The Conquest of Labor - (Southern Biography) by Curtis J Evans (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Conquest of Labor offers the first biography of Daniel Pratt (1799-1873), a New Hampshire native who became one of the South's most important industrialists. After moving to Alabama in 1833, Pratt started a cotton gin factory near Montgomery that by the eve of the Civil War had become the largest in the world. Pratt became a household name in cotton-growing states, and Prattville-the site of his operations-one of the antebellum South's most celebrated manufacturing towns.

Based on a rich cache of personal and business records, Curtis J. Evans's study of Daniel Pratt and his "Yankee" town in the heart of the Deep South challenges the conventional portrayal of the South as a premodern region hostile to industrialization and shows that, contrary to current popular thought, the South was not so markedly different from the North.

Review Quotes

"[This] book is a thorough, well-written biography, an excellent piece of business history, an exhaustive social and economic history of Prattsville, and a vivid chapter of the political history of the South, both before and immediately following the Civil War. It is, in other words, a monumental work on Pratt and Autauga County, Alabama."-Susanna Delfino, Business History Review

"Evans marshals an impressive array of primary sources to reconstruct Pratt's life and provide a detailed social history of the town of Prattville. . . . An important addition to the economic history of the South."-John Majewski, Journal of American History

About the Author

Curtis J. Evans is an independent scholar living in Northport, Alabama.