Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold ─ Phosphate, Fertilizer, and Industrialization in Postbellum South Carolina

“A finely layered and important study that fills in gaps in the industrial history of the New South and especially low-country South Carolina.” —Sidney Bland, author of Promoting Tradition, Embracing Change

“Skillfully blurs the old, comfortable line between Old and New South economies and paints a nuanced picture of the new labor relations in the post-slavery era.” —Charles Holden, author of In the Great Maelstrom

Shepherd McKinley presents the first-ever book on the role of phosphates in economic, social, and industrial changes in the South Carolina plantation economy. Fueling the rapid growth of low-country fertilizer companies, phosphate mining provided elite plantation owners a way to stem losses from emancipation. At the same time, mining created an autonomous alternative to sharecropping, enabling freedpeople to extract housing and labor concessions. Using extensive research, McKinley shows how the convergence of the phosphate and fertilizer industries carried long-term impacts for America and the South.

Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold develops an overarching view of what can be considered one of many key factors in the birth of southern industry. This top-down, bottom-up history (business, labor, social, and economic) analyzes an alternative path for all peoples in the post-emancipation South.

Shepherd W. McKinley, a senior lecturer in American history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is the coauthor of North Carolina: New Directions for an Old Land