Dallas Compress Company, 2010 Alabama Avenue, Selma

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-197. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Alabama Avenue, Selma, Dallas County, Alabama Date: and c. Structural Type: The warehouse complex consists of 25 c. and c. brick warehouses with 12 inch firewalls and fire doors. The buildings flank Alabama Avenue and are contained between Alabama Avenue, Selma Avenue, and Maxey Street to the north, and Alabama Avenue, Water Avenue, and Maxey Street to the south. The company's loading dock fronts rail lines running along Water Avenue on the southern portion of the complex. Few decorative details mark the structures. Floors in most buildings are wood with gaps between planks for air circulation. A small number of buildings possess cement floors that became common in later cotton warehouses. Skylights deliver natural light to the warehouse interiors.

The nineteenth-century buildings have 198 feet square under roof. A small press is located in warehouse #1 and is used to re-press loose bales. The principle compress, a machine that the company ./ purchased used in the resides in warehouse

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AL-197. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

LeAnn Bishop Lands, DALLAS COMPRESS COMPANY HAER No. AL-197 (Page 2) History Cotton warehousing expanded in the South's cotton industry. Established to temporarily store cotton in its move from the fields to the factory, and to hold cotton over to the next year, warehouses spread throughout the black belt South through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By public warehouses stored cotton throughout the country, and about 350 of these included compresses. While cotton remained "king" until about World War II, cotton farmers suffered carious setbacks throughout the early twentieth century. Boll weevil infestations, competition from synthetic fibers, and the like dampened sales or inhabited crop production in the early part of the century.

In the New Deal programs encouraged planters to mechanize production, adopt scientific farming methods, and reduce crops, which helped force tenants off the land as plantations evolved into large agri-businesses. These tendencies accelerated after World War II, and plantations employed fewer people and more machines. In 193 5 about 45 in 100 southerners farmed, but by only 5 in 100 did. While the cotton economy declined over the last half of the twentieth century, warehouses remained scattered through the region, serving the region's new cotton agribusinesses.

The Dallas Compress Company, incorporated around with farmers as stockholders, continues operating today and, with buildings dating from the late nineteenth century as well from recent decades, reflects the transitions of warehousing and the cotton economy over the last one hundred years. After ginning, cotton had to be sampled, classified, and stored until sale and shipment to textile mills. In south-central Alabama, many farmers warehoused and then sold the harvest to buyers operating out of Selma, which had developed into a moderately-sized interior cotton marker as railroads spread through the region. Warehouses operated by charging growers for storage, handling, insurance, and shipping. After receiving cotton for the grower, the warehouse graded the sample.

1 After grading, cotton compresses, usually combined with warehouses in moderately-sized and larger cotton market, further compressed cotton bales for ease of shipment. In market towns like Selma, growers could sell their cotton to proprietors of supply stores, local people who bought or sold cotton as their principle business or as a sideline to other business, agents of growers' cooperative associations, buyers for large merchants in central markets, or traveling buyers for mills. After the cotton was sold, warehouses shipped the product to the mill by the method requested by the buyer. Dallas Compress Company's older warehouse sections, dating to the are typical of late nineteenth and early twentieth century warehouse arrangement and construction.

Masonry walls, 12 in thick, and fire doors protected against the spread of fire, a common problem in all phases of textile processing. Wood plank floors with gaps between allowed air and moisture circulation. Numbered building columns identified storage areas within each warehouse, and skylights provided natural lighting to the interiors. As was typical of the moderately-sized and 1 Currently, the company sends samples to Birmingham for grading. DALLAS COMPRESS COMPANY HAER No. AL-197 (Page 3) larger cotton markets, Selma's warehouse combined storage with a cotton compress. Rail lines running to the south side of the complex provided transportation to the mills.

Later compress warehouses were built of reinforced concrete, with sprinkler systems to protect against fire, and some with overhead conveyors by which the cotton bales were easily moved. Dallas Compress Company's later buildings include concrete floors, though cotton was normally moved with forklifts and the like. Most recently, trucks have replaced trains in providing transportation to the cotton mills. Presently, about 80 percent of the cotton stored at the Dallas Compress Company is that grown by members of the Autauga Quality Cotton Association, a cooperative association of south-central Alabama farmers that contracted with Hohenberg Brothers of Memphis, TN to market their cotton. 2 The balance is cotton stored by individual growers.

Farmers are also allowed to warehouse the cotton for 8 months on a U.S. government loan, the loan amount being based on the grade of the cotton. The company has been licensed to warehouse government cotton since the Few modifications have been made to the original buildings outside of roof repairs and general upkeep. The facility has been expended through the twentieth century, and destroyed buildings have been replaced by newer structures. A tornado took one building in for example, which was replaced with a more modem facility. The Dallas Compress Company presently operates a compress, though it was purchased used in the The previous model is unknown. 2 The Autauga Quality Cotton Association formed in and is part of a long tradition of cooperative cotton growing associations.

AQCA members agreed to plant only the registered see of the variety approved by the association, gin all cotton at association-approved gins, assign the total crop to the association (members later sold the crop to the association), warehouse all cotton in approved warehouses, and send the warehouse receipts for that cotton to the association. In part, the grower agreements were designed to ensure that cotton would be provided to mill standards, a change members hoped would boost sales. Hohenberg Bros. Company (later purchased by Cargill) marketed the association's cotton, relieving farmers of that burden. DALLAS COMPRESS COMPANY HAER No. AL-197 (Page 4) Consulted Sources Copper, William J., Jr. and Thomas E. Terrill. The American South: A History. New York: McGraw-Hill, Daniel, Pete.

Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since Chicago: University of Illinois Press, Garside, Alston Hill. Cotton Goes to Market: A Graphic Description of a Great Industry. New York: Frederick A Stokes Company, Gibbons, Faye. Breaking New Ground: The History of the Autauga Quality Cotton Association. Montgomery: Black Belt Press, Hubbard, W. Hustace. Cotton and the Cotton Market. New York: D. Appleton and Company, Nelson, Sonny. Personal interview. Virts, Nancy. "The Efficiency of Southern Tenent Plantations, Journal ofEconomic History 51 (June Woodman, Harold D. King Cotton and his Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,