After World War II, the carpet industry came to be identified with the Dalton region of northwest Georgia. Here, entrepreneurs hit upon a new technology called tufting, which enabled them to take control of this important segment of America’s textile industry, previously dominated by woven-wool carpet manufacturers in the Northeast. Dalton now dominates carpet production in the United States, manufacturing 70 percent of the domestic product, and prides itself as the carpet capital of the world. Carpet Capital is a story of revolutionary changes that transformed both an industry and a region. Its balanced and candid account details the rise of a home-grown southern industry and entrepreneurial capitalism at a time when other southern state and local governments sought to attract capital and technology from outside the region. The book summarizes the development of the American carpet industry from the early nineteenth century through the 1930s. In describing the tufted carpet boom, it focuses on Barwick Mills, Galaxy Mills, and Shaw Industries as representative of various phases in the industry’s history. It tells how owners coordinated efforts to keep carpet mills unorganized, despite efforts of the Textile Workers Union of America, by promoting a vision of the future based on individual ambition rather than collective security. Randall L. Patton and David B. Parker show that Dalton has evolved in much the same way as California’s Silicon Valley, experiencing both a rapid expansion of new firms started by entrepreneurs who had apprenticed in older firms and an air of cooperation both among owners and between mills and local government. Their close examination of this industry provides important insights for scholars and business leaders alike, enhancing our appreciation of entrepreneurial achievement and broadening our understanding of economic growth in the modern South.

The Dalton-Whit?eld County area of Georgia has one of the highest concentrations of Latino residents in the southeastern United States. In 2006, a Washington Post article referred to the carpet-manufacturing city of Dalton as a "U.S. border town," even though the community lies more than twelve hundred miles from Mexico. Voices from the Nueva Frontera explores this phenomenon, providing an in-depth picture of Latino immigration and dispersal in rural America along with a framework for understanding the economic integration of the South with Latin America. Voices fr ...

From the authors:See the Invisible Hand. Understand Your World. That's the tagline of Modern Principles and our teaching philosophy. Nobel laureate Vernon Smith put it this way: At the heart of economics is a scientific mystery… a scientific mystery as deep, fundamental and inspiring as that of the expanding universe or the forces that bind matter… How is order produced from freedom of choice? We want students to be inspired by this mystery and by how economists have begun to solve it. Thus, we show how markets interconnect and respond in surprising ways to changes in resources and preferences. Consider, for example, how markets respond to a reduction in the supply of oil. Of course, the price of oil increases giving consumers an incentive to use less and suppliers an incentive to discover more. But an increase in the price of oil also encourages Brazilian sugar cane farmers to devote more of their production to ethanol and less to sugar thereby driving up the price of sugar. An increase in the price of sugar means a reduction in the quantity of candy demanded. So one way the market responds to a reduction in the supply of oil is by encouraging consumers to eat less candy! In analyses like this, we teach students to see the invisible hand and in so doing to understand their world. Similarly, we offer a unique and simple proof of the amazing invisible hand theorem that without any central direction competitive markets allocate production across firms in a way that minimizes aggregate costs! To understand their world students must understand when self-interest promotes the social interest and when it does not. Thus, Modern Principles has in-depth analyses of externalities, public goods, and ethical issues with market incomes and trade. Moreover, we always discuss economic theory in the context of real world problems such as the decline of the ocean fisheries, climate change, and the shortage of human organs for transplant.

Shaw Industries, which is based in Dalton, Georgia, is the nation's leading textile manufacturer and the world's largest producer of carpets. This history focuses on the evolution of Shaw's business strategy and its adaptations to changing economic conditions. Randall L. Patton chronicles Shaw's rise to dominance by drawing on corporate records, industry data, and interviews with Shaw employees and management, including Robert E. Shaw, the only CEO the company has known in its more than thirty years. Patton situates Shaw within both the overall context of Sunbelt economic development and the unique circumstances behind the success of the tufted carpet industry in northwest Georgia. After surveying the state of the carpet industry nationwide at the end of World War II, Patton then tells the Shaw story from the boom years of 1955-1973, through the transitional decade of 1973-1982, the consolidation phase of the 1980s and early 1990s, and the "new economy" of the mid- to late 1990s. Throughout, Patton shows, Shaw's drive has always been toward vertical integration--controlling the outside forces that could affect its bottom line. He tells, for instance, how Shaw built its own trucking fleet and became its own yarn supplier, all to the company's advantage. He also relates less successful ventures, most notably Shaw's attempt at direct retailing. The picture emerges of a company proud of its image as a steady and profitable business surviving in a competitive industry. Patton traces the history of Shaw Industries from its start as a family-owned operation through its growth into a multinational corporation that recently joined Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway. The Shaw saga has much to tell us about the continuing vitality of "old economy" manufacturers.