Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Finding Opportunities in Changing Times


"80% of the South's total spindleage" was within 150 miles of Charlotte. - Charlotte Observer, Oct. 29, 1929.

The exhibit space in the hallway outside the Carolina Room gives us a remarkable opportunity to show off our holdings to the world, or at least to the fellow staff members and hardy patrons who make it up to the third floor.

Our new exhibit concerns the history of business in Charlotte. It is entitled "Finding Opportunities in Changing Times". The theme conveys, we hope, an uplifting message to current residents. Generations before ours have also had to wonder what the new basis of Charlotte's prosperity would be. The way forward has always come from developing the assets of the old economic regime. The production of raw materials - gold and cotton - created the first concentrations of wealth here, for instance. When the markets for sellers of those commodities were no longer as strong, the key to a new economic future was the railroad. It had developed to serve the old industries, but it made Charlotte the center of the Southern textile trade. So did road improvements facilitate the growth of the trucking industry here and the steady influx of population lead to growth in real estate, finance, and government. Who knows what the new information infrastructure will lead to?

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