Raw materials. North Carolina's main industries turned the state's agricultural products into finished goods. Today, a factory may buy its raw materials from anywhere in the world, but North Carolina's nineteenth century industries stayed a little closer to home.
After the Civil War, the owner of the modern day Charlotte Observer, D. A. ... mill designer and manufacturer who advocated industrialization as a way ... the cost of bringing raw materials in and hauling finished materials out. ... Around the same time, furniture manufacturing in the state was also on the rise