“T’ is for Tompkins, Daniel Augustus (1851-1914)

A native of Edgefield, Tompkins studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. After working ten years in the North, he moved to Charlotte and established his firm, D.A. Tompkins Company. By the 1890s his company was building cottonseed oil mills and textile mills in North and South Carolina. At least as important as Tompkins’s efforts to build the textile industry in the South was his role as a spokesman and leader for that industry. He purchased the Charlotte Observer in 1891 and used it to express his views about the place of the industry in southern society. He was one of the leading opponents of child labor legislation. For several years Daniel Augustus Tompkins successfully blocked child labor laws at both the state and national levels.