Editing Liberty, South Carolina (section)

===Textile era (1900–1980)===
Liberty's next change came in 1901, when Mr. Jeptha P. Smith organized and started the first [[cotton mill]], which he named the Liberty Mill.  The original mill contained a card room and an operating spinning frame.  Eighteen houses and two overseer houses were built as a [[mill village]] to house the plant's workers and their families.  The second cotton mill was built by Mr. Lang Clayton of Norris in 1905.  Built in a part of town often referred to as Rabbit Town, the plant was originally named the Calumet Mill, and later renamed the Maplecroft Mill.  By 1920, both mills had come under the control of Woodside Mills.  The first mill became known as Woodside Liberty Plant #1 (commonly called the Big Mill), and the second as Woodside Liberty Plant #2 (commonly called the Little Mill).  Woodside Mills operated the plants until 1956, when the company was purchased by Dan River Mills of Virginia.  At their height in the 1970s, the mills employed over one thousand workers and housed over one thousand looms.<ref>Woodson, Julia. "Liberty." 67-68.</ref> In the 1970s, the Woodside Liberty Mills were the world's largest producers of Oxford fabric, a popular fabric of the era.  The mills were again purchased in the early 1980s by Greenwood Mills, which maintained control of the mills until local textile industry declined in the 1990s due largely to foreign competition.  In 2013 the little mill was demolished.  The Big Mill is currently being stripped for demolition.

The growth of cotton mills in the area brought about a major shift in the way people lived.  Many migrated away from farmlands to the mill villages, and went from growing food to survive to earning hourly wages in the mills.  Though farming was a hard life, early mill life was grueling in its own right; mill workers—condescendingly referred to as ''lintheads''—often worked twelve or more hours a day in unventilated rooms.<ref>Browning, Wilt. Linthead. Asheboro, NC: Down Home Press, 1991. A1.</ref>  Nevertheless, most workers believed that they were fortunate just to have such work, and willingly worked in the same mills all their lives.    In many mill village families, both the husband and wife worked in the same mill.

Outside of the mills, several other major changes also happened during this long time period.  Electricity came to Liberty in 1910, when Mr. J. Warren Smith, a salesman, installed two gasoline generators downtown to operate the first street lights and the lights of several shops.  By 1928, demand had increased to the point that Mr. Smith decided to sell his assets to Duke Power, which established a small office downtown.<ref>Woodson, Julia. "Liberty." 90-91.</ref>  The Liberty Fire Department was first established in 1925, with J. Warren Smith—the same man who brought electricity to Liberty—being named as the first fire chief.  The Fire Department moved into its present building in 1974.<ref>Woodson, Julia. "Liberty." 91.</ref>  The first town library originated in 1947 as a small room located in the same building as City Hall.  The Sarlin Community Library, the one in current use, was built at its present location in 1966.<ref>Woodson, Julia. "Liberty." 92.</ref>  Liberty's police department was finally organized in the 1920s, when the city employed a chief of police and two policemen.  The first telephone service came to Liberty in 1902, when [[Southern Bell]] installed a telephone switchboard in the same building as the post office.  The first water plant for the town was built in 1918 on Black Snake Road.  This plant initially supplied water to around one hundred homes.  This plant was phased out by 1956 after a newer waterworks site was built on Eighteen Mile Creek.<ref>Woodson, Julia. "Liberty." 95-97.</ref>

The former Mohawk Carpet plant is currently occupied by Southern Vinyl Windows & Doors, a major employer in the area.