Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE INDUSTRIAL DELELOPEMENT OF SOUTH CAROLINA REVIEWED Mr. W. W. Bail Tells of Changes, Political and Other wise, That Have Come to Pass in the State in Last Quarter of Century. The following is in part a paper' read by W. W. Ball of the staff of The State, on "The Relation of the Preas to Industrial Development of Soulh Carolina." at the meeting of the South Carolina Press association at Cdenn Springs. Mr. Ball said by ?way of preface that his paper con sisted of two parts remotely related, the first being devoted to a brief con sideration of the press Itself as an industry and the second bearing more directly on tin; theme assigned him. It is the second part that is here given. S Chinee in Retrospect. One might enlarge on the hints j that I have thing out. but my purpose is 1<> discuss a wholly different phase ol the topic that your committee has assigned to me?I am going to read a political, though in no sense par tisan, paper. Not since 1884, the year before Capt. Till ma 11 unbosomed himself at Bennettsville, has the political tem perature been so low in South Caro lina. In that year the stagnation of despul rwas tlie characteristic. In 1910 the political sea is becalmed; the people having embarked on an othei sea. Earnestly, diligently, joy ous!} they are busy?making money. They have no time for politics: they do not seek help from politicians. The) do not need it. Ill 1881 half a mill increase in the levy maddened the people. They W I'C poor. .Many of them could not make buckle and tongue meet, no mattOV how they sweated and strove, and, with the price of cotton going down ami the price of money at the ha I h staying up, they began to grope blindly and strike blindly in all direc tions. The condition was not peculiar io So.ith Carolina, it marked till the agricultural States and so. when a politician offered any remedy, they snatched hungrily at it. They were in no temper to weigh accusations and explanations and examine them uir." the misci'OSCOpo. Anything that was labeled legislative medicine they swallowed without ; rlmnce and then si.11 iked their H s>, in state after State, Whoever ran about crying a nosti ft w;e hailed gladly and paid ban (Koine): from the only monies thai the icople had- the scant supply it: ' public treasury, the "rascal ooi s wrung from the hard hands' l.. the tax-gatherer. Not a True Revolution. But, we had no political revolution in Iiis or any other American com monwealth. We had a ?hange ol offioi: Is, tagged somewhat differently, Im;: they wore men of the same race, st:-.le - hi the Community and the same fundamental habits and motives as their predecessors. Consequently, no constitutional change followed; in a l?v. years the flurry passed and th" people took up again their ac customed modes of thinking and (] ;-. The dh'iaioil of the people \> .- Iiarp und accompanied with . ruel laceration but it was not deep? it was only skin deep. The tough lig aments that held the people together Could not be sundered by "doelatna fory flourishes." Tho movement that for the time turned things topsy-turvy in the early nineties, and this I would especially ins -.- upon, was not a laboring man's mo ? mont. ll was Agrarian. It was th< '' rising, in the main, of the dis heartened but land-owning fanner no* of his wage-earning tenant or hired man. The land owner was so pom and distressed that he forgot tl : '. he was a capitalist thai his he 'less was one of buying labor at tho lowest possible price and selling labor's product at the highest possible ]>i irte. The I.ami Owner a Capitalist Always. That the fanner tills his land with his own hands does not change his nature as a capitalist if he own the land, but in I hose days he w as so poor, so weary of hand and sick ol spirit thai he imagined himself in precisely the same plight as the hlrod man was who had nothing save labor to sell. Wages being low. the latter had everything to gain and nothing to lose by alliance with the landlord and so the political blending of white landlord and white laboring man was complete. However, the laboring element, exclusive of the !: .:'! owning laborer. In the popula tion was small compared to what It Is now; when lands are low-priced they are easily acquired and easily held. Besides, the mill operative pop ulation was email and the cities and towns were small?with relatively small numbers of non-owners of homes. The agriculturalists were fol-J find believed that "town men." lawyers, merchants and bankers, were their oppressors, and most of them believed it, but, of course, everybody knows better now. The latter groups were poor too?just as many of them proportionately as of the farmers, were reduced to bankruptcy?and from the same causes. Depression In agriculture brought poverty and woe to members of every calling in the Soulh. because agriculture was almost the sole basis of Southern wealth. In retrospect, the artificiality of the dif ferences of the nineties is plain and because they were mere "sound and fury signifying nothing" they did not I permanently divide the people. The Crimination and recrimination might be ever so blatant and offensive, the ruling political classes of white men were one at heart, though they were unaware of it and denied it to them selves, and they could not array them selves in hostile camps. In spite of contrived antagonisms of fanciful warp and woof they clung together, not only by reason of racial unity and the nemo menace but by reason of the nbsenco of a true economic difference. A solid body can not be split by the bursting of percussion caps on the surface. The Flurry Over. So soon as "times got better," the price of cotton going up. the old quarrel was forgotten and in 09 out of 100 instances, perhaps, the politi cians wlto fattened while it festered were kicked Into submissive obscurity by the voters. But iDo truth that I stress is that there was one prepond erant class, the land-owning fanners: all others, professional and business men and laborers, wore dependant upon and hound up with them and so small in numbers, power and in fluence as to be almost negligible in the electorate; certainly they wore I not important enough to he separately considered much as. temporarily, a I seeming separation was forced. Briefly, let US examine the new and changed picture. Instead of a dozen small and scattered cotton mill vil lages, we have now more than a hundred in this Stale, some of them large, peopled by many thousand while voters, scarcely any of whom are home-owners and all of them l wage-earners men who have only ! labor to Bell. Without statistics at hand as to the number or increase in white farm laborers, conditions point unmistakcably either to the rapid growth of BUCh a (lass or else the complete abandonment of the farms to negro labor directed by landlords and overseers. Twenty years ago the man who had a thousand dollars or was able to borrow it could purchase a productive and Improved farm of 100 acres, as improvements went in those days, in a desirable neighbor hood, Xow the one thousand dollars will purchase only 10 or 20 acres. Formerly, any able-bodied and Indus. 11 ions young man could become a landlord without heroic exertions. Owners were eager to sell land on any terms. If money was scarce, land was so cheap and abundant, that a young man who promised well could buy it whether or not he had a dollar of capital. The Thrifty Small Farmer. The small farmer suffered less, comparatively, from the depression than the great landlord: his little farm gave him a home; he worked with his own hands and negro labor was so plentiful ml cheap that, if a skilled manager, lie could produce Cotton at some profit, no matter how low the price. He lived scantily, he endured hardships and even in the nineties (of course I am speaking now of the exceptionally thrifty and indus trious) lie saved money. When the I price of cotton began to bound in 1902, he had gained a start, he had an In valuable education in frugality, he knew how to save, Thus, some thous and of men who had no capital 20 years ago are bccotne well-to-do land owners they are especially numerous in the Piedmont district, The fanner boy of today is afraid to start on 20 acres; he can not buy a $5,000 or $10,000 farm of Inn or tf)0 acres and be is reduced fo the alternatives of leaving the farm, or working on the farm for wages or of going to a remote district, far from schools and railroads, where lands are still cheap. The landlord, wheth er he have 100 acres or 2,000, is con tented and prosperous. With cotton bringing 1" cents Or more the pound he is almost sure to make ends meet and as a rule, he saves money rapidly ?with Which tie buys more land. The Wealthy Landlords, The wealthy farmer, reaping n profit of $").00i) a year, reaches out to a region where the lands are cheap and buy* another 1.000 acres. Hav ing plenty of capital, he improves and develops his added possessions. In a word, we have in the South a quick ly growing wealthy landlord clacr,.' In some sections, notably In eastern South Carolina, the princely estates of ante-bellum tunes, which engender ed and nourished a beautiful culture, the glory of the "old South," are being 1 reproduced on an even more splendid scale. A generation must pass before* I this regime of planting wealth will la in full flower again but the signs are that cotton and all farm products will continue indefinitely to command high prices and that seems to Insure its permanence. The natural and inevi table, if uncorrected, result of high priced land would be more landless men. Twenty years age) the Southern cities of 10.000 and 20.000 Inhabitants had 2,000 ami 6,000?note Florence, Sumter, Spartanburg and Greenville. Scores of new towns have sprung Into importance and some important new i towns have come Into being. The j bulk of this new urban population is composed of skilled and unskilled [laboring men who have only labor to sell?who would se'l tabor high and buy goods cheat). The Industrial Revolution. Now I come to the central thought of this paper; we are In the midst ot an industrial revolution; instead ot a dominating land-owning class, we have two edasses of people, land-owners and other capitalists (the owners of stores, mills and shops) ami a white wage-earning <dass. and the latter is. j swelling immensely in numbers and political potency. While I have no figures, which 1 should have, descrip tive of the new conditions, one has hut to look about him to he convinced ot the description's essential 'ruth. It is too early to say that the* white la borers on the farms (exclusive ol land-owning lahorerst will reach num erical importance hut the drift is in that direction. That the town and village laboring class is large ami growing is the present fact. Some loose commentator has said that a political revolution is due In South Carolina at the cud of HO-yenr periods, speaking roundly. If we reck on 1800 as suedi an event, which | deny that it was. another is to he ox pected in 1020 ?which I do not proph esy?but it is reasonable to prophesy that when next there shall he a cleav age in the body po!iti<- in South Caro lina, it will be on the lines of capital and labor the land-owners forming j the centre of the capitalistic array ami the wage-e arners of every sort uniting in opposit ion. The Past Depression. In Inn.", there was. as I have said, the stagnation of despair in politics, to he followed by tin' commotion among the land-owners live years I later. in 1010 wo have the same stagnation on the part of tin- land owners, hut from an opposite cause. The farmers are not and can not hi' aroused to acute political activity be cause they are contented; but. if there he no outward unrest on the part of wage-earners now, that is no reason why it may not show Itself at any moment. The cost of living of laborers is heightened as the fann er's prosperity is heightened, at least that is the rule for the moment; as the farmer's happiness intensities, the struggle becomes sharper ami more ! painful for the consumer of the ; farmer's products. On this it is as we-11 not to dwell; the hint should he clear enough; all of you know some thing of the evil that a talented agita tor, trammeled with no scruples and with a genius for harangue can do I when in a democracy he sniffs ofllec and power, not to mention graft, hut I make a short excursion to touch a single aspect of this next unheaval that I have shaped in speculation. Will Stand (he .strain. Positively and fully I avow a beliel that race sympathy is so strong among tin- whites that serious and permanent division with appeal to the negro as an incident om\ not take place, at least within tin century or the next, on industrial or other grounds. Thal I assert as a personal belief, to forestall misinterpretation, hut there can he no harm in frankly Contrasting tin- conditions of IV" with this next political rending. The people being essentially of one class in 1800, the differences being ol distorted and picturesque exaggeration and on the surface, there was never an actual peril e)f appeal to the negro vote. Unconsciously, the factions felt the shallowness e>f their bickering and the great sound, healthy, white body politic held together much as there may have been skin abrasions that smarted. Besides, the people of the South were but M years in front ol the dumb agony of actual negro dorn ination. There was but one class of w hite people in 1890. The Multiplied Peril. With two ClaSSOS of white people, the danger of coalition by one or the other with a third class apart and aloof. (that third class being (he neeroes) is trebled. That is almost mathematically true it (lows from the multiplication of points of con tact. Two of these classes will have \ In common one of the strongest motives, if not the strongest, known to the human heart?the motive to get the most bread and meat for a day's work, in 1890 nearly all the white people had the common motive of giving the laborers, most of whom were negroes, the least bread and moat for a ?lay's work ?they were eager to buy labor cheap and sell goods high, obviously the conclusion emerges that If any conscienceless demagogue Bhould arise to attempt the destruction of white unity, the way would be clearer for his knavisb ness than it has been heretofore. In the end he would fall, but he might precipitate some years of uneasiness accompanied with pains and wrench inns to the commonwealth. The Way of Kscape. Finally, 1 come to the conclusion that the duty of the press In the industrial development of South Car olina is to address itself vigorously and diligently to the prevention of the unhappy political division which 1 have ventured to outline as a looming danger and that is to be done by developing the man as the industrial unit. All of you are somewhat wrought up in expectancy <<i>ont the census revelations In your respective towns. To my mind, a community of 1,000 beads of families owning their own homes is superior in every desir able way to another having 10,000 heads of families of whom 1,000 own homes. The ownership of a home is the sheet-anchor of good fitizenship. Increase of town population is :i boon, first of all. to the real estate holder who has land to sell, and then to the merchant, hotel keeper, and every other capitalist. Including the farmer who supplies the town market, but to the wage-earner, who hns only labor to sell ;md its price to buy with, it may bo, it usually is. the reverse. Arguing from this premise, the lust duty of the press is to encourage, to stimulate, to enable so far as it can. the wage-earner to become n capital ist; tluii is. to slake himself in the community by buying a home, The Mills mill the Men. Illustratively, it - Infinitely more important that you i. dp the employees in your cotton mills, by educating them, by Inducing Iho formation of building ami loan associations and savings banks ami by drilling them to the uses of these facilities to acquire homes, than it is to induce the build ing of n not her cotton mill. I mi^ht cite a score of Illustrations but the point is not hard to discern that the problem is to strip the laboring man's task of every hampering and hinder ing difficulty ami to strengthen hi in morally through the schools and by other means so thai the number oi men who have something besides their hands shall be steadily and rapidly increased. That above all things will fortify your common wealth against the devilment of the demagogue, When you do this the employers of labor will respond to your summons and cooperate with you. The Most Dangerous Trust. We rail with more of less coher ence and a good deal of meaningless line frenzy about "trusts," but the monster trust is the land trust. When (lit1 land prices have mounted so high that the poor can not own farms and tile broad acres are in tin- hands of the few, as in most of Iho old coun tries, the chances of the average man to better his condition shrinks to a pitable thinness that is why Immi grants come to America. Your task, gentlemen, ami it is the chief of your tasks in connection with this topic, is to make the landless South Carolinian a landlord ami the way to do that Is to educate him to be an expert farmer so that he may earn a Comfortable live lihood on In. l.", or acres such a farm as any strong young man may hope to purchase and pay for. In Holland, in France and other countries a body of 2f> acres is a farm of more limn respectable siz< ami there is no reason that in South Carolina We should not have thous ands and tons of thousands of farm ers of this description. What Editors May Do . When you 1111 your columns with news of the boys' corn 'dubs and farm ' demonstration by the national agri cultural department, when you sec ond the endeavors of Clemsou col lege and Commissioner Watson, when you advocate Industrial training in the schools, when you constantly and watchfully devote your newspapers editorially and other wise to the assist ance of these agencies, you do more for your town, your county and your State than when you promote the establishment of great Incorporated manufactories and financial Institu tions. When the man has been industrially developed so that he shall share as be ought to share in the resources of the State, the germs of political evil in him are eradicated. If there be ap proaching in the distance the flames of a political revolution started by the ignition of the laboring n\aa's dis content, our task Is to start a Counter Heine to meet It. check it ami overcome it. by helping ami c mvertiiig hint into a small capitalist. Into a home.owner in the town or a land-owning farmer in the country. in all tho States where there 1ms been a considerable white wage-earn ing class, clashes between laborers and Capitalists have been frequent: you will recall their bitterness and bloodiness. Having bad no such class the South has escaped the conflicts and has before it their history to profit by. The South may avert the approach of BUCh troubles by the educative poli cies that have been pointed out ami tlu? press should he the principal edu eatoi. Out4 lot of Misses tan oxfords, worth $L'.nn. Mill Knd price. $1.20 Davls-Uoper Co. His Appreciation If 'SHE BUSINESS MAN thorough Sit 5 X 8 ly appreciates his checking account. Those who do not kee]) such an account miss many of its advantages. We arc always glad to ex plain the workings of a checking-account to those who are not familiar with them. The Bank for Your Savings. MONEY LOANED ON REAL ESTATE LONG TIME EASY PAYMENTS Reliable Representatives Wanted The Jackson Loan & Trust Co Ft. Worth, Texas and Jackson, Miss. The success of ;i man in business depends on his attention to little things. A thousand get rich l>y saving, whore one <^c ts rich by speculating. That person is wise who in youth makes provision for old nge. A dollar saved today maj be tli ? foundation of your fortune. Begin saving to-day, tomorrow yon may forget it. Saving like spending is a habit. 1 he Place to Put Your Savings is I Enterprise Bank Laurens, S. C. X. ]',. I >ial, President C. II. Roper, Cashh Automobiles for Sale ^ ^^^^ - ^ - ^ ^^moblles for Hire Phone !78--Night Phone 16-Day J. H. PARKS, Agent Laurens, - , . South Carolina