The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1896-05-20
BILL ARP'S LETTER.
Professor Tucker of tho United States
Labor Department.
Atlanta Constitution.

Atlanta Constitution.
This is a great government. We
don't know very much about it until
we 60 behind the scenes-behind the
screens as it were-and see what is
going on. The doings of congress as
we read them in the papers a:e very
noisy and exciting, but it is mostly
routine work and tells US nothing of
what is going on in the various de-
partments-scientifc and industrial.
We used to get the patent Office re-
| ports that had a world of curious in
formation and explanatory pictures,
but they seem to have stopped coming.
And there were books on agriculture
and horticulture and pestiferous in
sects and books that told about cattle
and sheep and all the diseases to
which they were subject. All these
used to be distributed among the peo-
pie like the garden seeds are distrib-
uted, and pretty much for the same
vote-catching purpose, but they cost a
big lot of money, and now -"e given
only to the scientific. The men of
science make but little noise in the
world. They care but little for fame
or fortune, but they are eve at work
studying nature and solving mysteries
and lessening the burdens of life. Il
does seem to be a dispensation Of
providence that great men care but
little for money. What they discover
or invent o becomes common prop
erty. I am not speaking Of the small
man who takes out q patent on fish
hooks or hairpins, but of great men,
like Jenner and Pasteur, Agassiz,
Fulton, Watts Newton or Morse.
But [ was Illuminating about a visit
[ had today-a visit from Professor
Tucker, the United States agent for
the labor department. He come to
find out about how the silk business
was conducted in Georgia fifty years
ago. So I told him how my father,
in 1887, got some morus mu%lticaulis
cuttings from Washington and in two
years had several acres of young trees,
and then built a house, forty feet
square and two stories high, and filled.
it with hurdle frames and got some
silkworm eggs, and when they Matched
the worms soon filled the house and
eat up all the mulberry leaves and
wanted more. We got enough from a
neighbor to finish up with, and we
boys were glad enough when the nasty
things began to wrap up in their
mummy-like shrouds.
But my curiosity was excited. What
does the United States want to know
all this for? So he explained by say
ing that his department is comparing
the old with the new-the primitive
methods with the modern-and the
cost of each, and which was the best
and gave more happiness, and other
economic questions. He had a leather
grip full of samples of the handiwork
Of the women of western North Caro-
lima and northeast Georgia. Every
little square or scrap was pinned to a
printed sheet, that gave the name of
the weaver and her age and residence.
There were samples of wooden and
cotton and linen and silk, samples of
liusey and jeans and c%ounterpanes and
quilts and wagon sheets and curtains
and table cloths, and some of them
were gems of beautiful fabrics, and in
those mountain counties the humble
people are still spinning and weaving
in the old-fashioned way and are hap
DIV. In many families their handi-
work is piled up on the shelves and
clothes presses, awaiting the marriage
of sons and daughters, to whom they
were to be given as bridal presents.
Professor Tucker had some specimens
of silk sewing thread and fex-thread
that were made at home. He found
good people up there who seldom
bought anything and were able to
give a stranger a good bed and plenty
to eat and a sincere hospitality. He
told me of an old man in Rabun who
said he never fell out with the United
States until the revenue officers began
to sneak around his little still, where
he had been making peach brandy for
fifty years, and had the respect of his
Maker and his neighbors and he told
them that the United States wasent
big enough to stop him, for the right
to make it was handed down TO him
from his father and grandfather. He
said they threatened him every time
they came about, but he kept two
pitchforks in the house-one under
the front door and the other at the
head of his bed, and they didn't dare
to arrest him. But after worrying
with them for three years things kept
getting hotter and hotter and his
neighbors advised him to quit shilling
and he did, for he was getting old and
wanted to live in peace, but it was a
bad government that would let a rich
man still and not let a poor man.
These big distilleries, said he, swindle
he government out of more tax money
than all our moonshine stills put to-
gether. i they have to do is to
bride IT, %torekeeper. I know of one
over in North Carolina that sold $500
gallons in one year and never paid a
dollar of tag on it. He told Professor
Tucker that the revenue men broke
up forty stills in that region last year,
but to his knowledge there were about
a hundred that were still running on
a small scale. "The boys sorter like
the danger of ~t."sid he, "and the
;nformar ootnhas Il, when fOund ont.
He generally leaves this part of the
country as soon as he pockets his
bride. The mountain people are not
as honest and honorable as they used
TO be, and it all comes of this bribe-
taking business. The United States
ought to be ashamed of it." The
professor said it is impossible to con-
vince those mountaineers who are
se~venty-fve miles from market that it
is wrong to convert their corr into
whisky when one bushel will make
-. -.1la,, .,J tbou no, Haul n hun