The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1897-06-24
BARTOW'S PHILOSOPHER STATES
BETTER TINES ARE COMING. ,
PATIENCE is A GOOD MEDICINE.
Time Discounts Doctors or Politicians In
Bringing All Things Aroand Right
Side Up.

lleNe ludt ue IS dpOUt W cure TIE SouH-
try of hard times. Certain it is that
neither politicians nor legislation has
done any good. The disease was not
even diagnosed, but the patient is get
ting we'll. Neither Cleveland nor anti
Cleveland nor Mckinley nor the tariff
nor Populism has had anything to do
with it. Time is the medicine, and
when time cures a patient he stays
cured good, long period. I had rheu-
matism several years, and the doctors
worked on me until they got tired and
quit, but old Doctor Time came
along, and after while the rheuma-
tism just quit me and went away of its
own accord. For six years We have all
been cussin' and fussin' and discuss
in about the disease that afflicted the
country. Every politician had rem
envy, but somehow the people have
lest confidence in our so-called states
men and their medicine won't stay on
the stomach. A frst-class politician
can argue the leg off an iron pot or
the spots off leopard. heard Aleck
Stephens make a great speech away
back in the 40's and he proved that
the Democratic party was responsible
for all the calamities that had befallen
the country for twenty years, even to
the high price of coffee and the low
price of cotton and the yellow fever
in Savannah.
was ruminating about this because
I have been travelling around good
deal of late, and if the times are not
better then all signs deceive me. Farm
ing is claimed to be the foundation of
all prosperity-the mudsills of the
building-and if so, then I know the
times are improving, for the diligent
farmer is prospering everywhere in the
sunny south outside of floods and
cyclones. The crops in South Caroli-
ma are well advanced and promising.
Harvest is at hand in north Georgia
and Tennessee, and was never better.
Everything the farmer grows COM
mands fair price, and everything he
has to buy is cheap. The price OF
wheat and corn and hay is better thsn
it was from 1880 to 1S90-wheat at 81
per bushel, hay at 81 hundred, corn
at so cents, sweet potatoes at IS cents,
Irish potatoes at 60, chickens from Is
to 20 cents, and wood at S1.50 cord.
What is the matter. with the farmer?
Suppose his cotton is down to cents,
he can make money on it at that. A
man at Union, S. c., told me he made
! last year 500 bales on 800 acres, and
cleared $4,000. How is that? When
was q young merchant cotton aver
aged about 8 cents q pound; corn 40
cents bushel; wheat Is cents, pota-
toes 25, wood 81 cord. Shirting and
calico were 129 cents yard, sugar
and coffee 123 cents pound. Iron
was 5 cents, and steel Is cents and
nails s cents. Now all these things
except coffee are half price, and all
that the farmer grows for sale Is 25
per cent higher, except cotton. But
still he is not happy. Up north, of
course, it is different, for it takes all
they make in six months summer to
support them the six winter months.
am sorry for those people, that IS
for all the clever ones, and wish they
could sell out to the fanatics and fools
and come down here to this blessed
land. Their laboring class who have
no land and work about for wages say
they are not coming, for they can get
S25 a month up there and we pay our
negroes only $40. That's SO. That's
the way it is put down in the last
census. But the census don't tell how
the farm. laborer up there is only
wanted three months and the other
nine he jobs it around for little or moth
ing, and it takes his last nickel to keep
from freezing to death. And the CEN
sus don't tell how our negro laborers
| on the farms get their wages all the
year round and get comfortable cabin
| rent free and have no frewood to buy
and every family has garden and they
raise chickens and eggs and a pig or
two and have scraps enough from their
table to support two hound dogs and a
fee. Besides all this, they bait holes
in the creek and catch suckers by night
| and hunt rabbits on Sunday.
Talk about our cheap labor. There
isn't respectable negro man in Bar
tow county who isn't better off and
happier than the average farm laborer
at the north. That is one good thing
the negro has done for the south. He
! has intimidated the northern scurf and
the foreign scurf and kept them away.
I saw in the columns of The Constitu'
| ton not long ago statement in figures
that was taken from Boston paper
showing that since 1899 the foreign
population, inclusive of their children
born since their arrival, has increased
7S per cent in New England, while the
natives have increased but 6 per cent
, in ell that time. The exact figures
were gwen. Isn't that awful? New
England had just as we'll give up their
time-honored and historic country re-
ligion and all to these foreigners.
3 When was in Nashville the other
day looked with pride at the exhibits
of our southern industry that greeted