Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1901-12-07
THE POOR WHITES.
ORIGIN OF A DISTINCT GLASS LIVING
IN THE SOUTH.

The "craeker OF the Hills" Is the Direct
Descendant of the "sold Passengers" Who
Came to This Country In the Seventeenth
Century.
The notion that the poor white ele-
ment Of the southern Appalachian re-
gion is identical with the poor people
generally over the country is an error,
and an error of enough Importance to
call for correction. The poor white of
the south has some kinfolk in the Adj
irondack region of New York and the
Blue and Allegheny mountains of Penn
sylvania, but he has few relatives any
place else about the Mason-Dixon line.
The states of New York and Pennsylva-
mia We're slave states until the early
part of this century.
This poor white mountaineer descends
direct from those immigrants who came
over in the early days of the colonies,
from 1920 to about or some time after
the Revolutionary war period, as ''sold
passengers :" They sold their services
for a time sufficient to enable them to
work out their passage money. They
were sold, articled to masters, in the
colonies for their board and fixed wage,
and thus they earned the cost of their
migration.
The laws under which they were ar
ticled We're severe, as severe as appren-
tice laws in those days. The "sold pas
senger" virtually became the slave of
the purchaser of his labor. He could be
whipped if he did not do the task set
him, and woe to the unlucky wight if
he ran away. He was sure to be caught
and cruelty punished.
And though he was usually descend
ant of the lowest grade of humanity ON
the British islands, he still had enough
Of the Anglo-Saxon spirit about him to
make him an unsatisfactory chatteL
From 1920 forward-the year when
the Dutch landed the first cargo of Afri-
can slaves on the continent-the ''sold
passenger" was fast replaced by negroes,
who took more naturally and amiably
to the slave life.
The poor white naturally came to
cherish q bitter hatred for the blacks
that We're preferred over him. He al
ready hated his domineering white mas
ter When he was free to go, he put as
many miles as his means and his safety
from Indian murderers permitted be-
tween himself and those he hated and
hoped he might never see again. In
that early time the mountain region
was not even surveyed, let alone owned
by individual proprietors.
The English, Scotch, Irish and con-
tinental immigrant who had some means
sat down on the rich valleys, river bot
nj he hn
poor white was made welcome to the
foothills and mountain plateaus-
These descendants of the British vii
lein of the feudal era grew and multi
piled. became almost as distinct peo-
pie from the lords of the lowlands as
the Scotch highlander was, as related to
his lowland neighbor, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries.
The stir of the period since the close
of our civil war has made somewhat in
distinct the line that separates the
mountaineer from the plainsman of the
south. especially in the foothills and at
points where the two have intermingled
in traffic, in the schoolhouse and church,
and especially where the poor whites
have been employed at mining, iron
making, etc. But go into the mountains
far enough and you find the types as
clear cut as it was 100 years ago, with
its inimitable drawing speech and Gu
rious dialect, its sallow complexion,
lanlIy frame, lazy habits and immoral
ity-all as distinctly marked as they
were when hundreds of these people
found Cherokee wives in Georgia and
Tennessee in the early part of the GEN.
tury and bleached most of the copper
out of the skin of the Choctaw as well
as out of the Cherokee.
1t is a pity that some competent an
thropological historian has not traced
the annals of this interesting and dis
tinctive section of our population and
made record of it in the interest of sci
ence, no less than in the interest of the
proper education and elevation of the
mountain people. 1t has become, espe-
cially in the Piedmont section of the
south, most important labor element
The cotton mill labor by thousands
comes from the Cracker of the Hills"
and it is destined ito become a great
power, that labor population, social and
political.
The redemption of the poor white be-
gan when slavery went down in blood
and destruction, and it has gone on fast
er and travelled farther than some of us
think. -Chattanooga Times.