Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1902-06-11
"wHue SLAVERY IN THE sourH.n
Col. Jas. [. Orr Reiutes Some sianders by a
Northern lssasxias iairltef. !.

"hu htpk up 70 tuo etApGard OF the
ancient enemy Of Israel, has made
vicious and unwarranted attack mon
the cotton mill industry of the South,
after weeks visit to this section of the
country, which IL in keeping with the
reckless and audacious character of a
writer whose chief character aud aim is
to villify and traduce other people. It
Is questionable whether 1t is wise to con-
trovert the statements of such writer's in
regard TO the South, but now aud then
1t may be well to fatty contradict them
with the existing facts, and In this in
stance the editor of The Philistine has
been handled with gloves off by Col.
Jas. l.. Orr, president of the Piedmont
Cotton Mills, whose letter to Mr.. o. III.
sampson, of Boston, Mass, Is herewith
printed:
Dear Sir: Please accept thanks for the
copy of The Philistine containing tho
article, "White Slavery in the South
1t is a vile slander on the management of
the South Carolina cotton mills and a
wanton and unjust attack on the Massa.
ohusetts capitalists who have invested
their money in the South.
The statement that the mills in South
Carolina are mostly owned and operated
by New England capital is mistake, and
very little inquiry on the part of the
writer would have prevented such mis-
statement. In many of the mills less
than 10 per cent of the capital stock is
owned in the North, and very few of
them indeed have ae much as 90 per cent
of Northern capital in them. The man.
agement is almost exclusively by South
ern men. The executive officers, with one
or two exceptions, have been born and
raised here; three fourths of the super
intendents also.
The statement that in many instances
the machinery of the cotton mills has
been moved entire from Massachusetts,
to Sonth Carolina IL without the slightest
foundation of fact to sustain it. In 1901
South Carolina had about Ia mills and
10000 spindles, in 1901 she had 1870 mills
and 1000, 900 spindles, 80 it must be seen
that the mills are Of cOmparatiyely
recent construction and they have been
benefited by the experience of New
England, been built by New England
engineers and equipped with the latest
and most modern machinery.
Perhaps the best illustration of this
may be found in the fact that the agent
of the Draper company recently stated
that there were as many Draper looms
running in South Carolina alone as in
the whole of the New England States
combined. The most thoroughly up-to-
date mills that may be found in this
Carolina, and the slightest investigation
would have shown this fact, for it has
been commented upon by newspapers
and periodicals all over the country.
The statement that the mills run from
6 o'clock in the morning until O'Clock
at night is false, for the law limits the
hours of labor to SO per week, and run
ming over time is an indictable offence.
The statement as to the company stores
is grossly incorrect, for In some sections
of South Carolina the mills do not run
such stores at all, but rent the buildings
to merchants and have nothing whatever
to do with the sales of the goods or the
colleC tion of debts, and this rule applies
to the majority of the mills in the State.
1t is almost universal in the northwest
ern part of the State at such mills as
Piedmont. Pelzer, Bolton, the Anderson
mills, Abbeville, Greenville with one
exception), Newberry, etc. In none of
the company stores are the operatives
required to trade at such stores. 1t is
purely voluntary on their part. The
statement that nineteen families out of
every twenty never see any cash is utterly
false, as they are paid off every two
weeks.
The statement tina: the head of the
family can get whiskey and pay for it
with an order on the company store
shows the veracity of the other state
ments given. If it were possible to do
SO there is not company store in South
Carolina that would permit it; but to
establish the utter falsity of the charge
it Is only necessary to refer to the fact
that in South Carolina liquor is only sold
from the State dispensary and cannot be
bought there except for cash, and the
party ,lo.gets it must sign his name to
tained.
While all of the larger mills in this
State disapprove of working children
n fyun <~f
them have passed rules forbidding it,
except in cases of absolute necessity,
still children as young as ten are worked
in some of the mills.
This is occasioned, not from the
cupidity of the parents or mill managers,
but from necessity. We have no laws
in this State limiting the years in which
children may be worked. England had
no such laws until she had been manu-
featuring 100 years, and New England
had no such laws until they had been in
this business so or 90 years. But, not
wlthstanding the sneers and vilifications
OF our people, South Carolina will have
a law regulating the working of chill
dren long before either of those had it,
in proportion to the length of time they
nave been engaged in cotton manufac-
turing.
The only place that children are worked
IN the mill is in the spinning room and
for sweeping, and while GO hours a week
is long time for child to work, it is
not confining or arduous labor, and the
best illustration that it is rot 80 regarded
by the children themselves is that 95 per
cent of them would rather work in the
spinning room than on the farm or 90 to
school. Spinning is paid for by the side; |;
that Is, the number of spindles operated
oy child or grown person is paid in
exact.y the same proportion, and any
one with the slightest experience of man
ufacturing knows that the children make
FAR more waste on account of inattention
and lack of skill than the larger hands: !:
so instead of being economical every mill
man knows that it is the most expensive
labor we have. AS cur people become
educated in this character of work and
more skilled the children will be weeded
out, but now, on account of the scarcity
OF help, they are used in this department.
me statement that the operatives are
debased, worthless and cruel is most un-
just. They are all natives and all of
them have come off the farms or from
the towns where they have been engaged
in various occupations, and will compare
favorably as to intelligence, moral char
acter and industry with any other COM
munity of laboring people in this coun-
try or elsewhere. They are far superior
to the foreigners who operate the New
England mills; in fact, they are exactly
the same class of people that were en-
gagged in the mill business in New Eng
land fifty years ago, and those who re-
member the condition Of the mills in
that locality at that time as compared
with the present condition can Judge our
people correctly. The statement that
children five and six years old are en-