Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1905-05-10


as Capt. Smyth showed in his recent
address at Anderson, "from
3D. to 1856; the number of spindles
from $4,000 to 100000 or GAS per
cent, and the consumption of cotton
from 5000 to 100000 bales, or over
$40 per cent. The per cent. of the
crop raised in the State and con-
sumed increased from IL per cent. in
1890 to 68 per cent. in 1908" The
day is rapidly coming when every
pound of cotton grown in South
Carolina will be spun and woven
into goods in South Carolina.
"THE MANUFACTURING HABIT"
This is all the more surprising in
view of the statement deliberately
made by that great student of
economic problems, Edward Atkin-
son, of Boston, at the Cotton Expo
sition in Atlanta twenty-four years
ago, that it would be impracticable
for the people of the South ever to
acquire the manufacturing habit, and
that their mission in the economic
unfolding of this country was to
produce the raw material out of
which the skilled workmen of the
North would make the finished goods
to our mutual benefit. In less than
generation the South has prac-
tioally driven New England out of
the manufacture of the coarser cotton
goods as it will drive New England
out of the manufacture of the finer
goods in the life of another genera
tion if the people of the South shall
only prove loyal to themselves and
their opportunities and shall resist by
every means in their power en-.
tangling alliances with those who
having built up flourishing industries
under artificial conditions would now
discount our natural advantages by
legislative remedies and reformatory
processes. All sorts of laws have
been proposed by the representatives
of the cotton manufacturing interests
of New England ostensibly for the
public good, but really for the pur-
pose of equalizing the conditions be-
tween the two sections of the country.
The slogan of our industrial develop
ment and manufacturing primacy was
sounded by Captain Dawson more
than twenty-five years ago: "The
mills must come to the cotton % The
marriage of the cotton mills to the
cotton fields was the beginning of our
industrial greatness-what God hath
joined together let no man put
asunder.
TRYING TO SPLIT UP OUR PEOPLE.
Thanks to the vigilance of such
men at Ellison A. Smyth the legis-
latiye subterfuges attempted to our
hurt have 80 far failed, but now we
are threatened by more sinister ap-
proaches into the very citadel of our
strength-the unity of our people.
With all their inventive genius our
New England friends have not dis
covered any way by which they can
make cotton grow in their unfriendly
soil but they are doing their utmost
to acclimate the New England labor
agitator in the South. 1t has been
only a few weeks since it transpired
that Governor Douglas and Lieu
tenant Governor Guild, of Massachu-
setts, had sent emissaries through the
South on a secret mission to the mill
districts for the purpose of reporting
child labor conditions in the Southern
manufacturing centres in order that
they might institute such legislation
as would deprive the South of its
natural manufacturing advantages.
The walking delegate has made his
here and there, the maya
zine writers and pamphleteers and
others of pestilent brood of self
styled reformers have laid siege to
that impalnable and elusiye th;no