The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1905-05-24
LAURENS MILL HELP
OFFER TESTIMONIAL.

They Approve of Stand Taken by Mr..
LuCas-.-Chair Presented by DR.. Schayer
A Pleasant Evening at the Home of
the President.
The operatives of the Laurens Cotton
Mills Saturday night presented Mr.. W..
E. Lucas, the president and treasurer,
with the handsomest chair they could
buy in the city of Laurens, as token
of their approval of the course he has
taken as to the commission question,
and as testimonial of their loyalty to
him.
The testimonial was suggested in the
mill village Saturday afternoon. 1t was,
of course, spontaneous movement,
and practically all the people in the
mill village were contributors. Mr.. Lu-
cas- had his first intimation of it in the
afternoon.
The people arrived at the Lucas house
a little after night fall, about 800 mer
and about SO women and children. The
ladies and the elderly men were seated
in the parlors, and the younger people
remained on the piazza. DR.. Isadore
Schayer, the mill village physician, pre-.
sented the chair in graceful little
speech in which he related that two O,
three days ago one of the room fore
men, hearing of the controversy, said
eff Mr.. Lucas is put out, I'm ready tc
throw up this job, and go with him tc
help him build another mill, wherever
he chooses, if have to roll bricks in a
wheel-barrow." "That Mr., Lucas, -
said DR.. Slayer, illustrates how your
people feel toward you in this trouble,
and they give you this chair with the
hope that, as was said of the character
in mythology who drew new strength
from every contact with Mother Earth,
you, when you have rested in it, may
each time rise strengthened and re-
freshed for this righteous contest you
are maintaining.
Replying Mr.. Lucas said: "I thank
you. my friends, for this evidence of
your approval, which is worth more to
me than the approval of anybody else"-
and that was his whole speech. Then
the stringed band, which the people
had brought, played several airs, and
brief remarks were made by one or
two of the men representing operatives
and stockholders. At the request of
some of the young men, who work in the
mill, Mrs. Lucas, who is an accom-
plished pianist and who is favorite
with everybody in the village played.
Meanwhile ices and cakes were served
by the ladies of Mr.. Lucas's household,
and one or two gentlemen visitors who
were here for the stockholders and di-
rectors' meeting. Half an hour was
then spent in social way, everybody
enjoying the music and chatting. Then
the guests departed, the three hundred
men, some of them old warriors, giving
what sounded rather more like the "re-
bel yell" of defiance than three cheers.
These people had come from the
looms and the spindles in the afternoon,
but they were at home with their presi-
dent and he was at home with them,
and in feeling and sympathy there was
no gulf separating them. They know
that Mr.. Lucas was not moved by his
personal financial interest in making
this contest, they knew, as everybody
knows that it would have paid him
handsomely to have fallen in line with
the commission houses wishes. and be-
lieving that he is right, they took this
way of publicly aligning themselves
with him. True such demonstrations
do not buy mill shares and from the
viewpoint of a foreign capitalist per-
haps seem absurd, but they are never
theless of serious significance. The
fact is that the people who run the
spindles are just as important as the
men behind the guns.