Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1905-05-10
a PROPHECY MADE GOOD.
[Continued from page 81

enactment of laws for the regulation
of child labor in our mills. Two
years ago in 26,826 operatives en-
ployed iii sfxty-one of the mills in
this State there were only 976 chill
dren under IL years of age, and a
careful investigation made by Mr..
August Kohn showed that not more
than four out of every hundred en-
ployees iii the mills of this State were
children Under IL years of age. There
ought pot to have been any such
children engaged in this work and
there are probably very few, if any,
~ 80 employed. The mill owners
~not want them and have only en-
Ployed them under protest. 1 ven-
ture to say that there is not in any
land better fed, better housed,
happier and more prosperous mill
population than the mill population
ofSouth Carolina. The objection to
OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE WITH OUR
AFFAIRS
and to the several attempts which
have been made to obtain mill legis-
lation in this State is that such in
reference and legislation are but the
beginning OF the troubles which have
made the manufacturing business in
other parts Of the country precarious
to capital and ruinous to labor. Last
week the United States Supreme
Court rendered decision declaring
the New York State law making ten
hours days work, and sixty hours
a, weeks work in the bakeries of that
. tate to be unconstitutional because
it interfered with the rights of con-
tract between employer and en-
ployee. "Statutes of this kind" said
Justice Peckham, in pronouncing the
decision of the Court, "are meddle-
some in character and cannot be
enacted under the guise of exercising
the police powers of the State" "The
freedom of master and employee to
contract with each other in relation
to their employment and in defining
the same cannot be prohibited or
interfered with without violating the
Federal Constitution"
THE STATES FERTILE FIELDS.
Very nearly all of Governor
Perry's phrophecy has come to pass.
The broom sedge fields and exhausted
lands have been converted into garden
spots, and cotton is now grown in the
very shadow of the mountains. Last
year one of the progressive farmers
of Oconee county made 60 bales of
cotton on 40 acres of land, and in
Marlboro county, down on the Pee
Dee, 1,100 bales were produced on
1000 acres of land that was not
regarded before the war as by any
means the best farming land in the
county. With land in the mountain
counties of South Carolina producing
more than bale of cotton and 100
bushels of corn to the acre, is it any
wonder that the star of industrial
empire is taking its way Southward
and that it is shining with steadily
increasing effulgenoe over this blessed
old State of ours
glands in the coast country which
could hardly be given away thirty
years ago have been sold in the last
year or two at more than $3.50 an
acre, and the finest truck growing
region on the American continent,
according to an expert from Chicago,
has been developed in the low
country during the last quarter of a
century. Last year one of the truck
farmers on Yonge's Island, near
Charleston, cleared $4,000 on his
aE aE Enting operations, and most of it
N cabbages.
DIR. sHEPPARD's TEA FARM.
The sassafras tea period in the de-
velopment of this State has passed
forever. Last year DR.. @. U. Shepard
made 5000 pounds of tea on his
farm at Summerville, twenty miles
from Charleston, and found ready
market for every pound of it in this
coEn.rx He will make snyaral thou