Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1907-10-09
SOUTH CAROLINA TODAY.
The Most Striking Illustration Of the
Rejuyinated South.
(From the Philadelphia Public Led


(From the Philadelphia Public Led
ger.) ~
Crop reports have often a much
wider significance than Is indicated
| merely by an effect on current prices.
Those who watch the cotton market
or the corn market are interested to
read that yield Of 100000 bales
Is expected this season in South Car
olina, which will probably bring
the producers more money than any
previous crop gathered in that great
cotton State. 1t is interesting to
read, also, that South Carolina, while
not growing less cotton, is growing
| more corn than ever before, fact
of great Importance to the corn-rais-
ing States of the West. A statistical
item of still wider interest is in
the statement that the South Caro-
lima mills will probably consume this
year 100000 bales, or more than
one-half of all the cotton grown in
the State.
The change which has brought
South Carolina, within a few years,
into actual rivalry with Massachu-
setts as a cotton manufacturing State
must have seemed incredible to the
man Of an older generation. The
whole social and political organfza-
tion Of the State was based upon
the production and expectation of
raw cotton. 1t was South Carolina's s
one industry, and the only one that
appeared possible-with so much of
hog and hominy" as might be Incl
two generations King Cotton domi-
mated and directed the attitude and
policy of the State in all its rela-
tions, and after the revolution
wrought by the civil war and recon-
struction South Carolina drifted
without a guiding purpose-drifted
eventually into social disorder and
misdirected populism.
The beginning of local manufac-
lures was the beginning of a new
era, and South Carolinians of a
younger generation, untrammeled by
the lingering traditions Of past age,
have risen wonderfully to their op-
portunities. They have organized
their work upon the most modern
basis, have developed the abundant
| water power, and close to the cot
ton fields have built great mills that
give employment to thousands of
those who formerly were classed as
unproductive. At the same time
| they have vastly improved their ag-
riculture, utilizing their abundant
| natural resources and multiplying G
their product, SO that food Is abun-
dant as we'll as work.
With this Industrial development
! has come naturally corresponding
| change in general conditions. We
| hear comparatively little now of the
race conflict" in South Carolina
The old antipathies exist, but the
races are learning to work side by
side and have no time to indulge
their hatred. Nor is there time fol
stirring up the poor against the rich
for a legislative war against capital
Eor for any of the socialistic iollies
which but lately furnished in South
| Carolina as they are still flourishing
in some of the neighboring States
In short, South Carolina has "got
busy" and prosperous industry Ii
ever the best remedy for discomfort
In good time the proud old Palmetto
State will begin to exert some of Its
former influence in national affairs
but it will not be on the old lines
| Conditions are changed and popular
policies change with them.