Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-11-01
POOR PEOPLE IN SOUTH.
Illustration of Ignorance Causing
Poverty.

The twinShip of poverty and ignor-
ance is strikingly illustrated in the
mountain region of North Carolina,
says the Charleston News and Courier.
The rural mountaineers, excepting
those who own the fertile valleys, are
the poorest people to be found in the
south. The plantation negroes IN
South Carolina enjoy comforts ana
luxuries of which the dwellers in the
novels in the little clearings far up on
the mountain side have scarcely
dreamed. Their scanty cabbage, corn
and apple crops provide them with
only enough cash to purchase In small
quantities such necessaries as sugar
and coffee-to them the choicest and
most priced luXuries Of life.
Yet between these people and easy
living stands only the barrier Of not
knowing how to produce the scores of
things for which there is ready and
evergrowing market at their doors.
The villages and larger towns TEEN
with summer visitors, many OF them
residents and use-keepers for three
or four months. These flock to the
mountains not only from the seacoast,
but from all the interior Of the south
ern country. Hundreds of families OF
well-to do farmers of the Piedmont as
well as from rice and sea island cotton
plantations fill the boarding houses and
hotels.
Nature has made these mountains a
food producing region, but the singu-
lar anomaly is that nothing is so
difficult to find in it as good things to
eat. In the smaller towns days pass
in the summer when a pat Of butter is
not to be had for love or money. Four
years ago it was the experience of a
we'll known Charlestonian to arrive at
a fashionable hotel at supper time. AS
he strolled into the dining room and
took his seat at the nearest table the
100 or more guests at the other tables
began to clap their hands in applause.
They were not greeting the Charles
tonian, but a procession Of walters with
the first butter that had been seen In
forty eight hours.
Fruit in the mountains. with the eX-
ception Of apples, is scarce and the ap-
Piles are often undesirable citizens of
the fruit kingdom. Grapes should be
plentiful, but they are to be seen only
in q few places. of which Tryon is a
noteworthy example. Delicious rasp-
berries may be easily raised, but only
here and there are they heard of. The
few peaches offered for sale show
plainly that they are produced by their
own exertions; they have never known
cultivation. With the exception Of
green corn. cabbage and beans. the
fruits of the earth are self-made in
western North Carolina: the husband
man is not in. alliance with nature.
The native beef is second-rate, though
the lamb and mutton are excellent.
Indeed, lamb chops and roasting ears
are the two redeeming foods of the
country Poultry and eggs could be
produced at nominal cost, but the sup
ply is never plentiful and the prices
are always high.
OF course, 1t is not intended to say
that there is nothing to eat. Visitors
with plenty of money do not starve,
but the opportunity is present for the
mountain people to cultivate numerous
crops, which they could sell at excel
lent profit.
The mountaineers are not lazy. To
walk fifteen miles to Waynesville or
Hendersonville with a pail of huckle-
berries which will sell for 40 cents re-
quires physical energy. The trouble is
ignorance. The same kind of energy
exerted in the care Of peach trees, in
fertilizing them and in spraying them,
would yield 81 instead Of 40 cents.
Outside of the towns and the splen-
did valleys, the North Carolina noun
taineers are a race going to waste.
Hardy, brave, honest and intelligent,
! they are languishing in the dullest
poverty. they are shivering in rags
when the winter sets in, for no other
reason than that there is no one to
tell them how to do; to arouse them:
to start them on the easy route to a
comfortable condition Of life.