The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-06


 fore the woman of the family decides to learn how to cook. In even the poorest of mill villages she will find help and advice from her neighbors. Cooking be- gins to take on an importance never before given to 1t in that family, and some member of the household is soon developed into a cook
 In the better class of mill villages there are cooking teachers who go into the homes, introduce simple and wholesome dishes, and show the women how to pre- pare them. These cooking teachers are employed by the mill companies The mill managers know that the poor health of the people they bring in from the country is largely due to bad cooking They want healthy men and women who will work six days a week, therefore they send instructors 10 teach the women to cook
 Oatmeal, for instance, Is an mex pensiye article of food. It is whole some and Is easily prepared The average farm family coming to the mill village has never heard of oatmeal. The cooking teacher introduces oatmeal Rice-which few Americans anywh ere know how to cook properly-has long been familiar to the farmers of the Carolina lowlands. but the mounta ineer knew it not. Light bread" they will not eat. Their bread must be hot, and nearly always it Is made of corn meal. But when wheat -four Is used, 1t is the cooking teacher who shows how to save the soda and make the biscuits white and light, instead of yellow and l heavy.
 All of the labor in the southern cot ton mills has come from the farms first from the sand-hills and low countries, next from the foothills of the Piedmont sections and now from | fia Nt the fr ~lr Hl r ff,fat the physical health of all three classes 1 has been improved by the change from 1 farm life to factory life Better food Is responsible for much of the im- provement. but other things have con | tributed greatly.
 | Prom farm to factory" may sound 1 like a fate to be dreaded but it must be remembered that there are farms and farms. The family forced to ex- | change a free life on good Indiana farm for the factory would look upon l itself as ruined. So would a family from farm in the better agricultural parts of North Carolina. But the poor tenant farmer from the sand-hills or the mountains. who has never known a house of more than two rooms, who has never known what it was to have more than s10 in cash in a year, who has never had a school for his children to go to, who has not known either
  | church-to him the mill village is a revelation and a benefaction.
 The mill operatives of the south are notoriously nomadic. although there is some improvement to be noted in the last year or two, because more of the operatives realize that the promotions come to those who stay in the same mill. This tendency to move from mill town to mill town is one of the curious manifestations of the broadening lives of these people. Until they left their native mountain side they had never gone anywhere. They go to work In a mill at Concord; and there they h ear a great deal of Charlotte, It Is less than an hours ride to Charlotte and an excursion rate often makes it a very inexpensive trip. But the idea of spending money to "go on a trio is abhorrent to this man who us'
 think $10 in cash year a God
 Finally his curiosity to see Chs
 becomes so great that he thir
 must go So he takes his whole
 his household goods and do
 moves to Charlotte. There he fir
 for himself and his family in
 taking the places of some oth
 which has moved on to Gast'
 to see the town.
 The fact that there s aF
 in mill town makes th
 | lions very easy, even when
 at the expense of the famil'
 Ian agent from another mi