The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1910-08-03
THE DARK CORNER.

a. ID WhiidIIlS In Roanoke Times
with some surprise we observe va
rlous southern newspapers print and
apparently accept as a fact a story
from the st. Louis Post-Dispatch of
the appearance before the national
conference Of Charities and Correc-
tions In that city of Mrs. Shankie "of
the Squirrel Mountain School in the
Dark Corner of South Carolina" Mrs.
Shankie is made to tell of conditions
In her school and neighborhood SUD-
posed to be typical of those in the
| southern mountain countries. She is
quoted as saying that the boys at her
school shoot pistols around her head.
that preachers who go into the Sec
ton are shot at and chased off, that
the people generally practically are
savages and uncivilized.
The story bears falsehood-nrob.
ably the falsehood of a newspaper re-
porter-on the face Of 1t. The woman
is represented as saying that her
scholars have become so far civilized
that they raised last year "six bales
OF cotton and 100 bushels of corn" on
the 1OS acres Of school land. If they
nave succeeded in raising cotton in
the depths Of the mountains, they
have done what nobody ever before
succeeded in doing.
We happen to know this special
Dark Corner quite intimately and also
the people who live in it. They have
some moonshine stills, but they treat
revenue officers as revenue officers
treat them. They do not shoot at
strangers or waste ammunition firing
around the heads of school teachers.
They have churches and we never
have heard Of preacher being mo-
Tested. To Tire contrary all through
the southern mountains the Methodist
and Baptist preachers have done far
more to run the blockade stills into
the farm hollows and to put the
| moonshiners out of business THAI, the
United States government has been
| able to do in forty years.
The mountain people have their
own rows among themselves and set
tie according to their own codes. That
Is because they have been isolated
people with little access to towns and
courts; but they are getting out Of
that. In most Of the mountain Sec
tions it can be said as was said Of
England in King Alfonso's time, that
a maiden might walk through it from
end to end with a crock of gold on
her head and never be disturbed or
| injured. They poster nobody who
doesn't pester them. They attend to
their own business and want other
people to do likewise. They are as
eager for education as any people in
the world and when they get re-
ligion get 1t as hard and stand to it
as faithfully and rigidly as any peo-
pie In the world. They have their
peculiar faults and their peculiar yir-
tues, but nearly always they have
character and force which If directed
in the right ways will make them the
strongest people on the continent.
The evidence of this is that in all the
towns and cities along the foot hills
of the mountains from Virginia to
Arkansas some Of the very strongest
and foremost men in every depart
ment of life are of mountain stock.
When they are mean they are pizen
mean, as we say in the Dark Cor
ner, and when they are good they are
good and solid as beaten and tested
gold and will stay with the right man
in the right cause as long as a piece
Of them is left to wiggle.
There is no sense or justice in al
lowing these people to be advertised
to the world as staggering murder
Gus, savage ruffians. AS fast as they
SN' q Nh"iSO lHey ueNelop lHtO the
| finest kind of men and women. Like
| all people who are kept shut off to
| themselves and denied advantages.
they have prejudices, and their pre-
| Judices are strong, but where the
| world gets to them they play their
hand against it and their part in it
as we'll as any people we know.
In the South Carolina Dark Corner
is some mighty good, straight, clean
strain Anglo-Saxon, Irish and Scotch
stock, that has been kept pure.
Through generations of poverty and
ignorance its instincts have lived. We
suspect it is the same way with other