Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1915-01-26
Attack On tho Warehouse

We are reproducing on the first
page Of today's issue broadside that
the Columbia Record has fired at the
state warehouse commissioner and
over the head Of the commissioner, at
the state warehouse system.
While we are not at all impressed
by what has been said, and do not
consider the article worth the space it
occupies from any standpoint, still
since we desire to make few COM
ments, we do not desire to do so un-
til we have given the reader a fair
and full opportunity to see what we
are talking about.
The editor of the Columbia Record
is an able man, working for able and
shrewd men of masterful spirit and
great financial power, and quite con-
genial combination it makes, because
with both it Is means to an end and
very little regard on the part Of eth
er as to what means are necessary.
In this case, we consider that the
proprietors Of the Record told their
employe, the editor to sail in and kill
the warehouse system with the legis-
lature, and although he has undertake
en- to obey orders to the best of his
ability, so far as we are able to un-
derstand, this first broadside is not an
altogether creditable effort.
Let it be known to begin with, that
the largest stockholders and dominat-
ing owners of the Columbia Record,
are rich and powerful bankers, who
are owners of the Standard Ware
house company, which has for years
past been making big money storing
cotton for the farmers and negotiating
loans thereon, and who see in the state
system an effort to save to the cotton
producers themselves the big profits
that have heretofore been going to the
company.
In this editorial we note pre-
tended complaint against Commission
er McLaurin for not having furnished
the general assembly with a detailed
statement Of the business transacted
during the past eight or ten weeks
during which he has been trying to
get the new system in operation, and
criticism for Offering instead addition
al facts and argument as to why the
undertaking should be put on the
broad and useful basis originally con-
templated. There is no effort to show
that the warehouse system Is not
making fine headway, and we are in
clined to think that If the editor had
facts on which he could make such q
showing his editorial would not have
been written, because he and his en-
ployers would have had no occasion
for worry.
We do not hesitate to say that al
though the state warehouse system
has not yet made nearly as much
progress as we are hoping for it, Mr..
McLaurin has already accomplished a
great deal more than we thought was
possible with such means and powers
as the general assembly provided in
the act under which the system has
been started.
We beg to remark too, for the ben
eft of the Record, that although the
fact may not be susceptible for dem
onstration by figures, it is fact new
ertheless, that the new system has al
ready been worth far more than it has
cost by the effect 1t has had on the
owners Of private warehouses, in put
ting them on their p's and as in CIV
ing such improved service as would
seem to make the state warehouse sys-
tenn unnecessary. and as the whole
situation develops this benefit will be-
come more and more marked.
From what we have seen and know,
the efforts of the Record to throw off