THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTHERN MILLS.
A HOPEFUL SIDE TO LIFE IN THE FACTORY COMMUNITIES.
By Leonora Beck Ellis.
While the political economist knits his brows in perplexity over the immoderate increase of cotton mills in the Southern States, and the social reformer cries vehemently against their child labor and low adult wages, these problems are solving themselves by natural processes which man’s economics or sociological theories can neither hurry nor retard.
Cotton manufacturing has traversed the road to its base of supply, and can no more be severed from it again than the descending rivulet can turn and run up hill. Child labor is only a complicated error of new conditions, and will in due process fall to inevitable decay. The wage problem mutates everywhere, yet optimism assures us that it bears steadily towards solution.
But the mill people of the South are a new and picturesque labor class. Some glimpses of their homes and family life will, we believe, afford interest to the reader for entertainment as well as to the student of sociology.
There are points of distinct difference between the factory operatives of the South and those of any other section of our country or of Europe.
In the first place, there are no urban instincts in these Southern mill communities. Whatever virtues they lack at least they have not the vices of cities. The good and the evil in them are still such as belong to a strictly rural people. But no one must expect, after another decade and a half, to find the same thing true; for, with the passing of the present generation, this unique characteristic must of necessity be largely lost. Gregariousness of living is potent to efface such a mark even when deeply stamped.
It may be asked, What are the indications of this quality which, for want of a better name, is termed rusticity? The signs are many and easy to read. No observant person can miss the plain evidence even in his first day with the mill people. He walks past the cottages, row on row, and sees prince’s feather and bachelor’s button growing in the tiny yards, patchwork quilts sunning from the windows, and strings of red pepper festooned on the back porches. The boys are quite often chewing tobacco, but they are not smoking cigarettes. Often, alas! the girls dip snuff, but they do not lace in their waists, nor attempt handkerchief flirtations. The women are given to quiet, and a profound reserve usually marks their social intercourse. The festive gatherings in the entertainment halls on Saturday nights are either stiff parties or genuine country dances. The “barbecue” is common on a general holiday and the “all day singing” of a Sunday still remains the acme of enjoyment, affording the perfect blending of sociality and devotion.
A second quality differentiating our people from the Northern factory communities of to-day, is what may well be called their unmodified Americanism. Up to the present time there is an entire absence of the foreign element of population among them, and the effect of such absence is very marked. Not only do better manners prevail in this people sprung from our own soil, but better morals, greater social purity, less turbulence and lawlessness. Remember, that observance of law is easier, more natural, even to illiterate Americans, than to other nations, because Law has typified to them from childhood the majesty of right, not the tyranny of might.
MILLS 1, 2 AND 3, PELZER, S. C.
The finer respect for women which marks American manhood, extends also to these toilers. Except among their very lowest, motherhood inspires the regard it meets with in other social strata. And while in many of the mills the number of female employees exceeds that of males, yet in few of the better kind are there any mothers of young children at work.
These considerations lead at once to the questions, Where does such a class of labor come from? What are its antecedents?
The first is easily answered: The operatives have poured into the new factories, not from town or city, but from the country, direct from the cotton fields, we may say, to the mills. It was certainly not an anomalous movement when cotton was bringing 4¾ cents per pound. But as the staple moves back to its old prices, 10 and 12 cents, some reactionary phases must be looked for and provided against.
The antecedents of this class of labor deserve attention. A great majority of the operatives come from the agricultural class known as tenant farmers; that is, men who farm the land for others, paying as rent a considerable portion of each year’s crop. The tenant system was adopted in the South during the period of disorder and chaotic ruin following the Civil War, when our old system of labor was dissolved and no better base remained on which to build anew the fabric of agricultural life. Unfit as it is for a country of such institutions as ours, and the source in itself of very sore evils, the tenant system still had a necessary part in the last half century.
Many of the tenant farmers of the last generation had indeed “seen better days.” Not a few had been freeholders before the war, although usually of the little farms interspersed here and there among the great plantations of the aristocrats. Many others had been overseers, factors, agents of various sorts. A very small proportion came from the class of decayed gentlemen. The rest were made up from those strata usually lumped together in our designation, “crackers,” or, in the South Carolina term, “poor Buckra.”
HOMES FROM WHICH THE MILL PEOPLE COME.
Such are the antecedents of the mass of operatives in the new mills of the South. Bearing in mind this derivation, you will not find it difficult to account for many qualities, traits and habitudes that might otherwise appear anomalous. For example, their extravagance is a characteristic almost without parallel among other classes of toilers. But it is simple of explanation.
The transition from a dollarless past to a many-dollared present would render any class of untutored human beings extravagant. Through a long period of tenant farming, these people scarcely saw a piece of money from Christmas to Christmas. Each year’s supplies were either furnished by the owner of the land, or bought on credit at a nearby store, to be paid for when the cotton was picked. The harvest came, sometimes good, sometimes bad; but good or bad, it seemed uniformly to take it all to pay the merchant and the landlord. The tenant rarely enjoyed even the sorry pleasure of selling his cotton and paying the hard cash to these creditors; instead, he usually hauled the raw product of his toil directly to them, then turned apathetically away to begin his half-hearted preparations for another year’s crop. His wife and children shared his labors, sharing also his empty-handedness.
This went on through the dragging years of the South’s agricultural prostration, until the last decade came, with its mills and its industrial revolution, when the moneyless and landless ones drew into the new communities, to try bread-winning under unfamiliar conditions. The mothers and daughters had often worked on the farms, so they did not hesitate at the factory door, except when very young children claimed the care of the former. In most instances, indeed, the women’s fingers proved the readiest for the new occupation.
THE MOUNTAIN TOP CABIN
But neither women nor men acquired dexterity without a period of laborious effort, such as all workmen must struggle through when, possessed of only the inherited instincts of generations of bucolic ancestors, they set themselves to some form of mechanical labor. That period being done with, a certain amount of skill began to appear in all fairly intelligent operatives, and shortly they found themselves bringing home each Saturday night, or alternate Saturday night, according as pay day fell, an amount of money that to them seemed an amazing treasure-pile.
A TYPICAL MILL COTTAGE.
Cases such as the following are found in every prosperous factory community: The father, mother, and six or eight boys and girls, ranging from twelve to twenty odd years, are at work in one mill. Large families are the rule in this class, remember. Now, the adults, if fair weavers, easily average $22.99 apiece per month. The younger members of the family are probably spinners, and average about $14 each. This family, then, that in the old life of the farm thought themselves fortunate indeed to handle $100 in cash throughout a year, now bring home something like $175 every month!
Is it strange to you that extravagance seizes upon this metamorphosed household? If the sudden transition from pennilessness to plethoric pocket-books did not lead in itself straight to spendthrift living, the precedents of their neighbors would speedily teach the trait.
So the housewife loads the table with luxuries hitherto unknown; the pretty girl is tempted into all the caprices of dress that her little Vanity Fair may flaunt, while the father and brother can scarcely tell whither their dollars speed on such swift wings.
THE LYCEUM, PELZER, S. C.
Yet this wastefulness, too, is but a phase, destined to gradual elimination in the development of the process by which an agricultural people are converted into a manufacturing one. With all their illiteracy this class is not devoid of understanding; and when a certain bewilderment of these early years is past, it will be borne in upon them in countless ways, by their school privileges, their larger experience, their clearer views of the outside world, by their own innate manhood, indeed, that there are far other uses for hard-earned money than to be lavished on mere food, clothing and shelter. Many of them are already opening their eyes to the fact that for an abundance of things to eat and wear, they have bartered a certain independence and manliness which are fostered by agricultural pursuits, even the lowliest, and which breed sturdier virtues than mere factory dependents can hope to transmit to their children. Awakening perceptions such as these are leading to different results: to a rescinding of extravagance always; sometimes a return to the farm; occasionally to the laying aside of money or investing it in a home just outside the factory property. But in most cases I find a steadfast purpose growing,—to work straight on where they are for the present, and save every cent possible to educate the coming generation and set their feet in the path that leads to freedom. I have even found several young men and women putting aside money to go to school on when enough is saved, and many go to school and work through alternate half years.
But how can they save money? clamor those who have been studying the comparative wage-scale of Northern and Southern factories, without acquaintance with the actual conditions of the latter. By reasonable economy, is the answer in this case as others.
From $20 to $30 per month is paid good weavers throughout this section, while the average spinner draws from $10 to $16. These are regarded as good living wages in a country where the prices of necessaries range much lower than in the East or the West. Houses are to be heated only about four months in the year, and fuel is comparatively cheap, in many places less than $1.50 per cord for wood, while coal averages less than half the price it brings in Northern markets. Clothing in this warm climate costs far less than in a colder region. Farm and garden supplies are purchased for what seems to the Northern mind an absurdly low price, and dairy products are never high. Besides, in all the rural mill communities, which are now counted by the score to every one in a city, a garden patch always and often pasturage for one cow can be counted on with every cottage.
House rent is not a considerable item. The mill cottages rent by the month on the basis of 60 cents to $1 per room, and the houses range in size from three to eight rooms, four, however, being the rule. With few exceptions, these cottages are fairly comfortable, and built with due regard to sanitation. Outside of cities, each one has its ground space where the inmates may grow flowers and vegetables, thus fostering a form of local attachment that is by no means weak.
From this brief survey, it may be deduced that while the one-time tiller of the soil has surrendered something in becoming a factory operative, he has also come into new privileges and potentialities. When you strike your balance between gain and loss, do not overlook the weighty consideration of the school advantages and other educational facilities which such people have acquired by coming from sparse and remote settlements into their present community life.
During a recent cold snap the young and tender editor of this youthful publication accompanied the blizzard to a small Tennessee town. The office of the little hotel was full of commercial travelers trying to keep warm around a single grate. A half-frozen Italian organ grinder, with his monkey, entered, but was crowded away from the fire by the traveling men. He found a chair away back in the corner of the room and soon fell asleep. But suddenly he woke with a scream; the traveling men rushed to him and asked him what was the matter. He said he dreamed he was in hell and was freezing to death. “Freezing to death in hell! How is that?” asked one of the boys. “Well,” replied the Italian, “the drummers crowded around the fire so I couldn’t get to it.”—Robert. L. Taylor.
