"These Poor
Girls," Said One Of Our Party, "Think Themselves Extremely Fortunate To Be
Employed Here, And Accept Work Gladly.
They come from the most barren
parts of Carolina and Georgia, where their families live wretchedly, often
upon unwholesome
Food, and as idly as wretchedly, for hitherto there has
been no manual occupation provided for them from which they do not shrink
as disgraceful, on account of its being the occupation of slaves. In these
factories negroes are not employed as operatives, and this gives the
calling of the factory girl a certain dignity. You would be surprised to
see the change which a short time effects in these poor people. They come
barefooted, dirty, and in rags; they are scoured, put into shoes and
stockings, set at work and sent regularly to the Sunday-schools, where
they are taught what none of them have been taught before - to read and
write. In a short time they became expert at their work; they lose their
sullen shyness, and their physiognomy becomes comparatively open and
cheerful. Their families are relieved from the temptations to theft and
other shameful courses which accompany the condition of poverty without
occupation."
"They have a good deal of the poke-easy manner of the piny woods about
them yet," said one of our party, a Georgian. It was true, I perceived
that they had not yet acquired all that alacrity and quickness in their
work which you see in the work-people of the New England mills. In one of
the upper stories I saw a girl of a clearer complexion than the rest, with
two long curls swinging behind each ear, as she stepped about with the air
of a duchess. "That girl is from the north," said our conductor; "at first
we placed an expert operative from the north in each story of the building
as an instructor and pattern to the rest."
I have since learned that some attempts were made at first to induce the
poor white people to work side by side with the blacks in these mills.
These utterly failed, and the question then became with the proprietors
whether they should employ blacks only or whites only; whether they should
give these poor people an occupation which, while it tended to elevate
their condition, secured a more expert class of work-people than the
negroes could be expected to become, or whether they should rely upon the
less intelligent and more negligent services of slaves. They decided at
length upon banishing the labor of blacks from their mills. At
Graniteville, in South Carolina, about ten miles from the Savannah river,
a neat little manufacturing village has lately been built up, where the
families of the _crackers_, as they are called, reclaimed from their idle
lives in the woods, are settled, and white labor only is employed. The
enterprise is said to be in a most prosperous condition.
Only coarse cloths are made in these mills - strong, thick fabrics,
suitable for negro shirting - and the demand for this kind of goods, I am
told, is greater than the supply. Every yard made in this manufactory at
Augusta, is taken off as soon as it leaves the loom. I fell in with a
northern man in the course of the day, who told me that these mills had
driven the northern manufacturer of coarse cottons out of the southern
market.
"The buildings are erected here more cheaply," he continued, "there is far
less expense in fuel, and the wages of the workpeople are less. At first
the boys and girls of the cracker families were engaged for little more
than their board; their wages are now better, but they are still low. I am
about to go to the north, and I shall do my best to persuade some of my
friends, who have been almost ruined by this southern competition, to come
to Augusta and set up cotton mills."
There is water-power at Augusta sufficient to turn the machinery of many
large establishments. A canal from the Savannah river brings in a large
volume of water, which passes from level to level, and might be made to
turn the spindles and drive the looms of a populous manufacturing town.
Such it will become, if any faith is to be placed in present indications,
and a considerable manufacturing population will be settled at this place,
drawn from the half-wild inhabitants of the most barren parts of the
southern states. I look upon the introduction of manufactures at the south
as an event of the most favorable promise for that part of the country,
since it both condenses a class of population too thinly scattered to have
the benefit of the institutions of civilized life, of education and
religion - and restores one branch of labor, at least, to its proper
dignity, in a region where manual labor has been the badge of servitude
and dependence.
One of the pleasantest spots in the neighborhood of Augusta is Somerville,
a sandy eminence, covered with woods, the shade of which is carefully
cherished, and in the midst of which are numerous cottages and country
seats, closely embowered in trees, with pleasant paths leading to them
from the highway. Here the evenings in summer are not so oppressively hot
as in the town below, and dense as the shade is, the air is dry and
elastic. Hither many families retire during the hot season, and many
reside here the year round. We drove through it as the sun was setting,
and called at the dwellings of several of the hospitable inhabitants. The
next morning the railway train brought us to Barnwell District, in South
Carolina, where I write this.
I intended to send you some notes of the agricultural changes which I
have observed in this part of South Carolina since I was last here, but I
have hardly time to do it. The culture of wheat has been introduced, many
planters now raising enough for their own consumption.
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