More interesting excerpts:
" Governor Hammond, of South Carolina, was moderate when he said: "According to the best calculations which, in the absence of statistic facts, can be made, it is believed that, of the 300,000 white inhabitants of South Carolina, there are not less than 50,000, whose industry, such as it is, and compensated as it is, is not, in the present condition of things, and does not promise, hereafter, to be, adequate to procure them, honestly, such a support as every white person in this country is and feels himself entitled to."9
9 Quoted in Olmsted, p. 514. Here again is the thought that they were crowded out of occupations: "Some cannot be said to work at all. They obtain a precarious subsistence by occasional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, sometimes by plundering fields or folds, and, too often, by . . . trading with slaves, or seducing them to plunder for their benefit.""
" It has been seen that while many of the Southern mill ventures were undertaken partly with the express purpose
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of giving work to the poor whites, in a good many cases the opportunity for profitable employment of these people was entirely overlooked, this giving color to the belief that in proportion as the poor whites dropped out of participation in the economic order, they tended to drop out of the mind of the dominant class. The abolition of slavery did not bring the neglected men and women immediately back into the thought and sympathy of the South any more than into the employment of the South."
" 14 A Virginia correspondent of the American Agriculturist before the War asserted that whites could be got to work for less price than blacks, but the slaves were preferred. Newcomers were advised, if they wished to use whites, to bring them with them, since the native white population was inferior to the black (quoted in Olmsted, pp. 211-212). A farmer in the same State who employed only free labor found Irishmen at $120 a year the best workers; native whites were declared worse than free blacks (ibid., p. 99)."
" It has been seen that William Gregg, the builder of the Graniteville Factory in South Carolina, was the father, in the sense that he was the anticipator, of a new economic life for the South. His keen consciousness of the poor whites stands out in striking contrast to the state of mind indicated in the preceding paragraphs. It is interesting to notice a statement of Gregg's which shows clearly the condition of the lower strata of the white population fifteen years before the war; it is to be remarked that he was combating a tendency not simply to omit the poor whites from consideration, but to place the negroes ahead of these even, as possible industrial workers. "Should we stop," he asked, "at the effort to prove the capacity of blacks for manufacturing? Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, degraded white people among us, who, in this land of plenty, live in comparative nakedness and starvation?" And he continued:
Many a one is reared in proud South-Carolina, from birth to manhood, who has never passed a month in which he has not some part of the time, been stinted for meat. Many a mother is there, who will tell you that her children are but scantily supplied with bread. . . . These are startling statements, but they are nevertheless true, and if not believed in Charleston, the members of our Legislature, who have traversed the State, in electioneering campaigns, can attest their truth.
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It is only necessary to build a manufacturing village of shanties, in a healthy location in any part of the State, to have crowds of these poor people around you, seeking employment at half the compensation given to operatives at the North. It is indeed pitiful to be brought in contact with such ignorance and degradation; but on the other hand, it is pleasant to witness the change, which soon takes place in the condition of those who obtain employment. The emaciated, pale-faced children, soon assume the appearance of robust health. . . . It is, perhaps, not generally known, but there are twentynine thousand white persons in this State, above the age of twelve years, who can neither read nor write--this is about one in every five of the whole population."
"A recent president of the chamber of commerce of a capital city said that while in office he refused to give his especial support to projects to establish cotton mills in the place because of all the people who came to a factory, only five or six families would be composed of desirable citizens, the rest lowering the average of population. "You have to take care of these people when they are sick," he explained, "and you must give them schools and churches. Thousands of dollars, of course, were spent in eradicating the hook worm."
Sometimes the people brought with them little besides bad habits and a Page 171
total dependence upon the management for moral care and physical upbuilding."
"The disposition to seek operatives outside of the South, so far as it showed itself, was fostered by three circumstances: first, the feeling that experienced workers must be found to start the industry; second, the desire to weaken the negro by increasing the white population; third, new and prospective cotton manufacturers fell in easily with the prevalent plans of agricultural interests to secure immigration to the section."
" 'The only way in which we can control the labor of the free negro is to bring him in competition with the white laborer,' is the language of scores of men." By "the white laborer" the native white was not meant (Andrews, pp. 207-208)."
"It seems likely that immigrants, especially where foreigners, were not often sought by the South for industrial workers. Agricultural interests were uppermost in the minds of the people, and schemes to supplant the free negro were, for the time being, as natural as they were impracticable"