Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/296

 *ing of what are commonly called "poor whites;" a large majority of all these houses were the residences of shareholders, a considerable proportion cotton-planters.

Those who watch the enormous export of cotton from the South, and who are accustomed to reckon up its value, as it goes forward, million on million, hundred million on hundred million, year after year, say that it is incomprehensible, if it be not incredible, that the people of the South are not rich and living in luxury unknown elsewhere. It is asking too much that such statements as I have made should be received without any explanation. I have found this to be so, and so far as the explanation appears in the attendant social phenomena of the country, I shall endeavour to set it forth, sustaining the accuracy of my report by the evidence of competent Southern witnesses.

William H. Gregg, Esq., a distinguished citizen of Charleston, South Carolina, in a report to the directors of the Graniteville Manufacturing Company of that State, describes at length the condition of the operatives of the company, whom he states to have been drawn originally "from the poor of Edgefield, Barnwell and Lexington districts." These are cotton-growing districts of South Carolina, better supplied than usual with the ordinary advantages of civilized communities. For instance, by reference to the census returns, I find that they are provided with public schools at the rate of one to less than thirty square miles, while within the State, inclusive of its several towns, there is but one public school, on an average, to every forty square miles. There are churches within these districts, one to about seventeen square miles; throughout the State, including Charleston and its other cities, one to every twenty-five square miles. In Georgia the average is one to thirty-two square miles. With the condition of the newer cotton States, in these respects, that of Edgefield,