children at least, even in such mills, school opportunities are limited to those under or near the legal age of employment. Most of the mill teachers that were seen were desirous of having the children remain at school. One of the mill men, justly famous for the educational equipment he had provided for mill children, told me in all frankness that his teachers needed to be reminded continually that the schools were run for the mills-not the mills for the schools. With equal frankness, he admitted that when the mills were running at full time every hand over legal age was needed, and when mills were running on short schedule the families, usually large, needed to put as many members of the family as possible in the mills in order to have a weekly living wage.

Much is made of night school, but how many of you, were you children of the class of people alleged to come from the mountains, would seek a night school after a day of labor-or if you were on the night shift, how many of you would be drawn to the day school?

Educational equipment in the mountains is far from what it should be and does not compare with that in the few exceptional mill villages; and yet while in the mountains, if the mountain child wishes, he can attend for from three to six months in the year such schools as there are, but when he goes to the mill and becomes a wage-earner with wages payable to his parents, indolent acquiescence to schooling on the part of the parents passes often into active. opposition.

All Southern Mills Together Could Accomodate Only a Fraction of Mountain Population.

But enough of this comparative method. Anything can be proved by it if one picks his mill and picks his mountain cabinor makes generalizations from local instances.

I sometimes wonder if those who are so sure that the mills are solving mountain problems can realize what the mill men should know that operatives from the mountains are, after all, but a small fraction of the total number of operatives, even in the group of mills accessible to the mountain people. The maximum estimate given me of the total number of mill operatives in all the southern cotton mills (not merely those near the mountains, but in all the

Southland) is 250,000 and the total population dependent on the mills 585,000. Assuming this mill population to be 600,000, there remain 1,300,000 in the rural group of the mountain areas of the five mountain states under discusssion, the total rural population of these states (as I have used the term rural) being in round numbers 1,900,000.

Why defend the mills, then, by putting forward the limitations of mountain life when all the mills of the South, if manned entirely by mountain operatives, would affect less than one-third of all the rural mountain population in only five of the eight mountain states, and when in point of fact only a small fraction of the total 250,000 operatives are mountain people?

It is not a question primarily of the mountains. It is an industrial and a rural question and the people whom it is affecting chiefly are the people of the piedmont section and the lowland section, who come from a fertile soil and to whom the arguments based on isolation do not apply to the extent applicable to the mountain people.

The Questions at Issue.

The real question, therefore, is not whether the mountain fraction of operatives is better off in the mills than in the mountain environment. The questions at issue are these: Are the conditions now existing in the mills all they ought to be under the present laws? Are the present laws all they ought to be? Is the employment of children in gainful occupations right? Ought the unrestricted employment of women in such industries as the cotton textile industry to be allowed?

Those of us who believe in the mountain country and the mountain people resent the imputations that have been placed upon them in this discussion. If the worst be true that has been charged against some mountain people, an indictment ought not to be brought against all the mountain people, and surely a charge, whether false or true, against one people ought not to be used to conceal the wrongs in an industrial system working harm to other people.

There are mill men who admit that the mountain people in their mountain environment can earn a better living more easily than in the cotton mills, even under present conditions.

If we all will but open our eyes we shall see that there is a nation-wide rural question in this land of ours and not one pertain ing to the highland section of the South alone. The Southern highlanders have been held up as a peculiar people with peculiar needs, requiring peculiar treatment. The urban highlander can take care of himself and the remote rural highlander needs only what rural people need everywhere. Poor roads and other disadvantages in the mountains are offset to an extent by the fact that the urban pull of the South has not been strong enough as yet to drain the rural sections of the mountains of their virile stock a statement which cannot be made of all rural areas in our country.

We should thank our friends and temporary enemies of the opposition for calling to our attention the defects of our rural education, and we should face the facts that they bring forth, even though we are forced to disagree with their remedies for the present limitations of rural life in the mountains. Did time permit, I think it could be proved to you conclusively, from the findings of men of scientific attainment, that the mountain country, whether viewed in its entirety or by its regional belts, is a land of resources and a land of promise in which the soils are not barren but need only the adaptation of method and crop to soil, slope and elevation.

There is need for us to ally ourselves actively with all movements for rural betterment-to uphold the hands of our national and state educational and agricultural authorities in their efforts to promote farm schools and rural life schools, of our state boards of health and their federal and privately endowed allies. Is there not significance and promise in the announcement of the Red Cross Society that it is to take up rural nursing as a part of its activities? Who will make the promise possible of full realization by properly endowing this movement-and other rural movements?

In our zeal for rural welfare, we ought not, however, to ignore our industrial life. It must not be assumed that all mill men are

primarily selfish. Some probably would gladly break from the shackles of a competitive system and the insistent calls of stockholders, North and South alike, for larger dividends.

What we all need is a larger social vision, a deeper sense of brotherhood. If there be industrial leaders bound in selfishness and blinded by greed, they must be forced by an awakened public opinion to acquiescence in righteous popular demands. Their chil

dren and our children must not be allowed to climb to luxury and ease upon the labor-bent backs of other children. It is futile to attempt to make smooth the way of industrial progress by using any group of laborers as road material. Ours is the task to force by legislation, made operative by public opinion, recognition of the fact that men's bodies are worth more than the machines they operate, that the welfare and happiness of women are of more value than increased dividends, and the soul of a little child of infinitely more value than the saving on a spool of cotton or on a bolt of cotton cloth.

ment.

CAROLINA COTTON MILL COMMUNITIES.

REV. C. E. WELTNER, D.D.,

Welfare Worker, Olympia Mills, Columbia, S. C.

You remember the time when the kaleidoscope afforded amuseHow delighted we were when at the slightest turn of the hand the little pieces of glass fell into different positions, forming new designs, and new color combinations as we held the little tube up to the light. We are still deeply interested in the kaleidoscope, though it is no longer a toy; the great kaleidoscope of life has become to us all a matter of observation, study, and vital concern. Its pictures are larger-the pieces of glass have become men, women and children; at each turn from day to day the designs make deep impressions which change with wonderful rapidity from humor to pathos, from joy to sorrow, from pleasant surprise to bewildering perplexity. The kaleidoscope of the South Carolina cotton mill communities presents ever changing pictures of perplexing problems.

What We Wrestle With.

There are 164 mill communities in this state with 47,000 operatives, and a population of 110,000-about one-fifth of the white population of the state. The purest American white stock has been drawn together from the mountains and the rural districts. They are fast being welded into a new class of industrial workers. The chief barrier to their development is absolute illiteracy and near illiteracy. The last United States Census states that ten per cent. of the white males of this state between the ages of 14 and 21 are illiterate; other estimates of the illiteracy among the whites range from 5 to 20 per cent. A conservative estimate of the illiteracy of the cotton mill operatives is 12 per cent.; to this must be added a large percentage of near illiterates. This is the fundamental problem to which all the lesser problems point.

Another phase of the perplexing problem is the shifting about from one mill community to another of a considerable part of the