Barnwell, and Lexington, would be found to compare still more favourably for the poor. In Lexington there is even a theological seminary. What, nevertheless, there is not generally available to the people at large, Mr. Gregg indicates by his statement of what advantages they possess who have come to Graniteville.
"When they were first brought together, the seventy-nine out of a
hundred grown girls who could neither read nor write were a by-word
around the country; that reproach has long since been removed. We
have night, Sunday, and week-day schools. Singing-masters, music-teachers,
writing-masters, and itinerant lecturers all find patronage in
Graniteville where the people can easily earn all the necessaries of
life, and are in the enjoyment of the usual luxuries of country life." * * *
"To get a steady supply of workmen, a population must be collected which will regard themselves as a community; and two essential elements are necessary to the building up, moral growth, and stability of such a collection of people, namely, a church and a school-house." * * *
"I can safely say that it is only necessary to make comfortable homes in order to procure families, that will afford labourers of the best kind. A large manufacturing establishment located anywhere in the State, away from a town and in a healthy situation, will soon collect around it a population who, however poor, with proper moral restraints thrown around them, will soon develope all the elements of good society. Self-respect and attachment to the place will soon find their way into the minds of such, while intelligence, morality, and well directed industry, will not fail to acquire position."
What the poor people of Edgefield, Barnwell, and Lexington
districts needed was, in the first place, to be led "to
regard themselves as a community;" for this purpose the
nuclei of "a church and a schoolhouse" are declared to be
essential, to which must be added, such other stimulants to
improvement as "singing and writing schools, itinerant
lecturers," etc., etc. In short, the power of obtaining, as
the result of their labour, "the necessaries of life," "the
usual luxuries of country life," or, in two words, which cover
and include church, school, music and lecture, as well as
bread, cleanliness, luxuries and necessities. "comfortable
