The Colonel's Dream
Page 12
_Twelve_
Whenever the colonel visited the cemetery, or took a walk in thatpleasant quarter of the town, he had to cross the bridge from whichwas visible the site of the old Eureka cotton mill of his boyhood, andit was not difficult to recall that it had been, before the War, abusy hive of industry. On a narrow and obscure street, little morethan an alley, behind the cemetery, there were still several crumblingtenements, built for the mill operatives, but now occupied by ahandful of abjectly poor whites, who kept body and soul togetherthrough the doubtful mercy of God and a small weekly dole from thepoormaster. The mill pond, while not wide-spreading, had extended backsome distance between the sloping banks, and had furnished swimmingholes, fishing holes, and what was more to the point at present, avery fine head of water, which, as it struck the colonel more forciblyeach time he saw it, offered an opportunity that the town could illafford to waste. Shrewd minds in the cotton industry had long agoconceived the idea that the South, by reason of its nearness to thesource of raw material, its abundant water power, and its cheaperlabour, partly due to the smaller cost of living in a mild climate,and the absence of labour agitation, was destined in time to rival andperhaps displace New England in cotton manufacturing. Many Southernmills were already in successful operation. But from lack of capital,or lack of enterprise, nothing of the kind had ever been undertaken inClarendon although the town was the centre of a cotton-raisingdistrict, and there was a mill in an adjoining county. Men who ownedland mortgaged it for money to raise cotton; men who rented land fromothers mortgaged their crops for the same purpose.
It was easy to borrow money in Clarendon--on adequate security--at tenper cent., and Mr. Fetters, the magnate of the county, was alwaysready, the colonel had learned, to accommodate the needy who couldgive such security. He had also discovered that Fetters was acquiringthe greater part of the land. Many a farmer imagined that he owned afarm, when he was, actually, merely a tenant of Fetters. OccasionallyFetters foreclosed a mortgage, when there was plainly no more to behad from it, and bought in the land, which he added to his ownholdings in fee. But as a rule, he found it more profitable to let theborrower retain possession and pay the interest as nearly as he could;the estate would ultimately be good for the debt, if the debtor didnot live too long--worry might be counted upon to shorten hisdays--and the loan, with interest, could be more convenientlycollected at his death. To bankrupt an estate was less personal thanto break an individual; and widows, and orphans still in theirminority, did not vote and knew little about business methods.
To a man of action, like the colonel, the frequent contemplation ofthe unused water power, which might so easily be harnessed to the carof progress, gave birth, in time, to a wish to see it thus utilised,and the further wish to stir to labour the idle inhabitants of theneighbourhood. In all work the shiftless methods of an oldergeneration still survived. No one could do anything in a quarter of anhour. Nearly all tasks were done by Negroes who had forgotten how towork, or by white people who had never learned. But the colonel hadalready seen the reviving effect of a little money, directed by alittle energy. And so he planned to build a new and larger cotton millwhere the old had stood; to shake up this lethargic community; to putits people to work, and to teach them habits of industry, efficiencyand thrift. This, he imagined, would be pleasant occupation for hisvacation, as well as a true missionary enterprise--a contribution tohuman progress. Such a cotton mill would require only aninconsiderable portion of his capital, the body of which would be leftintact for investment elsewhere; it would not interfere at all withhis freedom of movement; for, once built, equipped and put inoperation under a competent manager, it would no more require hispersonal oversight than had the New England bagging mills which hisfirm had conducted for so many years.
From impulse to action was, for the colonel's temperament, an easystep, and he had scarcely moved into his house, before he quietly setabout investigating the title to the old mill site. It had beenforfeited many years before, he found, to the State, for non-paymentof taxes. There having been no demand for the property at any timesince, it had never been sold, but held as a sort of lapsed asset,subject to sale, but open also, so long as it remained unsold, toredemption upon the payment of back taxes and certain fees. The amountof these was ascertained; it was considerably less than the fair valueof the property, which was therefore redeemable at a profit.
The owners, however, were widely scattered, for the mill had belongedto a joint-stock company composed of a dozen or more members. ColonelFrench was pleasantly surprised, upon looking up certain musty publicrecords in the court house, to find that he himself was the owner, byinheritance, of several shares of stock which had been overlooked inthe sale of his father's property. Retaining the services of JudgeBullard, the leading member of the Clarendon bar, he set out quietlyto secure options upon the other shares. This involved an extensivecorrespondence, which occupied several weeks. For it was necessaryfirst to find, and then to deal with the scattered representatives ofthe former owners.