Such are the antecedents of the mass of operatives in the new mills of the South. Bearing in mind this derivation, you will not find it difficult to account for many qualities, traits and habitudes that might otherwise appear anomalous. For example, their extravagance is a characteristic almost without parallel among other classes of toilers. But it is simple of explanation. The transition from a dollarless past to a many-dollared present would render any class of untutored human beings extravagant. Through a long period of tenant farming, these people scarcely saw a piece of money from Christmas to Christmas. Each year’s supplies were either furnished by the owner of the land, or bought on credit at a nearby store, to be paid for when the cotton was picked. The harvest came, sometimes good, sometimes bad; but good or bad, it seemed uniformly to take it all to pay the merchant and the landlord. The tenant rarely enjoyed even the sorry pleasure of selling his cotton and paying the hard cash to these creditors; instead, he usually hauled the raw product of his toil directly to them, then turned apathetically away to begin his half-hearted preparations for another year’s crop. His wife and children shared his labors, sharing also his empty-handedness. This went on through the dragging years of the South’s agricultural prostration, until the last decade came, with its mills and its industrial revolution, when the moneyless and landless ones drew into the new communities, to try bread-winning under unfamiliar conditions. The mothers and daughters had often worked on the farms, so they did not hesitate at the factory door, except when very young children claimed the care of the former. In most instances, indeed, the women’s fingers proved the readiest for the new occupation. [Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN TOP CABIN ] But neither women nor men acquired dexterity without a period of laborious effort, such as all workmen must struggle through when, possessed of only the inherited instincts of generations of bucolic ancestors, they set themselves to some form of mechanical labor. That period being done with, a certain amount of skill began to appear in all fairly intelligent operatives, and shortly they found themselves bringing home each Saturday night, or alternate Saturday night, according as pay day fell, an amount of money that to them seemed an amazing treasure-pile. [Illustration: A TYPICAL MILL COTTAGE. ]