I want to show you several photographs exhibiting conditions about our plant. I have several of these, but I am afraid I might wear you gentlemen out. Doubtless this thing has come up before. Here is a photograph [indicating] showing the character of the people. It is a photograph of a Sunday-school class. That was not taken especially for this occasion, as were those first four photographs. That is simply a photograph of a Sunday-school class, and I have three others at the hotel, showing the faces of the people that are working in our mill.

Senator THOMPSON. How many people have you employed?

Mr. DAVIS. Seven hundred, in round numbers. I should think it might be 695.

Senator THOMPSON. What sized corporation have you, as to capital?

Mr. DAVIS. One million dollars.

We have connected with the mill also play grounds, recreation grounds, a bathhouse for the people. Why, the people who compose the operators or employees in the Newberry Cotton Mill came right from the soil, and I will venture to say, gentlemen, that they certainly had no access to the very primary sanitary conditions which a home should have in the country. The conditions of a poor renter on the farm, who had to make his living and then give half of it to some one else can not possibly hope to have anything.

That [indicating] is our school building.

Mr. KITCHIN. All of those people in that long picture are workers in the mill?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; all except a minister who was photographed there, and I will defy the gentlemen here to pick him out.

I have any number of these photographs with me, but I brought so many I was really ashamed to bring them up here from the hotel. Senator ROBINSON. Do you know what might be called the school population of your village is?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir. The school population of the village is 162 out of a population of 1,200, and I have 27 going to school who are of working age, according to our State law.

While speaking about education: You see the school building there [indicating]. It is just as nice a school building as there is in the city of Newberry. Just as well equipped in every way, and the teachers have to pass an examination for certificate, just as they do if they taught anywhere else.

I have four cases here in my village that I would like to call your attention to in emphasizing education. All these cases can be actually verified. I have a lady and gentlemen there by the name of Hubbard Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Hubbard. They are two of the most ignorant people you would want to see. I do not suppose they hardly know their letters. They are extremely ignorant, and were raised in the country and had absolutely no educational advantages whatever, and to look at those two people, the very expression of their face shows they are ignorant and unlettered. They have one child, a daughter, and to look at them you would select them as the last people on earth to appreciate an education; and yet their daughter is a graduate of Columbia Female College, and is now teaching school in the city of Columbia, S. C.

Another case is that of Mr. J. R. Thornton and his wife, who have been with the Newberry Cotten Mill for twenty-odd years. Mr. Thornton's education is very limited and his wife has absolutely none. They have three children, two boys and one girl. The second boy is graduating this year in our high school, and their only daughter, a very fine young lady, graduated at Newberry College in a literary course and also in music, and she is now teaching school in the city of Columbia, both in the graded school and music, making $90 a month there.

Now, two other cases: I have a lady there who married years ago, and her husband left her. I am not going to give her name, because I do not think it is expedient to do it. She has a boy and a girl. She put the boy in the mill at a very young age, and the girl when she was old enough to work. The boy is remarkably smart; he is a marvel. I have three boys of my own, and one I think will do very well, but he is not a circumstance to this boy. This boy won every medal in the high school and the Newberry College, and he is now going to be an Episcopal minister; that is, he will finish college this year.

Another case: An old lady who is a cripple and who has a house full of children, and she sent them all to school, one at a time, and they went through the graded school, and she had one especially bright boy, a good talker. This boy will graduate this year in college, and he is going to be a Presbyterian minister.

It looks like we are making preachers out of all of them, but Presbyterians and Episcopalians do not predominate there.

A great deal has been said to you in opposition to the adoption of this bill, from the standpoint of the manufacturer. What I say to you is going to be based more on the standpoint of the people who are going to be directly affected by the bill, because coming up from the ranks myself, and being familiar with these conditions and intensely interested in the welfare of the people who work in the cotton mills of the south, I am here before you this afternoon championing the cause of the people who will be directly affected by this bill.

We say a great deal has been written about the oppression of the child in the southern mills. Why, do you not know that the southern father and mother love their children as well as any other father and mother? Do you think that the southern blood would allow that oppression anywhere, and do you think that the southern management would want to do it, if they could? Not a bit of it. Of course, you will find this, gentlemen, in your investigation-if you do investigate it, and I hope you will-where a family has seven to eight boys and girls under 16 years old, a good sized family, you are going to find some bad boys in there. Yes, you will. And, as a representative of the management, I want to say I do not object to a bad boy; it simply shows strong Americanism in him; it simply shows there is manhood behind him; that is all. I do not object to that.

Here is one feature about this bill that I want to call your particular attention to, and that is the earning power of the father of a family. I do not think that has been brought out. But, you take a family that has been raised in the country-take this family I

referred to awhile ago. The old gentleman is 50 years old; he has been on the farm all of his life, and knows nothing else but to do hard laborious work. When he comes into the mill you can not put him to operating machinery like you could a skilled operator. He can not learn it; he is too old and clumsy, and he he can not begin to become efficient. You have to put him at some simpler position that does not pay well.

If this law should pass and we would take those two children out of the mill that I referred to a while ago, it would leave that old gentleman there with $1 a day to support a family of five--a physical impossibility.

I referred a moment ago to my own sons. I am the father of four children. I have a son 22 years old, a graduate of Charlestown and a graduate of the Mechanics Institute at Rochester, N. Y., and he is to-day working in my mill, and he went in there every vacation from the time he was 12 years old. My other boys have done likewise. It is work that trains a boy how to work. I would not want my son to wait until he is 16 years old before he strikes a lick of work, and I do not believe many fathers do. I see boys working around in this building under 16 years old. Fathers right here in the city of Washington do not want to do it. And why should they? If I want my sons to become citizens and become business men, I will not allow them to grow in idleness until they reach that age when they will not want to work.

There are two kinds of education-a literary education and an education of training. That is an education of doing things, and they both have got to go along together somewhat. I have known young men, graduates of Newberry College there in my city, who came over there and started in the mill after they were 18 or 19 or 20 years old. How long did they last? Sometimes a month; they did not last over three months at the outside-90 days was just about enough to see them gone. Why? Because they never started early enough to work; they did not want to work; they did not want to get on their overalls and do the hard work that was necessary to make a success in life, and I will tell you when you have a boy who wants to start at the top and come down he will never amount to anything. These children that we are training we know them; we know what they want and what they ought to have.

We have in our State a law limiting the age at present to 12 years, and there is a bill introduced now in the legislature to limit to 14, and in all probability it will pass. I think it will. But at the same time these people will probably feel it a hardship even if the law passes at 14 years old. But we are developing. I do not want to convey this idea to you, that we will never reach the time when a 14-year old law, and perhaps 15 or even 16 years, might not be acceptable. I do not know what the future holds for us, but when I think back 20, 25, or 30 years ago and recall the condition of the mills then, when I think of having to work there for almost nothing when I was a boy, and when I think of the marvelous improvements that have been made in the machinery and in the environment of the people who do this labor, and that the mills are throwing their whole weight in the development of strong citizenship, composed of the people who are employed in the southern cotton mills,

when I see that and realize the mighty strides that have been made in the development not only in the machinery which does the work, but in the environments of the people and in providing ways and means by which the people can enjoy themselves socially and religiously-we have three churches in our village and three ministers live in the village, indicating we take good care of the religious side of life, which is by no means the least side-and we have provided every convenience possible in our mill. I will say that, gentlemen, and I will be through.

I want to speak about the sanitary conditions inside the mill. We provide drinking fountains; we provide lavatories; we provide disinfectants there and keep it sanitary, and we do not provide the cheapest disinfectants we can find. I will venture to say that we are purchasing a disinfectant with a coefficiency of 20, which means 20 times stronger than carbolic acid, and I will venture to say that there is not a single school in the city of Washington to-day that is buying a disinfectant as strong as that.

We employ every conceivable method and means by which to look after the health conditions of our people. We would be foolish not to do it. We are proud of them, and at the same time we feel it will be working a serious hardship on the part of these poor peopleunfortunately poor people-to not allow them to make a nice living. Senator POINDEXTER. Where do you draw your employees from chiefly?

Mr. DAVIS. From the country.

Senator POINDEXTER. Tenant farmers. A few years ago a consid erable controversy arose here in the Senate over the question of what sort of focd the mill employees had. What have you to say about that the kind of living that they get?

Mr. DAVIS. Well, I should think that their living is different, as it differs in other localities of the country. If I go up here to New York, they have various dishes there; I do not know what they are, nor how to order things from the bill of fare when they bring it to me, and I expect I am not by myself in that, because things change, and they have all those French names for common dishes; but the ordinary person has good, wholesome food.

I am glad you mentioned that. Conditions are not alike all over the United States, and I want to prove that to you right here. Here [exhibiting photograph] is a handsome 20-room boarding house that I would like you gentlemen to look at. That house is equipped with electric lights, sewerage connections, bathrooms, and cost $6,000. That house was built right there, near our mill. How much rent do you suppose we get for it? We furnish the water, and we get $9 a month.

Senator ROBINSON. For that whole building?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator THOMPSON. The company furnishes it, does it?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; the object of that is manifest. Of course, $9 a month, with water furnished, does not pay the taxes and insurance on that building; neither does it pay the taxes and insurance on our entire village, because we rent one of those homes for $2 a month and the other at $3. The object of that is, of course, to provide cheap living for our people.

The man and the woman who rent this boarding house board those people for $10 a month, and they furnish remarkably wholesome food. There is where we are different; certainly different from New York. You can hardly get a decent one day's stay in New York for much less than that.

Senator THOMPSON. Mr. Davis, you have testified principally to the practical side of this transaction?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Senator THOMPSON. I want to ask now if from your experience you could not say that you could get to an 8-hour basis for those children under 16 years of age?

Mr. DAVIS. Gentlemen, I have been thinking of that question more than any other question since I reached this city. Realizing that I was the practical end of this proposition, I knew that question was coming, and, frankly, I would not say that it could be done, but I would not say that it could not be done. My impression, from the thought that I have placed upon it up to this moment, is that it would be exceedingly difficult.

There are many causes that enter into that. I understand that some mills are doing it in their States. Well, that may be, but at the same time, we are doing lots of things that they are not doing, too, and what is done at one place may or may not be practicable at another. There are many little details and technical things that come into this proposition that it would be hard for me to know how to state, but I would not like to go on record as saying that it could not be done.

Senator THOMPSON. Your legislature has changed the law locally from time to time, has it not?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; it has.

Senator THOMPSON. And you have met those conditions?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes; we have.

Senator THOMPSON. Do you not think it would be possible to meet the eight-hour proposition?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; but here is a condition that comes up all at once. The other change that has come about has been gradual; we have met it from 10 or 11-I do not know which it was, whether it was 10 or 11-but we have certainly come up from 11 until we now have 12, and I believe we will have the 14-year-old law, but we will get to it gradually.

The mills of South Carolina have been asking our legislature for several years to pass the compulsory education law up to 14 years of age. The objection, or one of the objections, I would have to this law, from the standpoint of the management-even at the 14-year-old limit-would be that it would turn these boys on the streets and these girls, and it is a hard matter, if the mother and father are at work, unless there is some way to make them go to school. They are not all going to school, only 12. While we have 27 there only 12 are going to school. Some people appreciate the advantages of going to school, and some have not the same appreciation of it.

That is a fair example of what I referred to a while ago. Again, we do not want those children thrown upon the streets. We would rather, in South Carolina, say "you must go to school," and put all of them into school and keep them off the streets. We would rather