Appalachian History

“For the last three or four years, or until the middle of 1920, the cotton mills passed through a very prosperous period, just as did every other kind of business that was properly managed.

“The cotton mills made large profits, but if any other business, including farming, failed to make large profits during the period named the manager of that business should have resigned and gone to work for wages. The mills, the farmers, the merchants and in fact, everyone, passed through a very prosperous period, but all of us failed to realize while passing through the prosperous period that an end to that period was inevitable.

“We failed to take into account the inevitable fact that that tail end of all booms must show a loss, deducting of course a portion of the profits which were heretofore made.

Liberty Cotton Mill workers, Liberty SC, 1917.

“During the Spring of 1920 the cotton goods market began to decline very seriously and buyers of cloths became very scarce. The buyers who had purchased in advance were disposed to be very critical and in many cases took advantage of technicalities and in some cases bankruptcy in order to cancel contracts.

“The mills having sold the goods naturally purchased the cotton at a high price to make those goods and when the contracts for goods were cancelled, either legitimately or through the bankruptcy courts, or otherwise, the mills had to bear the burden of loss on the cotton which they purchased to manufacture the high priced goods.

“The income tax has been very excessive and unfortunately the idea has been permitted to creep into the minds of the public that profits of the mills represented the gross profits without first deducting the large amounts taken from the mills by the Federal Government through profit taxes.

“In addition to this the State and County taxes, including school taxes, have materially increased so that our present tax from both Federal and State has become burdensome.

“For the last several months it has been impossible to secure a profitable business and as a matter of fact for the last few months practically all of the goods which have been sold have been sold at a material loss, and at the moment we are unable to do a business that is in any way satisfactory.

Pickens Mill interior, early 1900s, Pickens, SC.

“Most of the mills have kept their machinery running most of the time in order that their organizations may be kept intact and to give employment to those people who are more or less dependent upon the mills. The operation of the mills has been done at a loss, and while I do not intend claiming any philanthropic motives, at the same time I do contend that the mill management as a rule has at all times kept the welfare of their employees before them and has endeavored to furnish enough employment to avoid serious trouble on the part of the operatives.

“The mills’ payrolls in the last few years have increased in excess of 200 per cent above the pre-war wage scale, and it is my understanding that the wage scale has necessarily been decreased about 25 per cent below the scale prevailing in July 1920.

“There has been a disposition in many quarters to misrepresent the position of the mills, and the statements have not always been in line with the truth. In fact in many cases the statements made have been entirely at variance with the truth.

“Unfortunately a few officials whom we have every reason to feel should represent us as well as other lines of industry have been inclined to make political capital at the expense of the mills and at the expense of the truth.

Norris Cotton Mill, Cateechee, SC, before 1899.

“It is impossible to forecast the future, but I feel it safe to say that the mills will operate so far as may be possible so as to avoid serious want on the part of those who are dependent upon the mills, and while we are hoping for an improved business and have no doubt that it will come sooner or later, at the same time we do recognize that the intense speculation in cotton, cloths, stocks, land and everything else that was experienced during and directly after the war ended has not been in the interest of the people generally, and that everything must come down to a legitimate price before a happy and prosperous condition can prevail.

“At the present the prices of cotton goods are about one third the price prevailing in the Spring of 1920 and are about in line with the prices prevailing in 1913. We are operating at present without profit and often with loss and of course that condition cannot continue indefinitely without serious injury to the capital of the mills, though as stated above we are hoping for better times and will in most cases endeavor to so conduct the business as to avoid serious want on the part of operatives.

“The writer personally feels it would be much in the interest of all if everyone will recognize the loss experienced by them during the last several months and accept that loss in good faith and go to work on a proper basis or a basis that is normal, forgetting the losses experienced, and assume a cheerful attitude towards the future.

“There is no question in my mind but that the present condition is largely psychological and that if everyone will get their liver to working correctly and forget their troubles of the past, and look forward with confidence to the future, we will have a better 1921 than the last half of 1920 has proven to be."


James D. Hammett, of Anderson, SC, president of the Cotton Manufacturers Association of South Carolina, in
Annual report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, Commerce and Industries, Volume 12 , by South Carolina. Dept. of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industries, 1920

One of our cousins had a fight once with a fertilizer spreader, with an inanimate machine. He was pouring fertilizer into cotton rows with this spreader, a brand new expensive labor saving device, and he could not get it to spread the proper amount. It dropped too much, it dropped too little. He worked for two hours on the adjustments; then in a sudden tempestuous frenzy of temper he picked up a rock and beat the thing to bits. Throwing the broken pieces over the pasture fence, he yelled: "You dirty low-down evil contraption, stay there!" and going to the barn, he got out the old cow horn and from then on spread fertilizer as his father and grandfather had spread it.

This same cousin also had a row with a pig. This pig refused to eat when he came down to feed it. It pawed the ground and ran to the other side of the sty. "All right, said our cousin, "you either get some manners and eat when I feed you or you’ll perish to death."

He came to the sty the second day with a bucket full of buttermilk mash, and again the pig pawed and ran away. On the third day he said to the pig: "All right, damn you, you can just perish." On the fourth day, however, the pig ate ravenously as soon as my cousin put the bucket down, and from then on my cousin and this pig understood each other.

We slopped the pigs; we spread fertilizer and mixed fertilizer; and about us were the cotton fields and the fine blue hills, and on the walls of our houses were shotguns.

We drove into town to swap butter and eggs for coffee and sugar and black pepper; we swapped smoked hams for tobacco and cloth. We wasted opportunity, we wasted chance, but we held on to an attitude of living that some people had lost who did not waste opportunity and chance. We weighed and balanced many intangible things. We made up our minds about how we wanted things and where we wanted them.

I remember once my Uncle Wade saying to us he had decided when he was twenty-one years of age that he didn't choose to live more than two days’ drive from the Southern Railroad – he didn't intend to live any farther south than Greenwood nor any farther north than Pickens.

And I remember a great-uncle who started off to Texas and then returned, saying he found out in Mississippi that old Mr. No Account was moving right along with him, and he decided if old No Account had to hang on to him, he had rather deal with the scoundrel in South Carolina than 'way out in Texas. We talked about great rains and great winds and great droughts --- about all kinds of wonders. Once I remember Mary telling us she had seen an infidel. He was a Georgian, a fine-looking man, and he did not believe in God. Mary said to us Georgia was a wild place ---preachers drank whisky in Georgia.

We discussed ultimate destinies --- the asylum, the poorhouse, the graveyard, the jail. We considered chance and the power of faith over chance, and how strange and hidden was chance. We were caught by it like fish in nets and like birds snared in traps. And the race in our valley no more went to the swift than it had in Ecclesiastes, nor did the battle go to the strong, nor did riches come to men of understanding. When our time would arrive, it would arrive.


---Red Hills and Cotton, an Upcountry Memory, by Ben Robertson, University of South Carolina Press, 1943



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After her father died in 1904, Frances Miles Hagood (aka “Miss Queen") inherited his house in Pickens, SC. That same year she married Judge Thomas J. Mauldin, and the two of them remodeled the Hagood house from a simple farmhouse with a detached kitchen to a sumptuous Classical Revival dwelling. They added a detached law office building in the same style.

Judge Mauldin served as judge of the 13th Judicial Circuit of South Carolina from 1914 until his death in 1931. He graduated from The Citadel in 1891 and was admitted to the bar in 1892, but he taught for several years before entering the legal profession.

He was also editor of a local newspaper for a time, and during his lifetime was a Mason, a Shriner, a member of the Sons of the Confederacy, and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. He and Frances helped organize the Pickens chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which held annual meetings on the grounds of the house for many years to honor surviving veterans of the Civil War.

Frances Hagood Mauldin remained a social leader of the community until her death in 1954, was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and was president of the South Carolina Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Each June 2, the old soliders of the Confederacy met at their home for a parade and picnic.

The earliest section of the Hagood-Mauldin House was built about 1856 in Old Pickens Court House. The first owner, James Earle Hagood (1826-1904), son of wealthy landowner Benjamin Hagood, was a public official, lawyer, and planter of Pickens District. Hagood was a merchant until 1856, when he began his public career as Clerk of the Circuit Court of Pickens District, a position he held until 1868. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hagood was made Commissioner in Charge of the Poor and a member of the Soldiers’ Board of Relief.

He loyally gave material to the cause of the Confederacy. Among his duties, he made several trips to and from the battlefields of Virginia, bringing home the sick and wounded soldiers as well as recovering the bodies of solider who had died in service, and ministering to the destitute and dependent families of the soliders in the field.

When Pickens District was divided into Pickens and Oconee Counties in 1868 Hagood was appointed to the Board of Special Commissioners which was authorized to select a site for the town of New Pickens (the present town of Pickens). He acted as Secretary Treasurer of that Board. He also served as Clerk of the Probate Court in the new county seat and as Clerk of the Board of Pickens County Commissioners (initially convened in 1868).

In that year, he had his house dismantled, the rafters and beams numbered, and moved to New Pickens. He was soon elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives and served Pickens County in the General Assembly 1869-1872 during the same period that he practiced law with partner Joseph J. Norton.

In May 1873, Hagood was appointed Clerk of the United States Circuit Court for the District of South Carolina in Charleston, serving in that capacity for 30 years.

Each room in the Hagood-Mauldin House was heated by a fireplace, and each fireplace mantel and trim has a different design and style. A traditional southern-style deep front porch is located on the west side of the house, with a low sloped roof and round spindle columns to form the entry. The cooking house was to the rear, separated from the main house. Several windows are triple-hung sash with cross lattice glass panels.

The Pickens County Historical Society acquired the house in 1987 from the estate of Mrs. Irma Hendricks Morris, and the home was opened as a fine arts museum in October of the following year. In 1997 the home was accepted onto the National Register of Historic Places.


Source: http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/pickens/S10817739011/



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