sloping banks, and had furnished swimming
holes, fishing holes, and what was more to the point at present, a
very fine head of water, which, as it struck the colonel more forcibly
each time he saw it, offered an opportunity that the town could ill
afford to waste. Shrewd minds in the cotton industry had long ago
conceived the idea that the South, by reason of its nearness to the
source of raw material, its abundant water power, and its cheaper
labour, partly due to the smaller cost of living in a mild climate,
and the absence of labour agitation, was destined in time to rival and
perhaps displace New England in cotton manufacturing. Many Southern
mills were already in successful operation. But from lack of capital,
or lack of enterprise, nothing of the kind had ever been undertaken in
Clarendon although the town was the centre of a cotton-raising
district, and there was a mill in an adjoining county. Men who owned
land mortgaged it for money to raise cotton; men who rented land from
others mortgaged their crops for the same purpose.

It was easy to borrow money in Clarendon--on adequate security--at ten
per cent., and Mr. Fetters, the magnate of the county, was always
ready, the colonel had learned, to accommodate the needy who could
give such security. He had also discovered that Fetters was acquiring
the greater part of the land. Many a farmer imagined that he owned a
farm, when he was, actually, merely a tenant of Fetters. Occasionally
Fetters foreclosed a mortgage, when there was plainly no more to be
had from it, and bought in the land, which he added to his own
holdings in fee. But as a rule, he found it more profitable to let the
borrower retain possession and pay the interest as nearly as he could;
the estate would ultimately be good for the debt, if the debtor did
not live too long--worry might be counted upon to shorten his
days--and the loan, with interest, could be more conveniently
collected at his death. To bankrupt an estate was less personal than
to break an individual; and widows, and orphans still in their
minority, did not vote and knew little about business methods.

To a man of action, like the colonel, the frequent contemplation of
the unused water power, which might so easily be harnessed to the car
of 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 the
neighbourhood. In all work the shiftless methods of an older
ge