six o'clock at night
That was Amos Struver ; and then there was Harry Adams , the assistant clerk , a pale , scholarly-looking man , who came from Massachusetts , of Pilgrim stock . Adams had been a cotton operative in Fall River , and the continued depression in the industry had worn him and his family out , and he had emigrated to South Carolina . In Massachusetts the percentage of white illiteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent , while in South Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent ; also in South Carolina there is a property qualification for voters -- and for these and other reasons child labor is the rule , and so the cotton mills were driving those of Massachusetts out of the business . Adams did not know this , he only knew that the Southern mills were running ; but when he got there he found that if he was to live , all his family would have to work , and from six o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning . So he had set to work to organize the mill hands , after the fashion in Massachusetts , and had been discharged ; but he had gotten other work , and stuck at it , and at last there had been a strike for shorter hours , and Harry Adams had attempted to address a street meeting , which was the end of him . In the states of the far South the labor of convicts is leased to contractors , and when there are not convicts enough they have to be supplied . Harry Adams was sent up by a judge who was a cousin of the mill owner with whose business he had interfered ; and though the life had nearly killed him , he had been wise enough not to murmur , and at the end of his term he and his family had left the state of South Carolina -- hell 's back yard , as he called it .