Hell's Half Acre, a row of disreputable houses at the edge of the mill settlement...

Hell's Half Acre, a row of disreputable houses at the edge of the mill settlement at Avondale. These houses harbor the scum of the negroes and whites of the vicinity, and are separated from the mill village by a shallow ditch, which gave Gov. Comer, owner of the mills, the excuse that they were not on the mill property when the question of their removal was taken to him a while ago. A prominent social worker told me that not only do the mill people patronize these resorts, but that the broken down mill girls end up in these houses and that there are, on court record, three cases within a year of girls under fourteen years of age ruined in Hell's Half Acre. Told me, that there are innumerable instances showing the bad moral influence of the cotton mill settlement