The textile industry surged in late nineteenth-century South Carolina, quickly becoming the primary source of revenue and employment in the Northwestern, "Upstate" area of the state. The influx of industry created new job opportunities for Upstate rural farmers and sharecroppers who previously were engaged in agrarian pursuits. In order to attract labor, industry owners erected mill villages complete with homes, a company general store, churches, and schools. As the mill schools were primarily designed to feed the labor force of the village mill, most of these schools offered only a rudimentary education--often only through grades four and five. Mill owners required that laborers only be educated enough to operate machinery and handle the responsibilities of mill operation. However, the South Carolina State Department of Education sought to improve the quality of these schools, eventually consolidating mill schools into a statewide system that changed not only how the schools were organized, but also the quality of the mill schools and the attitude toward education among the mill operatives. By 1925, the majority of mill schools had been consolidated completely into the state system, and those remaining schools not completely consolidated were under shared authority with local school districts. This study investigates the development of mill schools in South Carolina, focusing primarily on one particular mill village school in the Upstate region--the Newry Graded School.