Unnamed Residents of Horace's New Town

Flags in the Dust characterizes the residents of Horace's new 'home' town - where he is clearly in exile - negatively. They have turned a Mississippi hamlet into a prosperous but squalid town. The engine of its economy is a factory making an unspecified product from the local cypress trees, which are all being chopped down. The narrator labels this populace with a series of pejorative terms, including "brigands" and "bugs" (373).