By Holland Thompson A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution Volume 42 of the Chronicles of America Series ∴ Allen Johnson, Editor Assistant Editors Gerhard R. Lomer Charles W. Jefferys Textbook Edition New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press 1919 Copyright, 1919 by Yale University Press...

The Background The South of today is not the South of 1860 or even of 1865. There is a New South, though not perhaps in the sense usually understood, for no expression has been more often misused in superficial discussion. Men have written as if the phrase indicated a new land and a new civilization, utterly unlike anything that had existed before and involving a sharp break with the history and the traditions of the past. Nothing could be more untrue. Peoples do not in one generation or in two

The Confederate Soldier Takes Charge As the year 1877 was beginning, the carpetbag governments in nine of the Southern States had been already overthrown. In two other States were two sets of officers, one of which represented the great mass of the whites while the other was based upon negro suffrage and was supported by Federal bayonets. Both sides seemed determined, and trouble was expected. The Republican contestants in Florida had already yielded to a decision of the Supreme Court of the Sta

The Revolt of the Common Man Practically all the farmers in the South, like those of the West, were chronically in debt, and after 1870 the general tendency of the prices of agricultural products was downward. In spite of largely increased acreage—partly, to be sure, because of it—the total returns from the larger crops were hardly so great as had been received from a much smaller cultivated area. The Southern farmer began to feel helpless and hopeless. Though usually suspicious of every movemen

The Farmer and the Land The end of Reconstruction found the tenant system and the "crop lien" firmly fastened upon the South. The plantation system had broken down since the owner no longer had slaves to work his land, capital to pay wages, or credit on which to borrow the necessary funds. Many of the great plantations had already been broken up and sold, while others, divided into tracts of convenient size, had been rented to white or negro tenants. What had been one plantation became a dozen f

Industrial Development Though the Old South was in the main agricultural, it was not entirely destitute of industrial skill. The recent industrial development is really a revival, not a revolution, in some parts of the South. In 1810, according to Tench Coxe's semi-official Statement of Arts and Manufactures , the value of the textile products of North Carolina was greater than that of Massachusetts. Every farmhouse had spinning-wheels and one loom or several on which the women of the family spu

Labor Conditions The laborer employed in the manufacturing enterprises of the South, whether white or black, is native born and Southern born. Sporadic efforts to import industrial workers from Europe have not been successful and there has been no considerable influx of workers from other sections of the Union. A few skilled workers have come, but the rank and file in all the factories and shops were born in the State in which they work or in a neighboring State. Speaking broadly, those dealing

The Problem of Black and White For a century, the presence of the negro in the United States has divided the nation. Though the Civil War finally decided some questions about his status, others affecting his place in the social order remained unsettled; new controversies have arisen; and no immediate agreement is in sight. Interest in the later phases of the race question has found expression in scores of books, hundreds of articles, thousands of orations and addresses, and unlimited private dis

Educational Progress Apologists for Reconstruction have repeatedly asserted that the Reconstruction governments gave to the South a system of public schools unknown up to that time, with the implication that this boon more than compensated for the errors of those years. The statement has been so often made, and by some who should have known better, that it has generally been accepted at its face value. The status of public education in the South in 1860, it is true, was not satisfactory, and the

The South of Today The South of the present is a changing South with its face toward the future rather than the past. Nevertheless the dead hand is felt by all the people a part of the time, and some of the people are never free from its paralyzing touch. Old prejudices, the remembrance of past grievances, and antipathies long cherished now and then assert themselves in the most unexpected fashion. The Southerner, no matter how much he may pride himself upon being liberal and broad, is likely to

The debt of Mississippi was small and that of Texas was not excessive, and neither made any attempt to repudiate the obligations. The $4,000,000 issued in Florida for state aid to railroads was large for the small population and the scanty resources of that State, but this issue was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Florida. The Reconstruction debt of Alabama was large, about $20,000,000, besides accrued interest which the State could not pay. In 1873, the carpetbag government at

Some of the older books are interesting from the historical standpoint, but conditions in the South have changed so rapidly that these works give little help in understanding the present. Among the most interesting are A. W. Tourgée's Appeal to Caesar (1884), based upon the belief that the South would soon be overwhelmingly black. Alexander K. McClure, in The South; its Industrial, Financial and Political Condition (1886), was one of the first to take a hopeful view of the economic development o

There are several excellent works on cotton and the cotton trade, chief among which are M. B. Hammond's The Cotton Industry (1897) and C. W. Burkett and C. H. Poe's Cotton, its Cultivation, Marketing, Manufacture, and the Problems of the Cotton World (1906). D. A. Tompkins, in Cotton and Cotton Oil (1901), gives valuable material but is rather discursive. J. A. B. Scherer, in Cotton as a World Power (1916), attempts to show the influence of cotton upon history. Holland Thompson in From the Cotto

The number of books, pamphlets, and special articles upon this subject, written by Northerners, Southerners, negroes, and even foreigners, is enormous. These publications range from displays of hysterical emotionalism to statistical studies, but no one book can treat fully all phases of so complex a question. Bibliographies have been prepared by W. E. B. Du Bois, A. P. C. Griffin, and others. W. L. Fleming has appended a useful list of titles to Reconstruction of the Seceded States (1905) . F. L

No complete history of education in the South has been written. The United States Bureau of Education published years ago several monographs upon the separate States. Edgar W. Knight has written an excellent history of Public School Education in North Carolina (1916). Carter G. Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (1915), E. A. Alderman's J. L. M. Curry, a Biography (1911), and R. D. W. Connor and C. W. Poe's Life and Speeches of Charles Brantley Aycock (1912) are illuminating. J. L

Some of the best historical material on the changing South is in the form of fiction. A number of gifted writers have pictured limited fields with skill and truth. Mary Noailles Murfree ( pseud. , Charles Egbert Craddock) has written of the mountain people of Tennessee, while John Fox, Jr. has done the same for Kentucky and the Virginia and West Virginia mountains. George W. Cable and Grace King have depicted Louisiana in the early part of this period, while rural life in Georgia has been well d

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