Sometimes neighbours clubbed together and opened an "old field school," paying the teacher out of a common fund subscribed for the purpose; again, a man who could teach went around, drummed up pupils at so much a head, opened a school and took chances on collection of dues. Many neighbourhoods were too poor for even such expedients; to get bread itself was a struggle to which children must lend labour. The seventies found few or no rural districts without a quota of half-grown lads and lassies unable to read and write. It was no strange thing to see little white boys driving a plow when they were so small they had to lift their hands high to grasp the handles; or little white girls minding cows, trotting to springs or wells with big buckets to fill, bending over wash-tubs, and working in the crops. The public school system was not put in operation at once, and if it had been, could not have met conditions of the hour. Planters lived far apart; roads in some sections long unworked, in others lately plowed by cannons or wagon-trains, were often impassable for teams--if people were so fortunate as to have teams; and much more so for little feet; then, too, the reign of fear was on; highways and by-ways were infested by roving negroes; many were harmless; would, indeed, do a child a kindness; but some were dangerous; the negro, his own master now, was free to get drunk at other times than Christmas and corn-shucking. An argument against the success of the public as of the "old field" school, lay in the strong spirit of caste animating the high-born Southerner. It was against his grain to send his children--particularly his daughters--to school with Tom, Dick and Harry; it did not please him for them to make close associates of children in a different walk of life--the children of the "poor white trash." This spirit of exclusiveness marks people of position today, wherever found. Caste prejudice was almost inoperative, however, having small chance to pick and choose. Gaunt poverty closed the doors of learning against the white child of the South, while Northern munificence was flinging them wide to the black. Soon as war ended, schools for negroes were organised in all directions with Government funds or funds supplied by Northern charity; and under Northern tutelage--a tutelage contributing to prejudice between the races. These institutions had further the effect of aggravating the labour problem--a problem so desperate for the Southern farmer that he could not turn from it to give his own child a chance for intellectual life.