In 1880 the value of farm products at the South exceeded by more than $200,000,000 that of the manufactured products there. In 1900 the case was nearly reversed: manufactures outvaluing farm products by over $190,000,000. During this decade the persons engaged in agriculture at the South increased in number 36 per cent., but the wage-earners in manufacturing multiplied more than four times as much, viz., 157 per cent. Each of these rates at the South was larger than the corresponding rate for the country. The same decade the capital which the South had invested in manufacturing increased 348 per cent., that of the whole United States only 252 per cent. The increase in manufactured products value was for the South 220 per cent., for the whole country only 142 per cent. The increase in farm property value was for the South 92 per cent., for the country only 67 per cent. The increase in farm products value was for the South 92 per cent.; for the whole United States it was greater, viz., 133 per cent. Land at the South was boundlessly rich in unexploited resources. More than half the country's standing timber grew there, much of it hard wood and yellow pine. Quantities of phosphate rock, limestone, and gypsum were to be dug, also salt, aluminum, mica, topaz, and gold. Especially in Texas, petroleum sought release from vast underground reservoirs. The farmer did not lack for rain, the manufacturer for water-power, or the merchant for water transportation to keep down railroad rates. The white Southerner, of purest Saxon-Norman blood, had the vigorous and comely physique of that race. Nowhere else in the land were the generality of white men and women so fine-looking. Easy circumstances had enabled them to become gracious as well, with the dignified and pleasing manners characterizing Southern society before the Civil War. High intelligence was another racial trait. The administration of the various Industrial Expositions named in this chapter required and evinced business ability of the highest order. During the quarter century succeeding reconstruction popular education developed even more astonishingly at the South than in the North or the West. Nothing could surpass the avidity with which young Southern men and women sought and utilized intellectual opportunities. With few exceptions Southerners had become intensely loyal to the national ideal, faithfully abiding the arbitrament of the war, which alone, to their mind--but at any rate, finally and forever--overthrew the old doctrine that the Union was a compact among States, with liberty to each to secede at will.