The last century was notable because of the great change in method and organization of human work and we call the early part of the nineteenth century the time of economic revolution in Europe and to some extent in America. The southern United States, however, while profoundly influenced by this revolution from the first, has not until to-day actually felt its full effect. The new factory system of the early nineteenth century is just to-day appearing in the South, and yet its appearance in England and New England seventy-five years ago made the South a part of the world industrial organization by making it the seat of cotton culture (see Note [1]). Two diverse developments resulted: In England and the North came a change from household industry to social industry, a step forward which led to an era of machinery, to a curious concentration of individuals and wealth and the necessities of living in certain great centres. That very concentration led to a wonderful contact of man with man which sharpened mind and sharpened thought and in the long run made the Europe of to-day. On the other hand, the southern United States, though really a part of this great system through its work of furnishing raw cotton, did not come into the whirl of the new industry because she had an industrial system which forbade machinery, discouraged human contact, and shackled thought. Why did this system of slavery persist so long in the South as to be caught in the vortex of the new industrial movement and rendered almost inextricable? If the South had been a place of intelligent farmers on small farms, we could imagine a development which would have been the wonder of the world; but because the fathers of the United States were so busy with large questions that they forgot larger ones, so busy settling matters of commerce and representation and politics that they forgot matters of work and justice and human rights--because of this we have in the South one of those curious back eddies of human progress that twist and puzzle advance and thought. The very forward forces of industry that fastened slavery on the South were weaving a social system which made the enslavement of laborers impossible and unprofitable. Consequently at the very time when the South ought to have been increasing in intelligence, law and order, the use of machinery, industrial concentration, and the intensive culture of land with the rest of the world, she lost a half century in a development backward toward a dispersing of population, extensive rather than intensive land culture, increased and compulsory ignorance of the laboring class, and the rearing of a complete system of caste and aristocracy (see Note 2). Evils there were to be sure in the new factory system of Europe and the North, evils which southern leaders did not fail to note and gloat over, but they were evils of another and newer industrial era, which did not stop progress, but gave it added incentive.