The New South 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 Contents. The New South Chapter Chapter Title Page I. The Background 1 II. The Confederate Soldier Takes Charge 9 III. The Revolt of the Common Man 31 IV. The Farmer and the Land 60 V. Industrial Development 86 VI. Labor Conditions 106 VII. The Problem of Black and White 129 VIII. Educational Progress 157 IX. The South of Today 191 The Repudiation of State Debts 227 Bibliographical Note 235 Index 243 THE NEW SOUTH ∴ CHAPTER I. 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 rid themselves entirely of characteristics which have been developing for centuries. There is a New South, but it is a logical development from the Old South. The civilization of the South today has not been imposed from without but has been an evolution from within, though influenced by the policy of the National Government. The Civil War changed the whole organization of Southern society, it is true, but it did not modify its essential attributes, to quote the ablest of the carpetbaggers, Albion W. Tourgée. Reconstruction strengthened existing prejudices and created new bitterness, but the attempt failed to make of South Carolina another Massachusetts. The people resisted stubbornly, desperately, and in the end successfully, every attempt to impose upon them alien institutions.