West Virginia steadfastly refused to recognize the share of the debt assigned to her on the ground that the principal part had been incurred for internal improvements in Virginia proper, and that one-third was an excessive proportion. The matter dragged along until the Supreme Court of the United States decided in March, 1911, that the equitable proportion due by West Virginia was 23.5 per cent instead of one-third. West Virginia, however, made no move to carry out the decision, and in 1914 Virginia asked the Court to proceed to a final decree. A special master was appointed to take testimony, and on June 14, 1915, the Supreme Court announced that the net share of West Virginia was $12,393,929 plus $8,178,000 interest. The State, by a compromise with Virginia in 1919, assumed a debt amounting to $14,500,000. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. Many of the references for the period of Reconstruction are also valuable for the subject of this volume, as it is impossible to understand the South today without understanding the period which preceded it. Much enlightening material is to be found in W. L. Fleming's Documentary History of Reconstruction (2 vols., 1906-07) and in the series of monographs on Reconstruction published by the students of Professor W. A. Dunning of Columbia University, among which may be mentioned J. W. Garner's Reconstruction in Mississippi(1901); W. L. Fleming's Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (1905); J. G. de R. Hamilton's Reconstruction in North Carolina (1914); C. M. Thompson's Reconstruction in Georgia, Economic, Social, Political, 1865-1872 (1915). GENERAL WORKS 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 of the Southern States. W. D. Kelley's The Old South and the New (1887) contains the observations of a shrewd Pennsylvania politician who was intensely interested in the economic development of the United States. Walter H. Page's The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths (1902) is a keen analysis of the factors which have hindered progress in the South.