State wide prohibition began in 1907 with Oklahoma and Georgia, and State after State followed until, in 1914, ten States were wholly dry, and in large areas of the other Southern States the sale of intoxicants was forbidden through local option. Southern members of Congress urged the submission of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding manufacture or sale of intoxicants in the nation. Every Southern State promptly ratified the Amendment when it was submitted by Congress. Unfortunately many negroes when deprived of alcohol began to use drugs, such as cocaine, and the effect morally and physically was worse than that of liquor. The "coke fiend" became a familiar sight in the police courts of Southern cities, and the underground traffic in the drug is still a serious problem. The new Federal law has helped to control the evil, but both cocaine and alcohol are still sold to negroes, sometimes by pedlars of their own race, sometimes by unscrupulous white men. The consumption of both is less, however, than before the restrictive legislation. The South has traveled far from its old opposition to sumptuary laws. Like State Rights, this principle is only invoked when convenient. Starting largely as a movement to keep whiskey from the negro and, to a somewhat less extent, from the white laborer, prohibition has become popular. On the whole it has worked well in the South though "moonshining" is undoubtedly increasing. The enormous price eagerly paid for whiskey in the "bone-dry" States has led to a revival of the illicit distillery, which had been almost stamped out. CHAPTER IV. The Farmer and the Land The end of Reconstruction found the tenant system and the "crop lien" firmly fastened upon the South. The plantation system had broken down since the owner no longer had slaves to work his land, capital to pay wages, or credit on which to borrow the necessary funds. Many of the great plantations had already been broken up and sold, while others, divided into tracts of convenient size, had been rented to white or negro tenants. What had been one plantation became a dozen farms, a score, or even more. Men who owned smaller tracts found it difficult to hire or to keep labor, and many retained only the land which they or their sons could work and rented the remainder of their farms. This system is still characteristic of Southern agriculture.