Public sentiment against the employment of children became aroused only slowly. Crusades against such industrial customs are usually led by organized labor, by professional philanthropists, by sentimentalists, and by socialistic agitators. The mill operatives of the South have shown little disposition to organize themselves and, in fact, have protested against interference with their right of contract. The South is only just becoming rich enough to support professional philanthropists, and an outlet for sentimentality has been found in other directions. There has been as yet too little disproportion of wealth among the Southern whites to excite acute jealousy on this ground alone, and the operatives have earned much more money in the mills than was possible on the farms. In comparatively few cases does one man, or one family, own a controlling interest in a mill. The ownership is usually scattered in small holdings, and there is seldom a Crœsus to excite envy. This wide ownership has had its effect upon the general attitude of the more influential citizens and hindered the development of active disapproval. The chief reason for the inertia in labor matters, however, has been the fact that the South has thought, and to a large extent still thinks, in terms of agriculture. It has not yet developed an industrial philosophy. Agriculture is individualistic, and Thomas Jefferson's ideas upon the functions and limitations of government still have influence. Regulation of agricultural labor would seem absurd, and the difference between a family, with or without hired help, working in comparative freedom on a farm, and scores of individuals working at the same tasks, day after day, under more or less tension was slow to take shape in the popular consciousness. It was obvious that the children were not actually physically abused; almost unanimously they preferred work to school, just as the city boy does today; and the children themselves opposed most strongly any proposed return to the farm. The task of the reformers--for in every State there were earnest men and women who saw the evils of unrestricted child labor--was difficult. It was the same battle which had been fought in England and later in New England, when their textile industries were passing through the same stage of development. Every student of industrial history realizes that conditions in the South were neither so hard nor were the hours so long as they had been in England and New England.