In the chapter on the conditions precedent to the erection of cotton mills in the South the attempt was made to show how the stage was set for the actual building of factories. The impulse for manufactures, and especially cotton mills was traced through its several more or less definite periods of development. The first of these was the recoil from the Hancock-Garfield election; the failure of the South's determined hopes for the success of the Democratic candidate, which would mean, it was thought, freedom from political insult and economic servitude, and an opportunity to wreak vengeance for the wrongs of radical rule, virtually marked the death struggle of the old exclusive social philosophy as the animating force in the South. This had been bred by the ante-bellum regime, called into concrete trial by the civil war, and intensified in character through each year of Reconstruction, and through each year proven more untenable. The questioned election of 1876, when Tilden was thrown out under circumstances peculiarly galling to the South, set the section as a unit and unalterable for the next four years in a passionate and dogged resolution against all odds to make a Democrat president in 1880. When Hancock was beaten in a fair fight by Garfield, the South was thrown prostrate; devastated by the war, pillaged and ridden in Reconstruction, to gather all her forces for a final defiant stand and have her last poor hope dashed was tragic. But this very extreme of bitterness was the South's salvation. The leaders, with remarkable accord and almost simultaneously in all quarters, after recovery from the first inescapable shock, rallied to the situation like heroes, and called their less valiant brethren after them in a new resolution to build up another South founded on democracy and a purpose to employ every material resource for the building of a foundation which would bear the weight of the different structure that had to be erected. Words unfamiliar in the South were heard on every hand; in this proposal of "real reconstruction" notions as novel as they were salutary were involved. Communication between States and parts of the same State, by railroads, telegraph and telephone; schools, churches, diversification of crops, deepening of harbors and rivers, municipal pride and civic reform were urged; it was demanded that politics and political wrangles be dropped forthwith, and that the section set about the course of material advancement as the only method of asserting rights against the North, and the only means of bearing her share of the national burden.