Holland Thompson

“ Granted that such a crime occurs in a district only once in ten, or even in twenty years; that is enough. Rural folks have long memories, and in the back of their minds persists an uncontrollable morbid dread. The news of another victim sometimes turns men into fiends who not only take life but even inflict torture beforehand. The mere suspicion of intent is sometimes enough to deprive such a community of its reason, for there are communities which have brooded over the possibility of the commission of the inexpiable crime until the residents are not quite sane upon this matter. ”

“ Lately some of the town and city churches have been developing the social and humanitarian side of religious work, but the greatest number manage to collect only enough money to keep the organization alive. They are like engines which can get up enough steam to turn the wheels slowly and painfully but lack sufficient power to do effective work. ”

“ On the whole there is surprisingly little friction between the blacks and the whites. One may live a long time in many parts of the South without realizing that the most important problem of the United States lies all about him. Then an explosion comes, and he realizes that much of the South is on the edge of a volcano. For a time the white South attempted to divest itself of responsibility for the negro. ”

“ Yet wiser men have seen defiance of law fail to stop crime, have seen mobs act upon suspicions afterward proved groundless, have seen mob action widely extended, and have seen the growth of a spirit of lawlessness. Where one mob has had its way, another is always more easily aroused, and soon the administration of the law becomes a farce. ”

“ They are not at all democratic, and in a negro state they would assume the privileges of an aristocracy as a matter of right. It would seem that their demand for full political and social rights for all negroes has for its basis not so much the welfare of the race as a whole, as the possibility of obtaining for themselves special privileges and positions of leadership. They are not satisfied merely with full legal rights. In those States where there is no legal discrimination in public places, their denunciation of social prejudice is bitter. ”

“ Throughout the South there are thousands of homes into which no newspaper comes, certainly no agricultural paper, and in which there are few books, except perhaps school books. The cooking is sometimes done with a few simple utensils over the open fire. Water must be brought from a spring at the foot of the hill, at an expenditure of strength and endurance. The cramped house has no conveniences to lighten labor or to awaken pride. The overworked wife and mother has no social life, except perhaps attendance at the services at the country church to which the family rides in a springless wagon. ”

“ The idea began to grow up that any one living in a town was necessarily an enemy to the farmer. The prevalent agricultural point of view came to be that only the farmer was a wealth producer, and that all others were parasites who sat in the shade while he worked in the sun and who lived upon the products of his labor. ”

“ The high schools are neither so numerous nor so well equipped as in some other States, but nowhere else is such evident progress being made. There are no universities in the South which count their income in millions, but the number of institutions adequately equipped to do efficient work is already large and increasing. The spirit of faculty and students is admirable, and the contact of the institutions and the people of the Southern States is increasingly close and full of promise. ”

“ One does not lose social position in the South by engaging in business or by working with his hands. It may easily happen that in the afternoon you may purchase a collar or a pair of shoes from a young man whom you will meet in the evening at the house of the local magnate. The granddaughter of a former governor or justice of the Supreme Court comes home from her typewriter and her brother from the cotton mill or the lumber yard. Social life in a small town—and most Southern towns are small—is simple and unpretentious, although here too the influence of prosperity is beginning to be manifest. ”

“ This is the explanation of much of the so-called race prejudice in the South: it is not prejudice against the individual negro but is rather a determination to assert white superiority. So long as the negro is plainly dependent and recognizes that dependency, the question of prejudice does not arise, and there is much kindly intimacy between individuals. The Southern white man or white woman of the better class is likely to protect and help many negroes at considerable cost of time, labor, and money, but the relationship is always that of superior and inferior. ”

“ Until recently much of the South has remained a frontier, as some of it is to this day, and in frontier communities men are accustomed to take the law into their own hands and are reluctant to depend upon inadequate or ineffective police protection. Despising physical cowardice, the individual prides himself upon his ability to maintain his rights and to protect his honor without calling for assistance. Frontiersmen are quick to resent an affront, and when their veracity is impugned they fight. ”

“ The Old South was never quite so aristocratic as the North believed, and today the white South is much more nearly a democracy than New England. Even in 1860 this was true of some parts of the South, as compared with some parts of New England. The rural South was always democratic except in comparatively limited areas, and it is so everywhere today. In those communities which have felt the new industrial spirit the question of birth plays little part. Any presentable young man can go where he chooses. ”

“ Nowhere else in the United States has the negro the same opportunity to become self-sustaining, but his improvidence keeps him poor. Too often he allows what little garden he has to be choked with weeds through his shiftlessness. One of the shrewdest observers and fairest critics of the negro, Alfred Holt Stone, says of the Mississippi negro: "In a plantation experience of more than twelve years, during which I have been a close observer of the economic life of the plantation negro, I have not known one to anticipate the future by investing the earnings of one year in supplies for the next.... ”

“ This Appalachian region had been settled by emigrants from the lowlands. Some of them were of the thriftless sort who were forced from the better lands in the East by the inexorable working of economic law. By far the greater part, however, were of the same stock as the restless pioneers who poured over the mountains to flood the Mississippi Valley. Students of the mountain people maintain that so small an accident as the breaking of a linchpin fixed one family forever in a mountain cove, while relatives went on to become the builders of new States in the interior. ”

“ Both embark in a venture the deferred results of which are dependent chiefly upon the industry and good faith of the laborer. By a seeming paradox it is only the laborer's unreliability which gives him such an opportunity, for if he were more dependable, the landowner would prefer in most cases to pay wages and take the whole of the crop. Because the average negro laborer cannot be depended upon to be faithful, he is given a greater opportunity, contrary to all ordinary moral maxims.
When the share tenant lives on the land he may be a part of two different systems. ”

“ According to this theory, the North won because the South could not manufacture goods for its needs, because it did not possess ships to bring in goods from abroad, and because it could not build a navy to defend its ports. Today it is clear that the South never had a chance to win, so long as the will to conquer was firm in the North. As soon as the War was over, the demand for greater industrial development made itself felt and gained in strength when Reconstruction came; but during that period the people had to devote all their energies to living 4 day by day, hoping for strength to endure. ”

“ The statistics of lynching which are frequently presented are obviously exaggerated, as they include many cases which are simply the results of the sort of personal encounters which might and do occur anywhere. There is a tendency to class every case of homicide in which a negro is the victim as a lynching, which is manifestly unfair; but even though liberal allowance be made for this error, in the total of about 3000 cases tabulated in the last thirty years, the undisputed instances of mob violence are shamefully numerous. Rape is by no means the only crime thus punished ”

“ If the control of the Southern States should be gained by the Republican party, unlimited negro suffrage would hardly be restored unless such action were forced by the party in the nation at large. In the last extremity the South would suffer loss of representation rather than face the consequences of unrestricted negro suffrage.
Socially the South is in a state of ferment. Old standards are passing, some of them very rapidly, and the younger generation is inclined to smile at some of the attitudes of the old. ”

“ Many men and women in the South fear the progress of the negro. They do not realize that the South cannot really make satisfactory progress while any great proportion of the population is relatively inefficient. Some fear the negro's demand to be treated as a man. On the other hand, many negroes demand to be treated as men, while ignoring or perhaps not realizing the fact that, to be treated as a man, one must play a man's part. ”

“ Many honest men who meant to be good citizens felt that education belonged to the family or the church and could not see why the State should pay for teaching any more than for preaching, or for food, or clothing, or shelter. There were, of course, those claiming to hold this theory whose underlying motives were selfish. They had property which they had inherited or accumulated, and they objected to paying taxes for educating other people's children. ”

“ All over the South, in every class of society, one finds this sensitiveness to an accusation of lack of veracity. Such a theory of life dies hard. The presence of a less advanced race is perhaps not conducive to self-control. The dominant race, determined to maintain its position of superiority, is likely to resent a real or fancied affront to its dignity. ”

“ It is not surprising that men continued to turn for leadership to those who had led in battle and, to a less extent, to those who had taken part in the civil government of the Confederacy. But for the humiliations of Reconstruction, some of these men might have been discredited, but the bitter experiences of those years had restored them to popular favor. As the Federal soldier marched out of the public buildings everywhere, the Confederate soldier marched in. These men had led in the contest against the scalawags and the carpetbaggers and many had suffered thereby. ”

“ Such a machine would revolutionize the tenant system, would permit a larger production of food, and at the same time would set labor free for other occupations. Meanwhile the general rate of wages in agriculture has risen and must rise still further, as it has done in other occupations. Any student of economics who draws his conclusions from observation of life as well as from books realizes how large a part custom plays in determining wages, and hitherto farm wages have been very low and labor has been inefficient in the South. ”

“ Some Southern States are spending millions for better roads, and the farmer or his son or daughter can easily run into town in the afternoon carrying a little produce which more than pays for any purchases. Tractors are seen at work here and there, and agricultural machinery is under the sheds. Many houses have private water systems and a few farmers have harnessed the brooks for electric lights. The gas engine which pumps the water runs the corn sheller or the wood saw. The rural telephone spreads like a web over the countryside. ”

“ Inadequate school taxes were levied; the asylums for the insane, though kept alive, could not take care of all who should have been admitted; appropriations for higher education, if made at all, were small; there was little or no social legislation. The politicians taught the people that low taxes were the greatest possible good and, when prosperity began to return 25 and a heavier burden of taxation might easily have been borne, the belief that the efficiency of a government was measured by its parsimony had become a fixed idea. ”

“ The power of public opinion is very great in the South. While this may be true of rural or semi-rural communities in any part of the land, nowhere else does collective opinion exert such overwhelming force as in the Southern States. Perhaps this phenomenon is a survival from Reconstruction days and after. Since certain attitudes toward the negro, for example, were defended on the ground of the necessity of protecting womanhood, a certain standard must be demanded from women, and every man claimed a sort of prescriptive right to 213 assist in laying down rules for such conduct on her part. ”

“ The production of wealth was hindered, and taxes had been increased to the point of confiscation. In States which had been ravaged by war, and of which the whole economic and social systems had been dislocated, an undue proportion of the total social income was demanded for the schools. Under existing conditions the communities could not support the schemes of education which had been projected. This fact is enough to account for their failure, for when an individual or a community is unable to pay the price demanded, it matters little how desirable or laudable the object may be. ”

“ Farm property in the South—and little was left except farm property after the War—depreciated in value enormously in the decade following 1860. Grimly, sullenly, the white man of the South fought again to secure domination, this time, however, of his own section only and not of the nation. When this had been achieved, a large portion of the population was overcome by that deadly apathy so often remarked by travelers who ventured to visit the land as they would have visited Africa. The white South wished only to be let alone. ”

“ In fact, up to 1810 or 1820 it seemed that the logical development of one or two of the South Atlantic States would be into frugal manufacturing commonwealths. Few of the thousands of small shops developed into real manufacturing establishments, however, though many continued to exist. The belief in the profits apparently to be made from the cultivation of cotton and tobacco changed the ideals of the people. To own a plantation on which he might lead a patriarchal existence became the ambition of the successful man. ”

“ If the tenant falls behind in his work and allows his crop to be overrun with grass or is unable to pick the cotton as it opens, the owner hires help, if possible, and charges the cost against the tenant. In other words, the owner attempts to apply to agriculture some of the principles of industrial organization. The success of such attempts varies. The negro tenant generally resents close supervision; but on the other hand he enjoys the community life of a large plantation. In the end, in the majority of cases the personal equation determines whether the negro stays or moves. ”

“ The Grange had tried to teach the farmers to think of themselves as a class, and the skilled workmen in a few occupations, in the border States particularly, had been organized. The Greenback craze had created a distrust of the 30 capitalists of the East. The fear of negro domination was no longer so overmastering, and the natural ambition of the younger men began to show itself in factional contests. Younger men were coveting the places held by the old war-horses and were beginning to talk of cliques and rings. ”

“ Some of the States still permit county commissioners to commit the care of the poor to the lowest bidder. On the other hand the poorhouse has been transformed into a "Home for the Aged and Infirm" in some States, and inspections of public institutions by the grand jury are becoming more than merely cursory. State boards of charities are being established, and men have even attacked members of their own political parties on the charge of incompetence, cruelty, or neglect of duty as keepers of prisons or almshouses. ”

“ 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 2 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. ”

“ The General Education Board, which, with its large resources, had been seeking the best way to aid education in the South, was forced to the conclusion that any educational development must be preceded by economic improvement. The farm production of the South was less than that of other sections, and until this production could be increased, taxation, no matter how heavy, could not provide sufficient money for really efficient schools. ”