ΧΙ SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS DURING RECONSTRUCTION INTRODUCTION IN their effect upon the political situation the social and economic conditions during Reconstruction were of the utmost importance. Among the whites the abnormal situation resulted in political restlessness that was mistaken by some in the North for fresh rebellion. Disfranchisement, loss of property, dread of the purposes of the negroes and their leaders, the spectre of social equality, the speeches of agitators, the demand for penitence in regard to the war - these resulted in a disturbed popular temper, and in a bitter dislike of Radicals, northern and southern, who in society and business were mercilessly ostracized. This ostracism caused the better class of the carpetbaggers and scalawags to fall away from the Radicals while the remaining ones associated more closely with the blacks. Among the blacks there was a tendency toward division into classes up-country and low-country negroes; mulattoes; the former servant class; artisans, teachers, and preachers. Pressure from outside tended to prevent this separation and to array the race as a whole against the whites. Criminality increased as the morality of the mass declined. Negro women began by refusing to work and ended by working more than the men. The death rate, especially of children, increased and disease became com mon. One of the most potent causes of irritation between the races was the constant discussion, mainly for political purposes, of the question of social rights for the negroes. Mixed marriages took place in several of the states which had laws favoring the mixing of the races, and these marriages invariably created ill feeling between the races. Politically the "equal rights" issue assisted in uniting the whites into one party. Socially Reconstruction unified the white race by breaking down barriers of wealth and class, and by alienating the races made the blacks dependent upon themselves. In the industrial field, the white districts sooner recovered from the prostration following the war,1 and, owing to the removal of slave labor competition, the building of railroads, the use of fertilizers, the development of mines, manufactures, and varied industries, and the rise of cities, these districts gradually took the place of the Black Belt as the productive part of the South. The white farmer could now raise Black Belt crops at less cost than the planter, notwithstanding the poverty of the soil in the white districts. All plans for reorganizing the industrial system of the Black Belt failed wholly or in part, and the fertile lands were left mainly to negro tenants, who, if undirected, became indolent, unreliable, and unskilful. Domestic animals could not be kept because of thieves, and varied crops were no longer produced. Bad farming was the rule. The share and credit systems were gradually developed. Owing to the negro propensity for petty thievery the industrious members of the race found it difficult to accumulate savings. Many of the large plantations fell into the hands of absentee landlords. Carpetbag taxation was ruinous and enormous quantities of land were sold for taxes. But the large plantations did not break up into small farms. 1. For conditions after the war see also Chapter I. At the close of Reconstruction, though all were hard pressed, the whites and blacks of the white districts were becoming independent; the planters had usually been ruined; the negro tenants in the Black Belt were living from hand to mouth; the whites were still on poor lands, and the thriftless blacks on the fertile lands. The industrial effects of abolition, now to be seen in spite of the ruin of Reconstruction, had been to emancipate the mass of the whites and leave the mass of the blacks to their own efforts without direction. However, many exceptional blacks, especially in and near the towns, had accumulated some property. |