In the Reconstruction era the whites fought fraud with fraud; and even after recovering control they, the whites, felt justified in continuing to defraud the negro of his vote. To restore the purity of the ballot-box was the chief reason for the amendments to State constitutions, by means of which amendments, having in view the limitations of the Federal Constitution, as many negroes and as few whites as was practicable were excluded.
This accounts in part for the smallness of the negro vote South. A more potent reason is that the Democratic party, dominated by whites, selects its candidates in primaries; and the negro, seeing no chance to win, does not care to pay a poll tax or otherwise qualify for registration.
Southern whites have now for more than three decades been governing the blacks in their midst. It is the most difficult task that has ever been undertaken in all the history of popular government, but sad experience has demonstrated that legal restriction of the negro vote in the South there must be.
Party spirit tends always to blind the vision, and, as we have seen in this review of the past, it often stifles conscience; and this even where the masses of the people are approximately homogeneous. Southern statesmen are now dealing not only with party spirit, but with perpetual race friction manifesting itself in various forms. Failure there must be in minor matters and in certain localities; the progress that has been made can only be fairly estimated by considering general results. Those who sympathize with the South think they see there among the whites a growing spirit of altruism, begotten of responsibility, and this promises much for the amelioration of race friction.
Since obtaining control of their State governments the whites in the Southern States have as a rule increased appropriations for common schools by at least four hundred per cent, and though paying themselves by far the greater proportion of these taxes, they have continued to divide revenues pro rata between the white and colored schools.
Industrial results have been amazing. The following figures, taken from the Annual Blue Book, 1911 edition, of the Manufacturers' Record, Baltimore, Maryland, include West Virginia among the reconstructed States.
The population of these States was, in 1880, 13,608,703; in 1910, 23,613,533.
Manufacturing capital, 1880, $147,156,624. In 1900—twenty years—it was $1,019,056,200.
Cotton crop, whole South, 1880, 5,761,252 bales. In 1911 it was about 15,000,000.
Of this cotton crop Southern mills took, in 1880, 321,337 bales, and in 1910, 2,344,343 bales.