CHAPTER III
THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION IN THE SOUTH[ToC]
Two questions may be asked of any group of human beings: first, How do they earn their living, and secondly, What is their attitude toward life? The first relates to the economic history and condition of that people; the second is a study of their religion. In these two essays I am to treat the first of these questions under the subject: The Economic Revolution in the South, and the second under the subject: Christianity in the South.
The last century was notable because of the great change in method and organization of human work and we call the early part of the nineteenth century the time of economic revolution in Europe and to some extent in America. The southern United States, however, while profoundly influenced by this revolution from the first, has not until to-day actually felt its full effect. The new factory system of the early nineteenth century is just to-day appearing in the South, and yet its appearance in England and New England seventy-five years ago made the South a part of the world industrial organization by making it the seat of cotton culture (see Note [1]).
Two diverse developments resulted: In England and the North came a change from household industry to social industry, a step forward which led to an era of machinery, to a curious concentration of individuals and wealth and the necessities of living in certain great centres. That very concentration led to a wonderful contact of man with man which sharpened mind and sharpened thought and in the long run made the Europe of to-day. On the other hand, the southern United States, though really a part of this great system through its work of furnishing raw cotton, did not come into the whirl of the new industry because she had an industrial system which forbade machinery, discouraged human contact, and shackled thought.
Why did this system of slavery persist so long in the South as to be caught in the vortex of the new industrial movement and rendered almost inextricable?
If the South had been a place of intelligent farmers on small farms, we could imagine a development which would have been the wonder of the world; but because the fathers of the United States were so busy with large questions that they forgot larger ones, so busy settling matters of commerce and representation and politics that they forgot matters of work and justice and human rights—because of this we have in the South one of those curious back eddies of human progress that twist and puzzle advance and thought.