FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS 5 



in this region also was already beginning to depreciate in value, 

 there seems to have been little discontent. 1 While the absence 

 of any considerable discontent among the farmers in this sec- 

 tion, and in the northeastern section as well, may have been 

 due in part to diversified farming and a fair amount of prosperity, 

 still it seems that the process of natural selection which resulted 

 from the westward movement of population had something 

 to do with it. The great flood of migration to the Middle 

 West during the first half of the century drained off the elements 

 which were disadvantageously situated or were inclined to be 

 discontented with their lot, while those who resisted the attrac- 

 tions of the West were generally of the more prosperous and 

 conservative class. 



The southern states of the Union remained, agriculturally, 

 as they had been before the war, producers of staples. Cotton, 

 rice, sugar, and tobacco were the principal crops in different 

 sections, but corn and some other grains were also produced 

 largely, though not in sufficient quantities to supply the demand 

 for home consumption. 2 The South was left by the war in a 

 state of complete exhaustion in which agriculture shared to the 

 fullest extent: farms had been devastated or neglected, often 

 the owners had been killed in battle or rendered incapable of 

 work, and worst of all the complete change in the industrial 

 system made a return to normal agricultural conditions ex- 

 tremely slow. Most of the large land-owners among the whites 

 had been unaccustomed to personal manual labor in the conduct 

 of their plantations, while the blacks were altogether untrained 

 in the management of agricultural operations and unused to 

 labor except under supervision. The available capital of the 

 section had been largely drained out by the exigencies of the 

 war. This fact made more difficult the development of any 

 wage labor system. 3 Nor did the political conditions of the 

 South in the reconstruction period conduce to the welfare of 



1 United States Census, 1870, volume on Agriculture; Emerick, in Political Science 

 Quarterly, xi. 454 (September, 1896). 



2 United States Census, 1870, volume on Agriculture. 



8 W. L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 251-283, 710-733; 

 C. H. Otken, The Ills of the South, ch. i. 



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