EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 45 



nomically the isolation of the two great classes was com- 

 plete. Sectional contests developed; the small farmers 

 were more than willing to vote taxes upon the great 

 planter to build roads and canals in and out of the up- 

 lands. The interior often received population renewals 

 from the planter section of unpropertied southerners who 

 had given up the unequal struggle with slave labor and 

 struck out westward. 



Even these people were to find themselves crowded by 

 the plantation system for "the rapid growth of the short 

 staple cotton industry was responsible for the spread of 

 the planter regime over most of the fertile hill country 

 of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Mid- 

 dle Tennessee, North Louisiana, and Lower Texas." 

 The new steam railways built before the Civil War gave 

 cotton an outlet to the market and made its conquest of 

 the regions permanent. 



No less important than the spread of cotton culture is 

 the structure and internal economy of the plantation. The 

 technique of cotton production, the disposition of the hu- 

 man factors in production, their living standards, the 

 management and relation of the plantation economy to 

 the outside world are all of significance. They may best 

 be treated by giving as far as possible cases and types 

 that strike near the mode of plantation activity. 



William J. Barbee of De Soto County, Mississippi, 

 writing immediately after the Civil War has described 

 the organization of a small plantation. 



"The best bottom plantations," he writes, "are those im- 

 mediately on rivers above overflow. Such location is decidedly 

 healthier than any in interior of the bottoms." Such a plan- 



21 Dodd, in South in the Building of the Nation, V, 77. 



