54 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



population who earned a livelihood by cultivating the ground 

 in small tracts with their own hands. Had slavery not been 

 abolished and the large plantation system destroyed, the manu- 

 facturing interests would doubtless have continued to languish; 

 and the opportunities now open in this rapidly expanding de- 

 partment of industry would perhaps never have arisen to improve 

 the condition of the poorer classes of the Southern whites. 



Thirdly, during the existence of slavery, it was to the interest 

 of the large landed proprietors, who controlled the industrial 

 affairs of every rural community, to train their own Negroes in 

 the different handicrafts; there were blacksmiths, carpenters, 

 wheelwrights, masons, bricklayers, shoemakers, and saddlers con- 

 nected with all the most extensive plantations, and, with hardly 

 an exception, they were the slaves of the owners. The only 

 white mechanics to be found in those parts of the South where 

 the black population was very numerous were residents of the 

 scattered villages and towns. The Negro under the new system 

 shows in the country a marked distaste for every branch of me- 

 chanics, and the handicrafts there have in consequence steadily 

 gravitated to white tradesmen. Thus the poorer class of white 

 persons have a means of earning a livelihood and even a com- 

 petence, of which they were practically deprived before the 

 abolition of slavery; employment in this department of activity 

 is now afforded to tens of thousands of men of their race where, 

 during the existence of the large plantation, employment was 

 afforded to hundreds only, because in reality almost the entire 

 work in his line was done by slaves. 



These are three most important ways in which the old class 

 of small landed proprietors have benefited by the change in the 

 economic system of the Southern States. With increased op- 

 portunity for improving their pecuniary standing, it has followed 

 that their general social condition is better than it used to be, 

 but in no social particular as yet has the new order in the 

 Southern rural districts become a satisfactory substitute for that 

 old order which gave the South its social charm under slave in- 

 stitutions. The characteristics of the ruling class of small land- 

 owners in the country to-day which before the war was the class 

 occupying an entirely subordinate social rank are essentially 

 what they have always been. The prosperity of this class has 



