THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 55 



not been sufficient as yet to allow them to make any real advance 

 in social attractiveness; the life which they lead still removes 

 them from the general currents of the world; they are still the 

 primitive people, as in former times, with social qualities com- 

 manding respect, but with none to produce a society so notable 

 as that which passed away. Education is more general, on 

 account of the establishment of free schools; some social ad- 

 vantages are enjoyed, which, under the old system, were beyond 

 the reach of all except the rich, but in its principal features, the 

 social condition of the rural population remains as it was when 

 subordinated to that of the higher planting class during the 

 existence of slavery. How entirely this latter class has vanished 

 and how wholly the country is given over to the former lower 

 rank in society is nowhere more conspicuous than in the rural 

 churches. Owing to the increase of the white population, these 

 churches are more fully attended than they ever were, but the 

 families belonging to the old rural gentry are no longer to be 

 seen there. 



A general social equality prevails among the whites in all the 

 rural districts. In the agricultural regions, outside of the towns, 

 there are, as yet, no means of accumulating sufficient fortune to 

 give superiority to new families possessing talent for getting 

 money; the old rural gentry has not been succeeded, even in a 

 comparatively remote degree, by a new gentry which rests its 

 claims to social distinction upon large estates acquired in recent 

 years. In the rural district, all the tendencies are toward a 

 further consolidation of the existing social equality among the 

 whites, because the subdivision of the land means a further 

 progress toward the reduction of the w r hole number of white in- 

 habitants to the condition of the men who work the soil with their 

 own hands. There are no substantial social distinctions among 

 manual laborers of the same race. The small farmer and the 

 small planter who are making up to an increasing extent every 

 year the entire body of the rural white inhabitants may hold 

 themselves a little above their white assistants who are without 

 property, but there is no real difference in their social level. "We 

 see in the South to-day a vast rural white population, which, as 

 a whole, stands upon the same footing, a footing of great respect- 

 ability, but entirely devoid of those charms which made the 



