THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 65 



needed elements of population. They demand railway connec- 

 tions with the outside world. Automobiles in increasing num- 

 bers demand improved public highways. This economic revolu- 

 tion will mean better schools, stronger newspapers, another type 

 of religious consciousness, and a more liberal social life. The 

 industrial transformation of Appalachia has begun, and the 

 next generation of Highlanders will be well in the middle of this 

 new era. 



We ought to keep clearly in mind a concern of primary im- 

 portance to the mountain people. The question, says President 

 Frost, is whether the mountain people can be enlightened and 

 guided so that they can have a part in the development of their 

 own country, or whether they must give place to aliens and 

 melt away like the Indians of an earlier day. 



That is to say, both the church and the school problems are 

 fundamentally economic and social. The highest values, of 

 course, are spiritual. As invading industrialism turns into gold 

 the natural resources of these mountains, will it enhance the 

 value of their largest asset the men and women of the hill 

 country ? 



THE RURAL NEGRO AND THE SOUTH 1 



BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 



OF the nine million Negroes, or nearly that number, in the 

 South, about seven million are in the rural districts. They are 

 on the farm, the plantation, and in the small town. -They in- 

 clude 80 per cent, of the whole Negro population in the South, 

 the great bulk of the Negro population in America, in fact. Of 

 this seven million it is safe to say that 2,200,000 persons are 

 actually working, either as hired hands, tenant farmers, crop- 

 pers, or renters and independent owners, upon the land. This 

 number includes women arid children, for, on the farm and the 

 plantation, the unit of labor is not the individual but the fam- 

 ily, and in the South to-day Negro women still do a large part 

 of the work in the fields. 



i Adapted from "Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities 

 and Corrections," Memphis, Term., May, 1!)14, pp. 121-127. 



