Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/400

 386 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

As an inevitable consequence of the absence of a broad general school system, it followed that many of the so-called colleges and universities received students that were fitted only for grade or secondary work.

In only a few of the southern states could a common-school system be considered as existing in 1860. Kentucky and North Carolina had something of a public-school system in operation, but in the other states, aside from the universities, the attempts to build up such a system had failed.

The Civil War destroyed the old institutions of the South and prepared the way for a new industrial and educational period.

II. WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION.

The majority of the lower schools of the South closed at or near the beginning of the war. In a few cases as, for instance, in Mobile they were kept open, but in the territory in, or in close proximity to, the actual path of the war there was little strength left to maintain the educational institution. Teaching at home no doubt prevailed to a considerable extent during these years.

The war produced a revolution in the organization of south- ern industrial life. The most marked change, immediately after the close of the struggle, was necessarily in the agricultural regions, where the abolition of slavery forced the planter to resort to other methods of cultivating the land. For a time he attempted to till his huge estate with the system of hired labor that prevailed in the North. This met with small success, for certain causes worked against it. First, the prejudice to labor already inbred in the white population barred the majority of them from becoming hired laborers. Second, the fact that the southern employer of labor now discovered that l:e had no responsibility to care for the negro except for the actual time he was working left many of the colored race helpless. Ignorant of industrial conditions, the negro sought the towns, where the labor market was already oversupplied. Taken as a whole, there prevailed a thorough disorganization of industry.

With so complete a destruction of earlier industrial forms