Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/407

Rh although for a time in the early part of the century Alabama appears to have been a popular focal point with emigrants both from the older States and from abroad; yet this was one of the richest sections of the country, abounding in natural resources, and would have ordinarily afforded a livelihood with much less expenditure of energy than would the territory farther to the north. Perhaps the general disinclination on the part of natives of the temperate zone to settle in warm climates may have been in slight degree responsible for this state of facts, but there can be little doubt that the institution of slavery was a more serious detriment to the advancement of the South than any other cause. There had begun to grow up there an aristocracy as exclusive and as proud as that of any state in Europe, and which, in fact, dominated the whole section; the agricultural operations were carried on principally by slaves, and the landowners lived in a kind of feudal state, surrounded by a large body of dusky retainers; the remainder of the white population were poor and ignorant, exercised little more influence than did the negroes, and were looked down upon by both blacks and whites alike. Work was regarded as degrading and beneath the dignity of a gentleman, and strangers proposing to establish themselves there were looked upon with a jealous eye. All these circumstances were highly unfavorable to the establishmntestablishment [sic] of new industries and to its industrial progress. There were no mines and manufactures, because there was no one with sufficient knowledge to conduct the operations.

We find that early in its history a certain stage of civilization was reached, for a time and in one way in advance of that of the North, due to the creation of a leisured class, but, being reached, there was no further advance, and for nearly half a century no progress was made. The war of secession and the concomitant abolition of slavery brought about in a few short years what it had taken centuries in Europe to accomplish: a hereditary servient class was raised to an equality—political and theoretical at least—with a hereditary dominant class which was by the same force rendered almost penniless. This may have proved the salvation of the South, but for a time a black pall of misery and degradation settled down upon it. There were no industries to revive, there was no all-powerful middle class; the aristocracy had been ruined, and between the two extremes there was no mean.

About the close of the first quarter of the century we discover that a servient class had also begun to be created in the North, but it was entirely distinct from that of the South; the services of its members, most of whom had sought a new world with the ulterior object of bettering their condition, were given voluntarily and for wages. A dominant class in the present condition of society appears to be