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The Flaws of the "New South" After the Civil War was over, many progressive Southerners began to envision a "New South". They hoped that, with an infusion of Northern capital, the South could recreate itself in Northern fashion, with industrialization, free labor and a booming economy. In this excerpt from his 1888 book The New South Investigated, Straker, an African-American, argues that the "New South" is fatally flawed. ... The South today has, amid all its troubles, political and otherwise, made great advancement in industry, education and commerce. Our land owners are now ready and willing to utilize their lands and not let them lie uncultivated. Our farmers no longer confine themselves to the growing of cotton only, but are engaged in the more varied industry of planting corn and rice. This latter article is cultivated in South Carolina to a degree of almost perfection, as all those who visited the late Cotton Exposition, held at New Orleans, can testify, if they saw it. Manufactories begin to dot the South in all of its principal cities and towns. Who that has visited the cities of Augusta, Atlanta, Savannah and Macon, in Georgia; Charleston, Greenville and Columbia, in South Carolina; Selena, Montgomery, Birmingham and Anniston, in Alabama; the City of New Orleans; Jacksonville, in Florida; and other cities of the South, can fail to discover the great advancement in the industry of the South in the past twenty years. The hum of the spinning wheel, and the noise of the manufactories' whistles are now heard in every principal city in the South today, and the ring of the anvil follows the church bell. The spirit of industry has taken hold of our water-power and our mineral resources, and has utilized them as far as the capital of the South will admit. Along our canals are being built numerous factories, and the cotton which we now grow is no longer entirely sent to foreign parts for manufacture, but is manufactured on the spot at Graniteville, Greenville, Columbia, Charleston, Atlanta, Savannah and Augusta. This shows the need for a protective tariff for the South. From the bowels of the earth we now dig iron, coal, gold and other minerals. Our industries are more varied than is generally known. We not only manufacture cotton, but we turn the cotton seed into oil. We have successfully cultivated the tea plant. The tea farm is now reckoned among the industrial pursuits of South Carolina. Our mills are numerous. We have the papermill, the saw-mill, the grist-mill, moulding our future alongside of other industries. Our railroads also show the advancement of the South. The old iron rail is now supplanted by the modern steel rail, and the dog-kennel depot is supplanted in many places by the beautiful artistic building of modern days. We have the improved air-brake; we run with greater speed. I remember when, not more than ten years ago, it took twelve hours from Charleston to Columbia, a distance of 130 miles. To-day it is reached by rail in five hours. We even kill more people on the railroad than we did before, and then, following in the march of progressive ideas, we have our railroad attorneys to plead as a defense, "contributory negligence or common hazard."... The Social Problem Is it true that the progress of the South, which I have shown to have taken place, has improved the social condition of the South? Is it true that the Negro of the South, which is known as largely the laboring class, and, therefore, the producing class, has improved in his social condition compared with the white class, which is known as largely the capital or nonproducing class? Why is it, in plainer terms, that the Negro who was poor at the close of the war when made free, is today yet poor when compared to the white man of the South? You may say that this is the result of the ignorance of the one and the knowledge of the other, but while I do not deny that ignorance and knowledge enter largely into the producing and non-producing quality of material advancement, it has not, and should not, have anything to do with the just relationship between capital and labor and the just wages paid as compensation for adequate labor. None will deny that the labor in quality required for making cotton in the South is fully adequate to the need of producing the same, and this is seen in the fact that the cotton produced in the South since the war has greatly exceeded the amount produced before the war; and yet the producing power makes no material progress as compared with the non-producing power. I can see no other reason for this, than because capital has been, and still is, unjust to labor in the South as in a degree it is in the North, added to which there has been a greater degree of caste prejudice on account of color and former condition in the South, blocking the avenues to industry and progress. As I have said before, it is not only the political change in the administration which is daily causing thousands of colored farm hands, and even mechanics, to migrate from the South to the West, but it is also caused by unjust wages, wages which do not admit of a bare living, such as 15 cents a day, and $6 or $8 per month. These low wages is carrying out the plan, said to have been suggested by [John C.] Calhoun, for the purpose of "keeping the Negro down." And how is this done in the South? Not only by paying him poor wages and giving him poorer rations, but still further denying him the opportunity for material advancement. A colored man in the South cannot purchase land with the facility of his white brother, not only because of his poor wages as compensation for his services, but because of the general indisposition to sell him land. Since the war, thousands of colored people who have commenced to purchase lands have been unable to do so and have lost what they have already paid, not only because some were defaulters in payment, but because more were the victims of the white man's original design to defraud him by some clause in the mortgage or fee simple deed, which defeated his tenure just at the time when he thought most sure he was the absolute owner... This system of discrimination between labor and capital, as seen in unjust wages and no protection, is also to be found among the few mechanics who perform operative labor in the South. It is not an unusual thing to see a white and a black mechanic, who although doing the same work' yet receive different wages. Discrimination is introduced even into the precincts of the schoolhouse. A first-class colored teacher never receives the equal salary of a first-class white teacher, a practice which, upon its face, carries with it the purpose of seeking inferior teachers for one class and superior for another. The professional, on account of caste prejudice, is shut out from equal opportunity of securing an equal patronage with his white fellow, because of his color. But added to all this is the further obstruction to social progress, as seen in the closing of the doors of industry, few as they are in the South, to the colored brother because of his color, and shutting them against him in every vocation in life which is not strictly menial. How then can the social condition of the South be other than a dividing and a divergent one between the races? And the question here arises, is the present social condition of the South one of true progress-materially or socially? I unhesitatingly answer, no! The South's progress, socially, is only apparent and shadowy; it is not substantial; it cannot be with a divided and unequal people in condition and opportunity. The present social condition of the South, as found in its white and black population, arises not so much from the habit of keeping separate these two classes on account of race or color, as by reason of the disparity in conditions and the hindrance to industrial pursuits set up by the same powerful whites against their weaker brethren-the blacks. You may say this is equally so with these two classes in the North, East and West, and yet the social condition is not the same. The principle is not different, but the facts are, and only serve to prove the truth of the principle. In the North, East and West, the largest number is the white class, and the result is in the order of the inverse ratio. It cannot be denied that the social condition of the South in which it finds itself so far behind the other portions of our country in industry, is owing to the folly of keeping out from engaging in industrial pursuits the class of people largest in numbers in its midst. The folly of trades unions, or the spirit which denies colored persons admission to the workshops in the South, is the chief cause of Southern depression in trade, and despite the progress it has made, is the reason it has not made greater progress. It is evident that if the South could receive into its midst a large amount of capital, and would then open its avenues of industry for the large quantum of labor it possesses, in the large number of colored people in its midst, it would spring into a powerful, rich and more prosperous portion of our country, with magic and alacrity, and would be the garden spot of these United States... |
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