The short separate routes were linked up into several great systems. All the big rivers were bridged, including a great bridge across the Mississippi at Memphis. The southern railroads had a wider gauge than the northern, but by 1896 all had been narrowed a few inches to correspond with the other roads in the country. Much of the money for these big enterprises was borrowed in the North or in Europe; but the South had good credit, and states, railroads, and banks found no difficulty in getting all the money that they needed for their development.

333. Wealth and Prosperity.-The growth of the South was shown also in its cities. The urban population slowly increased from 9 per cent in 1860 to 12 per cent in 1890. Part of the wealth of the region was going into new buildings and schools, into streets and streetcar lines, into parks and boulevards.

Interior cities grew fast; among them were Atlanta, Montgomery, and Memphis. Out in Texas the struggling towns changed into such prosperous cities as Houston and Dallas. New Orleans lies a hundred miles from the sea. In 1879 the great engineer, Captain Eads, built jetties which narrowed the mouths of the Mississippi so that the immense volume of water coming down the river would scour out deep channels. This opened New Orleans to the big steamers.

The great need of the South was the right kind of laborers. The field hands were not very steady, and though they usually made contracts for a year, they used often to drift away in the middle of the season. The town negroes were partly me

WEALTH AND PROSPERITY

415

chanics and partly lived by small jobs, the women supporting many of the families by housework or laundry work.

Nevertheless the South began to come forward very fast. A cotton exposition was held in 1881 in Atlanta, which taught the people how much could be done in making up their own cotton into cloth. Part of the profits of the plantations and factories went into new banks. In all the cities and prosperous towns good houses, business blocks, and public buildings were built. By about 1890 the South had risen out of the poverty resulting from the Civil War.

334. Summary. At the end of the war the South was almost ruined; but it abounded in rich land, and unworked forests and mines, and the people had the courage to begin again. A new system of plantation work was started, most of the negroes receiving a monthly allowance in food and supplies. Some of them bought land for themselves.

Under the Fifteenth Amendment, negroes had a vote on the same terms as white people. The whites laid the corruption of the carpetbag governments to negro suffrage; therefore, in the lower South, negroes were prevented from voting.

Free public schools were provided in all the southern states, for both whites and negroes. The town schools were fairly good, but in the thinly settled country, the schools were generally poorly taught. For higher education there were state universities and private colleges, and also several schools and colleges for the negroes which were kept up largely by gifts from the North.

Cotton came back to its old importance in the South. Truck farming for the northern markets sprang up along the Atlantic coast. By the use of cottonseed for its oil, the value of the cotton crop was increased.

Rich mines of coal and iron ore were opened, and several large manufacturing cities grew up. The cotton mills gave employment to thousands of the former poor whites, and were very profitable to the owners. The old water lines were again busy, especially the Mississippi River, and railroads were built from end to end of the South.

The result of all this activity was that slowly the South

became well off. The cities grew fast and new ones sprang up. The mouth of the Mississippi was opened to large steamers. Negro field labor was unsteady, but there were plenty of white and black mechanics; and by the year 1890 the South was richer and more prosperous than ever before.

REFERENCES

Histories. Beard, Contemporary Hist., 4-26, 46-49. dustrial Hist., 307-312. Dewey, National Problems, Dev. of Am. Nation., 433-437. - Hart, Southern South. Nation, ch. xii. South in Building of Nation, VI, X. vision and Reunion, § 144.

Sources. Harding, Select Orations, nos. 32-34.

Hart, Contemporaries

IV. §§ 203, 205, 208. — James, Readings, § 103.— Old South Leaflets

no. 149.

Dickson,

Side Lights and Stories. Craddock, Young Mountaineers. The Ravenels. Dunbar, Folks from Dixie. Grady, New South.

Harris, Uncle Remus. Jervey, Elder Brother. Page, The Southerner.
-Smith, Col. Carter of Cartersville.
Wilson, Southern Mountaineers.

Washington, Up from Slavery.

Pictures. Andrews, Last Quarter Century.

Century. Dunbar, Hist.

of Travel in Am. - Harper's Monthly. - Mentor, serial no. 131. — Scribner's.

QUESTIONS

(§ 326) 1. What was the economic and business condition of the South after the war? 2. What were the business advantages of the South?

(8 327) 3. What were the labor difficulties in the South? 4. How were the freedmen employed? 5. What did the negroes do for themselves?

(§ 328) 6. How did the negroes stand in the eyes of the law? 7. How did negro suffrage work? 8. How were the last carpetbag governments overthrown? 9. What political right have the negroes kept?

(§ 329) 10. How were schools organized in the South? 11 (For an essay). Education at Hampton or at Tuskegee. 12. How did the education of the whites progress?

(§ 330) 13. How did the cotton crops increase? 14 (For an essay). Life on a modern cotton plantation. 15. How was the growth of cotton extended? 16. What other products come from cotton? 17. What other crops were raised in the South?

(8 331) 18. How did iron and steel making grow up in the South? 19. How did cotton mills arise?

(§ 332) 20. How were southern railroads extended? 21. How did the South raise money for such improvements?

(8333) 22. How did prosperity appear in the southern cities? 23 (For an essay). Construction of the Eads jetties. 24. What were southern labor difficulties? 25. What were the evidences of prosperity?

CHAPTER XXXI

BUSINESS AND LABOR (1869-1890)

335. Inventions. All sections and all industries shared in the benefit of the many inventions that relieved the muscles of men and animals; but none was so valuable as a new process for making steel cheaply. An Englishman named Bessemer discovered (1864) how to make steel out of cast iron so that it cost no more than ordinary rolled iron, while it was much harder, tougher, and stronger.

This discovery at once cheapened transportation, for it became possible to use steel rails instead of the weaker wroughtiron rails. The steel rail was so strong that heavier locomotives could be used, and they could draw heavier trains, which could carry more freight. The same tough and cheap steel was used in ships and for framing high buildings, which gradually developed into the modern skyscrapers. Cheap steel meant cheaper machines and tools of every kind.

The tall buildings could not have been put up or used without elevators, which came into wide use in hotels, office buildings, factories, and some private houses. Vessels were quickly loaded and unloaded by steam power, and a machine was invented which would lift up an open steel car holding fifty tons of coal and tip it over sidewise so that the coal could run into a coal pocket or a vessel.

Electricity had years before been harnessed for human use by the telegraph (§ 224). In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell perfected the electric telephone, a device by which the vibrations that cause sounds can be transmitted over a wire and heard at the other end. In a short time this little device grew into an enormous business with millions of telephones and many thousands of employees. The same year, Thomas

A. Edison invented the phonograph, by which the sound vibrations can be recorded on a disk or cylinder and then reproduced. This developed into a great business of supplying talking machines and dictaphones; that is, machines which will automatically take down and record conversations.

Electricity was also applied to lights: first the big and costly arc lights, then the incandescent lamps, which give abundant light with very little heat.

Great office and

336. House and Farm Inventions. apartment buildings could not have been inhabited by millions of people had not new means been discovered of furnishing heat. Hot-air furnaces worked well in moderate-sized houses; and the kitchen stoves and open fireplaces were aided by base burners, oil stoves, and gas stoves. For larger buildings and many small ones, steam or hot-water systems were put in.

The housekeeper found many new conveniences for furnishing and preparing food. Canned meats, vegetables, and fruits were furnished by the million cans. Ice was stored in the colder parts of the country and made artificially in factories in the South; and that made it possible to keep food stored in large and small refrigerators. Cereals, coconuts, raisins, and many other food products were packed in parcels. A great industry was introduced by canning the abundant salmon