white
supervision. The land hunger of the white farmer, once checked by the
planting system, reasserted itself. Before these forces the plantation
broke up. The small farm became the unit of cultivation in the South as
in the North. Between 1870 and 1900 the number of farms doubled in every
state south of the line of the Potomac and Ohio rivers, except in
Arkansas and Louisiana. From year to year the process of breaking up
continued, with all that it implied in the creation of land-owning
farmers.

=The Diversification of Crops.=--No less significant was the concurrent
diversification of crops. Under slavery, tobacco, rice, and sugar were
staples and "cotton was king." These were standard crops. The methods of
cultivation were simple and easily learned. They tested neither the
skill nor the ingenuity of the slaves. As the returns were quick, they
did not call for long-time investments of capital. After slavery was
abolished, they still remained the staples, but far-sighted
agriculturists saw the dangers of depending upon a few crops. The mild
climate all the way around the coast from Virginia to Texas and the
character of the alluvial soil invited the exercise of more imagination.
Peaches, oranges, peanuts, and other fruits and vegetables were found to
grow luxuriantly. Refrigeration for steamships and freight cars put the
markets of great cities at the doors of Southern fruit and vegetable
gardeners. The South, which in planting days had relied so heavily upon
the Northwest for its foodstuffs, began to battle for independence.
Between 1880 and the close of the century the value of its farm crops
increased from $660,000,000 to $1,270,000,000.

=The Industrial and Commercial Revolution.=--On top of the radical
changes in agriculture came an industrial and commercial revolution. The
South had long been rich in natural resources, but the slave system had
been unfavorable to their development. Rivers that would have turned
millions of spindles tumbled unheeded to the seas. Coal and iron beds
lay unopened. Timber was largely sacrificed in clearing lands for
planting, or fell to earth in decay. Southern enterprise was consumed in
planting. Slavery kept out the white immigrants who might have supplied
the skilled labor for industry.

[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y._

STEEL MILLS--BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA]

After 1865, achievement and fortune no longer lay on the land alone. As
soon as the paralysis