basis for textual
discussion. The influence of the scientific generalizations of Darwin
and his school had reached the Church and forced upon it a rephrasing of
its views. It was becoming less dangerous for men to admit their belief
in scientific process. The orthodox churches lost nothing in popularity
as the struggle advanced, and outside them new teachers proclaimed new
religions as they had ever done in America.

The greatest of the new religions was that of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, in
whose teachings may be found a religious parallel to the political
revolt of the People's Party. Christian Science was a reaction from the
"vertebrate Jehovah" of the Puritans to a more comfortable and
responsive Deity. It was the outgrowth of a well-fed and prosperous
society, presenting itself to the ordinary mind as "primarily a religion
of healing."

Intellectual, spiritual, economic, and political revolt were common in
America in 1890, as they must have been after the industrial revolution
of the last ten years. The whole nation was once more acting as a unit,
for the South had outlived the worst results of war and reorganization
and was again developing on independent lines. The immediate problem was
the effect of the revolt upon political control.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The materials upon the unrest of the later eighties are yet uncollected,
and must be pursued through the files of the journals, many of which are
named above in the text. The new scientific periodicals: _Quarterly
Journal of Economics_, _Political Science Quarterly_, _Yale Review_,
_Journal of Political Economy_, etc., devoted much space to current
economic and social analysis. F.L. McVey, _The Populist Movement_ (in
American Economic Association, Economic Studies, vol. I), is useful but
only fragmentary. The materials on free silver are mentioned in the note
to chapter XIV, below. A.B. Paine, _Mark Twain_, gives many
cross-references to the literary life of the decade. J.F. Jameson
discusses the fertile field of American religious history in "The
American Acta Sanctorum" (in the _American Historical Review_, 1908).

CHAPTER XII

THE NEW SOUTH

The Old South, in which two parties had always struggled on fairly equal
terms, was destroyed during the period of the Civil War, while
reconstruction failed completely to revive it. The New South, in
politics, had but one party of consequence. With few exceptions white
men of respectability voted with th