that had
accompanied the rise of the textile industry in New England. In 1910,
New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, and Houston stood in the same
relation to the New South that Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, and
Detroit had stood to the New West fifty years before. The problems of
labor and capital and municipal administration, which the earlier
writers boasted would never perplex the planting South, had come in full
force.

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

A GLIMPSE OF MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE]

=The Revolution in the Status of the Slaves.=--No part of Southern
society was so profoundly affected by the Civil War and economic
reconstruction as the former slaves. On the day of emancipation, they
stood free, but empty-handed, the owners of no tools or property, the
masters of no trade and wholly inexperienced in the arts of self-help
that characterized the whites in general. They had never been accustomed
to looking out for themselves. The plantation bell had called them to
labor and released them. Doles of food and clothing had been regularly
made in given quantities. They did not understand wages, ownership,
renting, contracts, mortgages, leases, bills, or accounts.

When they were emancipated, four courses were open to them. They could
flee from the plantation to the nearest town or city, or to the distant
North, to seek a livelihood. Thousands of them chose this way,
overcrowding cities where disease mowed them down. They could remain
where they, were in their cabins and work for daily wages instead of
food, clothing, and shelter. This second course the major portion of
them chose; but, as few masters had cash to dispense, the new relation
was much like the old, in fact. It was still one of barter. The planter
offered food, clothing, and shelter; the former slaves gave their labor
in return. That was the best that many of them could do.

A third course open to freedmen was that of renting from the former
master, paying him usually with a share of the produce of the land. This
way a large number of them chose. It offered them a chance to become
land owners in time and it afforded an easier life, the renter being, to
a certain extent at least, master of his own hours of labor. The final
and most difficult path was that to ownership of land. Many a master
helped his former slaves to acquire small holdings by offering easy
terms. The more enterprising and the more fortunate who started li