ducational development of the South.
There were throughout that section men who saw clearly that the main
hope centered in education for black and white. They talked in season
and out, though sometimes with little apparent result, for the opposing
forces were strong. Among these forces poverty was perhaps the
strongest. It is difficult to convince a people who must struggle for
the bare necessities of life that taxation for any purpose is a positive
good; and a large proportion of the families of the rural South handled
little money. This was true even for years after the towns began to feel
the thrill of growing industrialism. It has sometimes seemed that the
poorer a man and the larger the number of his children, the greater his
dread of taxes for education.

Then, too, the Southern people had followed the tradition of Jefferson
that the best government is that which assumes the fewest functions and
interferes least with the individual. Many honest men who meant to be
good citizens felt that education belonged to the family or the church
and could not see why the State should pay for teaching any more than
for preaching, or for food, or clothing, or shelter. There were, of
course, those claiming to hold this theory whose underlying motives were
selfish. They had property which they had inherited or accumulated, and
they objected to paying taxes for educating other people's children. It
must be said, however, that as a class, the larger taxpayers have been
more ready to vote higher taxes for schools than the poor and
illiterate, whose morbid dread of taxation has been fostered by the
politician.

There were others who were cold to the extension of public education on
account of the schools already existing. In many towns and villages
there were struggling academies, often nominally under church auspices.
Towns which could have supported one school were trying to support two
or three. In few cases was any direct financial aid given by the
religious organization, but the school was known as the Methodist or the
Presbyterian school, because the teaching force and the majority of the
patrons belonged to that denomination. The denominational influence
behind these schools was often lukewarm toward the extension of public
education, and the ministers themselves had been known to make slighting
references to "godless schools." There was still another class of people
who really opposed public schools because they did not beli