ofitable
cotton culture rose more rapidly than the demand for cotton, and in
overproduction may be found one of the reasons for the decline in cotton
values in the early nineties. In the decline may be found an incentive
toward diversified agriculture. When cotton went down, farmers tried
other crops. The corn acreage in the ten cotton States passed the
cotton acreage before 1899, and with the diversification came no
decrease in the total cotton output, but an increase in general
agricultural prosperity. In many regions fruit culture and truck-raising
forced their way to the front among profitable types of agriculture.

In spite of the changes in industry and transportation the South
remained in 1910 a rural community when compared with the rest of the
United States. Out of 114 cities of 50,000 population in 1910, only 15
were in the Confederate area. But when compared with its own past the
South was developing cities at a rapid rate. Only New Orleans and
Richmond, in 1880, had 50,000 inhabitants. Atlanta, Charleston, Memphis,
and Nashville were added to this class by 1890. Texas had no city of
this size until 1900. But in 1910 she possessed four, Dallas, Forth
Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. As the cities increased in number,
bound together, and bound to the cities of the rest of the United States
by the ties of trade and society, the localisms of the South diminished.
The essential fear of negro control remained untouched, but in
superficial ways the Southerner came to resemble his fellow citizen of
whatever section.

The sectionalism which had made a political unit of the South before the
war was weakened. In the tariff debates of 1883 and later a group of
Southern protectionists made common cause with Northern Republicans.
Sugar, iron, and cotton manufactures converted them from the old
regional devotion to free trade. A fear of national power had kept the
old South generally opposed to internal improvements at the public cost.
The Pacific railroads had been postponed somewhat because of this. But
this repugnance had died away, and in the Mississippi River the United
States found a field for work that was welcomed in the South.

The Mississippi never fully recovered the dominance that it had
possessed before the war, but it remained an important highway for the
Western cotton States. The whimsical torrent, washing away its banks,
cutting new channels at will, flooding millions of acres every spring,
was too grea