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Chapter 21. Southern Conservatism and Liberalism 473
feel themselves as belonging together in a fighting unity. They probably
know each other better than liberals elsewhere and have a closer union with
one another. Their cause is the improvement of the South. The acute aware-
ness of the pressing problems of the region is likely to make the Southern
liberals more definitely practical in their interests even if this has not until
recently carried them to think constructively along power lines and in
terms of social engineering. Social science in the South has similarly never,
as in the North, lost the tradition of reasoning in terms of means and endsj
the few leading scientists have not become ^^purely scientific” to the same
extent as in the North.® The significance for human happiness of the prob-
lems under study is always a present thought in the South, and states-
manship enters more naturally into the writings of its distinguished social
scientists.
As suggested previously. Southern liberalism has aristocratic traditions.
As a movement it is as yet almost entirely within the upper classes. Its
main weakness lies in its lack of mass suffort. If it wants to see its ideals
progressively realized, it simply must get its message out from the con-
ference rooms and college lecture halls to the people on the farms and
in the shops. Under the pressure of the accumulating structural changes,
the ‘^Solid South” might sometime, and perhaps soon, be broken and a two-
party system develop. Southern liberalism will then face a political task
for which it must be prepared. The leaders for a truly progressive political
movement in the South are there j
the staff work for the battle is largely
done. If Southern liberalism can recruit an army to lead, it will itself, as
an ideological force, become one of the major factors of change in the
South and in the nation.
* See Appendix 2, Section 2.
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