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221
Chapter io. The Tradition of Slavery
conditions are more common. Even the middle strata of the Southern
white population depend on exploitation of labor.
The white workers, in their turn, often seek to defend themselves against
the potential or actual competition from Negro labor by extra-economic
devices. They themselves are often held in paternalistic economic and
moral dependence by their employers. As is often pointed out, the South
as a region is competing against the North by its recourse to low-paid docile
white and Negro labor. It has actually advertised this as an opportunity
for outside capitalists. . . the South remains largely a colonial economy,”^
complains Vance, one of the region’s outstanding social scientists, and
explains: “The advance of industry into this region then partakes of the
nature, let us say it in all kindliness, of exploiting the natural resources
and labor supply . .
This pattern of common exploitation—where everyone is the oppressor
of the one under him, where the Negroes are at the bottom and where big
landlords, merchants, and Northern capital are at the top—is obviously the
extension into the present of a modified slavery system. As Vance points
out,^ the “geography and biology” of the region are not to be blamed for
its economic position, but it is history that has molded the type of organiza-
tion.
The South tries to blame its economic backwardness on the differential
in freight rates, the national tariff system, and other economic irregulari-
ties, but these are, in the final analysis, rather minor matters j
they are
hardly more than symptoms of poverty and political dependence. The
destruction of material and human values during the Civil War and its
aftermath was large, but, by itself, it does not explain the present situation.
About three generations have lapsed since then, and we know from other
parts of the world how rapidly such wounds can be healed. The same is
true about the head start in industrialization which the North had: it could
have been overcome. To complain about the lack of capital in the region
is rather to beg the question. In modern dynamic economics we do not look
upon capital so much as a prerequisite for production but rather as a result
of production. The investment in the South of Northern capital has not
been detrimental but is, on the contrary, a reason why the South is not
more backward economically than it is.
The explanation for the economic backwardness of the South must be
carried down to the rigid institutional structure of the economic life of the
region which, historically, is derived from slavery and, psychologically, is
rooted in the minds of the people.
2. Slavery and Caste
In some respects, the remnants of the outmoded slavery system of the
Old South—^which we call caste—have been even more important impedi-
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