Existing comment:
The Palmetto State: An Isolated State Before the Great War:
"The vision of a people reunited must be kept before us; a people determined to take advantages of the resources which God has put in our grasp, to develop these resources; to build up our waste [sic] places; to diversify our crop and industries."
-- Inaugural address to the SC State Legislature, Gov. Richard I. Manning, 19 January 1915
Although the visible scars of the Civil War had disappeared, South Carolina remained a poor state five decades after Appomattox. Despite the growth of the textile industry (by 1915 it was the state's second largest portion of the economy), farming remained number one. Most people involved in agriculture were tenant farmers who usually stayed in debt, cultivating cotton and tobacco at low prices.
On the even of World War I, South Carolina continued to wrestle with many social problems as well. Although the state still had a black majority, it was very segregated. African Americans had virtually no representation in state or local governments. The only professions open to them besides agriculture were teaching and the ministry. Most earned their living as tenant farmers or laborers working for whites. Regardless of race, women could not vote and few worked outside the home unless they were employed in the mills or taught school, and at pay scales below that of their male counterparts.
At the same time, efforts had begun to solve some of these problems. In 1913, when Richard I. Manning became governor, South Carolina had a chosen leader with a progressive agenda. He worked with the legislature to increase education funding, develop an adequate highway system, further restrict child labor, and create a more equitable tax system. However, at the same time,. like most whites, he believed strongly in racial segregation. |