After 1865, achievement and fortune no longer lay on the land alone.  As soon as the paralysis of the war was over, the South caught the industrial spirit that had conquered feudal Europe and the agricultural North.  In the development of mineral wealth, enormous strides were taken.  Iron ore of every quality was found, the chief beds being in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas.  Five important coal basins were uncovered:  in Virginia, North Carolina, the Appalachian chain from Maryland to Northern Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Texas.  Oil pools were found in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas.  Within two decades, 1880 to 1900, the output of mineral wealth multiplied tenfold:  from ten millions a year to one hundred millions.  The iron industries of West Virginia and Alabama began to rival those of Pennsylvania.  Birmingham became the Pittsburgh and Atlanta the Chicago of the South.

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.

A SOUTHERN COTTON MILL IN A COTTON FIELD]

In other lines of industry, lumbering and cotton manufacturing took a high rank.  The development of Southern timber resources was in every respect remarkable, particularly in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi.  At the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, primacy in lumber had passed from the Great Lakes region to the South.  In 1913 eight Southern states produced nearly four times as much lumber as the Lake states and twice as much as the vast forests of Washington and Oregon.

The development of the cotton industry, in the meantime, was similarly astounding.  In 1865 cotton spinning was a negligible matter in the Southern states.  In 1880 they had one-fourth of the mills of the country.  At the end of the century they had one-half the mills, the two Carolinas taking the lead by consuming more than one-third of their entire cotton crop.  Having both the raw materials and the power at hand, they enjoyed many advantages over the New England rivals, and at the opening of the new century were outstripping the latter in the proportion of spindles annually put into operation.  Moreover, the cotton planters, finding a market at the neighboring mills, began to look forward to a day when they would be somewhat emancipated from absolute dependence upon the cotton exchanges of New York, New Orleans, and Liverpool.

Transportation kept pace with industry.  In 1860, the South had about ten thousand miles of railway.  By 1880 the figure had doubled.  During the next twenty years over thirty thousand miles were added, most of the increase being in Texas.  About 1898 there opened a period of consolidation in which scores of short lines were united, mainly under the leadership of Northern capitalists, and new through service opened to the North and West.  Thus Southern industries were given easy outlets to the markets of the nation and brought within the main currents of national business enterprise.