focuses on the close ties between industrialists and the Democratic
party leadership. It notices the relative powerlessness of workers and
the absolute exclusion of blacks from political life. The alternate view,
then, suggests that "progressivism" can be a misleading term; it masks
the fact that the state's power holders, even as they invested in educa-
tional and transportation improvements, were serving the interests of a
narrow economic elite ( Finger 1981, 12-13).

Political scientist V. O. Key ( 1949) subscribed to the alternate view of
North Carolina's political economy. Although he praised the state's
moderate race relations, he emphasized that North Carolina's economic
progressivism was in fact conservatism, not liberalism. He character-
ized the state as a "progressive plutocracy" whose power was subtle but
complete:

Industrialization has created a financial and business elite whose
influence prevails in the state's political and economic life. An ag-
gressive aristocracy of manufacturing and banking, centered
around Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Charlotte and Durham, has
had a tremendous stake in state policy and has not been remiss in
protecting and advancing what it visualizes as its interests. Con-
sequently a sympathetic respect for the problems of corporate
capital and of large employers permeates the state's politics and
government. For half a century an economic oligarchy has held
sway (p. 211 ).

This book adopts Key's definition of progressivism. According to
Key, a North Carolina progressive is committed to economic change
and believes that corporate leaders should control this change in order
to benefit the state's business community. The public prospers when
business does ( Key 1949, 214-15). As background to this book's analysis
of contemporary Tar Heel politics, this chapter examines briefly some
major political events in North Carolina from the late nineteenth cen-
tury to the mid-twentieth century. Two points are central. First, North
Carolina's moderate reputation in race relations during the early twenti-
eth century ignores the white leadership's harsh repression of black
political participation just before 1900. Second, the Tar Heel interest in
industrialization says nothing about the economic and political condi-
tions faced by the growing numbers of factory workers. The reality is
that business control of laborers went hand in hand with political con-
trol of black protest.

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