he celebrated in his book, but still hopes that the effects of progress would improve the condition of these mongrelized, untamed, half-savage drunken people who exhibit "the most hideous parts of our society." In his classic study, Democracy in America (1835), French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville sees the state of poor white southerners as being one of the effects of the slave system. He describes them as ignorant, idle, prideful, self-indulgent, and weak, and writes about southern whites in general: Restricted from holding political office due to property qualifications, their ability to vote at the mercy of the courts, which were controlled by the slave-holding planters, poor whites had few advocates within the political system or the dominant social hierarchy. Although many were tenant farmers or day laborers, other white trash people were forced to live as scavengers, thieves and vagrants. But all, employed or not, were socially ostracized by "proper" white society by being forced to use the back door when entering "proper" homes. Even slaves looked down on them: when poor whites came begging for food, the slaves called them "stray goats." Despite poor whites being looked down on by both the planters and the yeoman farmers, and their "rage" at being referred to as "white-trash", they, as a group, held the Blacks of the South in deep contempt. Cash writes that the slave system "bred [in common whites] a savage and ignoble hate for the Negro, which required only opportunity to break forth in relentless ferocity..." Poor Southern whites in the 19th century could also casual about male sexual activity outside of marriage, sometimes exhibiting a moral informality that was only slightly suppressed by the rise of evangelical revivalism and increasing church discipline. This behavior was part of a roistering tradition that had roots in the British origins of the class, and differentiated white trash from both the yeoman class and landed gentry of the plantations, where church proscriptions and social inhibitions held sway, respectively. For poor white women, there was generally a double standard, and a girl who broke the code of chastity and bore a child outside of wedlock would usually be branded as "shameless" and was often subject to public humiliation. However, there were instances where this was not the case. In some deep backwoods of the mountains, a girl bearing a child before marriage was not shamed, as it was considered proof of