Industrial Progress and Rural Stagnation in the New South

B-DEHIND a radiant veil of statistical averages heralding the economic progress of the "new South" stands a threatening spector of agricultural stagnation and poverty. A member of a nationally known industrial consulting firm has recently advised his clients publicly that "The South's once plentiful supply of labor is diminishing." This is not even a halftruth. Southern labor is still plentiful. The high birth rate in rural areas of the South continues to supply more workers than can be absorbed within the region. A distinguished editor of a national magazine has recently advised young authors in search of a theme that the South of Tobacco Road has almost disappeared. The lines of Erskine Caldwell's famous play may have gone cold but the ashes of poverty remain warm. The last census showed that in more than half of the counties in the Southeast the typical farm family had an income of less than $1000 a year. That is not far from "Tobacco Road." When Secretary of Defense Wilson recently told a Detroit press conference that the surplus labor problem in Michigan would work itself out after "a few people go back South when it gets a little cold," he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the problem. The Alabama tenant farmer may have had the election in mind when he said it, but he put the matter more clearly: "Yup, last year Charlie Wilson sent my boy home from Korea. This year he's going to send him home from Detroit." During the last decade and a half the South has experienced the most rapid growth in industrial jobs and payrolls in its history. Industrial employment almost doubled and payrolls increased by more than five times.... But.... At least one third of the South's young men and women who entered the labor force for the first time were forced to find jobs outside the region because of lack of economic opportunity at home. To these young men and women the economic climate is far more important than the changes registered by the Detroit weather station. It is true, of course, that each year when the cold winds of winter sweep off the Great Lakes, a few southerners do return home. But when the economic climate turns "cold," as it did for a short time in 1949 and again in the spring of 1954, they come back in ever larger numbers. Many of the workers who return have no difficulty finding jobs. During the decade and a half between 1939 and 1954 many aspects of the South they had known before the war have completely changed. Urbanization-the growth of cities and suburbs-has proceeded faster in the Southeast than in any other section of the nation except the Pacific Coast. In many areas new types of industries-chemicals, aluminum, synthetic fibers, and auto assembly plants-have complemented the region's traditional textile industry. The worker who returns to these areas often finds employers who are eager to make use of the new industrial skills which he has developed in the North. In other areas, where industrial changes have not occurred, the only alternative open to the returning worker is to go to work. along with his father and brothers on an already over-manned cotton or tobacco farm or to add his signature to the already long list of job applications at the State employment office. The very real achievements of the past decade and a half would certainly seem to justify an optimistic appraisal of the South's economic future. But how do we square this optimism with the continued existence of what President Eisenhower has called "pockets of rural poverty"? Why, in the light of the progress that has occurred, can an Alabama plant with only 400 jobs maintain an active file of 9000 applicants? And why can this same situation be found in practically every State of the South? * This paper is based on material presented at the annual TVA-Valley States Land Grant College Presidents' Conference, August 30-31, 1954, when the author was a member of the TVA Government Relations and Economics Staff.