THE SOUTH: The Enlightened Revolution

• Share

(3 of 4)

New Whirl. Camden's changes have only begun. By mid-1952, Du Pont will complete an additional $25 million expansion of its Orion plant (one of 20 Du Pont plants in nine Southern states), will hire about 1,900 more workers, and start Camden's spiral whirling again by paying out an additional $7,300,000 a year in wages.

Among the factors in the South's industrial growth are cheap electric power from TVA and private utilities, natural gas piped from Louisiana and Mississippi, and a lowering of Southern freight rates, which used to be much higher than in the Northeast and Midwest.

Industry draws industry. Each new payroll gave the South more money to spend. Northern manufacturers had to decide whether it was cheaper to feed this market by freight or by a new branch plant. Ford moved an assembly plant into Atlanta, General Motors began building Chevrolets, then Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks in Atlanta too. Purchasing power brought refrigerator plants, refrigerator plants brought enameling plants. Dairy processors and meat packers came along as Southern workers began eating higher & higher on the hog. An estimated 14% of all U.S. industry now lies in the Southeastern U.S.

Contrary to legend, most of the big corporations which have recently built Southern plants were not primarily searching for cheap labor. Some Southern wages are still lower than Northern, but the gap is sure to narrow. Southern labor offers employers some other, solider advantages. The Southern labor pool is deep. (Mechanical cotton pickers, for instance, and other labor-saving farm machinery are expected to displace 2,000,000 field hands by 1965; many of them will be available for factory work.) The South's labor population is young and quick to learn. Employers who complain that they have to scrape the bottom of the labor barrel in the North find they can pick, choose and train the brightest of young Southerners.

Glad Hand. The Southern glad hand has been quick to welcome industrial prospects. In 1936, Mississippi embarked on the "Balance Agriculture with Industry" plan which gave state assistance to local communities so they could build plant facilities. In return, the companies that moved in were supposed to maintain a minimum level of employment for about ten-years. Nearly all Southern states borrowed some variation of this technique, or offered special tax reductions to help new factories get going. Favorite targets are industries which employ lots of people, e.g., the shoe factories (Arkansas got eleven in three years), and garment plants (heaviest in Tennessee).

Port Wentworth, Ga. built a new industrial water plant to attract the Southern Paperboard company. Natchez, Miss, "clarified" the state stream pollution law to get the Johns-Manville insulation board plant. In Greenville, Tenn., some schools joined in educating the populace in the art of dairy farming to help the Pet Milk Co. build up a milk supply for its new processing factory.