NEW ENGLAND: The Fight Over Blight

Yankee New England has the nation's worst unemployment problems, partly because it has lost big pieces of its industry to the booming South. Massachusetts' mophaired Freshman Senator John Kennedy, a curious blend of Boston conservatism and New Deal liberalism, is firm in his belief that the Federal Government should do something to slow down this economic migration. Democrat Kennedy has delivered long speeches in the Senate, has written for magazines—and even crossed the Mason-Dixon Line to defend his program. Last week he offered the clearest statement of his argument to date in a 4,000-word article in the Atlantic, aptly subtitled "The Struggle for Industry."

Natural Reasons. "Why do industries move South?" asks Kennedy. One cause, he admits, is "the South's natural advantages," e.g., lots of fresh, pure water, a milder climate, plenty of elbow room. Another is the South's progress toward matching New England's pools of skilled labor, its research services, its markets and facilities. "Perhaps the most important of all, the South has a much larger supply of labor, primarily from the farms . . . thus enabling employers to select the youngest and most adaptable."

Also, the South has cheap power, largely because of "the influence" of federal programs. "The man who wants to start a moderate-size industry," writes Kennedy frankly, "would pay an annual electric bill in Boston of $26,800, but in Chattanooga only $11,000 [for the identical electric consumption]." New England, he points out, has not obtained a single federal hydroelectric project.

Kennedy wants action in the areas where, he says, federal law permits conditions in the South which are "unfair or substandard by any criterion." He snuggles up to the Fair Deal line long enough to blame the Taft-Hartley law for crippling union organization in the South.* He is on far sounder ground when he recommends an increase in the outdated 75¢ an-hour minimum wage (which provides the wage floor in some rural Southern plants) and abolition of the device of "learners' permits," which allow even lower pay. Federal-tax amortization benefits, he says, have been "disproportionately granted to Southern plants." Federally regulated shipping rates "discriminate unduly" against New England (although he admits that New England is badly located to exploit the big new markets of the Southeast and Southwest). And worst evil of all, in Kennedy's book, "one of the most obviously unfair inducements offered to those [industries], considering migration, is the tax-free plant built by a southern community with the proceeds of federally-tax-exempt municipal bonds."

In addition to the minimum-wage increase, Kennedy wants social security equalized and union privileges guaranteed. He wants tax loopholes closed, and "equal consideration given to all areas in ... tax write-offs, transportation rates and Government contracts and projects." He calls for federal help in achieving "the expansion and diversification of industry in our older areas," federal loans to new industry, and tax amortization benefits.