|
In a little town in the southern part of the State of Alabama, there is a monument honoring the cotton boll weevil! The people of that area erected the monument because, after the boll weevil destroyed their cotton crop in 1910, they were compelled to stop growing cotton and turned instead to dairying and to raising peanuts and melons. What was first viewed as a misfortune was a blessing in disguise, since the new farming was better suited to the land and raised their standard of living.
In another place, in Alabama, three brothers in 1934 ac¬quired a lumber mill that had already depleted most of the surrounding forest. The remaining trees were enough to keep the mill busy only eight years longer. But the brothers had new ideas, and today the mill is cutting more wood than it ever did in the old days. The supply may continue forever because the forest has become a carefully managed ,,tree farm". Not only have the brothers grown new trees to replace the old ones, but they have also been instrumen¬tal in spreading ,,tree farming" to land that could no longer grow cotton.
Mississippi, the most thoroughly agricultural state of the South began a program around 1940 to increase manufacturing and adopted the slogan, ,,Balance Agriculture with In¬dustry". The plan has helped create thousands of new indus¬trial jobs.
These examples give but a glimpse of the three-sided movement of diversification that is revitalizing the South. First, southerners are bringing their agriculture into balance, with crops that put new life into the soil, and with many types of plants and animals which are suited to the varied features of their landscape. Second, they are adding to the basic wealth of the region by using and cultivating their resources, instead of either letting them lie idle or destroying them. And, third, they are bringing their whole economy into bal¬ance by adding industry to farming.
At first, diversification was slow and often happened by chance, as the example of the town in Alabama shows. But, over the years, it became a very broad movement, deliber¬ately planned by individual farmers and manufacturers, and deliberately encouraged by local communities, states and the federal government.
The change in farming started in different ways in different places. Usually it began with one farmer, more daring than others, willing to experiment with new crops or a new way of plowing, or one adventurous enough to change from raising crops to raising farm animals. His success emboldened others to follow suit.
Remaking a farm is always hard and risky, but there are many ways in which the farmer is encouraged and helped to avoid mistakes. The government has a pro¬gram under which farmers in a district vote to adopt a soil conservation program for their area. Agricultural experts help them plan how to use their fields for various crops and show them how to rebuild the soil. In some parts of the South, farmers could not afford to buy the new equipment or seeds or animals needed to improve their methods. In these cases, the states and the federal government have arranged financial loans to meet such needs.
One of the biggest problems the South has faced has been the existence of tenant farmers who only rent the land they cultivate. Since most tenant farmers do not have the incen¬tive that landowning farmers have, production and income on these farms has traditionally been low. To overcome this lack of initiative, loans have been made available to tenant farmers who wish to purchase the land they work.
With these changes in agriculture has also come a growth in industries related to farm production. New processes have been developed for freezing foods so that many farmers can now profitably grow vegetables for city markets. Pack¬ing plants for poultry and dairy products have grown in number. The construction of new hard roads and highways as well as the growth off fleets of freight trucks have made it easier for farm goods to reach both processing plants and city markets.
Although cotton is still the principal crop of the South, cotton growing has changed. Mechanical cotton pickers, one of which can do the work of 40 men, have taken the place of low-paid labor. Usually, throughout the history of the indus¬trial revolution, the introduction of machines has created at least temporary problems of unemployment. However, the growth of industry in the South has been gradual; thus, workers who have left farm labor have been absorbed into other occupations without undue hardship.
Until 1940, most southern factories did simple jobs, com¬pared with those in the North. They turned raw materials into partly finished products - such as cotton into cotton yarn or unbleached sheeting - and then shipped these goods north to be made into finished clothing. Or they took already finished machine parts from northern factories, and assem¬bled them into machines that would be sold in the South.
Birmingham, Alabama, for instance, has long had a large steel industry, but its machinery came from the North and it made few finished steel products. Instead, it shipped out the metal. The South also shipped out partly refined aluminum ore instead of aluminum products, wood instead of furniture, and turpentine instead of paints.
This, too has changed. Better farming has brought farm machinery and toolmaking plants to the South. Higher wages and richer farms have brought clothing and shoe and household utensil factories. New houses, schools, barns and machinery sheds have created a need for window frames and doors, pipes and furnaces, and all the other things that go into modern buildings.
There are millions more industrial workers in the South than there were before World War II, and the number is increasing every year. Not all the industries have grown because the South has become a better market, however. Industry depends on the proper use of basic geographical resources, in the South as in the North. The South has always had raw materials, transportation and population.
|
