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POVERTY POLL
The South: A Road Leads Up
By Simmons Fentress
The Charlotte Observer (December 16, 1956)
Twenty years ago Franklin Roosevelt pointed to the
South as the "nation's No. 1 economic problem." Much has happened in the South since then, most of it
good. Living standards are up. An agrarian economy is
increasingly spotted with industry. Machinery hums now along many a
Tobacco Road. Wage scales are rising, however slowly. The
sharecropper is harder to find than ever. Farm and home ownership have
jumped. On the rural routes the electric light has replaced the kerosene
lamp; telephones are slowly coming. Social and economic barriers are beginning to lower
for the Negro. Economic trends cross the Mason-Dixon Line with more
freedom than they once did.
All this may be so. Yet if President Eisenhower were
to say tomorrow that the South is still the nation's No. 1 economic
problem he would be largely correct. Correct, that is, so long as he
added that this is the region where the promise is now as great as the
problem. The Senate Banking Committee, whose chairman is a
Southerner, took a long look recently at the economic state of things in
the South. It published its finding in a little book called
"Selected Materials on the Economy of the South." It could
better have called it "What's Wrong with the South." As a take-off point, the Committee noted that the
income of the average Southerner still is pitifully low.
In 1955 that income was $1,292, not quite two-thirds
that of the rest of the country. The six states with the lowest incomes were all in
the South. North Carolina, at 44th, was among them. Florida, the Southern state with the highest per
capita income, ranked no better than 24th on the list. In Mississippi,
at the bottom, the average person earned less than half the income
enjoyed by people in the rest of the country. Arkansas ran 47th in this poverty poll. South
Carolina was 46th, Alabama 45th, Kentucky 43rd and Tennessee 41st. These figures reflect not only the economic
opportunity of those in the South. They help to explain the tremendous
export of manpower and brainpower to other parts. They are much, but not
all, of the reason for the outward migration that began in earnest
around World war I and still goes on.
In the last 15 years the civilian population of the
United States rose twice as rapidly as that of the South. Two states,
Mississippi and Arkansas (47th and 48th) actually lost population during
the period. Between April, 1950 and July, 1954, the number of
persons leaving the South was greater by 1,191,000 than the number
moving in. Florida, as a haven for the retired, was the only Southern
state that gained through migration. North Carolina lost 170,000; South
Carolina, 67,000.
Clearly the South is sharing only to a degree in what
Carl Sandburg has called the 'fat-dripping prosperity' of the nation. It
is losing thousands of its citizens, both white and black, because of
that fact. People who were educated at state expense are leaving. They
are going to boom areas because the boom has not come to them. What is responsible? The Committee, in answer, turns first to the farm. A good yardstick to a region's economic development
and income level is the percentage of its labor force employed in
agriculture. That is true because earnings generally are lower there;
they are lower everywhere.
The South still is an agricultural land. It not only
is a region of farms, it is a region of small farms. And today the small
farmer is likely to be the 'marginal' farmer, squeezed between higher
costs and lower prices. Unless he can become big, he is likely to be
forced off the land. He usually lacks the money to become big. The mule, today's symbol of the little farm, is
making its last stand in Dixie. Outside the South, only one of every 12
farms still uses animal power. Every third farm uses animals in the
South. In 1954, the value of land and buildings per farm in
the South was $8,538. Outside the South it was $26,194.
More than a third of Southern farms were smaller than
30 acres. The proportion of small farms outside the South was just half
as great. Almost two of three Southern farms were under 70
acres. The ratio outside was one of three. The average farm in the South held 107 acres. Outside
the average was 323 acres. These figures tie closely to North Carolina's poor
showing in per capita income. Of all the 48 states, North Carolina has
the largest percentage of its population living and working on farms.
Only Texas has more farms. The trend throughout the country is toward larger
farms. The South lags in the movement.
In the last 15 years the size of the average Southern
farm has increased by 31 per cent. Outside the South the average farm
expanded by 41 per cent. The Southern farm, poorer in land and buildings, also
is poorer in equipment and living facilities. Telephones are found on only one of five farms.
Outside the South, two-thirds of the farms have them. Only one of two Southern farms had an automobile in
1954. Outside, eight of 10 farms have them.
In the same year, only one of five farms in the South
sold products valued at more then $5,000. On three of five Southern
farms, the products sold brought no more than $2,500. In the rest of the country, only half the farms sold
products worth less than $5,000. Only one of four sold products that
brought less than $2,500. It is these low income farms that are 'disappearing',
in the South as elsewhere. The people who are leaving them are, in many
cases, breaking the pattern of generations. The South can expect to hold them only if there is
room elsewhere in the economy. So far there is not enough room. There is
too little industry to absorb the displaced. They must, like the Oakies,
go elsewhere.
That is one of the major problems in Eastern North
Carolina. That section put most of its eggs in the tobacco baskets and
the future of tobacco there is increasingly dim. Yet industries are few
and far between, and the wage scales are likely to be low at such plants
as there are. It is the South's problem in a nutshell.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 24
July 2008
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