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A Comparative Analysis of Economic Development in the American West and South*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Douglas F. Dowd
Douglas F. Dowd
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

In 1930, the West—for present purposes, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado—had a level of per capita income payments that stood at 79 per cent of the national figure. In that same year, the figure for the South—Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas—was 51 per cent.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1956 , pp. 558 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1956

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References

1 U. S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1954 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954), p. 306.Google Scholar The “West” may of course mean any area west of Manhattan, the Appalachians, the Mississippi, or whatever. Had I chosen to include in my “West” the Far West, and/or states east of Kansas, my argument would have been made easier, for of all regions called “West,” the area I have chosen is the poorest. In delineating the South, I have left out the “Southwest.” To have done otherwise would have unnecessarily blurred, without adding to or weakening, the analysis. I stop at the year 1930 because of the periods of depression and war that followed, during which national crises overwhelmed regional characteristics.

2 My attention was first drawn to the South as a clear illustration of this position by Professor Sanford A. Mosk. For a brief and useful statement of the “institutionalist” position, see Mosk's, “Latin America versus the United States,” Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association, XLI, No. 2 (May 1951), 367–383.Google Scholar

3 Walter Prescott Webb, in his well-known The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment (New York: Ginn and Company, 1931),Google Scholar dealt with an area not coextensive with my “West,” but one that included it, and a good deal more. It was his view that the physical environment of the Great Plains “bent and molded Anglo-American life … destroyed traditions, and … influenced institutions in a most singular manner” (p. 8). This is certainly wrong on matters affecting economic development. Shannon would add that it is probably wrong on almost all but the most trivial institutional relationships. See the latter's lengthy critique of Webb (and Webb's rejoinder) in Critique of Research in the Social Sciences: III, An Appraisal of … “The Great Plains” (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1940), by Shannon, Fred A., pp. 3–135.Google Scholar

4 The literature on the West is abundant, but largely unsystematic, and highly romanticized., Comprehensive bibliographical materials may be found in Billington, Ray Allen, Westward Expansion (New York: the Macmillan Co., 1950),Google Scholar and in Shannon, Fred A., The Farmer's Last Frontier (New York: Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1945).Google Scholar

5 The development and adoption of agricultural machinery is given a lucid and detailed treatment in Rogin, Leo, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1931).Google Scholar Rogin was concerned with a longer time period and a broader area than the West as here defined.

6 Odum, Howard W., Southern Regions of the United States (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1936)Google Scholar is a most valuable study, containing well-arranged data on almost every conceivable technological, cultural, and physical characteristic of the South, most of which are compared on a state-wide basis for the entire nation. I have relied heavily on Odum for the factual material in this paper.

7 National Emergency Council, Report on Economic Conditions of the South (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938), pp. 29–30.Google ScholarPubMed In 1938, two million people were presumed to have malaria in the South.

8 There seems to be little dispute over this point. For a fuller discussion, see Herring, Harriet L., “Early Industrial Development in the South,” The Annals, 153 (January 1931), pp. 1–10.Google Scholar This issue of The Annals is wholly devoted to industrialization in the South.

9 Mitchell, Broadus and Mitchell, George Sinclair, Industrial Revolution in the South (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1930), pp. 1–7Google Scholar, contains a brief summary of this process.

10 On the persistence of the plantation system, see Shugg, Roger Wallace, “Survival of the Plantation System in Louisiana,” Journal of Southern History, III, No. 3 (August, 1937), 311–325.Google Scholar For the post-bellum labor system, see Zeichner, Oscar, “The Transition from Slave to Free Agricultural Labor in the Southern States,” Agricultural History, XIII, No. 1 (January 1939), 22–32.Google Scholar

11 Johnson, Charles S., Embree, Edwin R., and Alexander, W. W., The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1935), p. 4.Google Scholar

12 For an extended discussion of this system, see Clark, Thomas D., “The Furnishing and Supply System in Southern Agriculture Since 1865,” Journal of Southern History, XII, No. 1 (February 1946), 24–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Johnson, Embree, and Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, p. 33.

14 See Gates, Paul Wallace, “Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866–1888,” Journal of Southern History, VI, No. 3 (August 1940), 303–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a decade or so after the War, southern public lands were restricted to homesteading. In the following decade, they were thrown open to public sale. Following that, the lands were again taken off the market; by that time there was little left, qualitatively or quantitatively.

15 Woodward's, C. VannOrigins of the New South, 1877—1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951)Google Scholar, is a penetrating study of the period and the area. Chapter V, “The Industrial Evolution,” is an excellent brief summary of the pace and quality of the industrial movement, narrowly defined.

16 Mitchell's, BroadusRise of the Cotton Mills in the South (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1921)Google Scholar, is the definitive work on this movement.

17 Spengler, J. J., “Population Problems in the South—Part III,” Southern Economic Journal, IV, No. 2 (October 1937), 131 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Spengler's “South” is a broader concept than that used above, which strengthens the point I am trying to make.

18 Cash, W. J., The Mind of the South (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1954), pp. 205–206.Google Scholar Originally published by Knopf, in 1941.

19 Mitchell and Mitchell, Industrial Revolution, p. 13.

20 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

21 See Abramowitz, Jack, “The Negro in the Populist Movement,” Journal of Negro History, XXXVIII, No. 3 (July 1953), 257–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also, see Woodward, Origins of the New South, chs. 8 and 9.

22 Woodward, C. Vann, Reunion and Reaction (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1956)Google Scholar, provides a detailed and solid explanation of this important question. Originally published by Little, Brown and Company, 1951.

23 Although I am unable to document it, I have heard of countless instances where Negroes were forcibly prevented from migrating—through, e.g., the refusal to sell them railroad tickets.