Review History 2

Agricultural Adjustment Acts (1935 and later

About 1880, the environment for economic opportunities in the South entered a new phase. During this decade, manufacturing experienced rapid development led by the growth of the cotton textile industry. By 1929, 57 percent of the nation's cotton textile spindles were in the South, over two and a half times the share existing in 1890.
Natural and synthetic fiber industries began to appear in the region to produce the raw material for cotton and synthetic textile manufacturers, just as the textile industries provide the raw material for apparel manufacturing. Taking advantage of proximity, the growth in textile and apparel manufacturing across the Carolina Piedmont and in northern Georgia was followed by an increase in the number and output of fiber industries.
Cotton textile manufacturing was not the only new source of industrial opportunities. Reconstruction of the region's railroads and other public improvements stimulated the flow of money and the development of railroad towns. Cigarette manufacturing began to be focused in the tobacco regions of North Carolina and Virginia. With the establishment of a new federal land policy and a strengthened railroad network, the South's large timber resources began to be exploited. Much of the timber was taken out as a raw material, but furniture manufacturing in North Carolina and Virginia and (after 1936) pulp and paper manufacturing throughout the South also were an outgrowth of the exploitation. These industries continue to be important.
Also, during the last quarter of the 19th century, technological improvements in iron-making led to the rise of Chattanooga, Tennessee, as an important center of iron production. At the same time, a large deposit of high-quality coking coal was discovered near Birmingham, Alabama, and exploitation of the seam was begun before the end of the decade. Numerous iron-making companies and iron- and steel-using industries accumulated in and around Birmingham and Chattanooga. These two cities combined with the transport focus and subsidiary industries in Atlanta, Georgia, to form an important industrial triangle by the end of the century.
This development was significant in the economic geography of the South because of the way in which iron and steel production tends to draw other manufacturers dependent on steel - industries that are not as low-skill and low-wage as textile and tobacco product manufacturing. Also, this centrally located region of nonagricultural economic development could have been an industrial focus for the South as a whole, stimulating increases in labor skills, income levels, and general economic welfare through each city's connections with other major urban centers.
This did occur to some degree, but discriminatory shipping rates imposed on Birmingham-manufactured products dampened the beneficial effects considerably. Even though this pricing practice was eventually ruled illegal and stopped, the policy severely restricted the competitive cost advantage of Alabama steel during the rapid economic expansion decades of the early 20th century and contributed to the slow growth of southern industry.