Re: Re: Southern development; was Re: how labor standards work

["Michael Hoover" <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> What is remarkable is the slow convergence between the North and the South
> despite all the political/economic clout of the South.  I think that this
> episode is relevant for the WTO debates.
> June Zaccone wrote:
> > Another aid to Southern economic development was the disproportionate
> > military spending directed to this area--military production as well as
> > training camps beginning--during the WW II buildup. This was a
> > consequence of the dominance of Southern Congressmen on important
> > committees.
> Michael Perelman

Certainly, above was South's development 'trigger' (pun intended),
powerful Southern congressional committee heads merged with
Pentagon and military contractor desire for dispersal of production
and non-union labor.  As result, Southern cities began experiencing
population growth during WW2.  Initial post-war period witnessed
declining military contracts but cold war saw to it that southern
'defense' plants and shipyards hummed profitably away.  And Southern
cities continued to attract newcomers.  Southern states and cities
actively recruited military contractors and 'gunbelt' (as Ann
Markusen calls it) created new centers of aerospace and electronics.
Higher skilled, higher wage labor was driven by federal dollars.
In-migration expanded consumer demands which fed investment multiplier
effect.

But Southern development policies maintained lower-wage cost
advantages.  Granting of public subsidies began in earnest during
1930s -  Mississippi's Balance Agriculture With Industry (BAWI)
program was model of southern industrial subsidization.  Public
funds were spent for industrial advertising, workforce training,
hiring location brokers.  States granted tax exemptions, made or
guaranteed loans, donated sites, provided free or low rent/power/water,
publicly constructed facilities.  Heightened post-WW2 interstate
competition led to use of municipal industrial development bonds
across South (congressional legislation to curtail/abolish such bonds
met effective resistance from seniority-laden southern delegations).
Proliferation and institutionalization of subsidies revealed
Southern business 'progressive' and 'booster' elite commitment
to growth but did little to alter traditional pattern of
development built around low-wage, labor-intensive industries.
Subsidies helped sustain region's heavy concentration of cheap
labor industries.

Efforts to sell South accelerated.  Development commissions
comprised of businessmen, bankers, newspaper publishers, utility
executives, industrialists, big agriculture served public relations
functions.  State development agencies emphasized their state's
particular 'advantages' since most states offered similar wage levels,
resource costs, potential markets (Florida focused on beaches &
sunshine).  State legislators made laws attractive to industry
(Taylor County, on Florida's Gulf coast, was designated 'industrial
county' making discharges of sewage and industrial wastes into river
tidal basin 'public interest').  Governors (generally weak officials
in South) made frequent prospecting trips and engaged in public
salesmanship.  Cities & counties involved mayors, chambers of commerce,
influential locals, agencies in these efforts.

Organized labor was excluded and federal efforts to create more
favorable conditions for labor organizing were derailed by southern
committee chairmen.  Given southward shift of growth momentum, union
weakness in undermined organized labor in other parts of country.
Racism left black labor cheapest in region and civil rights movement
created problems for image-conscious boosters who worried about
impression disturbances would make on potential business migration.
Some accepted (usually reluctantly) desegregation in hope of slow,
peaceful, orderly change.  Educational improvements were hampered by
low (and regressive) tax levels, most 'success' occurred in vo-tech
allowing private sector employers to expropriate workers trained at
public expense.

Freedom to exploit region's resources and pollute its air & water
has spoiled vast sums of pristine natural habitat while creating
congested metropolitan areas that remain saddled with earlier
generation's problems - poor infrastructure, low-skilled & low-
paid work force.  Blacks continue to find it difficult to share
in region's growth as business migration/development shuns black
communities that are more pro-union and racism persists.  Black and
white folks in many rural areas continue to find it difficult to find
steady work at any wage.  While resistance to labor organizing
continues to suppress wage-levels (so-called white-collar earnings
have largely converged with counterparts elsewhere), it continues to
invite labor organizing.  Such is character of capitalist mode of
production.   Michael Hoover