Southern Exposure: Making the South Safe for Democracy

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1. The Problem of the South

THE SQUALID SOUTH

Problem 1, Section 1

We of the North have been too long deceived by the surface charm of the South, by the sincere friendliness and hospitality of the Southern people, which is a thin crust over the treacherous economic and social quicksand that engulfs the mass of the Southern population, newsman Leeds Moberly has written.

The condition of too many people in the South is deplorable, degrading, destructive of the decencies which men expect from American civilization, replied the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer. But history shows and God knows that not all the blame for that condition is Southern…There are bad men in the South, blind men, ruthless men, greedy men. But the South has no monopoly on them.

It so happens that there is truth in both of the foregoing observations. The South is a quagmire which threatens to engulf the entire nation, but much of the responsibility for the South's sad condition lies outside the region. At the same time there is no denying that the South is hypersensitive to criticism which emanates from the outside, and professional Defenders-of-the-South never fail to take advantage of every opportunity to aggravate this unfortunate psychopathic condition. The South's paranoia dates from its whupping in the Civil War and has not improved much since.

Typically symptomatic of this was the reaction which followed the remark by Frances Perkins (while she was Secretary of Labor) that A social revolution would take place if shoes were put on the people of the South.

Why, even the mules of the South wear shoes! indignantly rejoined Senator Joshua Bailey of North Carolina.

There is a considerable colored population in the South who would regard it as a distinct punishment to be required to wear shoes, added Senator Duncan Fletcher of Florida.

Miss Perkins’ ideas of the South are probably derived from having seen an ‘Uncle Tom’ show, from what she has been told by professional agitators, and from reading some of the metropolitan newspapers, concluded a Southern editor.

But the hottest reception of all was rendered the epochal Report on the Economic Condition of the South, prepared for President Roosevelt by the National Emergency Council in 1938. The remarks of H. Bond Bliss in the Miami Herald were typical:

Another group will set out to investigate the South and find out what is wrong with it. The South was not aware that it was in serious shape. Thought it was doing nicely. That is compared to most of the country. But President Roosevelt thinks differently. Declared it was the Number 1 economic problem. That it unbalanced the nation. Not the budget.

So the Southerners will be investigated; their doors opened, inquiries made on grits and grunts and pay. The truth is that the North is jealous of the South, of its conservative independence, its rising economic status. The North is a bit afraid. It wants to see what can be done. Not to save the South. But the North. From Southern competition.

In seeking to misinterpret the President's Report as a sample of damnyankee meddlesomeness, reactionary Southern papers blithely ignored the fact—clearly set forth in the Report's preface—that it was prepared under the editorship of Dr. Clark Foreman in collaboration with one of the most competent advisory committees of Southerners ever assembled. Among them were Dr. Frank P. Graham, president of the University of North Carolina, Dr. B. F. Ashe, president of the University of Miami, Barry Bingham, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and nineteen others, including manufacturers, chamber-of-commerce men, and labor leaders.

Needless to say, the common people of the South do not need to be convinced of the accuracy of the President's Report; to them the statistics therein represent the hard facts of their daily lives. They, more than anyone else, know that Roosevelt was right when, geographically speaking, he said that the South was the nation's economic problem number one.

Anyone who has been in the South, and who is not physically or willfully blind, will have no difficulty transposing the figures on life in the South into the peculiarly Southern shapes of hunger and pain. Others may find faithful reproductions in such books as You Have Seen Their Faces (Viking), and These Are Our Lives (Chapel Hill).

In addition to the President's Report, we now have the Report of the Southeastern Regional Planning Commission, based largely upon the 1940 Census. Like the President's Report before it, this later study speaks with a bona fide Southern accent, the Southeastern Regional Planning Commission being composed of members appointed by the governors of the seven Southeastern states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Figures hereafter cited from the President's Report are for the entire South, embracing the additional states of Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma.

No Ready-Made Money

The South has been the poorest region in America ever since its rulers chose the devastation of civil war to evolutionary progress; today the richest Southern state is poorer in per capita income than the poorest state outside the South.

In 1940 the Southeast's per capita income was only $309 as compared to $573 for the nation. While the region had 14 per cent of the nation's population, it had only 11.5 per cent of the country's wage earners, and they received only 7.3 per cent of the national wage total. Nearly 45 per cent of the region's people were farmers, and their average cash income was only $607 as compared to the average national farm income of $1,370.

Even in the boom year of 1929—when folks were eating high off the hog—Southern farm people had an average gross income of only $186 a year as compared to $528 for farmers elsewhere. Out of that $186 the Southern farmer had to pay all his operating expenses—so it is no wonder that such items as automobiles, radios, and books are relative rarities in the rural Southland.

For more than half of the South's farm families—the 53 per cent who are tenants without land of their own—incomes are far lower, says the President's Report. "Many thousands of them are living in poverty comparable to that of the poorest peasants in Europe. A recent study of Southern cotton plantations indicated that the average tenant family received an income of only $73 per person for a year's work. Earnings of sharecroppers ranged from $38 to $87 per person. An income of $38 annually means only a little more than 10 cents a day. A study of Southern farm-operating white families not receiving relief or other assistance showed that those whose incomes averaged $390 spent annually only $49 on food, $31 on clothing, $12 for medical care, $2 on education, $1 on reading, and $1 on recreation.

The South's industrial wages, like its farm income, are the lowest in the United States. In 1937 common labor in 20 important industries got 16 cents an hour less than laborers in other sections. A recent survey of the South disclosed that the average annual wage in industry was only $865 while in the remaining states it averaged $1,219. Significantly, at the same time it was found that the profits of Southern textile mills were higher than those in the North.

The South's great poverty is further revealed by the fact that the assessed value of its taxable property in 1935 was only $463 per person, compared to an average of $1,370 in nine Northeastern states. Furthermore, the South's banks in 1937 had only 6 per cent of the national total of savings deposits, although the region had 28 per cent of the country's people. State and local governments in the South collected only $28.88 per person in 1936, while in the nation as a whole the amount was $51.54. Two years earlier, federal income-tax collections in the South averaged only $1.28 per capita.

So much of the profit from Southern industries goes to outside financiers, says the President's Report, that the South has piled its tax burden on the backs of those least able to pay, in the form of sales taxes. In every Southern state but one, 59 per cent of the revenue is raised by sales taxes. The efforts of Southern communities to increase their revenues and to spread the tax burden more fairly have been impeded by the vigorous opposition of interests outside the region which control much of the South's wealth. Many Southern towns have found that industries which are not willing to pay their fair share of the cost of public services likewise are not willing to pay fair wages, and so add little to the community's wealth.

Thus the South has learned the painful lesson that industrialization, for which it has yearned so long, provides no magic formula for prosperity, but like agriculture, has problems of its own requiring public planning and regulation.

The War for the Four Freedoms gave some impetus to the South's rate of industrialization, but not nearly so much as was desirable, with shipyards and training centers comprising the major developments. During the first stages of the war the South's share in war contracts amounted to only 10 per cent of the total. In some measure this was due to the South's lack of investment capital and the reluctance of outside industry to expand Southward. But as H. Clarence Nixon pointed out, it was likewise true that This region could not forthwith take on a big job of producing fine, high-quality instruments of warfare, because it lacked the organization, the technology, the machine tools, and the highly trained personnel required. In spite of significant gains in the period between the two wars, Southern manufacturing was far below the national level. Even by the war's end none of the nation's thirty great industrial zones were in the South.

Evidence of the South's disadvantaged wartime position was found by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in a survey in which only 27 per cent of the South's people—the lowest proportion in the nation—said they were better off in 1942 than in 1941. Moreover, while 56 per cent of America's people were found to be saving money, only 45 per cent of the South's people were able to do so. A Fortune magazine survey in 1943 found that the median monthly earning in the South had risen to $103 per month—but in the rest of the country, excluding the Northeast, it was $151. For Negroes in the South and Southwest the median was less than $50 per month, while Negroes in the rest of the country had a median of $92.

Grits without Gravy

Southern people need food, says the President's Report. The all too common diet in the rural South of fat back, corn bread, and molasses, with its resulting pellagra and other dietary diseases, is not dictated by taste alone. Pellagra, the nutritive deficiency (starvation) disease, caused deaths at the rate of .65 per 10,000 population in the Southeast in 1940, as compared to the national rate of .16. Alabama's rate was highest—.87.

Considering farm operators, sharecroppers, and Negroes combined, the rural Southeast ranks far below the North and West in nutritional practices, states the Planning Report. At comparable levels of income, sharecroppers have less satisfactory diets than do farm operators. About one half of the Negro families of the Southeast have poor diets. Nutrients frequently absent from farm operators’ diets in the Southeast are certain of the basic vitamins, i.e., vitamins A, C, B, and G. Lack of these vitamins, occurring day after day, has been described as ‘hidden hunger,’ which is manifest in chronic fatigue, slow thinking, nervous disorders, and digestive disturbances and has been described by well-fed Southerners as ‘general triflingness.’

Even when judged by the. imperfect standard of national consumption, the South has a deficit of 121,000,000 gallons of milk, 70,000,000 dozen eggs, 18,000,000 purebred cattle, and so forth.

Of special benefit to the undernourished South was the U. S. Department of Agriculture's food-stamp plan, whereby persons certified as being unable to afford an adequate diet were granted, on the basis of family need, stamps with which they could purchase from their grocer whatever foods were designated as surplus, such as fresh vegetables, pork, butter, eggs, dried beans, flour, and so forth. The stamps were then redeemed at face value by the U. S. Treasury. This stamp-plan method of increasing the food-purchasing power of persons with sub-subsistence diets gave a boost not only to farmers, but to wholesalers and retailers as well, and thus met with the enthusiastic approval of nearly everyone. Similarly, the cotton-stamp plan proved to be a boon to the South, enabling those who raise and process cotton, among others, to clothe themselves with it more adequately.

Another program launched by the Roosevelt Administration which has succeeded in establishing a greater measure of freedom from want of food is the free hot school lunch agency. Before this plan was instituted, the Department of Agriculture found that 9,000,000 American youngsters were not getting even one square meal a day. By 1941, 5,000,000 of them were benefiting from the program, and 4,000,000 were fed in the relatively prosperous year of 1942. To the South, with more underfed children than any other region, the hot lunches, inexpensive but nourishing, have been a boon indeed. The heartening record of health, scholastic, and personality improvements which have stemmed directly from these lunches is one of the most moving documents in existence.

Lethal Statistics

The South is the No. 1 health problem of the nation.— DR. THOMAS PARRAN, Director U. S. Public Health Service

Hand in hand with undernourishment goes disease—nowhere is there a vicious circle more vicious than the misery-go-round of poverty and sickness. First poverty causes people to lose their health; then ill-health prevents them from overcoming poverty. And so the wheel of misfortune goes around and around…and when it will stop depends upon what people do about it, together.

The poor Southerner has been scrawny, puny, and ailing from way back. He has been reduced to this state not only by his lack of good and sufficient food but also by his lack of adequate clothing and housing. And then there are the related factors of ignorance of hygiene, sanitation, nutrition. Too, there is the excessive humidity of many areas, the warm climate conducive to microscopic growth, and the mushrooming of cities. All things considered, it would be surprising if the poor Southerner were not in that well-known foul shape.

And foul it is. The death rate for the nine South Atlantic states rose 7.3 per cent in a single recent year—an insurance company reports—while in no other region did it rise more than 4.8 per cent, and in some sections it declined.

Mother and child have less chance of survival in the South than anywhere else in the country. In 1939 the maternity death rate (per 10,000 live births) was 56.16 in the Southeast, compared to 40.39 in the nation. Florida's rate was highest: 65.27. Similarly, the Southeast's infant death rate (per 1,000 live births) was 58.6, compared to 48 for the nation. In 1937 stillbirths throughout the South ranged from a rate of 52 to 68, while the national rate was only 29.9.

When the National Youth Administration surveyed the health of its employees, it found that Southern youth exceeded the national rates for hookworm, venereal diseases, heart trouble, faulty blood pressure, and so forth.

The relatively poorer health of the relatively poorer Negroes finds expression in a life expectancy of only 45 years, as compared to 59 years for whites. In other words, to be born black in America is to be sentenced to die 14 years sooner than your white contemporaries. The Negro death rate is 32 per cent higher than the white (in 1925 it was 62.5 per cent higher) ; total daily sickness among Negroes is 43 per cent higher than among whites; the incidence of tuberculosis among Negroes is more than two and a half times higher than among Southern whites and five times as high as Northern whites. Moreover, the Negro maternity death rate is three times as high as the white rate, and the Negro infant mortality rate is two thirds higher than the white. Those are but a few of the hazards incurred by being born black in a white man's country.

Chief subverter of the South's health is malaria. In 1940 the Southeast's death rate from this disease (per 10,000) was .45, compared to . 11 for the nation. The rates of Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina were highest—.80, .72, .62. Worse yet, 39 of the Southeast's counties had rates of 2 or more. On the basis of $10,000 as the value of a human life, malaria cost the South $39,500,000 in 1936 alone. More than 90 per cent of the national incidence of five or six million cases of malaria annually occurs in the South. At the minimum out-of-pocket expenditure of $40 per case, the annual cost of the South's 5,400,000 cases is $216,000,000. In addition, the disease reduces the South's industrial output approximately one third.

Pneumonia and influenza combined in 1940 to cause a death rate of 9 per 10,000 in the Southeast, as compared to 7.03 in the nation. Tennessee and South Carolina had the highest rates, 10.32 and 10.22. Furthermore, 217 of the region's counties had rates of 10 or more, and 42 counties had rates of 15 or higher.

The Southeast's death rate from tuberculosis per 10,000 population in 1940 was 5.35, compared to the national rate of 4.99. Tennessee again was high with a rate of 7.58, while no Southeastern counties also had rates of 7 or more.

Syphilis caused a death rate of 1.85 per 10,000 in the Southeast in 1940, while the national rate was 1.44. Florida had the highest rate, 2.65, and 76 Southeastern counties had rates of 3 or higher. Selective-service figures on the first two million draftees also gave Florida the highest incidence: 53.3 per 1,000 whites, 405.9 per 1,000 Negroes. Since it is estimated that gonorrhea is five or six times as prevalent as syphilis, its incidence among Florida Negroes would appear to be something like 2,200 cases per 1,000 persons.

So much for the South's priorities on disease. The question is: What is being done about it? The answer is: Damned little. It is an inhuman truth that more attention has been given to the conservation of such resources as soil, water, forests, minerals, and even wild life than has been given to the preservation of human life and health.

In 1942, 204 of the Southeast's counties—nearly a third of the total—neither had full-time public-health departments nor were included in consolidated full-time health districts. Georgia was worst-off in this respect, with two thirds of its counties lacking full-time health service; and more than half of Florida's counties were likewise deficient. Even of those Southeastern counties which had full-time health service, more than half had 2 or less health-service employees for every 10,000 persons in the population; while only 6 per cent had more than 4 employees per 10,000 population. Total receipts for public-health services in 83 per cent of the counties were less than 71 cents per capita, and more than 40 per cent of the counties took in less than 40 cents per capita per year. Altogether, public-health expenditures in the region in 1941 amounted to only 7 per cent of the national total—to provide for 14 per cent of the country's people.

Obviously most of the health departments in the region are without adequate personnel to carry on an effective health program, concludes the Planning Report. The need is greatest in the thinly populated rural counties, and the most immediately available solution for them would seem to be consolidation into health districts.

Another aspect of the South's lack of medical service is the region's wholly inadequate number of physicians. With its 14 per cent of the nation's people, the Southeast in 1940 had but 9 per cent of the nation's physicians to serve them. In 80 per cent of the region's counties there was but one physician for every 1,112 people.

Still another index to the region's lack of health facilities is the fact that in 1939 it had but 11.5 per cent of the nation's hospitals to accommodate its 14 per cent of the nation's people. Even more indicative of the inadequacy of the region's hospital facilities is the fact that it had only 5.57 hospital beds for every 1,000 people, while the nation had 9.74. Furthermore, 41 per cent of the region's counties had less than 3 beds for every 1,000 people, while less than 1 per cent of the counties had as many as 5 beds per 1,000 persons.

To add tragedy to tragedy, even these hospital beds are not fully occupied—not because Southerners shouldn't be in them, but because they can't pay the price. In part this is due to the fact that a greater proportion of the Southeast's hospitals are under private control than are those throughout America. More than half of the region's counties had no general hospitals in 1941.

Be It Ever So Humble

Although the family has been relieved of many of its responsibilities by the public school (and has defaulted on much of the remainder) it nevertheless continues to be the center around which life in America grows. This being true, the house must be regarded as the seedbed. By the same token, the South's role as cradle to the nation makes Southern housing a matter of vital national concern.

As the President's Report points out, The effects of bad housing can be measured directly in the general welfare. It lessens industrial efficiency, encourages inferior citizenship, lowers the standard of family life, and deprives people of reasonable comfort. There are also direct relationships between poor housing and poor health, and between poor housing and crime.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first American President to shoulder the government's responsibility for improving the lot of the one third of the nation that is ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed. In the South, however, the burden is even heavier. By the most conservative estimates, says the President's Report, four million Southern families should be rehoused. This is one half of all the families in the