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2 Fed. Hist. 58 (2010)
The New Deal and the Modernization of the South

handle is hein.journals/fedhijrl2 and id is 58 raw text is: Federal History 2010 The New Deal and the Modernization of the South By Gavin Wright Inspired by the parallels between the 1930s and the current economic crisis, debate now rages over the economic successes and failures of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. One dimension of the historical record has been largely absent from these discussions: the impact of federal programs on the economy of the South. This article draws upon recent research to make the case that the New Deal era constituted a turning point in regional economic development, a watershed if not an instantaneous revolution. The survey proceeds in two parts. In the first, I assemble evidence on regional economic modernization, with no reference to the issues of racial and class justice that have dominated most of the historical literature as the gauge of regional transformation. The second part considers the implications of this modernization for the racial and political order of the South. A few disclaimers at the outset may be in order. The term modernization is intended merely as a con- venient aggregator for features of the economy commonly associated with development, such as roads, power, sewage systems, public health, literacy, and technological sophistication. It does not imply ad- herence to a universal theory of progress. Similar latitude applies to the term recent. David Goldfield writes: It maybe argued that southern economic development and urbanization holds much less drama than, say, the stories of slavery, segregation, civil rights, labor and agricultural work and tenure, and that the historiography will build more slowly as a result.' This observation seems accurate, and justifies a survey of scholarship across recent decades rather than recent years. Nonetheless the accumulation of evidence confirms the New Deal's transformative effect on the southern economy. Infrastructure Southern state-level investments in roads, education, and health certainly predate the 1930s, but little if any of the political impetus for the public works programs of the New Deal emanated from the South. Notwithstanding their employment- generating origins in a time of economic crisis, these programs constituted an extraordinarily successful method of state-sponsored eco- nomic development, as Jason Scott Smith argues. In his account of the impact of the New Deal in South Carolina, Jack Irby Hayes, Jr., writes that the Public Works Administration (PWA)- created under the National Industrial Recovery Act during the first wave of New Deal legisla- tion-literally changed the face of the Palmetto State. Its visible legacy a half-century later included hundreds of low-cost housing units to replace urban slums, miles of modern highways, a host of schools, courthouses, hospitals, post offices, and administrative buildings, a thriving shipyard, a number of new sewage and water systems, and two huge hydroelectric projects.2 Gavin Wright is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History at Stanford University. This article is based on a presentation at the meetings of the Organization of American Historians in Seattle, WA, on March 28, 2009. He thanks Tony Badger for organizing the OAH session and offering useful comments on the paper. ' David R. Goldfield, Urbanization, A Companion to the American South (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 490. 2 Jason Scott Smith, BuildingNew Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy ofPublic Works, 1933-1956 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 29; Jack Irby Hayes, South Carolina and the New Deal (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 71. Federal History online Wright 58

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