Document: Deep South; Building a better Southland

One document deep south Los fields of cotton barns and factories in the heart of Dixie. A revealing story of progress. Hi I'm Mary documented with on the spot recordings produced by the radio broadcasting service extension division the University of Alabama for the next 30 minutes he will make a transcribed trip through the Deep South. You will see the significance of a new industrial self changing self you will see how determined people are nature's plug into prosperity a move that more than ever is making itself felt in our nation's economy. Building better self land.

Lord. Well now that I have a BlackBerry. Very good. Yes I do well on schedule for a day like these men and these men that you are listening to. They're building a better Southland. You step a little closer and look at the blueprint. I know you're going to let it out bro. Right so say I'm going to call it. I. Wouldn't think that a small planned million or so probable employment 400 people would do much towards changing the south now would you. Doesn't seem likely that this and ever so small so remote would

affect our economy the economy of the south of the nation. And yet when you lump it together with a vast number of factories and plans and housing developments churches schools and other institutions. Well no. Then you begin to see an interesting scene. The South is growing expanding. Its building physically as well as insight. Break works coming very good. We made a good start and maybe we'll get that second goal this week. When you take a bite from a span of a panic when it take about another week to make a very good break or are you getting up out of Mississippi

where do you get your brick. A vital question will brick or heavy brick a breakable transportation then presents a problem. The drone's board brig long distance is it would be costly. So Southern building turns to Southern supply for its construction material. Last night on a good day. That way you like a guy to make you material you might read it again. That is about 800 that I know is right and then you're planning to play in the big building. That's right that's right make a case. Yeah material does.

What do you do in that and there's a lot of waste and misplaced mixing that is a beach type of a week here in Holly Springs Mississippi. You're visiting one of the most modern brick plants in the country. It's on our Mr. take a tight look song and describes the process of manufacture. And Rice state and that a male is excluded. This column that you hear every second that KHK of the carrier can't wait to hear the

story read they're right. These bricks some 72 hours later emerge from the 400 foot kiln baked hard another in stacked into a storage shed or shipping room. You're standing here with Mr. Titan Dr. Walter be JONES Your companion on this trip through the Deep South. You listen to the brittle notes of brick being stacked in the song of a Negro labor. Well.

We have cars on the track. We have several trucks. Type products. We have a. Well run.

Raw material that is no particular present time is only about a plant a manufacturing plant added to that cheap power natural gas not labor. You have tried to service the next 35 minutes from the Memphis Airport to operation from there. The. With

the. Production rate 44000 bricks a day more than an hour break to build three average size homes. Building materials have been one of the three primary requisite for humanity. Ever since the first original man emerged from his cave. Food he must have food. He must have clothing and he must have something to shelter him from the element. So that building materials have all kind of complex and the simple have been a matter of considerable concern to human beings. You remember Dr. Stuart J Lloyd man of the history as well as of science. And you remember his comments on building materials especially brick. Why don't they alter their material have courses they break. But then you think oh they may break Mesopotamia and the western part of the United States or the handsome brick that we use in our building here around the

university campus. A lot of curious. The things that have been written about Brick some of them difficult for the public to understand. I remember when a small boy and I were puzzled by a passage in the Old Testament which said that the interrelate objected to making bricks without straw. I met a lot of there in the fire they left Egypt. I thought at that time that the bricks were actually made out of straw but it turned out that the straw were merely a source of panic added another other material that made the claim more plastic over the brick could be produced next to brick you remember was cement. Another type of building material like is pretty ancient but not at all brick is the cement. Not necessarily the Portland cement that we know at present and which required a very high temperature in Atlanta thank you. But the old cement that the Roman views

are suited in the office of one of the leading cement plants of the song you're listening to the superintendent explained how the cement is made. For the fate of the crew and the Clinica before they are. Transferred there which when. They have to. Be transferred to storage in that bag. Q Yes just. I had a great what it looked like a man. In. One respect that it was fine. Ed. Ed it practically banished same med except with a Dr and then it's ground and anything out of it. Well a small amount to give them two to three push that gives them as they had it with a clay good old granite and. Regulator setting.

Portland cement. I'm like this image of early Rome is easy to control sets faster this is accomplished by burning for like bricks cement has solidified from a mixture of mud that's passed through along killed and heated to white hot tempered duos. As you travel the Deep South. You see towering smokestacks cluster of grayish buildings. The design of a major cement industry. For the South has the raw materials and each here produces a million and a half barrels of cement in Tennessee and Alabama and Virginia and Georgia and Florida and Louisiana and South Carolina and Kentucky. A million and I have barrels of cement to build a better a south. For. But Bradley's foundation work mighty good. About how much concrete that

we put in those under 24 cubic yards the foundation and appears to build it don't be concrete. Means newly reopened. And I knew it was. On the bottom. And I'm going to beat up on the bus right now. You did a nice job and put on Nate I noticed the speedo is been given a playlet yesterday but it will degrade to happen. Got any of them down whatever will you still supply company I don't get it the best bet I've ever seen. The best I've ever seen you visited a steel mill in the deep south using the sweating muscles the steaming cauldrons the glowing in goods and you stood at the gate and watched the cross-current of changing shifts the symbol of continuity of endless operation day and night. We gain week out

and you talked with the general manager a Scotsman. I could look out of all of the products that are alive and well here. But I have to remember one day I will make a blame and I well we wish all over it and making up for the farmers right. And then we'll go on. Now Mike never to step on all kind and have lewdness and glad he got a nice amount coated polished in God when I stepped on many different sides and they're just about the list of nails and staples that people use everywhere. Oh it goes all the way after 20 Pender from the parent in fixing the whole sorry got to thinking through the mind of bouche and their machine and of course from a boat. No.

I think I saw somewhere that will make quite a bunch of nails and bolts and beams of steel products to perform the miracle of a changing sound and there are other materials too. Often times overlooked in the construction of our future. When you make up a table of the stick for mineral production in the shell and in a lot of other parts of the herd you find then unravel banding right up somewhere near the top. Though you really don't think much about the minnows. Right. But don't you hear the old old yakking up a bit. Grow up with Farrell and machine work. Then run to the plant. Glad I'm here really. You're in Stockbridge Georgia Georgia is nobody has crushed Domania

especially granite. Opposite of Atlanta is stone mountain rising out of the horizon. It's rounded hump of solid granite an attraction to thousands of tourist from Highway 78 and gaze upon the incompleted artistry of three sculptured figures. Stonewall Jackson Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. A memo to a flaming house. But today it's a toast to a flaming future. For the South. The ones ragged remains of a beaten and broken Dixie has developed has traversed the economic trail has gained the summit traveled the Deep South. You've seen it. And there are statistics to prove it. It would be more of the Bureau of Business Research University of Alabama shows them to you regarding the construction contracts awarded in the

11 southeastern states in 1950 to write nearly five and a half times as large as in 1913 for the nation as a whole in 1970. Too bad it was only about four and three quarters and the 1930 value just prior to the war. Construction activity in the southeast had begun to pick up at a rate somewhat faster and for the nation as a whole. During the war period and both were periods in 1950 construction activity in the southeast moved upward at about the same pace as imaginary but from 1950 to 1952. He's got connectivity in the south east as far as the head at a considerably faster rate. Activity in the southeast over this two year period increased 37 percent whereas the rest of the country. The increase was about 11 percent. Yes you was there you can see it. The South is

building. I wish that this were for ever for the rabbit bad rather you go write your schedule RA rayo. What got us right and we have been in this room to reach back I and there be a built up area. Yeah there where perhaps the structure of a building material of the future rather than of the president down south they are looking to the future. And while they are building with foresight while they are using every innovation known for fine sturdy construction. Southern builders sometimes have to look elsewhere for their material glass product or the future is one of these and yet more than three centuries ago the first glass factory in the New World was located in Virginia in Jamestown. Although glass manufacturers in the Deep South today turning out new and vital materials. But competition is strong from the north from the west. So needed

glass to build a better sales land. Dixie turns to Illinois. Ohio to New England or California. But that's all right to avoid means that the South has developed to the extent that it is today a better market a better buyer. And so you see that a new South can affect people many professionals in many different states of the. One kind of building material we haven't touched upon the call of course is the ornamental don't very kind and naturally the first one of those that you think of is the ancient material marble. Make here and decorated the palace of the Roman emperor and of their predecessors. Then take a day. We have plenty of marble in the southeast here and yard in marble and Tennessee marble a very handsome material.

The post office that for example at Chattanooga had my beautiful marble in it with the king right sticking right out of it and then of course we have the quarries the beautiful white marble the marble quarry to fill a cargo in Alabama to see this beautiful white marble. You drive to synagogue and you see weather beaten wooden houses with gleaming marble steps prefacing rambling on painted porches. You meet the manager of the Alabama model company Mr. W age runs. You ask him about marble producing areas in the United States where you have a mind to run around on. There are and. There are about three. We have the right of a producer operate but out of

the material you have a rough time of it many of you probably already have a building right across the image they bring to hear you if you find that while certain building materials have to be imported others like Alabama marble are shipped far and wide so the influence of the Deep South is felt both in its supply and in this demand right now though you're standing on the brink of the Kwara almost a hundred feet below you jagged layers or steps of marble some quite some 10 used with gray other layers with a greenish cast an even pink. You can see the Corrugated drill marks and you can hear water trickling down the murky marble sides of the quarry with Dr. Will to be JONES You move down some stairs.

We're standing in the bottom of one section of Alibaba model company Squire. Yes and we have this Mr. Mitchell King who is in charge of the acquiring operations for their company. MITCHELL How big a priority as they asked him about 600 feet and about 400 feet wide. To match. My own. You do have to match it if I want to buy a marble to build. True for an interior decoration I would like to have the model of the same type. Isn't that correct. They scale in the fabricating model really in fashioning and

blending and matching of the material done here adding or not in the core that's down at the finish and why the proctor taken down and so on and then matched by a man who are known in the trade as corpus. They really bring the slabs to the two to make and that is the length and width and then they have the shop growing and with the shop growing they match and ruined the model in a particular room or space nicely. Then you're only interested in the Kwara just getting the marble out. That's great. Yes take the model out in the last minute blocks as you can get. Yeah I think they're going to rush.

I just started back up. Do you think about the story about Mark Cowan the great Chicago flour Mrs. O'Leary's counter kicked over the lantern Dr. Jones says Alabama model was in many Chicago building after the flood just marble was found some of it still standing testament to it's timeless. Well you've traveled about the deep south you've seen an area rich and raw materials you've seen these materials converted into finished products and even useful for the development of a growing Dicksee. Yes they're building down south. One of the important characteristics of this concrete construction activity in the south is the type of thing going to where the construction is going. It ranges all the way from factories producing.

Consumer goods of both durable and non-durable type to car plants and atomic energy installation and you're told that these plans will encourage other manufacturing firms which in turn will stimulate new building activity. Mr. Moore adds another optimistic note. OK here are the activity that has been taking place over the past decade in the southeast. Seems to me to indicate that the area is not right at the peak of its development but it is in the process of developing far beyond what it is today. I think it is safe to say that we may expect the southeast to lead the nation in construction as well as in industrial activity for the next few decades. That's the story the plan and the blueprint of the future and it includes more than buildings more than modern plants and pretty homes. But

playgrounds and highways as well. Well the South turned off tobacco road quite a few years ago and is today building its economic structure on a firm foundation. And as for progress. Yeah that's right your progress has come along but I am like well I don't want to get your little girl dying you made me happy on earth for all of us every day and I am in the A&E. This has been Program 10 of the document Deep South a series of actuality documentaries depicting the increasing importance of the South and the

economic development of our nation. This week building a better Southland a study of construction activity below the Mason-Dixon line. Their narrator was Walter Whitaker document Deep South is written and produced by Lee Roy BANNERMAN As Dr. Walter be jel and as a senior consultant. As presented by the radio broadcasting services extension to the University of Alabama and is made possible by a grant from the independent agency established by Ford. And now this is Keith bars reminding you that this has been a radio presentation of the University of Alabama.

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