Document: Deep South; From the ground up

Document Deep South. And documented with recordings extension of a minute. The significance of an industrial song changing song. It was determined people into prosperity is making itself felt and our nation's economy. Around.

The high pitched voice of Henry W. Grady is still ringing the bell of the

southland. It covers a broad mountain valleys of Kentucky and Carolina it covers the open fields of the Mississippi River Basin bounces against the Ozarks. It was sound of the concrete canyons of downtown Atlanta and Birmingham and Richmond Baton Rouge and Little Rock. It stocks the quiet streets of little towns like salute an apex and Gold Hill and there was a fab silos of promise too numerous to mention for the words of Henry W. Grady the fighting editor of The Atlanta Constitution where words of a few words brought the prophecy of the new South. Why do you ruin this day of their moment. Would man's words strange and redundant please remember. They were uttered as early as a dean 85. When betting on Alabama you stop at 21 North 19th Street get out of your

common crimes have applied to become great status to the opposite of a progressive promise leading from general of the South. Behind him. You could hear the faint rumble of press in the next edition. Probably but now you are standing before a second address. Mr Nunn please you ask Van Xander the executive editor of The Progressive fine. But I can now buy editor in another era I guess no one can see a future for the promise and the South has come a long way. Let certain choices you've been told that we are doing revolution here in the south. We've come from. They have a man to me were saying our stuff to him when we write with tractors and cotton. We've gone from when they are there and I mean it can mean two homes and a complete the mountain

with every convenience with a high line of brain in there like Hearst and we've gone from sand the rocks and mud to a section that is covered with a network of paint highways. We've gone from a time when people had almost lost confidence in themselves to a time when they're done to me when there's action and in them sayers and in their neighbors and their SUVs and we think that this revolution is actually just getting in for a momentum where we women like to continue to grow up sometime say in my own he said. In our family it took us from 1865 to mad 19. But I wanted to get back to where we were in a team 60 course as you know the South didn't build its social structure on

Wellstone that we never fell. Yes it's obvious the sound has come a long way back in the late sixties and it was an uphill journey. With. The Macon County Georgia bridges struck him on the other hand

buried him in the harbor. And yet the final coffin was imported all the way from. The better weather the touch of an iron. Curtain his coffin and the iron to shovel the Dockers were imported. The better man I don't you are a parent. And that. It was an awakening of the people. The people of the south of the nation began to realize untapped opportunities below the Mason-Dixon line where there were a lot of evidences. Which helped.

Them the way. We saw several good in bed. We came back which was the beginning of what we. Look back as a rather. Rosy era. And remember that was the. Reason they think they. Will years. But I'm not in the. Phantom a mood to parent in. 2007 a mini gotten. Then. With the present chief

justice here. Then in 19 in the stretch you're. Cutting prices just like yours was famous by Bailey moon. Or I suspect it was and in your 60s. We really began to see a current of that again. And we kept. Improving until. The spring of 1920. They put him there it. Was the cotton. Everybody in America got no. Money. By the way. They were looking for advice and got it by the ear so they play in a way to use up their. Profits relating their team and the. Rest of the money they can get to play a better team to win a crowd that instead of getting to best team since and

where since and some of them. Got as much as 20 since. Then just to look what ten years Mr Nine reports the south up out of the decline of the copy copy was dead. On one morning. The cotton in Arkansas and Alabama Mississippi and South Carolina the spiritual level where a cotton picker termed the passing of this faithful moneymaker. That they had reached the end of the road yet the song lingers and today blends with the sound of mechanization and appears among the results

of improved methods and soon will find cotton itself isn't dead. For each brain finding many farmers looking to the world in the future at home. Just come and find out what's going on an operation another cotton crop got caught in a rather bottoms heaven. Well that drove us back for 30 as much as 30 days but as a rule we've never lost but one crop on the river biking as a lad what's next thing you go. Next thing we're do be to dish get

desk get fertilizer and plant. You get the triangle raising good crop you know the climate to warm weather. I'm going to the right time. You know they're there and they're laying across you know the harvest. But you have disappointment and despair. You've heard of the weevil. You know what. The better team 60. It's a little misled to. The. Thousands of farmers in the southeast. About 1916 to about nine thousand twenty two. In some areas of the South there were. Literally hundreds of storms a bed and people moved by.

Could say to you that. Some of those. Areas never have been completely reset. From what happened there that we will end the price collapse here. Alexander now an executive editor of The Progressive pharma continues his story of the South's resurgence in the economy of our country. You know listeners he tells how cotton was dethroned how the crops came in to import and out of southern farmers saw the value of diversification as late as 1925 though the deep south arrived 53 cents out of every dollar from cotton you learn. And there wasn't much change until 1933 from that here on went to South put a cotton economy behind her. But lest we forget the song Linger. I want one more.

Yes you've likely made the same mistake. Because some people believe that because cotton has given way to cattle say that cotton has disappeared to the contrary. The South still remains one of the most important cotton producing sections of the world. And today Mississippi is the number two cotton STATE OF THE NATION driving 67 percent of its crop income from the cotton acreage that in 1051 increased 26 percent over the previous year. God instead of the living money crop of Tennessee and Memphis one of the principal cotton market OF THE NATION. Across the River in Arkansas cotton is still cane. And before a great restriction netted the state more than three hundred ten million dollars a year. Today I think it's a little it's that we're in the lead because the resolution is very good. These three.

We saw me at home. Which led double lives here and we are still producing. Roughly as much credit as we did back in the 20s. We've seen Cohen yours go up 50 percent any minute. This is a 30 percent interest here we send the SAS take the lane in the percentage increases and production. In the last 10 years the. State of North Carolina never memorably would have made then time mentioning percentage increases in big cash. We've seen a pasture program menace or below named saw saving programs make tremendous changes in the face of I don't know crop here in this area. Tobacco crop it's

been grown for 300 years is one of the billion dollar crops today and it looks as if its importance will keep on growing. Remember the tobacco farmer you talked with you remember standing into the shed of his tobacco barn and you remember talking to him about his crop back material rich golden yellow generate two to three liters per week is harvested by hand. Hold off separately. Photos I thought you got hold stock at all. No you started it but I made it back to stocks right. But tobacco farmers like this one spend between two hundred and fifteen hundred fifty man hours per acre growing all this the nation's fourth largest cash crop. It takes patients it takes president and tobacco from seed to say or at most time to go much pampering. Many processes it means hard

work from dawn to dusk and sometimes after dark it means planting and plowing and preparing for the harvest. It means care and constant vigil against worms and it was acts against blue and disease against bad weather conditions. It means watchful waiting is freshly cropped as a killer to a crisp golden brown. It means great one time packing and pressing it moves me to think. In many seasons. But not all tobacco is alike. On the backside of the Blue Ridge for instance Kentucky and Tennessee produce barely tobacco son Puru and tobacco that is harvested only runs stalking all those from Cuba and tobacco tobacco harvested a few rooms which were cured in a square two story barn. So if you were standing near cured by heat circulated by means of your pipes you have to.

Add to the barn and fed it again approximately five to six times and you know how do you do either have to get cured and before you take it do you have some storage facilities along about that time of year so credit your such a hurry you take it back out of the barn under stakes and take it to what we call a packed house storage cast. Pack it down for future. And if you're sure you take it up and rework it. Because of what he called a great process later on. Oh yeah and then the sale and the money to space. Well you hope the family you talked with was jealous hooks of quite a lot Carolina. He represented one of the 750000 final families who derive the Riley hood from the tobacco industry. He also represented several generations of skilled and farming experience since his father was a tobacco farmer. And his father before him. If the family would someday flourish with bright leaf tobacco you visited the crops

ultimate destination the site of sale a sprawling warehouse of mammoth dimensions with stunning on Mr. Gray and the moment Mr. Gray wept as the grave website of his as well. This brass is about an average sash that has a facsimile 77 basons Bethy. It was empty it was off season and so the warehouse men had time to talk. And as he talked you mentally made out a picture of tobacco made. Tractor driven trailer. And industrial rocket and I do promise. I'm long rows of meat. Basket of grain. Rushing out of the back. Watching away and interested spectators who fall in there with

a pink lemonade and McConnell added conclusion of a novel and way behind a window awaiting their checks. The real hive in full 100 miles an hour. That's a rate of speed. We go down the road selling tobacco packing a 400 times down the pan and that assails the tackles and tackles adorably then a batter would know it was saddling us but of the half. After they hang around last a good while I can usually tell what option they're saying and then they can recognize it has just gotten to me. And you remember the bank in that tobacco town in that tobacco

would end their hide their tobacco seeds and well what is this community like is it bad I'm on a large scale. Yes. Then about a six week period. We do about 75 percent of it is right in the manner of a bad rap. Thank you. Well you can thank him. We have a right here in the. Hundred thousand I have maybe today five days with almost a million and I have acres of his albums so I know I dedicated to the production of tobacco harvesting little 2 billion pounds a year about whether this is exported making tobacco the nation's first largest export. The domestic supply is dispatched a little perhaps a rich one to Winston-Salem and then most of it will be standard shredded condition and rolled into one manual output of more than four hundred and thirty

six barrel cigarettes to be purchased and smoked by some 60 smokers who visited a cigarette factory in Durham North Carolina. My soul would criminate its assembly line efficiency. And you met the happy hardworking employees about the den of countless cigarette makers under the words of. Nick you. Think you know look what's happening in the field of electrified farms and in their mechanized form. You know suddenly brought back to the reality of the moment you know sainted and Alexander noms office.

You're listening to his comments on the agricultural development of the new South back in the early 20 years they were actually just a few bare bones it was like to buy. In this sample of arrows. Into danger. WHY HAVE I BEEN THREE MILLION electrified farm day here in the south. As late as nineteen point and we only had the low quarter of a million tractors on all of homes in the South most of those were in the southwest today and there are more than a million tractors Oh no better than two and a half million homes in this area. We've seen the salmon farm income increase from a little over two billion dollars back in 1932 when earned billion dollars yearly. They're back in that era when. We're still seeing our percentage of

tenancy in the sand to go there in the weeks and was actually two out of every run. Attempt. To Dany two out of every three years. Senator we want to recognize some of the institutions and agencies that have contributed did so much to this sort of inform progress in these last 25 years. Yes I think we've heard a lot of progress. But. Also I think we are almost out of scientific research which has been done on our behalf. Years ago I can remember no older than I am that we had to go and it wouldn't take us anything it was on our way to start the back of what we call the plant. Now we have control and

control first one thing and that helps us increase the production of tobacco. Because I think we may. Be making a bad mistake if we think you know to recognize what becoming the more he used for his men to need to grow new lives for new products hemp just to. Get products that we weren't getting good prices as you know sometimes added to a clear understanding of this new and better sound begins to dawn. I do consume admits progress not only affects the sound but the notion of the home. What the meaning of the future. I have this thought that. While the training population is still there and what end. Korean is there are here in the south. It's rather striking to me how our.

Sons of the. Land I want to. Families are staying on the farms where the day. And this is the condition that I will obtain when I was a boy growing up just. 30 years ago. All of the boys and the girls too were trying to get away from the phone. But today these boys are. Proud to be farmers and proud to be farming where there. Are. Just another evidence of this by the way is it. I'm just finding hundreds of city boys who never have been on the farm or. Never have had any farm experience and really want to be home. Then I think I might say that I'm finding that a good many I'm a becoming good karmas too. I'd simply like to say 1980. This new sound which was prophesied back in the brain to some 65 years ago is.

No longer a dream it's actually becoming reality. And. There is news out of bounds he's doing that a musician and Honan's. Position an increasing importance I would say. In the nation that the opening day. This has been programmed three document deep south 70s about two out of a documentaries depicting the increasing importance of the South and the economic development of our nation. This week from the ground up the story of an agricultural revolution. You're now at a restaurant with a document Deep South is written and brought to you by

Learoyd Bannerman with Dr. Rander B Jones as a senior consultant. It ended by the extension of a University of Alabama. And it made a profit Grant and independent. If. There is a reminder that. This is the end network.