Document: Deep South; Sunrise down south

Document Deep South. Fields of cotton from Florence and factory in the heart of Dixie. A revealing story of progress by Americans documented with on the spot recordings and produced by the radio broadcasting service extension division. University of Alabama. For the next 30 minutes he will make a transcribed trip through the beats you will see the significance of a new industrial song by 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. Sunrise song.

You're. It's morning on a million. People in eastern and central time bells rousing out of the body warm beds to face the dawn of a new day. Down south they're waking up. Not from overnight sleep alone. No no but they're waking up to the potentialities of growth and prosperity never dreamed possible. Yes the South is raising the funds. You can see it from the famous skyline drive.

Over here. What it seems to be one of those gas and that one seems to be in good condition. It would still operate my ATV and right next to a modern school and below that an industrial right mixed in the same little community that is but you can see it in Carolina in timber in TX in great fields and tobacco. You know farmers future. Yes I think we farmers have made quite a bit of progress but. Also I think we owe most of it to scientific research which has been done in our behalf. Years ago I can remember no more than I am that we had to go into the woods

and take a dump. Anything that was on our way to start the bacca. Day it's what we call the plan. Now we have control and more control and first one thing and that helps us increase the production of tobacco. Yes and it shines brightly in the high wires in the highways that cross mountains and rivers and plains bringing with them businessmen and industrialists of the nation who are seeking better horizons. Data taken by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Richmond have shown that the southeast is leading the nation industrially and that South Carolina is leading the south. Then there's the Georgia Peach. Georgia's famous for two kinds of states. There's a dance training there's a racket out on Tuesday to lay bare the

south the same sun gives that glow to Florida citrus and the visiting tourist. Last year Florida produced about 70 percent of all the orange is recruited and tangerine produced in the United States. Sowing westward with the sun up and around the Great Gulf crossing cotton lands in coal fields at noon at the foot of the Appalachians. On a clear night you can see the sky brighten over Birmingham the glare of countless blast furnace s will go on about it Brown. With a production. Crew from Wright for an indefinite period. Dr. Ruth a reporter from Wood River who we. Felt very good around that. We want real gun out of the bottle from Rupert from Mount Obama to Mississippi to the river by the same name where the

nostalgia of notches flows freely with the perseverance of Vicksburg. In the 1930s for engineers established the waterways experiment station at Vicksburg Mississippi with a mission to examine into the factors affecting the flow of the river. The idea was to find out. Why the river acted the way it did so that we could predict what it would do in the future. And if you move down the Mississippi whether by side we lower sea going steam you come at last to New Orleans. A festive city this famous the world over for its French Quarter and fine food. And yet behind its Mardi Gras mask of revelry and relaxation there is a bustling serious minded Metropolis an important center of business of industry of Commerce by the end of the war we realized right here in New Orleans that we had to do something about war and of course

being situated at the gateway of the Mississippi Valley if you are graphically located right in the heart of the Deep South we concluded that we didn't have to promote and tell the world that we had a good port here but the war proved to us that that was necessary and so right after the war we began a promotion program. First of all we need to do it our own Commerce Department here and we opened offices in the interior. We all walking down Chicago's side boys a man driving the anti Ariens and then a man driving Latin America. Well we have been there we have been able to develop some fine traffic through here. We have increased our tonnage since 1945 to where it will go back now surpass about eight and a half million tons of imports and exports are new go westward across by you country through Louisiana swamplands desolate damp oftentimes very dense. But big business lurks here too. You find

in the midst of Cypress and Sawgrass simply to move in and out of countless waterways while canneries do over time. Here two men Harvey sugar cane in the shadow of a sugar refinery and everywhere marsh lands in forest or fields even far out in the open water. Derek's define a four billion dollar oil industry lead in a third you know a production in the United States. In 1950 one Louisiana produced two hundred sixty two million 100000 barrels of oil and kind of thing in Arkansas. The rays of the morning sun reveal much wealth before reaching the backside of the Ozarks timber and tourist trade top and expanding rice industry. But still king of the mall where pretty Harvey cotton Alarcon production for 1951

which was a. Relatively good year was roughly 240 million dollars into Memphis to the tempo of Beale Street Blues and Nashville where the stars shine brightest I'm sad tonight to the hoedown strains of Grand Ole Opry. But forget what you've been told. But here in Tennessee you folks are more than lovers of mountain music in the sunshine. But as we follow Dan River traffic and then dogs so true that no country in fifteen hundred forty detachment cops uptown area. Looking for a gala Matal And of course it turned out to be right and not gold but that is 15 hard fought

in. We've come up here now to find out something about the story. Of this area. When did they start mining cops. Yeah when you start scratching around commercial mining started here about 18 40 and you already had Centennial. That's right. Over a hundred years of mining in the Ducktown basin. Yes son the takes on a copper go. And also the blue blue grass and blue ribbons in the land of thoroughbred. Lexington Kentucky the training barn of the fabulous Calumet Farm. Well I know what they're reporting. Right. Yeah you make all of them. Yes sir we won the major stakes throughout the country with cattle and bred

horses. How many acres and we have about a thousand and a fat. And they tell me this land run. Your life. Let's let's. That is correct. Probably they worth around two million dollars with the land and I'll go with that Haitian alone will be worth a million dollars he won a million 85000. Circled the Deep South. Wherever you go you'll see it happen. A dawn of new promise of Remender magnitude a promise of new and by who. Growth of untapped opportunity a greater importance to our great nation. Herds of cattle in oil derricks in modern factories and foundries.

You see it in the city. And in the country you see it in the faces of the people. And you realize. Get it explained. Why is it you wonder what are the reasons of a South's phenomenal growth. Well one reason one big reason you find is accredited to the lay of the land you understand more clearly when a 71 year old Dr. Stuart J Lloyd prominent a chemist and geologist gives you the picture show would understand once said The sun should be a very lovely land. Nature is done her part. Lying in the north temperate zone along the seat of the word civilization richly endowed with minerals of all kinds. I think player a fertile soil covering almost all her rocks. Mild winter and now air conditioning to temper the summer heat.

The new South is at last beginning to realize on her physical advantages her location and climate. The people of this world after all are surface dwellers. They cling to the sharp interface between the solid earth and the air. The air has much the same composition everywhere in the tropics and at the poles. But the earth itself is very different in different places and its character is often reflected in the habits and particularly our it is the men who spend their lives around it. Those of us who inhabit the southeast live on three different types of country along the sea coast both Atlantic and Gulf and four miles inland stretches the coastal plain or young low fairly level non mineralized area mainly agricultural and lending itself to the assembling of large plantations large estates with their accompanying

stately homes. This fertile coastal plain also sweeps up both sides of the Mississippi Valley as far as Cairo following the northernmost advance of the ancient sea. The long peninsula of Florida jutting down almost into the tropics has of course a distinctive character of its own and its own climate. Back of the coastal plain lies the great Piedmont plateau fairly high under lain by the world oldest rocks never at any time covered by the sea. Agricultural too but often mineralized and varied in scenery and climate. Your origin. The Carolinas and Virginia live mostly in the Piedmont BUT IT project also well into Alabama. Back of the Piedmont again example Lekan district with Cowen Irom and other minerals and plenty. The long straight valley with Po mountains between

them that run from Birmingham up into Virginia and beyond distinguish this terrain from the other two. This is the home of the hardy mountaineer and of the picturesque scenery which surrounds him. But over all the southeast we have the blessing of abundant rain from an annual 50 inches up and water supply as we all know is fast becoming the critical point everywhere in industrial growth as well as in farming and the rains k. And rain water trickled down the hillside and followed the plod for. A drink filled a river down the hill out of the field and into the raging river was washed the good air. And on a rainy day the farmer would stand under the eaves of his back porch

and helplessly watch gullies to wrinkle. He also means without topsoil to harvest the mortgage. Big People of the South farm and factory work alike paid for major mistake egregious error of cutting timber for the slopes. The grass so that one of these slopes it rushes up the street is like down on the bottom. But this was more than a mistake it was a lesson learned. Listen but the greatest work for us to have a conception of how the water run will know the words to the

planet slopes to grass and forest. And then when the rains come back and it's time to sink into the ground and the floods in each mistake was a lesson learned and a need for conservation was felt in a land rich with natural resources. Thus the south awoke to the necessity of protecting her soil and her forest and the wildlife. As well as her water and vast source of mineral reserves. It was an awakening of the people while Southerners so longed and not had the

privilege of progress discovered a future with a promise and they went to work. They changed their way of thinking and thought in terms of tomorrow instead of the present of the past turned thought into action and change the downward course of Dixie. I've sometimes seen in Milwaukee said you know family it took us from 1865 to met in 1840 to get back to where we were in 1860. Course as you know the South didn't get its social structure Oh well so that we never felt that we were not a part of what was going on. But it did take a cent to rebuild economically. That's Alex Nunn talking is executive editor of The Progressive pharma one of the South's leading agricultural publications. Mr. Nunn is a Southerner who has made it his business to know the South to know its hard times its

history as well as its fortunes its future. But its all a matter of history. Here day after the Civil War was just a fight they exist and they had their way just to balance their needs. Sure as well and failed as a whole school I suspect. Never read more than three or four months and four barons of the show and why it was there were such things who they just didn't notice it. Well the people greatly got hold of them say it was part of their climate but it was a long hard road to hoe Mr Nunn will tell you you can sit in his office in Birmingham Alabama. Well within earshot of clattering

typewriters bidding attack to win a deadline for the next edition. And Alexander none can tell you what most of his readers know firsthand from their fathers or from experience. He can tell you of the reconstruction struggle the fight for life and dignity of the Rosie era around 1910 the year upon which they originally triple a base to the parity price he can tell you of the cotton collapse in 1914 and the gallant journey on the road back I began the year after only to enter a decade of doom and destiny. He can tell you how the cotton Weevil grew in the south and yet by some strange paradox save the South from that setback forward the south threw off the shackles of the one crop economy and emerged into what editor naan describes as an agricultural revolution. You naturally have a question.

Yes to me of what this revolution is doing to me what is already mean I can simply suggest several things it means to me. I think maybe I should put first that they'd better educated people. Certainly in all places and all races and all groups among the population becoming better informed both in the schools and in the everyday life than they've ever been before. Suddenly it's meaning are there. We've eliminated some of the problems already you know that we had in this area. 30 in 40 years ago and I think we're going to continue to eliminate you know by actually running all in the control some of the other problems and you know. Another thing this ain't the means to me here this revolution is it. Means a better market for the products that folks produce in other

sections not here in the south even though our own industrial development has been rather a number in the last decade. It means that we have better we've got more money to spend and then we're interested in more different kinds of products and we have a wonderful. And then I mean it would always mean that we're building in we're developing a more stable in a healthier economy that will stand there in the many different kinds of conditions. The evidence is there to be seen. The bigger busiest cities in greater industry and wealthier well-tended farms in forest cool and green and highways and railways in airdromes and ports in big dams and big power in research and in optimism. It shows in the countryside and in the people. For me I was not a very I work in Little Rock Arkansas.

Doctor from ahead is this it. I'm awake it's from Memphis Tennessee. I'm from Louisville. Sell insurance. I'm a welfare worker from Baton Rouge Louisiana. I'm the north terminal tobacco and. I'm from cash blues Alabama and I mean that is not a bullet station operator stop lost. But then you have it. You travel about the Deep South and you see her people at play at work. You talk with them you talk of the weather crops of taxes of employment of income of meat prices of politics and of war. And you find more than likely that their own potential is every day folk usually quiet spoken and considerate casual in appearance and concerned with practically the same problems that perplex the everyday folk of other communities in other parts of the nation. But you're likely to find too that they seldom think as slowly as they talk.

The way they make us talk in movies these days it's just terrible that way. Hell yes you you must realize that southern accents come in varying degrees and sometimes heard in far reaching places and in positions of high responsibility. Fourteen out of the nation's first 17 presidents call the South a home but no Southern voice has been greater than that which is resoundingly through the Deep South today. The voice of her people seeking and finding a better Southland. For me it was written for me of a National Planning Association. It was organized in 1946 and we had two ways and it's been a continuous program over a shared purpose of that is just to do what we have been talking about here to try to see what our needs are and if possible to anticipate some of our needs and insofar

as we can be with and then there are many local groups. With Mayor or where. Oh if you're like that you without it we can have peace and we have a lot of back and we keep in the office for emergency of course of the residents and for farmers and tobacco communities. We have just recently would try to diversify as part of this organization's work to bring diversified farming and industry combine so that we will have a most astute existence from two offices you have heard the south speak. The first was located in the Library Tower of Duke University the second in a typical

farmer's town some hundred and thirty miles away. Population five thousand two hundred fifty in the first off as you heard Doc to be you Ratchford professor of Southern economics an active leader in the committee of the South and the pharmas town. You spoke to the leader of an energetic local movement Mr. de best Nielsen executive secretary of the Whitehall Merchants Association. Multiply their work the work of their organizations. But the work of similar groups around the Deep South. Throughout 11 Southern states Virginia to Florida. From the Carolinas to Arkansas the South has physical and human resources. And it's easy to see why sunrise down south. This has been program one document deep self. A new series of

actuality documentaries depicting the increasing importance of the South and the economic development of our nation. This week sunrise Dahlan solve your narrator was Walt Whitaker document Deep South is written and produced by the raw about him and Dr. Walter B Jones as well. Document deep self is produced by the radio broadcasting services extension division. University of Alabama and is made by a grant from the fund for I don't have any independent agency established by the

board. This is bars reminding you that this has been a radio presentation of the University of Alabama. This is the tape network.