Document: Deep South; Men of magic

Document Deep South. Of the fields of cotton and factory in the heart of Dixie already beaming story of progress in the area documented with on the spot recordings by the radio broadcasting service extension division. University of Alabama. For the next 30 minutes he will make a transcribed trip through the beach. 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. And our nation's economy. Lord. Man of magic. Ya. Ya.

Ya. Deep within the deep south there are men of magic. Not the voodoo variety of Creole days and the right healer type who walks the winding mountain road but men of science of knowledge are the test tube in the tried try again method men who were introduced in a busy corridor. On the right. Men faced with problems and questions confronted in busy offices. A lot isn't there one of the earliest and Benteke Baba blabbed and this rodeo a black guy I've always thought that it was but we have someone here open Pella much more hyper than I can get when I meet crook. The plant manager of the wrong dog a plant of the Alameda caught by.

Men who make it their business to make a business for everyone. A business that charges new causes of progress Channel's ingenuity way becomes tomorrow's promise. Such men reside in today's Southland. Where their work their influence is being felt. Felt in the farm community. The Country Store felt in fields and forest and factory. Filled in the city and in the whole felt in the people. You've had the pleasure of meeting several of these men you traveled about the south through Kentucky and the Carolinas through Virginia and Georgia Arkansas and southward to Louisiana Mississippi Alabama and Florida and you've been amazed to learn that these men are men of magic or every day ordinary men men whose lives are often fashioned by

queer turns of fate. And I started in college I had expected to major in history a subject that has always had. A great deal the fascination for me. But I found. That I wasn't getting along too well in history. Probably due to the fact that they professor of history. Was engaged in a little experiment at the time to determine how much discouragement a student would take and still remain in his chosen field. At least he told me that that was the case. Some years later when I had an opportunity to discuss the matter with him. A combination of. Some indifference and poor grades in history which I had not expected. Coupled with by. Then arresting. Professor of Chemistry made chemistry a more interesting subject for me in my first year in college. Men who immigrate from faraway lands.

I call myself an adopted geology and Guardian by adoption I was born in England. In the County of. Darbyshire. I'm a graduate of the University of London. And on a degree in chemistry. I never expected in all my life to leave England. I expected to say that all of my life. But after leaving college I went to work for a. British chemical and Manufacturing Company Limited which was a. Company that later became known to me. And in nineteen hundred twenty four. I asked me to come over to this country to help build a plant in Cumberland Maryland. And I said well I didn't want to leave England but I wouldn't mind the six months. But I've been here on and off.

Man who personified the firms they represent. One of these men the man you met in the corridor the man who was tricked into chemistry is the director of research of the chemist Rand Corporation makers of Aqua a bit of magic performed of natural gas and their. Acronym is an apparel type fiber. That means that it goes into almost all articles of clothing such as and men's suitings. Into shirts. Into women's dresses and suits into stockings blankets and many other uses to which a textile fiber is put today. His name Dr. Frank So today his office is modern and you located one of the big brick buildings that form the newest addition to a rapidly expanding family was Southern based chemical industries. Kim strand is located on a

700 acre track along the Tennessee River. And a field that once produced cotton. Why did Kim strand come here. Chemistry and located indicator because a modern synthetic fiber plant. Can really only locate in the south. That is due to the fact that the basic materials used in the manufacture of the true synthetic fibers are mainly petro chemicals chemicals derived from natural gas and oil. And due to the large reserves of natural gas and oil in the southwest and the large number of petrochemical plants located in the same area. It is inevitable that any synthetic fiber manufacturer would look to the south for a location for his plant. I might say in that connection that some 85 percent of all of the better chemicals manufactured in the country are manufactured in the southwest particularly in the area

around Houston Texas and along the Texas Louisiana Gulf Coast. In addition to that most of the textile fibers today are processed in the more than 800 textile. Factories we have located in the south eastern states. So the textile. Fiber manufacturer is confronted with the situation that his raw materials are in the southwest and the plants that are going to can hurt his fiber into finished yarns and fabrics and clothing are located in the southeast the south then becomes the only logical location for a synthetic fiber plant and nearly all of the new synthetic fiber plants are being built here in the south. The synthetic fiber industry may be rightly regarded as a Southern industry. But today's Southland is a land of complexity. A jigsaw

puzzle of progress comprising some parts forand of the personality of Magnolia blossoms and mint juleps. These parts are sometimes visual sometimes or. Judges a clipped accent of the adopted Georgian man of magic from England. We actually make that. Man made by about half by two processors. They are made by the prophet. I'm the other way. I think they. Let a yawn it made from heavy last Saturday. Occasionally these parts are hidden or sometimes blended into the background of the prosperous enterprise. There are fibers of foreign influence sinews of foresight that originated as far away as which a chemist could write let them write write write but. Had invented a profit making their discovery one of the

particularly. Great and hell of a time late at that the American government during World War Ron. Paul that where you. Have claimed and all day you'll remember what I made. Of wood and Pemba. And they chemist had decreed that I was like all the don't know. How that it would kind of crack on the right. Give the proper form of a wing boil. And they early days that don't they yield for that but but what I made out of all what you're highly inflammable. And that's how you know that a date had a very interesting problem not be encumbered saw that they. Dangled up fire on the airplane or comfortably read you from Switzerland to England to America. The history of a history making achievement from airplanes to eveningwear that was the significance of this achievement.

And it all came from the test to the tried try again method. And so when you ask to see the plant that produces this miraculous material it was logical that you should be led first to the laboratory. Dr. John I'd like to introduce to you Mr. Hamilton in charge of all of the technical kind of selective in that land. How do you do a move like that right. And you might like that. Yeah. What do you do. You know we have quite a few laboratory. Every time we have somewhere we have a lot of incoming Roman Catholic and half of what. We have where we analyze a materials process to make sure they're ready for us. Now we have others where we analyze our finished price from a customer. And then point to the mind of

God where we make certain technical investigation one kind or another. Now why did you guys know exactly what you know intimately everything that goes at the beginning and the end are found here in the laboratory and the test tube here in the south last year we've got a hundred and three new research and laboratories that represented the largest increase in research laboratories for any area in the country and is a further indication that the South is going to take care of the needs of industry in this respect. But while laboratories have been built to meet a challenge they themselves created a challenge. Well there must be men of magic too. So you see another vital effect of chemical industries down South they development of chemical industry in the south and other industry as well as had a

very favorable of fact upon improving education here in the south. That is inevitable. They caused new industries require new talents require the efforts of more and more well-educated people particularly in the professions in business procedures in mathematics and in fact almost a whole field of education. So the fact that this industry is growing up in the south means that greater demands are being placed upon southern educational institutions for more graduates and that has been reflected in the fact that Southern schools are turning out a higher proportion of technically trained people and people trained in the various business requirements than they have ever turned out before. You remember though the words of Dr sodaine even now as you walk through another plant in another state. You remember them as you watched chemist carefully calculating the

secret on mountains as you watch technicians wielding tools of their trade as you saw secretaries and stenographers and statisticians busy at work. You would remember them the next time you looked upon cap and gown of the graduating student. You remember and realize that today's South Land is a land ripe with opportunity. Enter the spinning room and you watched Bobby's whining the magic spinning madly moving up and down moving madly in regimented rows repeating repeating repeating a miracle of chemistry. And at last you came to an office at the far end of the room. I'm going to. Remember that we have a line around.

My hair in. My While let's go have a chat with him. Mr. Hale What do you do on the Last night I think you've got to. Have a response around here. Well now I wonder if you could take us through your file of the material beginning to end. Can we do that you think. I'm not why she would start running around with the proper play thread of the heart of God in the running. Okay let's go. To jail. What's going on here now we have. No one no.

One home. Going man. No I don't think I want to go on banning outbreak and knock you out. Then why did no one through the pumpkin. We had him out. How much. Right right right right right. Yeah thanks. Michael Mann a little hardware coming out now. They're an annoyed. Element. On the. Right. Your get out right away man I got to have a beat down. Like you were standing on a

catwalk high above the bobbins below. Well Mr. Haye only explained the manufacture of the fairy like filaments and then you move down the narrow steel stairway to the floor below that way down while ago. Well I'm a. Comic. Oh yeah right oh yeah yeah rock. Rock rock. I want to make one of the

many known how many of you have. Run and come out. I like where God would lead. He likes the farm pretty much but he believes he'll stay on it Celanese. Another example of the sour switch from farm to factory. Now this doesn't mean they're desert ing the farm and the South is plowing under her superiority in agriculture. You know from experience you've traveled the highways and byways of Dixie through ham lives and one horse town

was the big cities in busy industrial centers and you've seen the fields in between the vast open acres of row crops and cultivated land. And the conclusion has been simple. The southern farm of today is a better farmer a more thorough more efficient farmer a farmer who today employs scientific methods to preserve until his soil industry is helping him. Kim strand 70. Countless other chemical industries are contributing greatly to the inefficiency of the average farm. And since the vomit again but use more with less. These industries tend to absorb his extra help and extra dollars to the economy of his community. His you'd learn quite a lesson you've learned that chemical industries not only look to the south but the South looks to them. Recently.

Company decided that in view of a. Tremendously important law they southpaw Betemit oben it to the south. That it was logical. I had to be located in the south instead of in New York City. That barring one have been made and now proceeding. So how is the senior executive of the company and all of the time interacted and all of these plans and Charlotte North Carolina. But how about this man who changes the bobbins. He's one of twelve hundred fifty employees you were told what you were asking about the investment by employing operations like you the way you have had involved an investment of about seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars. But employee that's an interesting thought I'm glad you asked that question because it brings up this thought that if. Remember that in the old days when a man came for a job he was likely to be

expected to have the tools that his job required a carpenter would on his own saw and on and man was hired to do a job but expected to bring his tools. Now if our employers are expected to bring let told AFP then of course they would have seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars to buy it. You saw the point. You saw two acres and acres of industry that made up this investment. And so the question came to mind who owns this plant. To your amazement there are more than 34000 Momus stockholders of every description everywhere. Businessmen big and small families of fortune and of living wage institutions and individuals as far away as Spokane Washington and Kansas City. And you don't have to hold stock to have a stake in this in other chemical industries of the Deep South you discover. For the

development of the synthetic fiber industry means many things to many people. To the south. I think that that offers a saz a wonderful opportunity because they manufacture clothing has always been a very substantial enterprise in this country employing large numbers of people and contributing a lot of money and a lot of goods to our total economy. I think that the fact that the synthetic fiber plants are locating in the south almost exclusively puts the south in a very inviable position. The south as you know already grows substantially all of the cotton that we use in this country. And we grow a lot of the wool used here too. Together with a fiber plants I think that places the south in the position of dominating the fiber industry in this country and that

domination is becoming more and more apparent with the passing years as we add to our textile producing potential here in the south. But it doesn't stop there. DR So they told you. You remember his words. The location of the chemical industry in the south with respect to these new developments also has a favorable effect upon the rest of the country because chemical operations are like any other type of operations they must be curried out economically and the location of the can of chemical plants here in the south means that these chemicals are being produced at a lower cost than they would be elsewhere in the country which of course means that we can produce consumer goods at a lower price than we otherwise would be able to do. A fact that we are building up a new modern and economically producing chemical industry here in the south means a better things at lower cost for everyone in the

country eventually. Like the products themselves the industry has been a transformation of magic a miracle of development in the Deep South. A movement that began with the early 30s in flourished with the demands of World War Two. Last year the South secured 55 percent of the chemical plants approved by the government and constructed under certificates of necessity. It will make many things using the test tube. So you ask why has your tour been confined to firms making textile fibers. The answer was very simple. This was but an example of a gigantic movement making itself felt throughout Dixie today. A movement spearheaded by the makers of synthetic fibers which you found the south the only logical place to locate doctors so dey answers your question like this.

I think I answered a question in this way. The textile industry as a whole is a largest consumer of chemicals in this country. Approximately 25 percent of all of the chemicals manufactured in this country are used by the textile industry. To get. Going. All right. Yeah yeah way back in the pot Mike. We have a man in the truck if you can hang out long on their way out and back on the quality of play I think yeah.

Let's move on. How this thing is going on. It looking over a lot of the big Cohen. Oh now what was wrong with that one and anything wrong with that one. Abrupt abrupt and all that. Not what you what what happened that night. Oh yes. Well there's nothing wrong with the paralytic got the mechanic the putting at the Gap. That's when I thought about that when you're holding. Handing it around taking a look at it that's a good cause. I read that your put that in your little hole and a cardboard that covered with white clay. Well I don't know but I did me.

Good luck. I think never. Thought I'd seen me. And I have never ever met a gathered here putting an iron to a placard. Holding that over the top. Oh and that in a lot of life who and I were all black and then wrapped in wax paper. And so this fabulous silk like yarn is softly packed away. Soon to be received in a South Carolina textile mill perhaps to be fashioned into many fine fabrics. The ultimate magic of men like doctors so day in William a crux. Men are the test tube in the try try again method. Today there are more than several such men down Dixie way. Men who make a mony a rubber or plastic counters on a chemical. Man who are making a better more productive Dicksee. A feat of magic. A change of.

Heart. This has been programmed 13 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. Man of magic the magic of the Southern chemical industry. Your narrator was Walt Whitaker special advisor for this program was Dr. Stewart JANE LLOYD retired dean of chemistry from the University of Alabama document Deep South is written and produced by deride BANNERMAN Dr. Walter B Jones as a senior consultant. Document itself is presented by the radio broadcasting services extension to the

University of Alabama and is made possible by our Grant on the funding for adult education an independent agency established by the Ford Foundation. And now this is King's bars reminding you that this has been a radio presentation of the University of Alabama. This is the n AB network.