Industrialization and Economic Progress in the Southeast

Abstract

The growth of industry in the Southeast is not a recent phenomenon. Manufacturing has expanded steadily in the region over at least the last fifty years. Since the turn of the century, manufacturing employment in the Southeast' has increased three times as fast as total population-250 per cent as compared with 79 per cent.2 Over every decade since 1899-including the depression 1930's-the Southeast increased its number of manufacturing production workers. The greatest per cent increase over the last half century occurred in the early 1899-1909 decade when the cotton textile industry had its largest growth in the region.3 (See Table 1.) After this early boom period, the rate of increase declined progressively until the World War II decade, when the Southeast experienced a renewed high rate of expansion in manufacturing employment. Over the recent 1939-49 decade, the Southeast experienced its greatest absolute increase in manufacturing production workers. The regional totals, of course, obscure great differences among the states of the Southeast in the timing and extent of industrial expansion. Over the entire half-century, the increase in manufacturing production workers varied from a high of more than 400 per cent for North Carolina to a low of slightly more than 100 per cent for Arkansas. Over the recent 1939-1952 period, the expansion in