Postwar Industrial Development in the Southeast and the Pioneer Role of Labor-Intensive Industry

Abstract

This study examines the role of labor-intensive manufacturing, particularly the textile and apparel industries, in the postwar industrial development of the Southeast. It is argued that this role continued to take the form of an early or pioneer involvement in the spread of industrial development, an involvement that has produced important but often overlooked changes in the postwar industrial geography of the area. Correlation matrices were used to examine the position of labor-intensive industry in this evolutionary process and to identify any differences in the types of labor markets sought by the textile and apparel industries that could have affected their pioneer roles. It was found that these industries could indeed be fit into a process of evolutionary change in the Southeast, that they continued to perform a pioneer function, and that this pioneer function led to expansion into less industrialized areas off the Piedmont. The apparel industry led in this expansion.