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The South

2011-08-22T22:12:10Z

Rkremer: /* 1964 to 1992 */

'''The South''' includes the eleven states that made up the [[Confederate States of America]] which consisted of [[South Carolina]], [[Mississippi]], [[Florida]], [[Alabama]], [[Georgia]], [[Louisiana]], [[Texas]], [[Virginia]], [[Arkansas]], [[Tennessee]] and [[North Carolina]]. The South is currently defined by the US Census as these states, as well as [[Delaware]], [[Maryland]], [[West Virginia]], [[Kentucky]], and [[Oklahoma]]. <ref>http://www.census.gov/geo/www/us_regdiv.pdf</ref> The '''''Deep South''''' consists of the states most "southern" ''in culture'': South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Georgia and Louisiana.
==History==
The '''Ante-Bellum South''' comprised the slave states before the American Civil War started in 1861; all the northern states had abolished slavery. The social history is considered in terms of large plantations with more than 20 slaves that grew cotton and other crops for export, and the "plain folk", who owned few or no slaves.

===18th century===
Historians and archaeologists in recent years have rediscovered a great deal about the pre-1800 South. <ref> See Isaac (2004) and Kern (2005)</ref> Thomas Jefferson's parents operated Shadwell, a plantation in the 1740-70 period. The Jeffersons led lives of comparative cultural refinement, although Shadwellwas at the extreme western edge of the Virginia frontier. They created a personal "island" of gentrified culture in the Piedmont region, a homestead that virtually replicated the finer domestic accommodations and routines as well as "institutional structures, patterns of slaveholding and agriculture, and slave life" existing in the eastern Tidewater region at the time. Peter Jefferson (father of Thomas) was a successful planter, slaveholder, surveyor, and government officeholder. Jane (the mother of Thomas) was the educated daughter of a successful merchant; they shared a value system that focused their energy and talents on financial success and acquiring status. Shadwell's proximity to the Rivanna River, physical layout, main house and outbuilding construction, household furnishings, and the documentary record of the family's domestic and business activities reveal an extraordinary blend of rugged individualism and the social expectations of the planter class.
===Plantation System===
The ante-bellum economy was dominated by plantations owned by rich white families and using slave labor. Historians define a plantation as having 20 or more slaves (of all ages). Cotton was the main crop in a broad swath (called the "Black Belt") that included most of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Other plantations grew tobacco (in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Kentucky), hemp (Kentucky and Missouri), rice (South Carolina) or sugar (Louisiana). Most slaves were owned by plantations, and slave culture has been extensively studied. The great majority of whites did NOT live on plantations, and farmed on a smaller scale or on a subsistence scale. The plantation South had few large cities; the most notable were Charleston, SC, and Natchez, Mississippi. In general the plantation owners invested all their profits in new lands and new slaves.

The system survived the Civil War, as the emanciapted Freedmen continued to work on plantation land, as hired hands, tenents or sharecroppers. Aiken (1998) notes the plantation after 1865 had scattered sharecropper huts (compared to concentrated location before). There were few towns so plantation owners provided a crossroads central place that provided a "furnish" store (to advance tenants seed, tools, food staples, against their share of the harvest) and other town-like services. The blacks set up their own Baptist and Methodist churches; the preachers became both religious and political leaders.

The system of cotton plantations collapsed in the 1940s as cotton picking machines drastically reduced the need for labor.<ref> See Virts (2006); Aiken (1998) notes plantations never entirely disappeared.</ref>

==Plantation Historiography==
[[File:Cotton1820-60.jpg|thumb|380px]]
Anderson (2005) shows that after the Civil War a wave of nostalgia created an image of the plantation South that endured for a century, most notably typified in the novel and movie, "[[Gone with the Wind]]" (1936, 1939). Memoirs and fiction by former white plantation residents indicate "that nostalgia occurs most forcibly after a profound split in remembered events and experiences." These literary strategies "reveal a potent change in elite white southern consciousness after the Civil War." By 1900, plantation reminiscences that described the Old South as a place of wealth, self-sufficiency, honor, hospitality, and happy master-slave relationships had gained regional, national, and international popularity. The nostalgic memories of Southerners helped them triumph over defeat and create a sense of continuity with the splintered past.

Serious scholarship began in 1900 with [[Ulrich B. Phillips]]. He studied slavery not so much as a political issue between North and South but as a social and economic system. He focused on the large plantations that dominated the South.

Phillips's addressed the unprofitability of slave labor and slavery's ill effects on the southern economy. Phillips systematically hunted down and opened plantation and other southern manuscript sources. An example of pioneering comparative work was "A Jamaica Slave Plantation" (1914). His methods inspired the "Phillips school" of slavery studies between 1900 and 1950.

Phillips argued that large-scale plantation slavery was inefficient and not progressive. It had reached its geographical limits by 1860 or so, and therefore eventually had to fade away (as happened in Brazil). In 1910, he argued in "The Decadence of the Plantation System" that slavery was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and political power, that is, [[Slave Power]]).

Phillips contended that masters treated slaves relatively well and his views were rejected most sharply by neoabolitionist historian Kenneth M. Stampp in the 1950s. However, Marxist historian Eugene Genovese revived many of Phillips' ideas in the 1960s. Phillips' economic conclusions about the decline of slavery were challenged by [[Robert Fogel]] in the 1960s, who argued that slavery was both efficient and profitable as long as the price of cotton was high enough. In turn Fogel came under attack.

==Plain folk of the South==
* see also [[Redneck]]

The '''Plain Folk of the Old South''', often called [[yeomen]], were the middling white Southerners before 1860 who owned few slaves or none. The term has been extended to include the poor and middling whites in the South into the early 20th century. Historians have long debated the social, economic and political roles. Terms used by scholars include "common people", "yeomen" and "Crackers." The term favored in [[Jeffersonian Democracy]] and [[Jacksonian Democracy]] was "yeoman", which emphasized an independent political spirit and economic self-reliance.

From the travel accounts of [[Frederick Law Olmsted]] in the 1850s through the early-twentieth-century interpretations of historians William E. Dodd and [[Ulrich B. Phillips]], common southerners were portrayed as minor players in the antebellum period.

Romantic portrayals, especially [[Margaret Mitchell]]'s ''Gone with the Wind'' (1937) and its 1939 film ignored them. Novelist [[Erskine Caldwell]]'s ''Tobacco Road,'' portrayed the degraded condition of whites dwelling beyond the great plantations.

=== Owsley as historian of Plan Folk===
The major challenge came from historian [[Frank Owsley]] in ''Plain Folk of the Old South'' (1949). It ignited a long historiographical debate. Owsley started with the writings of Daniel R. Hundley who in 1860 had defined the southern middle class as "farmers, planters, traders, storekeepers, artisans, mechanics, a few manufacturers, a goodly number of country school teachers, and a host of half-fledged country lawyers, doctors, parsons, and the like." To find these people Owsley turned to the name-by-name files on the manuscript federal census. Owsley's ''Plain Folk of the Old South,'' says Vernon Burton, is, ''one of the most influential works on southern history ever written.'' Using their own newly invented codes they turned into data bases the manuscript federal census returns, tax and trial records, and local government documents and wills. ''Plain Folk'' argued that southern society was not dominated by planter aristocrats, but that yeoman farmers played a significant role in it. The religion, language, and culture of these common people created a democratic "plain folk" society. Critics say he overemphasized the size of the southern landholding middle class while excluding the large class of poor landless and slaveless white southerners.<ref>Hyde (2005)</ref> Owsley assumed that shared economic interests united southern farmers without considering the vast difference inherent in the planters' commercial agriculture versus the yeomen's subsistence life style.

=== Recent scholarship: Burton and others ===
In his study of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Orville Vernon Burton classified white society into the poor, the yeoman middle class, and the elite.<ref> Burton (1985)</ref> A clear line demarcated the elite, but according to Burton, the line between poor and yeoman was never very distinct. Stephanie McCurry argues, yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites by their ownership of land (real property). Yeomen were "self-working farmers," distinct from the elite because they worked their land themselves alongside any slaves they owned. Ownership of large numbers of slaves made the work of planters completely managerial.

Wetherington (2005) argues the plain folk (of Georgia) supported secession to defend their families, homes, and notions of white liberty. During the war the established patriarchy continued to control the home front and kept it functioning even though growing numbers of plain folk joined the new wartime poor.

Wetherington suggests that their localism and racism dovetailed with a [[republicanism|republican ideology]] founded on Jeffersonian notions of an "economically independent yeomanry sharing common interests" (p. 12). Plain folk during the war raised subsistence crops and vegetables, and relied on a free and open range to hunt hogs. Before the war they became more active in the cotton and slave markets, but plain folk remained unwilling to jeopardize their self-sufficiency and the stability of their neighborhoods for the economic interests of planters.

The soldiers had their own reasons for fighting. First and foremost, they sought to protect hearth and home from Yankee threats. White supremacy and masculinity depended on slavery, which Lincoln's Republicans threatened. Plain folk concepts of masculinity explains why so many men enlisted: they wanted to be worthy of the privileges of men, including the affections
of female patriots. (p. 145). By March 1862, the piney woods region had a 60 percent enlistment rate, comparable to that found in planter areas.

As the war dragged on, hardship became a way of life; Wetherington reports that enough men remained home to preserve the paternalistic social order, yet there were too few to prevent mounting deprivation. Wartime shortages increased the economic divide between planters and yeoman farmers; nevertheless, some planters took seriously their paternalistic obligations by selling their corn to plain folks at the official Confederate rate "out of a spirit of patriotism." (p. 171). Wetherington's argument weakens other scholars' suggestions that [[class conflict]] led to Confederate defeat. More damaging to Confederate nationalism was the localism that grew as areas had to fend for themselves as Sherman's forces came nearer. During [[Reconstruction]], plain folk viewed freedmen as the greatest affront and humiliating symbol of Yankee victory, so they turned their hatred against [[Carpetbaggers]] (Republicans from the North) and refused to tolerate [[Scalawags]] (white Republicans from the South).

==Civil War and Reconstruction==
* see [[Slave Power]]
* [[American Civil War]]
* [[Reconstruction]]

The story of "[[Gone with the Wind]]" (1936 novel, 1939 film) is intensely anti-war, showing how rebel hot-heads (repeatedly ridiculed by Rhett Butler) take the highly prosperous South into a needless war and destroy their whole way of life.

None of the characters is profoundly changed by the war, except for Scarlett O'Hara. She moves from the frivolous lover of leisure to a Yankee-like shred, hard-driving business leader. It takes a very hard-headed Scarlett to whip the underperforming traditionalistic menfolk into shape to deal with the modern postwar economy.<ref> Scarlett's transformation is exactly what they Yankees had planned for the Southern white men during Reconstruction. See C. Vann Woodward, "The Southern Ethic in a Puritan World," ''William and Mary Quarterly,'' Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul., 1968), pp. 344-370 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1921772 in JSTOR]</ref> Rhett, although Southern-born is a war profiteer who is hated by the men because he resembles a mercenary money-grubbing Yankee. Only prostitutes like him. At first Scarlett finds the war merely tiresome as the foolish young men rush out to get killed, spoiling her parties. Scarlett only loves Ashley; she can't have him so she marries a series of men for the money to save Tara, her home. That motivation marks her transformation. As the the first female capitalist of the New South, she resists Rhett's overtures even after marriage showing her choice of money and power over sex and romantic love. In Shakespearian terms, she is a shrew who will not be tamed.

==Age of Jim Crow==
* see [[Jim Crow]]
* see [[Black history]]

'''Jim Crow''' was the system of racial segregation in the Southern U.S. from the 1880s to 1964 in which African Americans were segregated (separated) in public schools and public places, so that they did not mingle in public with whites on equal terms. It also means that blacks had little or no political power. It was a low point in [[Black history]] after the euphoria of [[Reconstruction]]. The most prominent black leader was [[Booker T. Washington]].

The Supreme Court of the United States held in the ''Civil Rights Cases'' (1883) that the Fourteenth Amendment did NOT give the federal government the power to outlaw private discrimination. In an even more important decision the Supreme Court held in ''Plessy v. Ferguson'' (1896) that Jim Crow laws were constitutional as long as they allowed for "separate but equal" facilities. Everyone knew that the "equal" in "separate but equal" was a technicality, and that great inequality was tolerated in practice.

Today conservatives and liberals alike denounce the policy of Jim Crow as an unacceptable violation of the principle of equal rights for all.

==Post 1960==

After 1945, the Civil Rights movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow. The Supreme Court declared legal, or ''de jure'', public school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, and it ended in practice in the 1970s.<ref> Michael J. Klarman, ''From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality'' (2006) </ref> The court ruling did not stop ''de facto'' or informal school segregation, which continued in large cities. President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], building a coalition of liberal northern Democrats and conservative Northern Republicans, pushed Congress to pass the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] which immediately ended Jim Crow laws that segregated restaurants, hotels and theatres; these facilities (with rare exceptions) immediately dropped racial segregation. In 1965 the federal [[Voting Rights Act]] ended discrimination in voting for all federal, state and local elections.

==Presidential politics==

The South favored the [[Democratic-Republican Party]] or Jeffersonian Republicans during the [[First Party System]], from the 1790s to 1820s. However during the [[Second Party System]], 1830-1854, the region was closely balanced between Democrats and the [[Whig Party]], with the Democrats gaining after 1848.

Political parties were in disarray in the late 1850s and were suspended during the Civil War. During [[Reconstruction]], 1863-1877, the dominant [[Republican Party]] was a coalition of Freedmen (freed slaves), [[Carpetbaggers]] (new arrivals from the North), and [[Scalawags]] (white southerners), all supported by the U.S. Army. Violent confrontations led to the collapse of the Republican state governments in the 1870s; the last three fell in 1877. They were replaced by the [[Redeemers]], conservative white Democrats allied to the [[Bourbon Democrats]] of the North.

The Democrats repressed a Populist movement in the 1890s, and dominated every state with rare exceptions down to 1964. The "Solid South" as political pundits called it, nearly always supported Democratic prfesidential candidates, except in 1928, 1952 and 1956.
===1964 to 1992===
Since 1964, the South has been highly competitive. The Solid South began to break down in the 1964 election, when all of the states in the deep south (with the exceptions of Florida and Texas) voted for Republican [[Barry Goldwater]]. President Johnson's homestate, Texas, remained Democratic. In 1965 blacks were given the vote for the first time since the 1890s, and most of them voted Democratic. In 1968, [[Richard Nixon]] and Independent [[George Wallace]] split the region, with the exception of Texas, which remained Democratic.

In the 1976 election, Democratic contender [[Jimmy Carter]].<ref>[http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps/1976ec.gif 1976 Electoral Distribution].</ref> swept the region combining the black vote with a majority of evangelical whites. Beginning in 1972, candidates Richard Nixon (1972), Jimmy Carter (1976), [[Ronald Reagan]] (1984), [[George H.W. Bush]] (1988) carried every southern state.<ref>In 1980 Carter carried his home state of Georgia.</ref>

===1992 to 2008===

In 1992 [[Democratic]] candidate [[Bill Clinton]] reassembled Carter's coalition and carried Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia in 1992, but lost Georgia in 1996.<ref>http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps/></ref> [[George W. Bush]] (2000 and 2004) carried every Southern state including Democratic challenger and incumbent Vice President [[Al Gore]]'s home state of Tennessee.

In 2008 Barack Obama broke through, carrying Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, leaving the GOP base in disarray.

==Military==
Large numbers of Southerners have served in the U.S. military. During the Civil War southerners did not volunteer in large enough numbers to match the military needs of the south. Approximately twenty percent of all Confederate soldiers were therefore draftees (compared to eight percent in the Union armies), and they were subject to “compulsory reenlistment.”<ref>Tinadall & Shi, ''America: A Narrative History'', 7th ed.(New York Norton, 2007):616-618.</ref>

==Bibliography==
==Plantations ==
* Aiken, Charles S. ''The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War'' 1998; geographical study
* Anderson, David. "Down Memory Lane: Nostalgia for the Old South in Post-civil War Plantation Reminiscences." ''Journal of Southern History'' 2005 71(1): 105-136. Issn: 0022-4642 Fulltext: in Ebsco and [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5009563170 online edition]
* Camp, Stephanie M. H. ''Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women & Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South.'' 2004. 206 pp.
* Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. ''Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South'' 1988 [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=54351838 online edition]
* Genovese, Eugene, ''Roll, Jordan Roll'' (1975), the most important study of slavery.
* Isaac, Rhys. ''Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation'' (2004), re: late 18th century
* Kern, Susan. "The Material World of the Jeffersons at Shadwell." ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 2005 62(2): 213-242. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: at History Cooperative
* Kulikoff
* Lowe, Richard G. and Randolph B. Campbell, ''Planters and Plain Folk: Agriculture in Antebellum Texas'' (1987)
* McBride, David. "'Slavery as it Is': Medicine and Slaves of the Plantation South." ''Magazine of History'' 2005 19(5): 36-39. Issn: 0882-228x Fulltext in Ebsco
* Morgan, Edmund S. ''American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia'' (1975).
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ''American Negro Slavery; a Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor, as Determined by the Plantation Regime''. (1918)[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11490 online at Project Gutenberg]
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ''Life and Labor in the Old South''. (1929).
* Phillips, Ulrich B. "The Economic Cost of Slaveholding in the Cotton Belt," ''Political Science Quarterly'' 20#2 (Jun., 1905), pp. 257-275 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3195%28190506%2920%3A2%3C257%3ATECOSI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I in JSTOR]
* Phillips, Ulrich B. "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts." ''American Historical Review,'' 11 (July, 1906): 798-816. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28190607%2911%3A4%3C798%3ATOAGOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T in JSTOR]
* Phillips, Ulrich B. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7162%28191001%2935%3A1%3C37%3ATDOTPS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W "The Decadence of the Plantation System." ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,'' 35 (January, 1910): 37-41. in JSTOR]
* Joseph P. Reidy; ''From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800-1880'' 1992 [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=12034198 online edition]
* Rothman, Adam. ''Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South'' (2005),
* Ruef, Martin. "The Demise of an Organizational Form: Emancipation and Plantation Agriculture in the American South, 1860-1880." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 2004 109(6): 1365-1410. Issn: 0002-9602 Fulltext: at Ebsco
* Savitt, Todd L. "Black Health on the Plantation: Owners, the Enslaved, and Physicians." ''Magazine of History'' 2005 19(5): 14-16. Issn: 0882-228x Fulltext in Ebsco
*Stampp, Kenneth M. ''The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South'' (1956)
* Virts, Nancy. "Change in the Plantation System: American South, 1910-1945." ''Explorations in Economic History'' 2006 43(1): 153-176. Issn: 0014-4983
* Volo, James M., and Dorothy Denneen Volo. ''The Antebellum Period.'' (2004), popular culture [http://www.questia.com/read/107031757 online edition]
* Weiner, Marli F. ''Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South Carolina, 1830-80.'' 1998
* White, Deborah Gray. ''Ar'nt I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South'' (1999) [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101096405 online edition]
* Woodman, Harold D. "The Political Economy of the New South: Retrospects and Prospects." ''Journal of Southern History.'' 67#4 2001. pp 789+. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002427851 online edition], covers 1877 to 1914
* Woodward, C. Vann. ''Origins of the New South, 1877-1913'' (1951). classic survey of the region [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb00007.0001.001 online at ACLS e-books]
* Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. ''Southern honor: ethics and behavior in the old South'' (1982) [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb00819.0001.001 online at ACLS e-books]

==Plain Folk==
* Ash, Stephen V. "Poor Whites in the Occupied South, 1861-1865," ''Journal of Southern History,'' 57 (February 1991), [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642(199102)57%3A1%3C39%3APWITOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 JSTOR]
* Bruce Jr., Dickson D. ''And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain Folk Camp Meeting Religion, 1800-1845'' (1974) [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8723(197509)62%3A2%3C388%3AATASHP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B online edition]
* Bolton, Charles C. ''Poor Whites of the Antebellum South: Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi'' (1994) [http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Whites-Antebellum-South-Mississippi/dp/0822314681/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200630882&sr=8-3 excerpt and text search]
* Burton, Orville Vernon. ''In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina'' (1985) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10585854 online edition]
* Campbell, Randolph B. "Planters and Plain Folks: The Social Structure of the Antebellum South," in John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, eds., ''Interpreting Southern History''(1987), 48-77;
* Carey, Anthony Gene. "Frank L. Owsley's Plain Folk of the Old South after Fifty Years," in Glenn Feldman, ed., ''Reading Southern History: Essays on Interpreters and Interpretations'' (2001)
* Cash, Wilbur J. ''The Mind of the South'' (1941), famous classic [http://www.amazon.com/Mind-South-W-J-Cash/dp/0679736476/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200631649&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]
* Cecil-Fronsman, Bill. ''Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina'' (1992)
* Hahn, Steven. ''The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890'' (1983) [http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Southern-Populism-Transformation-Upcountry/dp/0195306708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200631613&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Harris, J. William. ''Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty and Black Slavery in Augusta's Hinterlands'' (1985)
* Hyde Jr., Samuel C. "Plain Folk Reconsidered: Historiographical Ambiguity in Search of Definition." ''Journal of Southern History.'' 71#4 (2005) pp 803+.
* Hyde Jr., Samuel C. "Plain Folk Yeomanry in the Antebellum South," in Boles, ed., ''Companion to the American South,'' 139-55.
* Hyde Jr., Samuel C. ed., ''Plain Folk of the South Revisited'' (1997).
** Hyde Jr., Samuel C. "Plain Folk Reconsidered: Historiographical Ambiguity in Search of Definition" ''Journal of Southern History'' (Nov 2005) vol 71#4
* Hundley, Daniel R. ''Social Relations in Our Southern States'' (1860) [http://books.google.com/books?id=ifVLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:Social+intitle:Relations+intitle:in+intitle:Our+intitle:Southern+intitle:States&lr=&num=30&as_brr=0&ei=AC-QR7DVI4bktAPoxMRC complete text online]
* Linden, Fabian. "Economic Democracy in the Slave South: An Appraisal of Some Recent Views," ''Journal of Negro History'', 31 (April 1946), 140-89; emphasizes statistical inequality [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992(194604)31%3A2%3C140%3AEDITSS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R in JSTOR]
* Lowe, Richard G. and Randolph B. Campbell, ''Planters and Plain Folk: Agriculture in Antebellum Texas'' (1987)
* McCurry, Stephanie. ''Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country'' (1995),
* McWhiney, Grady. ''Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South'' (1988) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/cracker-culture-celtic-ways-in-the-old-south-by-grady-mcwhiney.jsp online edition], by a leading conservative
* Nobles, Gregory H. "The Transformation of the Other Virginia." ''Reviews in American History,'' Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 506-511 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-7511(198512)13%3A4%3C506%3ATTOTOV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T in JSTOR]
* Osthaus, Carl R. "The Work Ethic of the Plain Folk: Labor and Religion in the Old South." ''Journal of Southern History'' (2004) v. 70#4, 745-82.
* Otto, John Solomon. "The Migration of the Southern Plain Folk: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis," ''Journal of Southern History,'' 51 (May 1985), 183-200. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642(198505)51%3A2%3C183%3ATMOTSP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C in JSTOR]
* Owsley, Frank Lawrence. ''Plain Folk of the Old South'' (1949), the classic study
* Owsley, Frank Lawrence. with Harriet C. Owsley, "The Economic Basis of Society in the Late Ante-Bellum South," ''Journal of Southern History'' 6 (Feb. 1940): 24-25, [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642(194002)6%3A1%3C24%3ATEBOSI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in JSTOR]
* Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, ''Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Why-Confederates-Fought-Virginia-America/dp/0807831581/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200630882&sr=8-12 excerpt and text search]
* Wetherington, Mark V. ''Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia.'' 2005.
* Winters, Donald L. "'Plain Folk' of the Old South Reexamined: Economic Democracy in Tennessee," ''The Journal of Southern History,'' Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 565-586 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642(198711)53%3A4%3C565%3A%22FOTOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M in JSTOR]
* Wright, Gavin. "'Economic Democracy' and the Concentration of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850-1860," ''Agricultural History'', 44 (January 1970), 63-93 in JSTOR, a statistical critique of Owsley
===Primary sources===
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ed. ''Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649-1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources.'' 2 Volumes. (1909). [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0x3Uy0t_x4u_7ZGxmq&id=_fk5qIP8hU4C&printsec=titlepage&dq=ulrich+phillips+plantation&as_brr=1 vol 1 online] and [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0aEKo9OlIHJf-m3SKDua41q&id=zoley-snvSkC&printsec=titlepage&dq=Phillips,+Ulrich+B.+ed.+Plantation+and+Frontier+Documents vol 2 online]

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Geography]]
[[Category:United States Politics]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:Reconstruction]]
[[Category:American Civil War]]
[[Category:Slavery]]
[[Category:The South]]

Essay: New Ordeal

2011-08-21T23:08:48Z

Rkremer:

[[Image:29-50.gif|right|250px|thumb|Dow Jones Industrial Averages, 1929-50.]]
[[Image:115yeardowgoldratio.gif|right|200px|thumb|Dow Jones Index in constant dollars relative to the price of gold. The chart is a good reflection of living standards throughout the period.]]
The '''New Ordeal''' is the period of time between 1929 and 1941, when the American economy finally recovered from the [[Crash of '29]]. It encompasses most of the 1930s, World War II, and the postwar economic recovery. The New Ordeal also is sometimes referred to as the '''Great Ordeal''' or simply the '''Ordeal'''.

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During the twenty years of the New Ordeal, America experienced 2 deep recessions, or essentially a second depression within the [[Great Depression]], and [[World War II]], a calamity that claimed the lives of 55 million people worldwide. Many of the nations involved in World War II resorted to "economic planning", as Economist [[Friedrich Hayek]] referred to it, to address the so-called "crisis in capitalism" in the 1930s.

The 1929-1949 period saw two recessions: One beginning in 1929 with the stock market crash and the 1937 "Roosevelt Recession." Manufacturing demand stimulated by WWII, and the postwar demand for durable consumer goods led to the 1942-1949 recovery, where finally, in 1949, the New York Stock Exchange recovered to the level it had been at 1929.

In 1929 the DJIA declined 90.0% over a duration 34 months. Six successive market crashes comprised this famed bear market: (1) September to November 1929 (DJIA fell 40% in this first phase). (2) April to June 1930. (3) September to December 1930. (4) March to May 1931. (5) July to January 1932. (6) March to July 1932. A new bull market then started immediately, as did a business recovery.

Business had topped out mildly, a month before the first crash; a gradual mild decline continued to April 1930, then fell sharply into a depression simultaneously with the end of the 1930 stock market rally. The business decline halted in December 1930, stayed level for 6 months, then plunged again in steep economic decline that didn’t lose its downward momentum for a full year, until July 1932. Business improved intermittently thereafter but still remained at depression levels through most of the decade of the 1930s except for a short recovery in 1936–37.

In 1934 a fall of 24.1% in the DJIA began again over 9 months. Then the market took seven more months to get back up to where 1934 began.

==Economic planning==
:'''''Main article'': [[Economic planning]]
[[Image:Economicplanning.JPG|right|250px|thumb|Criticism of Economic Planning was suppressed; F. A. Hayek's ''Road to Serfdom'' was rejected for publication 3 times "on political grounds" <ref>Richard Cockett, ''Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983'', Harper Collins, London 1995, pg. 100.</ref>]]
{{Cquote|Planning will become a function of the federal government; either that or the planning agency will supersede the government, which is why, of course, such a scheme will be assimilated to the State.|20px|20px|[[Rex Tugwell]]<ref>''The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire,'' Rexford G. Tugwell, The American Economic Review, vol. 22, no. 1, March 1932. [http://www.bartleby.com/73/147.html]</ref>}}
The New Deal did not promote economic recovery, rather it established a system which required a permanent crisis to support a military industrial complex. The system resembled the managed and bureaucratized, state supported system of [[Germany]] before [[World War I]]. Before this regime the United States lived in a system which depended for its economic expansion upon private investment in private enterprise. After World War II the US lived in a system which depended for its expansion and vitality upon the government. This is a system, based upon a pre-World War II European model created at the moment when it had fallen into complete disrepute and disintegration in Europe.<ref>[http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Fifteen___The_Roosevelt_.htm ''The Roosevelt Myth'', Book 3, Ch. 14], John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948.</ref>

===Cartelization===

Enforcement of the Anti-trust Act was considered as an essential instrument to prevent [[cartel]]s and trusts in restraint of trade which had been viewed as deadly to the system of [[free enterprise]]. On the [[United States presidential election, 1932|campaign trail in 1932]] Franklin Roosevelt called loudly for its strict enforcement. Yet immediately upon Roosevelt's accession to office the Anti-trust Act was suspended in order to cartelize every industry in America on the Italian [[fascist]] corporative model. <ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948, Book 1, Chapter 4, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/cgi-bin/framed/2767/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Four___The_New_New_Deal.htm ''The New New Deal''].</ref>

The [[National Recovery Act]] (NRA) and the [[Agricultural Adjustment Act]] (AAA) were plans to take the whole industrial and agricultural life of the country under the wing of the government, organize it into vast farm and industrial cartels, as they were called in Germany, corporatives as they were called in Italy, and operate business and farms by economic planning schemes dictated and carried out under the supervision of government. This, at the time, was known as [[fascism]]. In those days fascism was not yet defined as [[anti-Semitism]]. <ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', Book 1, Chapter 7, [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Seven___An_Enemy_Is_Welc.htm ''An Enemy Is Welcomed''], Flynn, 1948.</ref>

===Managerial state===

James Burnham, a former [[Trotskyite]], discovered in 1941 that the "workers revolution" which allegedly was to overthrow the capitalist "exploiters", was in real practice a "managerial revolution" which replaced older 19th century owners of capital with twentieth century technocrats and managers. Burnham found that "workers in this mythical 'workers' state' were, the facts showed, a subject class far more heavily exploited than the workers under capitalism," and that the new managers in a planned economy "have curbed the masses and have instituted a social structure in which they are on top, not by virtue of private property rights in the instruments of production, but through their monopoly control of a state power which has fused with the economy." <ref>James Burnham, ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham 1966.</ref>

==Wealth Tax Act of 1935==
The [[New Deal]] was able to expropriate the upper income brackets even before [[World War II]]. In 1929, total aggregate Personal Income was estimated at $80.6 billion and the tax brackets making above $50,000 retained $5.2 billion, after income and surtax; in 1936, when total Personal Income was estimated at $64.2 billion, not quite $1.2 billion was retained by "the Rich". Taxable income above $100,000 was wholly absorbed by the government when account is made of the inheritance tax. Economist and former Austrian Finance Minister [[Joseph Schumpeter]] described it in these terms:
:"''a tremendous transfer of wealth has actually been effected, a transfer that quantitatively is comparable with that effected by [[Lenin]]. The present distribution of disposable incomes compares well with the one actually prevailing in Russia.''<ref>Schumperter continues: "the Russian act of April 4, 1940, concerning the income tax, reveals that incomes as low as 1.812 rubles per year were subject to it. It also reveals the existence of incomes of over 300,000 rubles which were then taxed at the rate of 50 per cent. Now, let us neglect the tax on the lowest incomes entirely and put the modal income in the 1,812–2,400 ruble group at 2,000 rubles; further, let us put the modal retained income in the highest group at no higher than 150,000 rubles (though those 300,000 rubles before tax were a lower limit). Then we discover that the higher of these modes was 75 times the lower one. Even if we put, for 1940, the American equivalent (not of course in purchasing power, but in the sense of equivalent position in the income scale) of the lower mode at as low as $1,000, we shall evidently not find much in the United States income distribution of retained incomes (even apart from the reductions specifically motivated by the requirements of war finance) to support, in the light of the Russian paradigma, the current phrases about atrocious inequalities, “concentration of power” as measured by concentration of income, and the like. The evidence presented in the well-known book by Bienstock, Schwarz and Yugov on ''Industrial Management'' in [[Russia]] tends to support this view. Many other details point in the same direction, for instance, the fact that those ranges of the professions who could formerly but cannot now afford domestic servants in the United States, do enjoy this privilege—worth a ton of electrical household gadgets—in Russia. All this still fails to take account of advantages that do not pass through income accounts. The power and social position—which is one of the main reasons for valuing a high income—of the industrial manager, especially if leader of the local unit of the [[Bolshevik]] party, is far and away above that of an American industrialist. Interesting phenomenon—this Lag of Ideas! Many well-meaning people in this country now profess horror or indignation at social inequalities which did exist fifty years ago, but no longer do. Things change, slogans remain."</ref>

===Class warfare===
:Main article:'' [[Class warfare]]
[[Robert H. Jackson]], Assistant Attorney General, and Secretary of the Interior [[Harold Ickes]] in December 1937 made speeches inspired by the President on the [[conspiratorial]] [[Marxist]] diatribe, ''America's 60 Families.'' <ref>''New Deal Chorus'', Time magazine, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758849-1,00.html pg. 1][http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758849-2,00.html pg. 2], Jan. 17, 1938.</ref>

In February 1944 Congress rejected Roosevelt's demand for a $10,500,000,000 tax increase and cut it to $2,300,000,000. Roosevelt vetoed it saying this was a "bill not for relief of the needy but of the greedy."
Senator [[Alben Barkley]], Democratic leader, rose on the floor of the Senate to say the veto was "a calculated and deliberate assault upon the legislative integrity of every member of Congress." The entire Senate united in a roar of applause. Barkley declared that after seven years of carrying the [[New Deal]] banner for Roosevelt, he would resign his post as Democratic majority leader and he called on every member of the Congress to preserve its self respect and override the veto. The Senate overrode it 72 to 14 and the House 299 to 95.

==Crash of 1937==

1937 DJIA declined 51.8% over 56 months. There were five crash phases: (1) August to November (DJIA fell 40% in this first phase). (2) February to March 1938. (3) January to April 1939. (4) May 1940. (5) October 1941 to April 1942. Business peaked out and fell violently, simultaneously with stocks. Economic indicators bottomed out 9 months later (May 1938). The recovery began mildly at first, but not until the World War II production boom was the country lifted out of the Great Depression.

The period 1941–42 contained the longest nonstop downswing crash (7 1/2 months) in history. Certain analysts call this two separate bear markets, one from September 1937 to March 1938, and the second from May 1940 to April 1942.

During the Great Bear Market from 1929 to 1942, the [[Dow Jones Industrial Average]] (DJIA) had rallies of 48% (from November 13, 1929, to April 17, 1930), 94% (July 8, 1932, to September 7 of that year), 121% (February 27, 1933, to February 5, 1934), 127% (July 26, 1934, to March 10, 1937), 60% (March 31, 1938, to November 12 of that year), and 28% (April 8, 1939, to September 12 of that year). Yet, on April 28, 1942, the apex of the [[Malthusian crisis]] that was [[World War II]], the DJIA was still at only 92.92, 76% below its September 3, 1929, high of 381.17. <ref>Daniel Turov, [http://www.leithner.com.au/newsletter/issue18.htm ''Mixed Message,''] Barron’s, 21 May 2001, quoted in the Liethner Letter, Issue 1826 June 2001, retrieved 11 June 2007.</ref>

===Double-dip recession===

When FDR was inaugurated for his second term in March 1937 [[national income]], [[payroll]]s, and industrial production<ref>League of Nations Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, June, 1936. Percentage change 1929 to March 1936, United States -21.8%, rank number 13.</ref> were still 20 per cent below the 1929 figure and construction was still only about one third what it had been in 1929 when the nation had a booming economy due to massive speculation that would ultimately lead to the stock market crash. By June, 1937 the [[U.S. Treasury]] reported relief payments were less than in the same period the preceding 12 months, however this was not so. The Treasury merely shifted relief payments to other accounts. Relief payments were, in fact, larger than the year before. The Treasury made a practice of "cooking the books" to produce phony numbers. Stock prices declined and by September the dire reality could be no longer hidden. By the end of October 1937 the market crashed. The U.S budget was running a [[deficit]] at the time of $300,000,000 a month.

===Unemployment worse than in 1933===
In January 1938, John D. Biggers in a study commissioned by President Roosevelt reported there were 10,870,000 people out of work, more than when FDR first took office in 1933.
<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758790,00.html ''Two Schemes''], Time magazine, Jan. 10, 1938.</ref> Roosevelt realized that all the “pump priming” and spending $17 billion had failed. Despite the billions added to the debt, the Depression was back and Roosevelt was at the center of a tug-of-war with advocates of spending like [[Harry Hopkins]], [[Leon Henderson]] and [[Rex Tugwell]] on one side, and opponents like [[Henry Morgenthau]] on the other.

DNC Chairman [[Jim Farley]] recalled on a meeting with Roosevelt on March 28, 1938. FDR told Farley he would have "to go in for pump priming or relief," but complained he could not spend on local projects because the states and cities did not want any more buildings and institutions which they would have to pay for in perpetuity. States and localities were having trouble paying the bills on New Deal projects already built. Many [[WPA]] projects approved by the federal government were abandoned because the states and cities could not raise the money to support and occupy them.

In the 1938 Congressional elections Harry Hopkins oversaw spending programs with no regard for economic utility to meet the immediate political necessities of an election, but the growth of debt could not go on indefinitely. And the New Dealers problem was complicated by pressure from within the Democratic party to balance the budget.

New capital made available for investment amounted to $348,000,000 in 1935. This was less than 1/10th of the amount available in 1929. By contrast, the British economy had nearly recovered to its 1929 levels by 1935, and the amount available for investment was almost twice as much as the United States.

{| style="background:white; color:blue" border="1" class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! United States <ref>Standard Statistics Co., ''New Money for Operating and Producing.''</ref>
! Great Britain <ref>Midland Bank, London, ''New Issues for British Companies,'' converted from £ to $ at $4.8665.</ref>
|-
| 1927
| $3,201,000,000
| $710,509,000
|-
| 1928
| 3,062,000,000
| 983,033,000
|-
| 1929
| 3,668,000,000
| 759,174,000
|-
| 1930
| 3,039,000,000
| 394,186,500
|-
| 1931
| 1,006,000,000
| 155,728,000
|-
| 1932
| 321,000,000
| 248,191,500
|-
| 1933
| 177,000,000
| 296,856,500
|-
| 1934
| 356,000,000
| 350,388,000
|-
| 1935
| 348,000,000
| 666,710,500
|-

|}

The country now reached a greater crisis than in 1933. The [[National debt]], which was $22 billion when Roosevelt took office and largely a heritage of [[World War I]], now was $37 billion. Taxes had been more than doubled by Roosevelt.

By April 1938 [[unemployment]] reached several thousand more than when Roosevelt was elected in 1932. This was now Roosevelt’s Double Dip Depression. Voices began to speak up suggesting after all Hoover may have known what he was doing, but here, nine years after the Depression began the fundamental condition of the country was no further advanced than it was at the end of Hoover's three year struggle with it.

===The Second New Deal===
All during the winter and spring of 1938 a group of young instructors from Harvard and Tufts were busy on a book which they called ''An Economic Program for American Democracy.'' which appeared in October, 1938. These instructors had been moving under the guidance of Dr. Alvin H. Hansen,<ref>Alvin H. Hansen, ''Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles'', (Norton, 1941).</ref> The theory propounded may be briefly stated thus: The expansion of the American economy came to an end in 1929. Before that it had grown for several well-known reasons. (1) There was a rapid increase in population due to free immigration. (2) The frontier was open to entry and exploitation. (3) Technological expansion went forward upon an amazing scale. But all this came an end. Population is no longer increasing save at a small rate. The frontier is gone, having been exploited and settled. Technological advance at the old rate is no longer possible—the great era of revolutionary inventions is over. A basic change had come over the structure of the American economy.
[[Image:Flatgrowth.JPG|thumb|300px|right|Real Output and Growth remained stagnant throughout the New Deal. By 1938 Unemployment was worse than when FDR took office.<ref>''New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis, ''Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, Journal of Political Economy, volume 112 (2004), pages 779–816.</ref>]]
The theory continued: Government spending on the First [[New Deal]] had been proved to be a powerful. Too many people made the mistake of supposing that this was a temporary expedient to bring back a self-sustaining economic recovery. Government spending must be not be used as merely a pump primer, but as a permanent additional or auxiliary pump. The old pump—private industry and business—could no longer produce the national income required for a full life. The government had to set up built in stabilizers to maintain prosperity. "The government must assume full responsibility for maintaining national income at a sufficiently high level to assure full utilization of our human and material resource."

This must be done, they insisted, by government spending. "The notion that public spending can he safely resorted to as a temporary emergency device must he abandoned."

Their thesis was as follows. The people do not spend all of the income they receive on consumable goods and services. Each year they save great sums. These savings are thus withdrawn from the function of spending. They must be brought back into the stream of spending some way or the system collapses. The orthodox method of accomplishing this in the past has been through private investment. People who save and who do not wish to spend their money for food or clothes or consumable goods are willing to invest it. If they invest it they put it into what are called capital goods—goods designed to produce other goods such as houses, buildings, machinery, etc. If they do this the money is used to create jobs, experts, technicians, etc., and this gets into the hands of people who will consume it. To keep the capitalist system going there must he a continuous flow of all savings into investment—into new industries and the expansion of old industries. That was considered a perfectly sound theory for many years. It was the basis of the opinion of those who appealed to President Roosevelt in 1933 to adopt a program that would encourage business expansion. Instead the president promoted anti-business rhetoric and class warfare causing uncertainty, and job creation suffered.

The New Deal economists, however, as John Flynn cited, were just learning this important principle. But the Brain Trusters concluded that a continuous flow of savings into private investment was no longer possible. This is possible only when business men wish to borrow funds for new enterprises and expansion of old ones. But this would happen again, they said. Expansion on a sufficient scale in new enterprises and expanding old ones is hopeless because the economy has reached the end of its expansion era, as described above. The only way to avoid the inevitable collapse of the system, they proposed, was for the government to step in and borrow those sums which business refused to borrow and to spend the money on all sorts of welfare, educational, social and other public enterprises.

Government spending had already plunged the nation into debt to the tune of nearly $40 billion. Continuous spending of funds borrowed by the government would mean a continuous expansion of the government debt. Government debt, they argued, is not like private debt. It does not have to be paid. The government can keep it afloat indefinitely by redeeming old bonds with new bonds. Moreover the interest on the government debt will not be a burden. "The debt is due by the people to themselves," they said. The people owe the debt. The people own the bonds which represent the debt. The government taxes the people to pay the interest on the bonds. It takes the taxes out of the pockets of the people and then pays it back to them in the form of interest. It is just taking it out of one pocket and putting it in the other.

The government therefore need not bother about the size of the debt. It can go on borrowing indefinitely.

At this same time [[Rex Tugwell]] and [[Leon Henderson]] both admitted that the New Deal spending programs failed. But they insisted it had failed because it had been on a far too modest scale. Instead of spending three billion a year, for which Roosevelt was being condemned, Tugwell said it should have spent twelve billion a year.

==Theory of the Permanent Crisis==

Making provision for war increased business profits. In 1936 Roosevelt had said, "If we face the choice of profits or peace, the nation will answer – must answer - 'We choose peace'. It is the duty of all of us to encourage such a body of public opinion in this country that the answer will be clear." <ref>''Getting Us into War'', Porter Sargent Publisher: P. Sargent, Boston, 1941. [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Getting_Us_Into_War-Porter_Sargent-1941-640pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=218&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 ''No More Millionaires''], pg. 372 pdf</ref><ref>[http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/%E2%80%9Cnever-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste%E2%80%9D/ Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste]'', Mario Rizzo, August 10, 2010.</ref>
By 1938 Roosevelt embarked on a massive defense appropriations buildup; the Administration would advance 30% to a defense contractor when placing an order. The National City Bank reported an increase of overall business profits in the year 1939 over 1938 of 63.6%, and in its December 1940 Bulletin showed for 284 companies "directly affected by war and defense program" a rise of 79.2%. The ''Wall Street Journal'' reported, "Betterment in profits was naturally more pronounced, as a rule, in those industries benefiting directly or indirectly from the European conflict." <ref>''Wall Street Journal'', May 3, 1940.</ref>

On February 28, 1934, Elliott Roosevelt, son of President Franklin Roosevelt, and [[Anthony Fokker]] each received half a million dollars for selling fifty military aircraft to the Soviet government. <ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,756770-2,00.html ''Son's Scheme''], Time magazine, Oct. 19, 1936,</ref>

Curtiss-Wright Aircraft, to enlarge its plant, received a loan of $92 million at 4%. [[I. F. Stone]] of ''[[The Nation]]'' magazine wrote,
:"Offered as a non-recourse loan . . . the government would have no claim against the Wright company if it failed to repay the loan. All the government could do in that case would be to take the factory. Since the plant would be financed entirely by the government, the government would really be taking back its own property if the Wright company for some reason wanted to drop it. ...The ''Wall Street Journal'' reported on August 2 that while the loan was for $92,000,000, 'the cost of the proposed plant and its equipment is understood to be only $37,000,000 or $38,000,000'. When asked by the ''Journal'' correspondent about 'this apparent discrepancy', Jesse Jones said, 'We don't believe it would be in the public interest to break down that total at this time'....As this is being written, the Wright contract has yet to be signed. The company is now asking for five-year amortization instead of eight. Incidentally, a vice-president of this finicky company, T. P. Wright, was assigned to the Defense Commission on June 8 to help speed up production"
The Defense Commission was the same commission that would determine and approve the terms of the loan.<ref>''Getting Us into War'', Sargent, 1941, pg. 433.</ref> ''PM'' noted "For an $18,000,000 plant to command a $92,000,000 credit from any bank, including a federal one, may make financiers blink, but that is what has been arranged". The Curtiss-Wright loan was only a little over five times the value of the plant. But Boeing Aircraft, with a plant worth $3,000,000 was awarded a loan of $32,000,000, more than ten times. And Boeing was to own it in five years.<ref>Roger Ingersoll, ''PM'', August. 9, 1940.</ref>

==Stagnationism==
:'''''Main article:'' [[Keynesian]]ism'''
1946 DJIA declined 24.6% over 37 months. There was only one crash phase (August–September 1946), and the bottom was hit within 4 months. But the market moved sideways for almost three years and tested the 1946 low area three times. The final time was in 1949, after which the market rose almost without interruption for the next 12 years (160 to 741 in 1961).

==Record keeping & construction trades==

Record keeping and even economic definitions then were not what they are today. By using the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which is practically the only measurement available in real time that scans the entire period) the Dow did not get back to the level it was at in 1929 until 1949 (160 pts on the Dow). Other economic indexes either did not exist, or were developed later, often by guess work. For example, the oft quotes unemployment rate of 25% which peaked in 1932 is only guess work based upon observations in New York City. No one knows what the real national figures were, or what it actually had been in places like Arkansas or Oklahoma. Gross output figures such as [[GDP]] did not exist either.

It was not until 1949 that [[living standards]] and peacetime [[employment]] returned to something like it was prior to 1929. The New Ordeal is evident today throughout American cities where one can see a distinct gap in the building and construction trades that took place in the decades of the 1930's and 40's. Little was built beyond quonset huts, tin structures with a semi-circular shape and a timber frame underneath. And what was built was either extremely expensive, or built by the government usually for military purposes.

==Further reading==
*[http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf ''Road to Serfdom'',] Friedrich A. Hayek, Reader's Digest Condensed Version, April 1945.

*[http://gigablast.com/get?d=78268369924 ''Other People's Money''], John T. Flynn, The New Republic, February 20, 1935.

*''The New Ordeal'', Freeman Tilden, The North American Review, v. 239, February 1935, p. 131-7.

*''Ordeal by Planning'', John Jewkes, Macmillan, New York, 1948. [http://www.questia.com/library/book/ordeal-by-planning-by-john-jewkes.jsp]

*''The New Ordeal by Planning'', John Jewkes, Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1968.

*''The Ordeal of Total War, 1939-1945'', Gordon Wright, New York, Evanston, and London, Harper & Row, 1968.

*[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792094,00.html ''The Great Ordeal''], TIME magazine, May. 14, 1945.

*''Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal'', Frank Freidel, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954.

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:New Deal]]
[[Category:Great Depression]]
[[Category:politics]]
[[Category:economics]]