The Southeast, The Land of Changes

The southeastern region is changing more rapidly than any other part of the United States – not because the land is new, but because the area’s old, exhausted land is being given new life.

The problem of the Southeast area bet illustrated by a story that goes back a decade before the turn of the century. The tale describes the funeral of a poor man. “They cut through solid marble to make his grave and yet the little marble tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the hearth of a pine forest, and yet his pine coffin came from Ohio. The South didn’t supply anything for that funeral except the body and the hole in the ground”.

A modern Southerner commented on this story: “We have added too little human skill to our raw materials”.

As both this comment and the fable both suggest, geography itself has been kind to the Southeast. The region is blessed with plentiful rainfall and mild climate. On most of its farmlands, crops can be grown without frost at least six moths of the year. A transportation artery, the Mississippi River and its southern branches, runs through the heart of the area, and other rivers are found near its coast. Crops grow easily in its soil, which is brown on the coastal plain, red on the low hillsides, and black in east Texas. The mountains contribute coal, waterpower, and rich valleys. Being abundant with subtropical fruits characterizes much of the Florida peninsula. And to have the States of Louisiana and Texas is an advantage for the Southeast because there lie some of the nation’s largest oil fields. Fisheries, forest, and minerals are other things that make the region naturally rich.

It is perhaps due to this favorable nature of the land the people feel they do not have to build any industries to help their economy.

However since the end of World War II, there has been a great upturn in the region’s economic fortunes. What people see there after many years’ absence is astonishing improvements: new roads, bridges and factories: new schools, hospitals and community centers.

Today, the Southeast is experiencing a surge of industrial development, although average income and standard of living remain lower than any other region of the nation. However, economist predict that in the next decade the standard of living will rise substantially with the increase in population, jobs and industry attracted by the relatively lower cost of land, energy and labor. Industries ranging from solar research to chemical technology are moving to the Southeast for example, creating blue and white-collar jobs, gas stations, and TV-repair shops. Only four percent of southern workers remain employed by agriculture. Yet the South’s extensive woodlands, rich farmlands and agrarian heritage give Southerners a sense of tradition, history and regional identification that remains resistance to the encroaching values of modern industrial society.

(From Earl N. Mittleman’s An Outline of American Geography)