The Problem South: Region, Empire, and the New Liberal State, 1880?1930

1. The “Southern Problem” and Readjustment

18 I chapter one The “Southern Problem” and Readjustment I pause here only to protest against that crudity of impatience with which the world has so largely observed the development of Southern life. Expecting within the brief period of a generation the entire re-creation of our industrial fortunes and of our political institutions, men have waited to see the whole character of a civilization doffed like an outer garment ; the fabric of a new order—involving the deepest issues of memory, of passion, of pride, of racial and social habit—instantly re-created upon a strange loom. —edgar gardner murphy Facing back over Southern history is not cheering. Facing forward is trying to the stoutest-hearted optimism. The fallacy in most of our debating is, in fact, the fallacy of willful optimism. We have constantly assumed that there was a solution of each problem as it presented itself, a clearly right thing to do, which could also be done. —william garrott brown n the first decade of the twentieth century President Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “The problem of any one part of our great common country should be held to be the problem of all our country.”1 Roosevelt’s statement echoed what many Americans had already come to believe, that the southern United States was a problem of great magnitude, and one the nation would do well to resolve. This was not the first time that Americans had set the South apart at odds with the rest of the nation. As early as the eighteenth century , northerners and southerners drew attention to the inherent differences between North and South. During the antebellum period, abolitionists, free “Southern Problem” and Readjustment • 19 labor Republicans, and travelers to the South often portrayed the region in a negative light, emphasizing its backwardness, licentiousness, and extreme poverty . However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the problem of the South elicited far greater attention than it ever had before, with the possible exception of Reconstruction. Various social scientists and academics, regional and national associations, northern philanthropies, and federal agencies identified an array of problems and articulated a host of solutions. The South was transformed into a mission field and an immense laboratory for social and cultural change. Efforts on the part of reformers to draw attention to the South’s shortcomings and make them known to the rest of the world generated a discourse about the Problem South that played counterpoint to national progressive ideals. Most Americans understood the nature of the “southern problem”; the phrase conjured up an image of a backward, poverty-stricken region that stood in contrast to the rest of the nation. This discourse on the problem of the South inspired real people and institutions to engage in reform of politics, the economy, and social relations. The development of a set of cultural representations and the inauguration of reform continued to reinforce one another symbiotically . The Problem South was simultaneously a discourse and a material reality acted upon by identifiable groups of people. Although the South itself varied tremendously in terms of topography, racial demography, social relations , labor arrangements, and economic development, people came to view the region as a timeless entity marred by region-wide problems. In his discussion on the problem of the South, Larry J. Griffin argues that “in no other case . . . were social problems so intimately related, even equated, in the public mind to a particular region for so sustained a period of time that the region itself—rather than the objective conditions—became commonly understood as the ‘real’ problem.”2 As the introduction to this book notes, the ascendancy of this vision of southern regionalism cannot be divorced from the profound transformations in American society that contributed to a new sense of nationalism. Growing urbanization, the rise of big business, the expansion of the railroad system, new patterns of immigration, revolutionary technological achievements, and the spread of American empire encouraged Americans to reassess the concepts of nation and Americanism. The identification of an array of regional problems peculiar to the South—high rates of illiteracy, diseased bodies, 20 • chapter one white degeneration, a backward rural economy, and racial tensions—complicated the nationalist project since these southern idiosyncrasies came to be viewed as immutable, essential natural differences. Reformers and government experts found themselves facing seemingly irreconcilable circumstances. Belief in the timeless, distinctive quality of the South’s problems ran contrary to the objective...