Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in South Carolina

6. The Lord, Mr. Roosevelt, and Bright Leaf Redemption, 1933–1935

Agriculture cannot survive in a capitalist society as a philanthropic enterprise. henry a. wallace 6The Lord, Mr. Roosevelt, and Bright Leaf Redemption, 1933–1935 Seldom has an event drawn so bold a line across the page of history as did the New Deal in the chronicle of southern agriculture . The benevolent paternalism that came to characterize government’s attitude toward farming began in the first hundred days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. The heart of the New Deal’s farm program was the commitment to raise farmers’ incomes by bringing supply in line with demand . The idea was not new. In the 1920s, southern and midwestern congressmen had twice pushed agricultural reform bills through Congress only to see them vetoed by President Coolidge. During the Hoover administration , the ill-fated Federal Farm Board was a compromise plan that failed largely because it attempted to support prices without regulating 139 production. In the election of 1932, however, Americans expressed their readiness for sweeping economic and social reform and granted the new administration a clear mandate for change.1 Change came at a good time. After the well-intentioned calamity of the Federal Farm Board, farmers throughout the United States sank deeper into depression. But none, perhaps, sank lower than tobacco growers in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. The Farm Board had been touted as the farmers’ last, best hope. When it collapsed, dragging with it the Bright Belt’s only cooperative, many farmers despaired of recovery. In fact, some viewed their reduced circumstances with grim fatalism as though their misery was somehow ordained by Providence. A Baptist preacher in Horry County voiced the silent supplications of many hearts when he offered a prayer for the 1933 crop season: ‘‘Lord,’’ he said, ‘‘the night has been long. Send the light.’’2 The year 1933 was a watershed in the Pee Dee and much of the South. While the region reached a point of utter despair, reforms began that restored equity to the tobacco business and returned prosperity to the Pee Dee. The night was waning. The fundamental problem in the tobacco country was the golden leaf ’s dramatic loss of purchasing power. In 1932, the Department of Agriculture estimated that the purchasing power of a pound of fluecured tobacco had fallen to about half what it was in the 1920s.3 Many Pee Dee tobacco farmers—landowners and tenants alike—had little to spare in the best of times, and the relentless erosion of buying power had long since exhausted their reserves. There was general agreement on the causes of the problem. It was well known that the decline of leaf prices resulted from overproduction and the inherent prejudice of the marketing system. Moreover, given the enormous profits of the tobacco companies, it was obvious that growers were not receiving a fair share of the ultimate value of their produce. Everyone from the secretary of agriculture to high school ‘‘ag’’ teachers agreed that production must be controlled and manufacturers persuaded to pay higher prices. The question was how. Meanwhile, not all Pee Dee tobacco growers were suffering in silence. From Galivants Ferry came an eloquent appeal for ‘‘mothers go[ing] from the curing barns late at night, their small children sleepy and pitiful,’’ and 140 : long green for ‘‘strong men . . . [who] faint from overheat and [are] dragged from the field.’’ The writer compared the meager returns of this brutal work routine to the wages of R. J. Reynolds factory workers and asked if the government might ‘‘do something for his [Reynolds’s] slaves all over Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia who toil in the hot sun for him and produce the product on which the very life of his industry depends.’’4 In the spring of 1933, Congress acted to restore equity to agriculture. But unlike the Baptist preacher, the lawmakers did not call upon heaven. They believed the growers ’ loss of equity had more worldly origins. Government’s response to the farm crisis was the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 12 May 1933. The act articulated an ambitious policy intended to correct inequities in American agriculture. In the act’s opening paragraph , the Depression was blamed in part on the ‘‘severe and increasing disparity between the prices of agricultural and other commodities’’ that had undermined the living standard of rural America. It promised to restore the purchasing power of farm products by balancing production with consumption...