Regional Manufacturing Structure in the Southeastern United States, 1973

REGIONAL MANUFACTURING STRUCTURE IN THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES, 1973 James O. Wheeler" There have been a number of studies in recent years dealing with the location of manufacturing activities in the southeastern United States, a region that has been growing at a rate above the national average for the past several decades. (1) The majority of these studies have focused on the reasons for firms locating in the South or on the role of a particular locational factor, such as wage rates or water. (2) Although no definitive statement exists on the precise role or relative importance of various locational factors responsible for the growth of Southern industry , the major factors have been identified: national markets, regional markets, resource availability, labor advantages (wage rate and labor surplus), industrial linkages, and climatic suitability. However, analysis of these locational factors has only obliquely shed light on the regional structure of manufacturing in the South. Generalizations about the structure of Southern manufacturing include its lack of a diversified industrial base and the dominance of low wage, low value-added, low capital investment, and slow growth industries . (3) Singled out for special analysis has been the rural locational preference of Southern manufacturers, which varies, according to research by Lonsdale and Browning, from a high of 61 percent rural firms in South Carolina to a low of 24 percent in Tennessee. (4) Their survey of nearly 2,000 manufacturing firms in 1969 established the Southeast as distinct from most of the rest of the country in having a high proportion of rural industry. Other research has examined the South in the context of location theory and regional development theory. (5) This work has drawn upon two somewhat different theoretical frameworks, the first viewing industrial growth and locational change largely as an internal process within a region, while the second attributes industrialization to an export base through interregional (or international) trade theory. (6) Both purport to explain the magnitude and regional structure of manufacturing. The first approach, stemming largely from Hoover and from Perroux, emphasizes the sequence or stages of development. (7) The theories relate structural change in the region to technological progress and explicitly address the question of the location of industry within the region. Hoover's work, following from classical locational theory conceived at *Dr. Wheeler is professor of geography at the University of Georgia. This paper was accepted for publication in June 1974. 68Southeastern Geographer a macroscale, incorporated technological change; many spin-offs and derivatives have been developed. (8) Perroux has initiated a large body of research on the growth pole concept within a region, and Darwent has examined the concept from an explicitly geographical point of view. (9) The second analytic framework, the external stimulus to regional growth, has been examined by a number of writers, including North, but it has been little applied in the context of the South. (10) Needless to say, the interregional trade theory and the intraregional, macro locational theory share several points in common. PURPOSE AND DATA. The purpose of this research is to describe the regional structure of manufacturing in 12 Southeastern states and their major metropolitan areas, with focus upon the largest firms which employ the majority of the labor force, contribute the greatest to the total valueadded by manufacturing, and consequently exert the greatest impact on the regional economy. What are the broad industrial distributions within the Southeast, how does the industrial mix vary from place to place, and what is the role of metropolitan areas in the South's manufacturing characteristics and composition? After answering these questions, the regional structure of Southern manufacturing is discussed in the context of interregional trade theory and the evolutionary concepts of macro location theory. The primary methodology employed is factor analysis. Manufacturing firms analyzed in this study are those listed as having over one half million dollars in assets in January, 1973. (11) Although these constitute only about 3,500 plants in the 12 Southeastern states, these plants represent the dominant manufacturing base of the region and reveal the principal regional structure of manufacturing. It can be argued that emphasis on the rather large number of small firms has led in the past to a misleading picture...