The Second Wave: Southern Industrialization from the 1940s to the 1970s (review)

144REVIEWS The Second Wave: Southern Industrialization from the 1940s to the 1970s. Philip Scranton, editor. University of Georgia Press, Athens, 2001. 310 pp. Merrill L. Johnson What comes to mind when thinking of southern industrialization is a landscape of textile factories, sawmills, and the occasional food-processing establishment. While this image correctly defines much of the early 20th century South, it is deficient in its portrayal of the southern industrial setting after World War II. By the 1960s, southern factories produced an array of goods—from cars and airplanes, to electrical equipment—that suggested a new era (i.e., a "Second Wave") in the evolution of the industrial South. The book edited by Philip Scranton offers a series of detailed snapshots ofthe industrial setting after World War II, and examines this setting not only in terms of new industrial players but in the dismantling of old structures . This book is a published outcome of the 1998 conference on southern industrialization sponsored by the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for the Study of Southern Industrialization. The contributors come from a variety of disciplines , including geography, and rely mainly on case-study and narrative formats in their presentations. In his opening remarks, Professor Scranton identified several overarching themes that describe "Second-Wave" processes. These themes include: spatially concentrated investments, with much of the rural South bypassed; the problem of worker skills and training; limited understanding of and appreciation for the environmental impacts of new industries; cultural and racial tensions that resulted from confrontations between the "New South" and the "Old South"; the challenges associated with importing investments rather than generating local investments; and the problems associated with the creation of industrial linkage structures. The first three chapters can be treated collectively and examine the rise of aircraft manufacturing in Marietta, Georgia. In Chapter 1, Thomas Scott (history) wrote a careful reconstruction of events that demonstrated the importance of local boosters and political connections in acquiring, first, the Bell Aircraft Corporation, which assembled bomber aircraft during World War II; and later, the Lockheed Corporation, which focused on transport aircraft. The emphasis in Chapter 2 (by Richard Combes, history) is on the role of federal investment and management strategies—e.g., the government-owned/contractor-operated and cost-plus policies —that made corporate participation in such assembly activities attractive. The reader will note, in addition, that a considerable amount of the chronological Dr. Johnson is Professor of Geography and Associate Dean ofthe College of Liberal Arts at the University ofNew Orleans, LA 40148. E-mail: mljohnso@ uno.edu. REVIEWS145 material described in Chapter 1 is revisited here. In the third chapter, Karen Ferguson (history) wrote an exquisite essay on the changing roles of African Americans in the face of industrial change. Her descriptions of the various African American strategies for securing "citizenship" in the southern economy were especially compelling . The next several chapters stand independently and examine discrete aspects of the industrial change process. In Chapter 4, Randall Patton (history) described how embellishments on Mrs. Whitener's bedspread led to the eventual creation of the tufted-textile industry in north Georgia—a process of geographical clustering from an initial handicraft industry that was unique to the South. In Chapter 5, Toby Moore (geography) described in great detail how and why mill villages were divested by textile companies; of particular interest is his portrayal of the changing employment relations and socioeconomic conditions in which this divestiture occurred. Chapter 6 represents a slight deviation from the types of issues already examined with geographer Craig Colten's analysis of the environmental impacts of the Texas petroleum industry. He described how the emphasis of state environmental policies evolved from an exclusive focus on recreation and conservation to a more comprehensive embrace of public-health concerns, yet how these policies often were inconsistently applied in the face ofpowerful oil interests. Another natural resource, forests, is examined in Chapter 7 by William Boyd (energy analysis and law). He traced the evolution of timber production from the "mining" activity of the small land-holder, to the "cropping" activity of the major corporation, and how the modern industry was able to consolidate its economic position in the South through rationalization of...