The
poverty of the American South complained of by FDR had been caused by
the destruction and rapine wrought by Grant and Sherman’s armies; it
would be more accurate to state that instead of being liberated, the
black race merely acquired new masters. Those black people were already
Christianized and educated in practical pursuits, but Northern
emissaries would help them become consumers of Northern-made goods.
Bernhard Thuersam
Shoeless Southerners and a Vast New Market for Northern Goods
“Some
years ago Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins raised the temperature of
many Southerners to fever height by suggesting that if the people of
that section could be persuaded to wear shoes a veritable “social
revolution” would result. The mass-production system of the United
States, the secretary told a welfare council in May, 1933, depends upon
purchasing power, the proper development of which would lead to
prosperity beyond anything we “have ever dared to dream of.”
If
the wages of the millworkers of the South could be raised to such a
level that they could afford shoes, a great demand for footwear would
result. Indeed, said the secretary, when it is realized that “the whole
South is an untapped market for shoes” it becomes clear that great
“social benefits” and “social good” would inevitably come from the
development of our “mass-production system” to meet this latent
consuming power.
Southern
editors and speakers indignantly denied the canard that Southerners
bought no shoes and retorted that such comments were only what might
have been expected from a woman, especially one who knew nothing about
the South.
It
was even suggested that should all the inhabitants of the South
suddenly wake to wearing shoes the resultant wear and tear on streets,
sidewalks, and hotel carpets might cause grave financial loss to the
area.
That
was in 1933 . . . [and it was maintained that] Markets can only exist
where there is demand; demand comes close upon the heels of knowledge.
Knowledge, or education in the ways of the West, has therefore been
considered essential if “backward” peoples are to be induced to purchase
western goods. [Henry M.] Stanley, the African explorer, in an address
before the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, published in 1884 [asserted]
that if Christian missionaries should clothe naked Negroes of the
Congo, even in one dress for use on the Sabbath, “320,000,000 yards of
Manchester cotton cloth” would be required . . . Should they become
sufficiently educated in the European moral code to feel the necessity
for a change of clothing every day, cloth to the value of [26 million
pounds] a year would be necessary.
When
the natives have been educated they would abandon their idleness and
sloth, [John Williams, missionary to Tahiti said in 1817], and become
industrious workers. Then, he asserted, they will apply to our
merchants for goods . . . “
[When
FDR called for a New Deal in the South] He certainly must have been
aware of the implications of the thesis that the poorly housed,
undernourished, and ill-clad Southerner must be given greatly increased
purchasing power to enable him to better his economic condition, thus
strengthening the demand for manufacture products and consequently
improving the economy of the nation as a whole.
It
is also certain that the concern which Secretary Perkins felt for the
shoeless Southerner was not without precedent. When the armies of Grant
and Sherman liberated the Southern Negro, the economic implications
were not lost on the people of the victorious section. Following in the
wake of the Union armies a host of teachers and missionaries flocked to
the South, determined to Christianize and educate the freed Negro . . .
with a decidedly abolitionist tinge, to be sure.
[These]
people, their robes of self-righteousness wrapped firmly around them . .
. carried with them the New England school, complete with curriculum,
texts and method, but they also took with them the attitudes and beliefs
of the social reformer and, specifically, the militant abolitionist.
Politically, the teachers and missionaries became the tools of the
[Republican] Radicals in their program of reconstruction . . .
Sensing
in the alphabet and the book the key to the white man’s position of
dominance, the open-sesame which would unlock the magic door of equality
and wealth, the Negro, like the Polynesian, flocked to the church and
the school. As one observer wrote, the “spelling book and primer”
seemed to them Alladin’s [sic] lamp, which will command over all the
riches and glory of the world. In brief, they believed that education
was “the white man’s fetich,” which would guarantee wealth, power, and
social position.
Some
of the teachers [and missionaries] understood the inevitable result of
the extension of freedom, Christianity, and education to the Negro – the
development of a vast new market for northern goods, which would result
in great profits to northern mills.”
(Northern
Interest in the Shoeless Southerner, Henry L. Swint; Journal of
Southern History, Volume XVI, Number 4, November 1950, pp. 457-462)
