Chapter 3: The Sellers of the South
This chapter discusses how states and local governments marshalled their forces for promotion purposes: key public officials, including the governor; business leaders, and influential private citizens.
Many southern states had formed planning boards during the Depression in order to tap into New Deal money, the receipt of whcih required (among other things) approval by a state planning board. Once the New Deal programs ended, so did most of the state planning boards.
In the postwar South the trend was more toward industrial development boards. Members of these boards were often gubernatorial appointees or ex officio state officials. Labor interests were little represented on these boards. Board members often contributed to public relations efforts while the day-to-day work was done by the professional staff.
Governors got involved in the process. By the mid-1950s southern governors had begun making prospecting trips into heavily industrialized areas. They would travel around and glad-hand CEOs of large companies.
This served at least two purposes. For one thing it was a visible symbol of their effort to attract jobs. Second, industrialists were often genuinely flattered that a governor would come calling.
These efforts stirred up northern governors.
Governors would also personally call on state legislatures to pass laws when needed to allow satsify requirements of a prospective industry.
Governors influence over the highway department was also used to attract businesses, by committing to build roads or bridges needed for access.
Growth-minded local businessment (utility exectutives, heads of construction companies, etc.) often cooperated with the state. They might make their own promotion and planning staffs available or contribute funds for advertising and promotion.
Cobb discusses southern states' promotional advertsing efforts.
Dvelopment advertisements focused on the South's major attraction -- a surplus of nonunion workers needing employment. A survey of promotional advertisements indicates that southern boosters put a great deal of stock in "Anglo-Saxonism." (p. 91)
In other words, no Europeans prone to union activism.
Basically, ads pitched cheap labor, low taxes, and cheap raw materials.
They also had to combat stereotypes of the South as "backward and degenerate."
So, did all this effort have any effect?
Posted by Chip on June 22, 2004 at 08:14 PM | TrackBackAlthough it may have been true, as locational theorists insisted, that labor costs, markets, raw materials, and a host of other economic, technical, or physical factors were still the basic site-selection determinants, many communities in several states could satisfy most of those criteria equally well. Because the industrialist could choose from a number of potentially acceptable locations, attractive advertising or tactful persuasive assistance could mean the difference for a southern town between a much needed new payroll and the loss of a plant ot a community that had been more effectively "sold" to the prospect. (p. 95)