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Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880
Winner of the Herbert Feis Award of the American Historical Association, 1985. Winner of the Charles S. Sydnor Award of the Southern Historical Association, 1985. Winner of the 1990 Robert Athearn Award of the Western History Association and an Honorable Mention for the 1990 James S. Donnelly, Sr., Prize in History and the Social Sciences from the American Conference for Irish Studies.
- GenresHistory
368 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 2, 2019
This book has been around a while but doesn't have any reviews on Goodreads so I decided it needed one. It's by veteran and respected Southern historian Pete Daniel, and it's a solid effort to explain some of the changes to the South in the 20th century.
Is there a landmark date or event that truly divides the Old South from the New? Many writers in Southern history see the Civil War and Reconstruction as this seminal event in Southern history but Pete Daniel has a different view. At the heart of his assertion is a consideration of what events actually transformed Southern society into something new. Previous historians such as Woodward claimed that a new elite arose during Reconstruction, and this helped mark the transformation from Old South to New South, but several other historians have rebuffed Woodward, demonstrating that the new elites were actually little different from the old. Pete Daniel, in Breaking the Land, makes the claim that it was mechanical innovations in Southern agriculture, along with the New Deal programs of the 1930s that encouraged the implementation of those innovations, which truly marked a revolutionary break in Southern society and ways of life.
Developments in the South in the years immediately following the Civil War featured much continuity from the antebellum era, and that the South remained different from the North in critical ways. By the 1930s, however, the breakdown of the old plantation system is one of the critical pillars of Southern society undergoing change. There was a migration of farmers off the land and headed for urban areas in the North and South. Over 13 million of them between 1935 and 1970, so while the South lost civilian population between 1940 and 1943, most metropolitan areas gained.
Daniel locates the causes of this migration in several related events. One was the increased mechanization of farming. This had been the case from early on in the rice industry. In the mid-1920s, rice farmers owned an average of $2,281 worth of agricultural machinery per farm, compared to the $137 average of their brethren in cotton farming. (59) Tobacco growers and cotton farmers followed this same trend towards mechanization later, between the 1930s and 1950s in the case of cotton and during the 1950s for tobacco. Daniel also describes in detail how this mechanization led to fewer, but larger, farms. Both sharecroppers and tenant farmers fell victim to this centralizing trend of mechanization in the South’s traditional staple crop agricultural sectors as landlords added to their stocks of agricultural machinery. These tenants and sharecroppers, in turn, migrated out of rural areas in the South.
Legislation was part of this process as well. Daniel notes how New Deal agencies and the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged this transformation toward greater efficiency and productivity, regardless of the social costs. “As landowners received cash for their cooperation in government programs, they bought machinery and dismissed more croppers.” (91) For a time, some New Deal elements attempted to reform the existing rural society of mule farming and furnishing agents, but the USDA’s dream of progress quickly swept these elements away. Paul Appleby, chief assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, stated that the Agricultural Adjustment Administration was “militantly for the large farmers and was much less interested in the lower economic level farmers and very little interested in farm tenants and farm laborers and so on.” (105) Not even World War II could slow down this march towards rational efficiency; the USDA supported food crops during the war but continued to support cotton as well.
The story of Southern industry mirrors these efforts at agricultural modernization. Typically, industrial promoters looked to Northern industry to modernize Southern society, rather than native Southern capital, wooing them with the South’s propensity to give state government aid to industrialists, oppose organized labor, try to keep taxes low, and create policies favoring land development. The Second World War intensified this trend toward Southern industrial growth. Industries making war materials, such as synthetic rubber and aluminum, benefited enormously, as did cities manufacturing actual implements of war, especially naval vessels. Unfortunately, several problems emerged almost immediately, including massive urban overcrowding and the failure to build up industries outside of those producing war materials.
The old Southern question of labor, especially the status of black labor, was an important issue during this process of industrialization. Though the increasing mechanization in agriculture resulted in the exile of many farmers from the land, Southern politicians and white workers, still caught up in hateful white supremacist ideology, wanted to be sure that whites benefited most from industrialization while blacks continued to labor in rural areas. Even after Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, establishing the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, Southern elites and workers made every effort to evade the order, holding down African Americans to prevent them from achieving economic independence. Various southerners described the FEPC as “Roosevelt racial experts,” “halo-wearing missionaries of New Deal socialism,” and “dat committee fer de purtechshun uv Rastus & Sambo.” While black Americans did not meekly submit to these new efforts at discrimination against them, by the 1940s whites had a new ideological weapon to deploy against equality-minded opponents, as they added the accusation of communism to the traditional tactics of segregation and rumors of black takeovers and insurrection.
Due to this decision and others, by the early 1940s many Southern politicians were in rebellion against the New Deal, appealing to white solidarity at home and states rights in Congress as they strove to uphold the legality of the white primary and the poll tax. It was almost a repeat of what had defeated the Populists half a century before. However, the politicians’ efforts at conservative reaction faced greater obstacles now than they had in the Populist era. Daniel relates how urbanization, combined with the spread of automobiles and radio, had opened a new world for many in the South, and the great majority of individuals continued to support the New Deal.
The final aspect of the book I want to mention here is that Daniel believes the mechanization of agriculture in the South was harmful to the environment, thus the title of the book. In agriculture, this era marked the first widespread adaptation from human and animal power to machine power. This change, and the resulting drop in tenancy and sharecropping, resulted in a transformation of southern agriculture perhaps equaled only by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The unlocking of energy through burning fossil fuels in agricultural machinery, combined with extensive application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, also made the South a heavy contributor to environmental pollution. The larger the farms became, the greater the tendency toward mechanization and efficiency, which meant more dependence on chemical fertilizers.
In all, this is a quality book despite its age, and one worth reading for those interested in Southern history, especially the South’s relationship to agriculture.
Is there a landmark date or event that truly divides the Old South from the New? Many writers in Southern history see the Civil War and Reconstruction as this seminal event in Southern history but Pete Daniel has a different view. At the heart of his assertion is a consideration of what events actually transformed Southern society into something new. Previous historians such as Woodward claimed that a new elite arose during Reconstruction, and this helped mark the transformation from Old South to New South, but several other historians have rebuffed Woodward, demonstrating that the new elites were actually little different from the old. Pete Daniel, in Breaking the Land, makes the claim that it was mechanical innovations in Southern agriculture, along with the New Deal programs of the 1930s that encouraged the implementation of those innovations, which truly marked a revolutionary break in Southern society and ways of life.
Developments in the South in the years immediately following the Civil War featured much continuity from the antebellum era, and that the South remained different from the North in critical ways. By the 1930s, however, the breakdown of the old plantation system is one of the critical pillars of Southern society undergoing change. There was a migration of farmers off the land and headed for urban areas in the North and South. Over 13 million of them between 1935 and 1970, so while the South lost civilian population between 1940 and 1943, most metropolitan areas gained.
Daniel locates the causes of this migration in several related events. One was the increased mechanization of farming. This had been the case from early on in the rice industry. In the mid-1920s, rice farmers owned an average of $2,281 worth of agricultural machinery per farm, compared to the $137 average of their brethren in cotton farming. (59) Tobacco growers and cotton farmers followed this same trend towards mechanization later, between the 1930s and 1950s in the case of cotton and during the 1950s for tobacco. Daniel also describes in detail how this mechanization led to fewer, but larger, farms. Both sharecroppers and tenant farmers fell victim to this centralizing trend of mechanization in the South’s traditional staple crop agricultural sectors as landlords added to their stocks of agricultural machinery. These tenants and sharecroppers, in turn, migrated out of rural areas in the South.
Legislation was part of this process as well. Daniel notes how New Deal agencies and the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged this transformation toward greater efficiency and productivity, regardless of the social costs. “As landowners received cash for their cooperation in government programs, they bought machinery and dismissed more croppers.” (91) For a time, some New Deal elements attempted to reform the existing rural society of mule farming and furnishing agents, but the USDA’s dream of progress quickly swept these elements away. Paul Appleby, chief assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, stated that the Agricultural Adjustment Administration was “militantly for the large farmers and was much less interested in the lower economic level farmers and very little interested in farm tenants and farm laborers and so on.” (105) Not even World War II could slow down this march towards rational efficiency; the USDA supported food crops during the war but continued to support cotton as well.
The story of Southern industry mirrors these efforts at agricultural modernization. Typically, industrial promoters looked to Northern industry to modernize Southern society, rather than native Southern capital, wooing them with the South’s propensity to give state government aid to industrialists, oppose organized labor, try to keep taxes low, and create policies favoring land development. The Second World War intensified this trend toward Southern industrial growth. Industries making war materials, such as synthetic rubber and aluminum, benefited enormously, as did cities manufacturing actual implements of war, especially naval vessels. Unfortunately, several problems emerged almost immediately, including massive urban overcrowding and the failure to build up industries outside of those producing war materials.
The old Southern question of labor, especially the status of black labor, was an important issue during this process of industrialization. Though the increasing mechanization in agriculture resulted in the exile of many farmers from the land, Southern politicians and white workers, still caught up in hateful white supremacist ideology, wanted to be sure that whites benefited most from industrialization while blacks continued to labor in rural areas. Even after Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, establishing the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, Southern elites and workers made every effort to evade the order, holding down African Americans to prevent them from achieving economic independence. Various southerners described the FEPC as “Roosevelt racial experts,” “halo-wearing missionaries of New Deal socialism,” and “dat committee fer de purtechshun uv Rastus & Sambo.” While black Americans did not meekly submit to these new efforts at discrimination against them, by the 1940s whites had a new ideological weapon to deploy against equality-minded opponents, as they added the accusation of communism to the traditional tactics of segregation and rumors of black takeovers and insurrection.
Due to this decision and others, by the early 1940s many Southern politicians were in rebellion against the New Deal, appealing to white solidarity at home and states rights in Congress as they strove to uphold the legality of the white primary and the poll tax. It was almost a repeat of what had defeated the Populists half a century before. However, the politicians’ efforts at conservative reaction faced greater obstacles now than they had in the Populist era. Daniel relates how urbanization, combined with the spread of automobiles and radio, had opened a new world for many in the South, and the great majority of individuals continued to support the New Deal.
The final aspect of the book I want to mention here is that Daniel believes the mechanization of agriculture in the South was harmful to the environment, thus the title of the book. In agriculture, this era marked the first widespread adaptation from human and animal power to machine power. This change, and the resulting drop in tenancy and sharecropping, resulted in a transformation of southern agriculture perhaps equaled only by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The unlocking of energy through burning fossil fuels in agricultural machinery, combined with extensive application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, also made the South a heavy contributor to environmental pollution. The larger the farms became, the greater the tendency toward mechanization and efficiency, which meant more dependence on chemical fertilizers.
In all, this is a quality book despite its age, and one worth reading for those interested in Southern history, especially the South’s relationship to agriculture.
April 7, 2025
Rest in peace to the tenant and small farmer [praying hands emoji] [single tear frowny face emoji]
(Gutted for class)
(Gutted for class)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews