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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 21. Southern Conservatism and Liberalism - 4. The Changing South
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Chapter 2i. Southern Conservatism and Liberalism 465
state governments, and from state governments to federal governments
—
is helping to give the South a new kind of administration. Even more
in the South than in the rest of the country the New Deal takes on the
form of a popular movement. Partly under the stimulation of the New
Deal, the people of the South are coming to organize themselves for a wide
variety of purposes: in county planning and other agricultural groups, in
4-H clubs, in credit associations and cooperatives, in religious reform
groups, discussion forums, fact-finding committees, parent-teacher associa-
tions, interracial commissions, professional organizations and civic better-
ment leagues. Some of these organizations are much older than the New
Deal, but the whole trend has certainly gained momentum during recent
years. The relation to the political New Deal of these variegated civic
activities is apparent. The people behind it are the same as those working for
the New Deal. Often those organizations are initiated and financed by the
N.Y.A., the W.P.A., and the F.S.A. or some of the other government
agencies.
Small numbers of Southerners, even in the lower classes, are thus gradu-
ally becoming accustomed to meeting together for orderly discussion of
their problems. We have already observed the lack, in the South even more
than in the North, of self-generating peoples’ movements. The activity
which we are now considering is certainly not a spontaneous outflow from
the intelligent demands of problem-conscious masses. It is spoon-fed from
above. But we must be careful not to under-estimate its potentialities. The
building up of a social democracy does not, perhaps, follow exactly the
same pattern everywhere. It may be that as small groups from the masses
are in this way reached by modern political thought, they will, in their
turn, act as catalysts bringing political intelligence and organizational
solidarity to the vast dormant masses of white and black people in the
South.
The New Deal—^particularly in the South—does not rate highly when
judged by norms of administrative efficiency. There has been lack of
careful planning, coordination, and persistency, and there has also been
waste of personnel and money. But the New Deal has spirit—particularly
in the South. And it has done what many of the more efficient national wel-
fare policies in other countries have rather neglected: it has strongly
emphasized the education of the people. Such agencies as, for instance, the
Farm Security Administration, have perhaps their most outstanding
accomplishment in the education of the masses for a fuller and more
efficient life. By actually changing the people, and not only assisting them
economically, the New Deal becomes the more potent as a dynamic factor
undermining the status quo in the South.
The docility of the people on the plantations and in the textile mills
—
so different from the common stereotype of the independent, upright
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