A Liberal
Dose
May 12, 2022
Troy D.
Smith
“The
Roots of Upper Cumberland Poverty”
In the last two columns we have determined that 1) there is
a long history of drug-and/or-alcohol-related crime in the Upper Cumberland
compared to the rest of the country, and 2) the Upper Cumberland, and Appalachia in
general, are much poorer than much of the rest of the country, and has been for
a long time. I suggested that the drug-and-alcohol problems of the Upper
Cumberland have, as their root cause, the economic stress of the region -this
both creates a demand, from people whose life prospects have been limited by
their economic circumstances and who wish to escape that reality, and creates
opportunity for some to expand their economic horizons by providing for that
demand, a situation which seems to promise a quicker return than working at a
minimum wage job (if you can find one). This is neither an excuse nor a
justification for crime, but is at least a partial explanation of it.
Before the Civil War, Appalachia was not significantly
poorer than any other rural part of the country -most people were
subsistence farmers and there were varied economic interests. This started to
change in the 1870s, when railroads extended into the region, closely followed
by extractive industries like coal and timber. Before then, most of the coal in
America was mined in NORTHERN Appalachia, in Pennsylvania and Ohio. There was
plenty of coal in the Southern mountains, but with no railroads to haul it out
it was not economically or logistically feasible to remove it. Before the Civil
War, while the many northern railroads were closely linked like latticework,
southern railroads existed primarily to transport cotton from plantations to
the harbors of coastal cities to ship overseas. Areas that produced little to
no cotton -mountainous areas -were ignored. This changed in the 1870s -in part
because there was renewed demand for coal (the 1870s were the beginning of the
Second Industrial Revolution), and in part because there was a move toward more
industrialization in “The New South.” A frequent marker of this expansionist drive
was local businessmen creating partnerships with northern investors. For
example, former Confederate general George Dibrell of Sparta was largely
responsible for bringing both the railroad and coal mining to White County, with more and more northern investors as time went on. The
coal and timber companies of Appalachia were frequently owned, or at least
co-owned, by people in other parts of the country.
At the same time, another form of economic opportunity was
coming into the region: tobacco. Before the Civil War, most tobacco was “dark
tobacco” grown in Virginia and Maryland. In the late 1800s, though, a new
tobacco strain was developed -burley -which can thrive in the mountains. By the
early 1900s, the vast majority of this popular new strain was coming from
Kentucky and Tennessee. This strain -which was virtually guaranteed to produce
a profit -enabled some Appalachian subsistence farmers to supplement their
income. They had mostly been self-sufficient, but not prosperous -as someone
once said, not poor but also not used to a lot of money.
Coal and lumber companies, however, were competing with
tobacco for the mountain land -or at least the timber and mineral rights to it.
They were also looking for a work force, which was initially hard to find
because most people worked their own small farms and were content to do so (and
reluctant to leave or sell those farms). In the early years of the coal
industry in the Upper Cumberland, countless immigrants were imported to the
mountains to work them, many from either Scotland, Ireland, or Wales or Bohemia
(the modern-day Czech Republic). Land, however, could not be imported- it had
to be bought. The Panic of 1893 caused a four-year depression in which many
farms failed -many were bought by coal or timber companies, and the now-unemployed
farmers became the cheap, desperate workforce the companies had been waiting
for.
Next week I’ll discuss how this all led to our current
situation.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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