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The New Deal PlowsThrough North Carolina

As you read, look for:• New Deal programs and their effect on North Carolina• the General Strike of 1934• vocabulary terms New Deal, Blue Ridge Parkway,

tobacco allotment, parity, tobacco price support,minimum wage, collective bargaining, SocialSecurity Act

The New Deal PlowsThrough North Carolina

This section will help you meet thefollowing objective:

8.6.01 Identify the causes andeffects of the Great Depression andanalyze the impact of New Dealpolicies on Depression Era life inNorth Carolina.

It was one of the most startlingmoments in North Carolina his-tory. In the summer of 1933, farmagents in every county went tofarms and plowed up crops in thefields. A third of the cotton, to-bacco, and peanuts planted thatspring were ruined. For an agrar-ian people who lived close to theland, to ruin a crop deliberatelywas unheard of. Yet, North Caro-linians were ready for the “newdeal” promised them by theirnation’s leaders. They would bestartled more than once.

When Franklin D. Rooseveltbecame president in 1933, the federal government immediately beganto fight the effects of the Great Depression. First, Roosevelt closed all thebanks temporarily and sent trusted bookkeepers to check the accounts.If a bank was solvent (sound), then it could reopen, and its accountholders could know their money was safe. Second, Roosevelt used fed-eral money to spread more relief for people in every state. All typesof people were given temporary work to provide them with some money.Third, Roosevelt and the Congress helped the national economy recoverby regulating how much factories and farms could operate and how muchthey could make. All of these New Deal measures had one thing in

Above: As Franklin D. Rooseveltcampaigned in 1932, he spread afeeling of optimism that timeswould get better. Rooseveltcampaigned in Charlotte duringhis reelection bid in 1936.

Section 3: The New Deal Plows Through North Carolina 409

Program/Legislation Date Purpose

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) 1933 Reduced production of crops, toraise farm prices. Declaredunconstitutional in 1936.

National Recovery Administration (NRA) 1933 Reduced destructive competitionand helped workers by settingminimum wages and maximumweekly hours. Declaredunconstitutional in 1935.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 1933 Built dams on the Tennessee Riverto control flooding and generateelectricity.

Public Works Administration (PWA) 1933 Put people to work buildingroads, buildings, and other publicworks projects.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) 1933 Insured individual savingsaccounts so that people did notlose their money if banks failed orclosed their doors.

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) 1933 Provided federal funds for stateand community relief efforts.

Civil Works Administration (CWA) 1933 Provided temporary federal jobsfor the unemployed.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 1933 Provided jobs for young singlemen building forest trails androads, planting trees to reforestthe land and control flooding, andbuilding parks.

Figure 26 New Deal Programs and Legislation

common: putting money into the hands of citizens so they could spendmore and revive the economy. The New Deal programs were dividedinto three different initiatives: relief, recovery, and reform.

Relief With Temporary JobsRelief programs had both a short-term and a long-term impact on North

Carolina. In the short term, people got money to pay off their debts and goon living. In the long term, the state was improved by structures that made

410 Chapter 12: The Great Depression and the Big War

Program/Legislation Date Purpose

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) 1934 Insured home loans forlow-income families.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 1934 Regulated stocks and gave stockinformation.

Social Security Administration (SSA) 1935 Created a system for retirementand unemployment insurance.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) 1935 Employed out-of-work Americansto repair roads, build or repairbridges, paint murals, writeguidebooks, put on plays andmusical performances, and createstatues in parks.

National Labor Relations Act 1935 Guaranteed the right of employeesto organize and to bargaincollectively with their employers.Created the National LaborRelations Board to hear unfairlabor practices.

National Youth Administration (NYA) 1935 Provided job training and part-time work for college students.

Fair Labor Standards Act 1938 Established a maximum workweek and minimum wage,prohibited child labor in certainindustries, and set a minimumage for child workers.

everyone’s life better. Some towns got federal money to lay water and sewerpipes into mill villages. Some of those lines were used for decades. Othercommunities built new post offices that lasted half a century.

The impoverished Mountains region was particularly helped. A fed-eral construction agency (the Public Works Administration) hired thou-sands of Mountains residents to clear, grade, and pave the route of theBlue Ridge Parkway. The idea was to open the Mountains for visitorsto see its wonders and to trade with its residents. Another agency, the

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CAROLINA PLACESCAROLINA PLACES

Blue Ridge Parkway

North Carolina and Virginia share more than just aborder and a tobacco heritage. They also share one of theworld’s most famous roads: the Blue Ridge Parkway. Theparkway is a very long place. It is almost 469 miles fromend to end, from the mountain gap where it starts nearCharlottesville, Virginia, to its end at the Cherokee Reserva-tion, in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains. The NorthCarolina portion is about 252 miles long.

The idea for the parkway is almost as old as the auto-mobile itself. In the early 1900s, Mountains residentsdreamed of “a crest road” that would take them along thetop of the Blue Ridge. Traditionally, roads did not go to the

Blue Ridge Parkway

top of the mountains; rather, they snaked around the sidesand went through gaps in the slopes. The gasoline enginechanged all that. World War I, however, put an end to theidea. During the 1920s, North Carolina put its money intothe “good roads movement” to build an east-west highwayand connect all the counties with a paved network of roads.

Below: North Carolina workers began the constructionof the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Virginia line inAlleghany County. The workers’ hardest job wasthe blasting and removal of tons of rock from themountainsides.

412 Chapter 12: The Great Depression and the Big War

The New Deal made the Blue Ridge Parkway possible. Thefederal government used its money to put people back to work.President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a polio victim who loved todrive his specially built car, supported the idea of a scenic roadthat would bring more people to the mountains. He also knewthat the massive task of carving out a road would employthousands of Mountains residents. He also argued that a re-turn to prosperity would help “the devastated landscape.”

The work on the parkway began in 1935, but the goingwas slow. The first 10 miles of roadbed were graded nearthe Virginia-North Carolina border, in Alleghany County. Theworkmen used up 35,000 drill bits in those 10 miles. Even-tually, millions of trees were planted and millions of tons ofrock were moved along the route. The work was slowed byWorld War II. But by 1967, crews had carved out 26 tun-nels and paved all but 7 miles of the 469-mile route.

It took another twenty years to finish those seven miles.The unfinished part was to cross Grandfather Mountain, but

Grandfather’s owner, Hugh Morton, argued that grading onhis mountain would ruin some of the fragile natural envi-ronment. Morton wanted the Blue Ridge Parkway to comeby his mountain but not damage it. After years of argumentsabout the best plan, engineers came up with one of the mostingenious structures ever built in the state. They built “abridge over land,” made out of concrete piers and slabs. Sosensitive was the project that the builders were not allowedto build an access road along the way. They had to place thepieces of the bridge, one by one, by standing on the piecethat they had just installed. It was, as one engineer sighed,“the most complicated concrete bridge ever built” in theworld. Since its completion in 1987, the Linn Viaduct is oneof the most visited stretches of the parkway.

Below: The construction of the Linn Viaduct on theslope of Grandfather Mountain was considered one ofthe engineering marvels of the twentieth century.

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Tennessee Valley Authority, began to build hydroelectric dams on all thestreams that fed into the Tennessee River. The idea was to give Moun-tains residents a source of power and stop the erosion of their bottomlands. The Fontana Dam in western North Carolina created one of thelargest lakes in the state.

Across the state, thousands of young men enlisted in the Civilian Con-servation Corps. They lived in CCC Camps, where they were fed andhoused and given money to share with their families back home. Theyworked on stopping the effects of erosion caused by overfarming andovertimbering. Their biggest accomplishment was clearing and gradingthe Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was opened in 1939.Perhaps their worst action was planting millions of kudzu plants. Kudzu,which quickly grew in gullies and fields across the state, was a Japanesevine that was supposed to hold the soil in place. Instead, it grew fasterthan anyone anticipated and took over fields, forests, and abandonedbuildings.

Recovery AttemptsThe major problem attacked by the New Deal was overproduction.

The theory was this: If the amount of stuff made in the fields and thefactories could be reduced—while as many people as possible were stillworking—then the price of the goods would go up, but people wouldhave the money to buy them.

In 1933, the federal government set up two programs to do this. Thefirst one was the Agricultural Adjustment Administration for farms,

At 480 feet, Fontana Damis the highest dam eastof the Rockies. It wascompleted in 1945.

Above: The largest TVA project inNorth Carolina was the construc-tion of the Fontana Dam. The damhelped provide electricity, floodcontrol, and recreation.

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known as the AAA. The second, the National RecoveryAdministration, commonly called the NRA, aimed to helpfactories.

The AAA Down EastIt was the AAA that ordered the “plow-up” in 1933. The

idea was that, by reducing the acreage of crops, farmers wouldmake more money by growing less. It worked. By 1934, mostcotton and tobacco farmers saw their incomes go up by a third.A few even doubled their incomes. Since people were continu-ing to smoke, tobacco farmers on the Coastal Plain particu-larly made more money, some even tripling the cash in theirpockets after going to the tobacco auction. North Carolinafarmers became very enthusiastic about the New Deal. Evenafter the Supreme Court outlawed the AAA (because it arguedthat Congress had gone too far in managing the marketplace),North Carolinians welcomed a second version of it in 1938.

The farm program did have problems, especially down east.The AAA payments were made to the landowners. Sharecroppers, par-ticularly African Americans, did not always see the rise in incomes. Somelandowners simply kept the extra money. And, the program had to have amajority of farmers approve it each year, which meant that black farmerscould vote for the federal program, but could not vote for the congress-men who set it up. White leaders thought this would damage the tightgrip they had over blacks with segregation.

Top: These young CCC workers aretransplanting a large tree along theBlue Ridge Parkway. Above: Thisstone marker atop Mount Mitchellhonors the work of the CCC.

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Tobacco Price SupportsStill, the farm program became a long-lasting part of life on the Coastal

Plain. This was particularly the case for tobacco farmers. They devised acooperative system where each grower got a share of the tobacco mar-ket. Each grower held a tobacco allotment, that is, a specific amount ofland on which to grow the crop. If a grower violated the size of the field,he or she paid a penalty. In return, the cooperative worked with the fed-eral government to ensure that every farmer received enough cash to liveon. This was called parity, the amount of money needed to make a mini-mum profit. If a farmer did not get a parity price at the auction, he or shestored the crop in an approved warehouse. The farmer then got a parityloan from the cooperative. When the market price went up, the farmersold the crop at a profit and paid back the loan. North Carolina becamequickly known for the success of these tobacco price supports.

The tobacco price support system had several effects. First, it allowedthousands of farm families to stay on the land and not move to the townswhere jobs were scarce. Since price supports lasted for years, these fami-lies could better their lot and still live like their ancestors had. Second, itmeant that voters in the east continued to be closely tied to the Demo-cratic Party, which devised the plan. Third, it provided merchants, bank-ers, and warehousemen in the towns on Tobacco Road with guaranteed

Market prices for tobaccorose from 11.6 cents apound in 1932 to 15.3cents a pound in 1933.

Above: These farmers are pickingup their money after a tobaccoauction in 1938. Federal controlson the production of tobacco madetobacco farming more profitable.

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business. Towns like Greenvilleand Kinston continued to set theirschool terms and schedule theirstore sales by the phase of the to-bacco season. Tobacco Road hadbeen a dirt path for many, but theNew Deal turned it into a pavedhighway.

The NRA and LaborThe industrial component of

the New Deal had its biggest im-pact on the industrial cities in thePiedmont. NRA officials in Wash-ington, D.C., required each seg-ment of business to devise a “codeof conduct,” a list of rules and pro-cedures that would allow the maxi-mum number of people to beemployed for a specific number ofhours. Wages and prices were tobe in the code. Everyone cameunder some code. Even barbershad to meet and come up withhours and prices. The NRA essen-tially allowed manufacturers toregulate themselves by cuttingproduction.

In North Carolina, the NRAquickly stabilized the textile indus-try, in the sense that most of the mills could reopen and hire many oftheir workers back. It also finally, effectively, eliminated child labor. Thetextile code limited the work week to forty hours, instead of the averageof sixty, and provided a minimum wage that, although low, helped ev-eryone. (A minimum wage is the least amount an employer can pay aworker for a certain number of hours.) The NRA also had a provisionthat allowed labor unions to serve as a genuine voice for workers.

The General Strike of 1934The right to collective bargaining, where a union spoke for all the

workers in negotiations with employers, encouraged northern laborunions to try once more to organize the textile workers. Thousands oftextile workers walked out of their mills on Labor Day 1934.

The General Strike, as it was called, spread from Danville, Virginia,across the two Carolinas into Georgia. It was the most aggressive strikeby workers in the history of the state. Union members in places likeGastonia went from town to town to close other mills. Their “flying

In 1935, however, theU.S. Supreme Court ruledthat the numerous codesestablished by the NRAwere unconstitutional.

In this political cartoon, the artist is making fun of the“alphabet soup” federal agencies during the New Deal. President

Roosevelt is portrayed as a professor explaining that it is“evolution, not revolution.”

THE ART OF POLITICSTHE ART OF POLITICS

Section 3: The New Deal Plows Through North Carolina 417

squadrons” (a name borrowed from the airplane units of World War I)arrived at factory gates and tried to block the entrances.

The reaction was mixed. At some mills, workers walked out and stayedout. At others, mill hands who said they would take any work foughtwith the strikers. The National Guard was called out in some towns.

Eventually, as in the past, the workers began to drift back into themills when their money ran out. Once again, in hard times, the ownershad more cash and could wait longer, especially since they had few cus-tomers for their goods. Many workers who were not rehired blamed theirplight on the union. As one worker noted, “Folks can talk all they wantabout the right to join a union, but right don’t count much when themoney is against you.”

Reform Efforts of the New DealThe New Deal meant for its relief and recovery efforts to be tempo-

rary. They were to end once the national economy was back on its feetand people were working and buying again. Some features, however,became permanent; more accurately, they lasted for the lifetime of thepeople affected by them.

Above: More than 10,000 textileworkers took part in this Labor Dayparade in Gastonia after all of themills in Gaston County closed be-cause of the General Strike of 1934.

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By 1940, theunemployment rate in

North Carolina haddropped to 8.8 percent,the best in the nation.

It’s Your Turn

1. What were the short-term and the long-term impacts of the NewDeal relief programs?

2. What two New Deal programs were intended to deal withoverproduction?

3. What was the significance of the tobacco price supports?

Above: Young workers leaving millin Scotland Neck to go home fordinner.

In addition to the tobacco price support system, the Social SecurityAct gave some industrial workers their first retirement pension and helpedthem when they were laid off from work. Less successful was the fed-eral law passed that further strengthened the hand of labor unions tobargain collectively for workers. Although there was success in the North,many North Carolinians were too embittered by the failure of the Gen-eral Strike. Along the same line, many farm owners in the east resentedNew Deal attempts to buy worn-out land and sell it at low cost to share-croppers. As a result, only about one in fifteen poor families escaped share-cropping. White elites particularly did not like losing their monopoly overthe labor of poor black men, especially those who could not vote on thetobacco program. With the elec-tion of Clyde Hoey, a more conser-vative member of the ShelbyDynasty than Governor Gardner,the state did very little.

Despite misgivings about thelong-term effects of the New Deal,every North Carolinian knew thatit changed the life of the state. By1939, every town had some streetor building built with federal dol-lars. Airports too were built withfederal assistance. Because of therural electric cooperatives set up bythe New Deal, more farmers hadlights. More people were smokingthan ever, and Tobacco Road prof-ited. People knew they had more money in their pockets, and, except forthe poorest of families on the Coastal Plain and in the Mountains, theywere spending more of it.

And, as the 1930s came to an end, North Carolinians got caught up inthe next phase of the New Deal, President Roosevelt’s program to makethe United States “the arsenal of democracy.” World War II had startedin China in 1937 and in Poland in 1939. All Americans, North Carolin-ians among them, were becoming involved.

Above: This Granville County fam-ily is stripping, tying, and gradingtobacco leaves in a bedroom oftheir home in 1939.

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HISTORY BY THE H IGHWAYHISTORY BY THE H IGHWAY

The most famous author in state history was ThomasWolfe. His series of novels, based loosely upon his life grow-ing up in his mother’s boarding house in Asheville, becameworldwide bestsellers in the 1930s. His most famous book,

Thomas WolfeThomas Wolfe

Look Homeward, Angel, took its name from an angel sold byhis father in the family tombstone shop. The state has madehis house a historic site in downtown Asheville and theangel still graces a grave in Hendersonville.

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Top: Thomas Wolfe posed with his mother Julia on theporch of her Asheville boarding house. Above: Thefictional “Dixieland” of Look Homeward, Angel bears asharp resemblance to Wolfe’s own home in Asheville,now a state historic site. Right: The angel that inspireda book title resides on a grave in Hendersonville.

Section 3: The New Deal Plows Through North Carolina 421