Book Review

At first glance, it might have seemed illogical: why would southern planters oppose federal old age pensions for elderly black tenant farmers? After all, federal assistance would have relieved local governments of the substantial burden of poor relief (monies that came quite directly out of the pockets of local planters).	1
But southern planters in fact had a very rational, albeit complex, reason for their opposition to the proposal for this federal program. As Alston and Ferrie patiently detail, neither knee-jerk racism, nor knee-jerk conservatism, nor even knee-jerk states' rights ideology suffice as explanations for the South's long-recognized opposition to federal welfare policy. Instead, southern planters and their political representatives feared that the New Deal–era federal welfare programs would encourage the recipients of relief to transfer their gratitude and loyalty to the federal government, thereby ending the system of "planter paternalism" that had served as a powerful support for continued planter hegemony in a non-slave-based agricultural economy.	2
Briefly summarized, the argument goes something like this: After the end of slavery, southern planters searched for means to assure themselves a reliable, pliant, cheap labor force. Planter paternalism, defined as the provision of goods and services in exchange for hard work and obedience, emerged in the late nineteenth century as a tool to control their laborers with relatively little supervisory costs. (These "goods and services" included provision of credit, protection against racial violence, posting bonds in court, paying for a doctor's visit, and so forth.) Workers who received these benefits would be less likely to migrate and would be more likely to show their gratitude through high productivity and dutiful respect.	3
Once this system was in place, planters worked to defend it against all threats. Federal welfare programs would interfere with paternalism by offering workers an alternative source for those goods and services and therefore free the workers from their obligations of deference and hard work. Southerners in Congress used their considerable power to fend off federal programs whenever possible; in other instances they modified proposed programs to minimize the potential impact on southern social and economic relations. Thus southerners insisted that farm workers be excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act and from the Old Age and Unemployment provisions of the Social Security Act. In addition, southern congressmen acted to keep other programs, such as Aid to Dependent Children, Firmly under local control where local elites could be certain their administration did not interfere in labor or race relations. During World War II, southern politicians assured that agricultural workers would be deferred from the draft.	4
By the 1960s, however, southern political leaders abandoned much of their opposition to federal welfare initiatives and generally supported Johnson's Great Society programs. This change in voting patterns was not the result of any loss of political power by the South, which still dominated the critical congressional committees and could have acted to derail the federal welfare programs once again had it chosen to do so. Instead, southern elites of the 1960s no longer feared the loss of planter paternalism. The extensive mechanization of southern agriculture that had taken place since World War II had meant that planter paternalism was no longer needed: mechanization produced standardization of production that limited workers' ability to "shirk." Mechanization, in effect, served a supervisory function, as "machines by their very nature reduce the discretion of labor" (5). "Paternalism became an outdated contractual device" (119). Although southern elites did not come to embrace the welfare state, their "grudging acceptance" helped to produce a "Flood of welfare legislation through Congress" (12).	5
In fact, by the 1960s, the South began to see an advantage to encouraging black outmigration. No longer starved for labor thanks for the mechanization of cotton production, Southern elites began to fear the impact of civil rights legislation on a region with large black populations. Encouraging black migration to northern cities now seemed advisable, and federal welfare programs would facilitate that goal. Most southern politicians dropped their previous opposition.	6
This is an important book on many counts. First, it makes clear, in a way that many southern histories do not, how regional differences matter. Southern regional concerns, such as race and labor relations, directly affected national legislation and the development of the modern welfare state. Rather than merely describing "southern exceptionalism," the authors demonstrate that southern exceptionalism profoundly influenced national policy.	7
Second, Alston and Ferrie succeed in integrating several strands of historiography, producing an intriguing new way of looking at postbellum southern history. Students and scholars of southern history, of labor history, and of social welfare history will find this an essential book.	8
This is a limited study, however, and does not cover all areas of southern welfare history. The authors effectively ignore local- and state-level welfare provision; it is not clear, for example, whether these same southern planters opposed county almshouses or other alternative forms of assistance to the indigent. Focused tightly on agricultural labor and planter paternalism, the book does not address issues of urban welfare policies or mill-village paternalism.	9
As an institutional history, the book is primarily a "top-down" analysis, with little attention to the role of tenants in shaping either planter paternalism or government welfare policy. Recipients of aid or paternalism are generally silent players in this account, unlike that of much recent social welfare scholarship. The contest, or conflict, here is between different groups of political and economic elites, not between elites and their laborers.	10
Another minor criticism is the lack of analysis of antebellum paternalism and its relationship to the postbellum version. The authors mention paternalism and slavery but devote little attention to comparing the two kinds of paternalism.	11
But even with these caveats, Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State will be rewarding reading for those interested in regionalism, race and labor, or social welfare policy.	12
Elna C. Green Florida State University

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