Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the South, 1865-1965.

By Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferric. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 171. $49.95.

In this book, Lee Alston and Joseph Ferric view postbellum Southern economic and political history through the lens of paternalism, a labor market relationship which in the South took the form of white, rural, elite patrons providing protection and a variety of other services (medical, legal, recreational, credit, and so on) to poor agricultural workers, especially blacks, in return for loyal and reliable labor. The authors argue that this arrangement emerged in the South in response to the high monitoring costs inherent to premechanized cotton agriculture. That is, the technology of Southern agricultural production underpinned this institution of paternalism. A necessary condition for the persistence of this arrangement was an environment in which the economic and personal security of the poor was not already guaranteed by the government. Thus, as long as the Southern rural elite wished to maintain this relationship, they had to ensure that the government did not intrude as a provider of paternalistic goods.

As the technology of cotton agriculture became increasingly mechanized during the 1950s and 1960s, the technological underpinnings of this arrangement came undone, and the Southern rural elite no longer had an incentive to provide paternalistic goods or to resist the expansion of the welfare state. In fact, they might well have had an incentive to encourage the welfare state to relieve them of any implicit obligations to support poor and old workers once mechanization arrived. Thus, the work's central insight is that by tracing the arc of paternalism's ascendance and demise, we can understand not only the mechanics of the Southern agricultural economy but also the connections between Southern economic interests, technological developments, legislative strategies, and the timing of the welfare state's rise.

The logic of the argument is developed well, and the authors make every effort to square the model with the vast existing body of empirical work on postbellum Southern agriculture and labor markets. It is obviously difficult to measure paternalism, however, and therefore it is also difficult to provide strong, direct, econometric evidence to support the ideawork's conclusions. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend the book to everyone interested in Southern political economy, Southern labor markets and agricultural production, or the legislative forces that shaped the welfare state's evolution. Moreover, this work is an example of how the study of economics, history, and institutions can be effectively integrated.

The study is an exercise in applied political economy, and so it is appropriate that the first two chapters (after the Introduction) are respectively entitled "The Economics of Paternalism" and "The Politics of Maintaining Paternalism." These chapters lay the foundation for the ensuing chapters' discussions of the Southern role in shaping the Social Security Act (Chapter 3), the Farm Security Administration (Chapter 4), and the bracero program and other wartime farm labor legislation (Chapter 5) to suit the region's interests. Chapter 6 documents the rise of the welfare state and in doing so makes the book's most provocative and central argument: that Southern politicians did not lose committee power in the 1960s but that rather, their opposition to the federal provision of paternalistic goods diminished as technological developments in cotton agriculture undermined the rural Southern elite's demand for "good and faithful" labor. The book's concluding chapter summarizes its main points and addresses alternative theories of the welfare state.

The economics of Southern paternalism was rooted in the nature of premechanized agriculture. Alston and Ferrie argue that "before mechanization, monitoring labor effort was costly because workers were spread over a considerable physical distance, and the linkage of reward with effort was difficult because there could be considerable variation in output, the cause of which was difficult to determine" (p. 23). In this context, and given that some paternalistic goods were not available on the market (e.g., protection), paternalism could have worked like an efficiency wage and reduced shirking and job mobility. The Southern rural elite enjoyed more stable, and presumably more productive, labor relations in exchange for paternalistic favors.

The story's setting moves from the rural South to Washington as the authors explore the politics of maintaining paternalism. Again, the maintenance of this system required that the government (and the market) did not provide effective substitutes for the Southern elites' paternalistic goods. After Reconstruction and until the New Deal, the federal government was disinclined to interfere in Southern labor relations, but as the government became an increasingly important player in the national economy, it inevitably tended to impinge on Southern economic autonomy. Some knowledge of congressional mechanics is essential to understanding how the South resisted federal intrusion until the 1960s. Southern congressmen and senators benefitted from the region's one-party system by establishing seniority in the Democratic Party and on several key committees. These committees wielded considerable power in determining which legislation did and did not eventually receive consideration by the entire legislative body. Therefore, the Southern agents in Congress had power that exceeded their numbers because of their strategically situated committee appointments, and they used this power to influence landmark pieces of legislation related to agricultural labor.

The next three chapters illustrate how Southern economic interests and political power interacted in shaping three key pieces of federal policy in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s: the Social Security Act of 1935; the Farm Security Administration, which was established in 1937 but disbanded in 1946; and wartime farm labor legislation and the bracero program. Alston and Ferrie argue that agricultural workers were excluded from the Social Security system until the 1950s largely because Southern congressmen wanted to prevent the government from directly providing a paternalistic good (social insurance) traditionally supplied to Southern agricultural workers by the region's rural elite. Similarly, once the Farm Security Administration began to interfere in Southern agricultural labor relations by providing an alternative source of credit to indebted agriculturalists, Southern congressmen targeted its funding and eventually helped extinguish the agency. Finally, the paternalistic system was threatened not only by the federal government's intrusions but also by the strengthening labor market connections between the South and the rest of the country. As migration out of Southern agriculture became a more viable option for workers (especially as labor demand surged in the 1940s), engagement in paternalistic arrangements became relatively less attractive to those workers. The authors argue that wartime legislation, including deferments for agricultural workers, reduced mobility out of the farm sector, while the bracero program (which arranged for the temporary importation of Mexican agricultural workers) relieved agricultural labor shortages in areas (such as the West, Southwest, and Midwest) that might otherwise have drawn more agricultural workers out of the South.

A logical implication of Alston and Ferrie's argument is that if the economic basis of the paternalistic system were to disappear, so too would Southern opposition to the federal provision of paternalistic goods such as social security and poor support. After all, as a relatively poor region, the South stood to benefit from the increased inflow of federal dollars. Chapter 6 traces the mechanization of Southern cotton agriculture, the consequent undoing of the technological basis of the paternalistic system, and the reversal of Southern opposition to the emigration of rural blacks and to the welfare state. In fact, the authors argue that with the reduced demand for rural labor and with civil rights on the horizon, the Southern elite encouraged black emigration and the urban bias of welfare provision as a way of mitigating the impact of civil rights on the Southern social and political order.

This book is important reading for those interested in political economy of the postbellum South. It is an effective synthesis of economic, historical, and institutional analysis that makes clear and provocative arguments about the evolution of the Southern economy and the federal welfare state. Furthermore, the authors always attempt to reconcile their ideas with the available empirical facts, and the resulting interplay of theory and historical experience is enlightening.

William J. Collins Vanderbilt University