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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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found that the first effect of the NRA, for instance, was to revive industry in the South. They hadn't thought of that as being possible. When they found that the CCC, the beginnings of the WPA, the work relief, the public works projects were all being put in the South where there was great poverty and unemployment, they were delighted. It worked. There was an immediate revival of life around those projects.

The political power of the South is the poor-white trash. They don't know what gentleman farmers are. They don't know what gentlemen financiers are. The people who are the politically active people are the ordinary people. I have my doubts that there ever was a Southern aristocracy that was more than a handful of people who were pretty nouveau riche. There were two generations at the best I'm told who had wealth. After all the plantation that we talked about lasted for a very brief period of time - the plantation society and economy. The plantation owners were a handful of people. The plantations were changing hands all the time. There just were not, except for a moment in time when there was one such plantation maybe, plantations where “little Missy and Massa” were personages who had notions of being aristocratic. I'm inclined to think that the Gone With the Wind picture is much more true than had been romantically realized. They were just that kind of ordinary people.





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