American Industry

       My job in my reconstruction group was to come up with a way to remedy the effects of physical damage to the south from the war. One of the more interesting consequences of this problem was the correlation between the damage to farms and poverty of white farmers. Many lower class whites made a decent living off of farming before the war. During the war, however, many of those farms were destroyed; with their farms damaged, many relatives and workers dead, and any money invested with the confederacy gone, white farmers plunged into poverty by the thousands. When I read about their situation in Foner, I was struck by how similar the statuses of poor whites and former slaves were. Both groups were in debt, and trapped doing farm-work that could barely support them. The freedmen obviously were in a worse situation because of discrimination, but both groups suffered from the same basic problem; the total lack of decent work. When I finally figured out this was the problem, I immediately remembered the State of the Union address, in which President Obama spoke on a similar issue with the American job market today.
       I also remembered President Obama's proposed solution: relocating industry from foreign countries back to the U.S. I realized this could work in the south as well. The primary problem with the south's economy was a dependence on agriculture, and the only way to fix that problem was to increase industry. The obvious industry to focus on was textiles, because of the south's huge supply of cotton. I had found my answer: subsidize American textile companies, in an attempt to siphon some of those industrial jobs from Britain, thereby (hopefully) creating jobs for former slaves and white farmers.
       I was surprised at the parallels I found between the problems of the past and of today, and how easily ideas can be applied to very distinct and different times. It is normal to think about learning from history for help with today's problems, but it is very weird to think about learning from today to help solve yesterday's problems. I'm not totally sure what the lesson is here, but it sure is an interesting thought.

Image credit: http://19thhumanitiesschool.blogspot.com/2010/10/pictures-relating-to-industrial.html