Dollars for Dixie
Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century

In Dollars for Dixie, Katherine Rye Jewell demonstrates how conservative southern industrialists pursued a political campaign to preserve regional economic arrangements.

Katherine Rye Jewell (Author)

9781316626337, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 July 2019

336 pages, 1 b/w illus. 2 tables
22.8 x 15.1 x 2 cm, 0.45 kg

Organized in 1933, the Southern States Industrial Council's (SSIC) adherence to the South as a unique political and economic entity limited its members' ability to forge political coalitions against the New Deal. The SSIC's commitment to regional preferences, however, transformed and incorporated conservative thought in the post-World War II era, ultimately complementing the emerging conservative movement in the 1940s and 1950s. In response to New Dealers' attempts to remake the southern economy, the New South industrialists - heirs of C. Vann Woodward's 'new men' of the New South - effectively fused cultural traditionalism and free market economics into a brand of southern free enterprise that shaped the region's reputation and political culture. Dollars for Dixie demonstrates how the South emerged from this refashioning and became a key player in the modern conservative movement, with new ideas regarding free market capitalism, conservative fiscal policy, and limited bureaucracy.

Introduction. The New South and the New Deal
Part I. Working within the New Deal: 1. The New South and the NRA
2. Southern industry and the Southern region
3. Confronting the 'Wagner monstrosity'
Part II. Free Enterprise and the South: 4. Creating the nation's economic 'opportunity' no. 1
5. Rates, war, and the turn to free enterprise
6. The South as the 'bulwark of democracy'
7. Downplaying Dixie
Conclusion. The politics of free enterprise.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], History of the Americas [HBJK]