Living in the Southern States: Historic lands, new ideas. (1974)

[Music] so [Music] it's a land of tradition but the temple of life in the south is changing eleven states make up this region it contains a fourth of the area of the country a fifth of the people live here it's an area rich in heritage williamsburg virginia with its reconstructed 18th century houses and shops recaptures the colonial tradition of the south costumed southerners help recreate those important early days in american history throughout the south there are reminders of this period and of another one important to southern history this was the first white house of the confederacy jefferson davis lived here [Music] some of our southerners are still fighting the war between the states but when an event leaves your land in ruin and violently alters your way of life you don't easily forget that event nor do your children or their children or their children [Music] when young men die and a cause is lost a great sadness can overwhelm the land [Music] the civil war brought vast changes to the south the end of slavery created problems for blacks and whites that haven't been settled yet [Music] the war disrupted the economy of the south and the south was slow in recovering but it has recovered new ideas are at work now cotton was king in the old south and it still is but now cotton farming is mechanized and the basis of an important textile industry the textile industry employs a fourth of the industrial workers of the south this cloth is 35 cotton 65 percent round the cotton's from here in south carolina and so is the round my textile mill is one of oh at least a thousand in the state there isn't any other state that produces the amount of textiles we do very few whole countries do either i was born on a farm i still love the country but the work is in the cities now that's why i'm here even though the industries of the cities have drawn many people from the country the south is still largely an agricultural region with a third of the nation's farms a million tons of sugarcane come out of florida and louisiana each year and more than a million tons of rice from louisiana and arkansas forty percent of the country's tobacco is grown in north carolina truck farms supply the southern cities with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and then there's peanuts george washington carver turned the south onto peanuts he knew that cotton and tobacco were wearing out the soil [Music] in his research laboratory he made more than 300 different products from peanuts his work helped to convince southern farmers that they could make a good income from peanuts and they do today we grow more peanuts here in georgia than in any other state and we make more peanut butter too copper revolutionized farming in the south food processing is one of the important industries of the south the leaning industry in arkansas many agricultural products besides peanuts are processed in the south [Music] cheese is forming from milk in this fat dairy products are another important part of the food processing industry the cattle industry is growing in florida in alabama cattle raising brings in most of the farm income [Music] in georgia chicken farming is a major industry this is my daddy's farm and i just help him out on weekends i'm washing the drinkers now the chickens like fresh water we raise broilers that means we keep chicks until they're about eight weeks old the feeding's all automatic [Music] right now daddy's on his way to the hatchery to pick up a new load of chicks [Music] in high school we learned that we produce more chickens and broilers here in georgia than most other states do we're right at the top the whole south is really 90 of america's broilers come from around here agricultural products of the southern states appear in food stores across the nation as well as in stores and markets of the south not all products of the land are aimed for the dinner table some reach the baseball field or the living room north carolina makes more wooden furniture than any other state forests cover large areas of the south but the furniture and wood product industries use up timber fast to make sure that there'll be a supply of wood in the future tree farms have been established there are more than three thousand of them in just mississippi experimental tree nurseries are also helping to develop better timber what we're trying to develop is a faster growing strain of usable timber i'm a geneticist my specialty is evergreen pollination what we do is take pollen from a strain that has a characteristic we want then we inject it into a casing around the female flower of a tree with other good characteristics hopefully we'll get seeds that produce a more valuable timber tree through cross-breeding trees have been produced here that are taller thicker even straighter but what's more important to me personally is that because of tree farms like this one our country is planting about 25 percent more timber than it's cutting down timber is a renewable resource but many non-renewable resources play an important part in the economy of the south today iron ore as well as coal and limestone the main ingredients of steel are all found in alabama bauxite is mined in arkansas arkansas bauxite is turned into aluminum in alabama mills sulfur wells in louisiana produce more than 2 million tons of sulfur every year mainly for manufacturing sulfuric acid mississippi's natural gas is piped to users throughout the eastern half of the united states this plant in baton rouge louisiana is part of the large oil refining industry in the south more than 700 oil and chemical products are produced in this plant alone the main sources of the oil are the offshore wells along the gulf coast of louisiana oil from these wells plus cargoes from around the world pass through the port of new orleans on the mississippi river i push green barges to the grain elevator upriver we go 16 miles up the river from new orleans and 55 miles down river you really have to know the river they got different currents upstream current all kinds of things like that you got to really watch it a push boat drives something like a car i push mostly grain barges no special training i just picked up the job little by little you catch on to it a lot of barges a lot of boats a lot of ships a lot of traffic here in new orleans the mississippi is a major highway of commerce in the south some rivers of the south are also used for another important purpose power dams provide hydroelectric power for many areas of the south available power and available resources are held south has been using traditional sources of energy and nuclear energy too this reactor at the savannah river laboratory in south carolina produced u-235 during world war ii at the oak ridge national laboratory in tennessee scientists are doing basic research in atomic physics chemistry biology and related fields these robot hands are controlled by the operator standing behind a shielded wall the south is also the base for most of our space exploration kennedy space center is on cape canaveral in florida the space center is here because of the good weather in the region and nearness to the ocean which are the two main reasons for the development of another major industry in the south tourism especially in florida but parts of the south are attracting more than just tourists now the mild weather in the ocean have attracted many new permanent residents housing and shopping centers are going up there are more cars and more highways to accommodate them and of course there are the problems industry brings pollution when swamps are drained to provide more land for housing wildlife dies and ecologists are unhappy there are still poverty problems and problems of inequality historic problems that are gradually being solved [Music] an agricultural region is changing to a land of major cities and industries out of the historic lands of the south a new south is rising [Music] you