America's Johannesburg: Industrialization and Racial Transformation in Birmingham (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.)

More than coal and iron contributed to Birmingham's industrialization. The extent of the exploitation for profit of black labor by capitalist industrialists was unique. Nowhere else in America was black labor so systematically controlled and directed. Only in Johannesburg, South Africa, with it's policy of apartheid, was direct coercion against blacks more open and direct. How this happen and why it was permitted is the Wilson's subject. His main objective is to "reveal the history and evolution of race-connected practices in Birmingham, Alabama, and to explain how the city and its institutions acted to restrain or assist individual and group actions that fostered such practices." (ix) There are five areas of discussion to his argument. The first discusses race and capitalist development and state cooperation. Secondly, southern antebellum background and thirdly, reconstruction are elaborated. The fourth part of his argument demonstrates how cooperation gave way to conditions of competition between blacks and whites and finally, Wilson shows how racial improvements came with the advent of Fordism (though Wilson's use of the term is unclear). American racism originated from the time of the very foundation of the nation. It arose when slavery and capitalism together produced cotton which supplied the nations fledgling industry. The Constitution itself supported slavery and restricted black assimilation. Race, Wilson argues, served to prevent a class struggle between common whites and planters which Marx had anticipated. In Alabama small farmers and the Broad River Group could agree when it came to racial matters, but a new order was mandated subsequent to the Civil War. After slavery, the question for southern capitalists was how to exercise labor control? Wilson makes use of the Kondratieff cycle (waves of economic expansion and contraction), the impact of rapid modernization and depression on employment, and class struggle in his explanation. New class and race relations constructed out of planter attitudes produced a unique industrial situation in Birmingham. The slave mode of production in the antebellum era is distinguishable from free labor. Slaves were fixed capital to the slaveholder and were thus inflexible assets. Free labor was a variable cost to the producer and could be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the number of hands. Also the utilization of free wage labor encouraged innovation and its more efficient use. Further, economically the wages generated by free labor contributed to greater consumption than that in slave communities. In antebellum Alabama planters were not adverse to industry, but racial exploitation was key to their industrialization. Indeed prior to the Civil War, John T. Milner envisioned an industrial slave city where Birmingham was founded but only with the defeat of the Confederacy was a new system of accumulation permissible. In reconstruction, former slaves become free labor but they did not get free land. Nonetheless cotton still had to be planted and harvested. Following the war the South's need for capital pulled northerners and southerners together. With the influx of northern capital, southerners were able to limit democratic capitalism. "Reconstruction achieved the goal of reconstructing the South for industrial capitalism, but it failed to provide economic and democratic rights for blacks." (62) It was in agriculture where planters were initially able to reassert control over labor through the sharecropper system. On the plantations one striking difference was by the dispersion of homes. Rather than being closely situated as in slave days they were spread out, but this only offered an illusion of freedom. Actually dispersion worked to the landholders' advantage by spreading out the workers and thus discouraging collective action. It was this type of control that carried over into industry at Birmingham as determined by the railroads. Southern industrialists came from established society and were there to make money. In this they were supported by state power: "The state was not only anti-black, but strongly pro-capital." (95) The ties went back to the antebellum years. While slavery no longer existed, the new attitude was that black labor could still be exploited by any means just short of slavery. A large black labor pool was used in lieu of mechanization in agricultural, mining, and industry. Mechanization was not essential because, just like the coal and iron taken from the ground, "the Birmingham regime considered an abundant supply of cheap and exploitable labor the key to economic growth." (112) However, free black labor was not dependable. The convict-labor system permitted a greater degree of control and dependability but it worked in competition to free labor. Contract labor was acceptable when as a manner of control the workers were subordinate to whites. Whites supervised their labor and the subservient status served to keep wages low. There were attempts to unite labor across the racial divide, as by The Knights of Labor and later organizations. But "by the turn of the century, racism had so distorted the economic institutions of the South that it practically eliminated any workings of a competitive mode of regulation." (178) When race became institutionalized, homogenization of labor and scientific management practices continued to keep workers segmented. At the turn of the century, in response to relentless competition, corporations expanded as monopolies and cartels, and through backward and forward integration. However, "although corporate power and influence increased, capitalists paid almost no attention to their workers social/economic needs" (187) until it became in their interest to do so. Not willing to raise wages, TCI embarked on a program developing planned communities such as Fairfield. The purpose of welfare capitalism was to keep wages low and reduce turnover. With the advent of the Great Depression, welfare responsibility was assumed by the state. But in response to economic needs, national laws were passed, such as the AAA and the NIRA which effectively broke the political back of the planter regime. "The increasing costs of labor and new Deal policies pushed the South to accept the notion of an intensive regime of accumulation and to become more integrated into the national economy." (204) Still in the South, the white power structure remained and slum clearance and urban renewal efforts did not materially benefit the blacks. Economic improvement did eventually come with rural industrialization through industrial development bonds , but these Fordist companies were in rural areas, not the large cities. "Entrepreneurial regimes were more willing than planter-based regimes to sacrifice old racial beliefs and practices too maintain and attract investment. This willingness contributed to significant civil rights gains in Birmingham and the South as a whole." (226) Thus Wilson purports to show how racial improvements came with the advent of Fordism, but Ford's mass production did not appear until the early twentieth century.In conclusion, Wilson demonstrates that in Birmingham, capitalists used race and class to exploit labor, and "it was the interactive effects of race and class that produced and transformed "America's Johannesburg." (234) Just as William Weaver (Dew, "Bond of Iron," 1994) exploited slave labor at Buffalo Forge, Birmingham's industrialists exploited black labor in Birmingham. The difference is that the Civil War put an end to the former, and capitalism transformed the latter.