The White Worker in the South

The struggle for life has changed from a free fight to an encounter of disciplined forces, and the free fighters that are left are ground to pieces . . . —William Dean Howells

The fabled workingman of the American South—the “little man” flattered and courted by politicians, the “loyal American” who dreams of becoming, by the sweat of his brow and God’s good will, “almost as good as anybody else”—owes more of his identity than any other American to what A. M. Schlesinger, Sr., has called the myth of “long tutelage to the soil.” He is the 19th-century man whose devotion to his land magically results in courage, creativity, and resourcefulness—a man who can repair a tracto...