Small Towns Decay as Cities Prosper : Sun Belt Promise Fading in Depressed Rural South

ALBANY, Ga. —  In the 1960s and ‘70s, this southwest Georgia city--like many other little cities and towns in the rural South--was riding the crest of the Sun Belt boom.

New businesses and industries were proliferating here, just as in Atlanta. Population and personal income marched steadily upward, and the future looked limitless.

“Albany could do no wrong,” recalled James H. Gray, publisher of the local newspaper and president of the Albany Chamber of Commerce. “The exodus from the Frost Belt was on, and businesses and industries heading South were ours almost just for the asking.”

In recent years, however, Albany’s fortunes--like those across rural Dixie--have taken an alarming turn for the worse.

While Atlanta has continued to grow and prosper, Albany’s economy has been decimated by a number of setbacks--the depression in agriculture, loss of manufacturing jobs to overseas competitors, federal aid cuts and deregulation of the transportation industry.

Last fall, in one of the most devastating blows, Albany lost more than 2,200 jobs when the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. plant was shut down. It had been not only the biggest employer in this community of 86,200, but the largest tire factory in North America.

Albany’s unemployment rate is now more than 9%, almost twice the statewide average. Retail sales are stagnating and municipal revenues have flattened, hindering local government’s efforts to help develop new jobs.

The situation ordinarily might be of little concern beyond the banks of the Flint River, the scenic stream that cuts through town, but what is happening in Albany is happening in other towns and communities as well. It is threatening to undo decades of economic growth and to turn dreams of Sun Belt riches into nightmares of stagnation and decline.

Increasingly, the story of the Sun Belt is becoming a tale of two Souths--one urban and one rural. On the one hand are the Atlantas, Charlottes, Birminghams, Raleighs, Nashvilles and Jacksons--cities that are expanding, prospering and offering thousands of new job opportunities. On the other hand are the farm communities and rural areas, which generally are on the skids and losing jobs, people and self-esteem.

“After two decades of reasonably solid growth, many rural communities are now finding themselves in serious decline in manufacturing and agriculture,” according to a landmark report, “Shadows in the Sun Belt,” compiled by MDC Inc., an employment-research firm in Chapel Hill, N.C.

“In short,” the report said, “while we live in the Sun Belt, there is a dark cloud hanging over many of our rural neighbors.”

Report Cites Statistics

The report, published last year, cites the following statistics:

- More than 95,000 textile jobs and 16,000 jobs in the clothing industry have been lost in the region since 1980, the overwhelming number of them in rural areas.

- Metropolitan areas are gaining jobs at nearly twice the rate of rural areas. In Georgia, for instance, 75% of all jobs created since 1981 have been in the Atlanta area, although it has only 40% of the state’s population. Manufacturing employment has grown 17% in the Atlanta area over the last five years, but fallen 3.3% in the rest of the state.

- Farm income and assets have been plummeting. In North Carolina alone, 13,000 farms went out of business from 1980 to 1985, a 14% decline. Land and other agricultural assets in the state have fallen by at least $2 billion in value since 1983.

- Federal budget cuts since 1980 have cost state and local governments a cumulative $20 billion and had serious effects on rural economic-development efforts.

Beyond the statistics is an even bleaker picture of growing fear, anguish and misery in the rural South as farm notes are foreclosed, mills and factories shut down, merchants go out of business and people are forced onto the unemployment or welfare rolls.

Nothing Left but Dignity

“We have lots of citizens left with nothing but their dignity,” said Janice Faulknor, director of the Regional Development Institute at East Carolina University.

This bifurcation of the Southern economy is causing problems for Sun Belt cities as well. The burden is beginning to spread to urban areas, as displaced workers arrive from the depressed countryside in search of jobs.

Population losses from many rural areas have grown worse in recent years. In Georgia, for example, 36 rural counties have lost population since 1980. In the 1970s only nine of the state’s 159 counties lost population.

“For the most part, the people leaving the rural areas are heading toward the big cities,” said Douglas Bachtel, a University of Georgia rural sociologist. “But many of them are undereducated and don’t have many skills. Almost half of the people over 25 in Georgia don’t have a high school education. That’s why people in Atlanta and other metropolitan areas in the South need to be worried about our rural areas.”

Could Repeat History

The “Shadows in the Sun Belt” report warns that the new migration, if left unchecked, could be as disruptive to the urban South as the post-World War II migrations of millions of Southern blacks and Appalachian whites were to the industrialized Northeast and Midwest.

“Southern states are threatened with both decaying rural and inner-city communities, creating a massive financial drain on the region’s resources,” the report said.

The states are trying to meet the challenge. Arkansas, for example, has set up a state development finance agency with the power to issue bonds to back rural business ventures, industrial enterprises, schools, medical facilities and housing.

Mississippi has authorized the creation of rural “enterprise zones” that offer tax breaks to new businesses.

In Georgia, a push is on to form a state rural development agency and a special investment fund to help stimulate hiring.

Incomes Below Average

“Rural Georgia remains poor by national standards,” said a report recently issued by the state Community Affairs Department. “Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 133 have per capita income levels at or less than 75% of the national average. And while in the 1980s, per capita income statewide has increased by 58%, moving Georgia from 38th to 28th (place), much of that increase has occurred in metro areas.”

County and local governments also are mobilizing their forces to combat the problem. Albany, for instance, recently opened a city bureau of economic planning and joined Dougherty County, of which Albany is the seat of government, in forming a city-county economic development commission.

Dougherty County also is part of a recently formed economic development coalition involving 23 rural counties in southwest Georgia.

“We had some real successes back in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Albany Mayor Larry Bays, “but I think that maybe we got to taking success for granted. Now we’re going back to get those successes again.”

Recapturing the old magic will be difficult for many rural communities, however. For one thing, the days are gone when Southern industrial recruiters could go out on a “buffalo hunt” and easily bag outside industries with the lures of cheap land, cheap labor and low taxes.

“That was the classic pattern for economic development in the South in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Griffin Doyle, executive assistant in the Georgia state Community Affairs Department. “But the advantages we offered--the cheap land, cheap labor and low taxes--are even better in many Third World countries. And that’s where companies are going now.”

Increased competition from their own city cousins is another big problem for the rural South.

Earlier this year, for example, the Georgia state commissioner for industry and trade, George Berry, told the Southwest Georgia Economic Development Coalition: “The typical requirement from a foreign (business) prospect is a site within an hour of the Atlanta airport, and this . . . mitigates against areas such as Albany. It is sometimes hard to get prospects outside the metro area.”

Rural communities also suffer from an increasing “brain drain” as their best and brightest people head for greener pastures.

“As it has been said, after the farm pond has been fished out, all that’s left are the bullheads and crappies,” said the University of Georgia’s Bachtel.

Dependency on Weak Sectors

Perhaps the most disturbing trend for the rural South, however, is its disproportionate dependence on three economic sectors--agriculture, manufacturing and government--that have the least growth potential, and its poor performance in the three sectors that have the highest growth potential--services, finance and retail and wholesale trade.

Rural communities are determined to overcome the odds, however. For all their ills, many of them still offer abundant opportunities for entrepreneurship and growth for existing businesses. The rural South also has a wealth of natural resources that thus far have been largely ignored or exploited without full benefit to local communities.

Rural Dixie also hopes for economic gains from tourism and the retirement community industry. Macon, 90 miles north of Albany, is hoping to build a vacation resort on the order of Disney World in Orlando or Opryland in Nashville.

Lure for Tourists

In McIntosh County, between Savannah and Brunswick on the Georgia coast, an entertainment complex with a hotel, shops, condominiums and a brewery has been proposed to lure Florida-bound tourists off Interstate 95.

“Individual resourcefulness and entrepreneurship long have been a hallmark of rural life,” said William Winter, former Mississippi governor and chairman of the advisory panel for the “Shadows in the Sun Belt” study.

“After all, it was those intrepid yeomen farmers and venturesome business owners who built the South--in times far less promising than these.”