COTTON AND REGIONALISM O 



Each of these regions has its own resources and eco- 

 nomic capacities based on its products and partly 

 determined, as Professor Turner has said, when the geo- 

 logical foundations were laid down. On topography and 

 agricultural production have been erected industrial su- 

 perstructures which have created other economic interests 

 in fabricated goods. It is these rival economic interests 

 that have resulted in sectionalism. A section may be de- 

 fined as a region seeking to realize economic interests in 

 political action. It is regionalism in politics that has 

 given content to the designation of the American Congress 

 as "an assembly of geographic envoys." It is Professor 

 Turner again who has given this view its brilliant expres- 

 sion: "We in America are in reality a federation of sec- 

 tions rather than states. State sovereignly was never 

 influential except as a constitutional shield of the section. 

 In political matters the states . . . act in sections and 

 are responsible to the respective interests and ideals of 

 these sections. Party policy and congressional legislation 

 emerge from a process of sectional contests and sectional 

 bargainings. . . . Legislation is the result of sectional 

 adjustments to meet national needs." l2 The tariff for the 

 industrial North Atlantic states and the agricultural re- 

 lief demanded by the Farmers' Block of the Corn, Wheat, 

 and Cotton Belts offer an obvious contemporary illus- 

 tration. 



It has been suggested that the reason for America's 

 cultural unity is the absence of national and racial differ- 

 ences. Again this is an overstatement. Outside cities, 

 there exist racial groups definitely related to regions and 

 to production of particular types of crops. Variety is 



12 Op. cit., pp. 6-7. 



