Donald Comer: New Southerner, New Dealer

Donald Comer became a leader in the cotton manufacturing industry in the 1920s. That decade and the next were a time when both the New South ideology and labor-management relations underwent change. Those years were also watershed years in terms of changes in the political scene. During those years Progressivism changed and the New Deal arrived. As the son of Alabama Governor B. B. Comer, and as the leader of both Avondale Mills and Cowikee Mills, Donald was poised to act on those changes and to help shape both the economic and political side of life in the South. The Barbour County native acted to promote traditional New South goals of industrialism and diversified farming. The prominent Alabama cotton manufacturer also acted as a Progressive and as a New Deal advocate. The interaction of Comer with both the New South philosophy of economic development and the political reforms of both Progressivism and the New Deal are explored. Both the extent of his acceptance and the limits to his belief in both economic and political reform are examined. Specific points investigated include New South issues such as industrialization and diversified farming, Progressive reforms such as education, the use of child labor, night work of women and children, the development of the Tennessee Valley, and Prohibition; New Deal issues of relief and recovery, particularly rural relief, the ending of tenant farming, and the limiting of cotton acreage, and government intervention in the economy and in labor relations.