Jamie --

Standard of living, North and South, was somewhat equal just before the war. By the 1880s standard of living for the two regions had gone in opposite directions. One author says it's like comparing average earnings of German workers with average earnings of Russian peasants. Evidently something happened to cause this change.

What could it have been?

Just before the war, the average wage for day labor in Southern states was a dollar to a dollar-twenty-five. Within a generation wages rates had fallen to as low as a nickle a day, and little children had to work in mills and mines for families to get by.

Something happened to cause that.

Before the war, most Southerners, even those who owned a few slaves, operated farms for mainly for subsistence. They raised some cotton or other cash crops for market, and lived on what they raised afterwards. As a result of the war, most of these families lost their land and had to work as tenants. As Mr. Turchin states, the ways and means of life didn't change much over the years, but there was a lot less to live on. As Tennessee Ernie Ford once lamented, these folks owed their soul to the company store.

Mr. Turchin is correct -- it is true that nobody made our hillbilly ancestors move up North. By the same token, nobody makes Mexicans cross the border into the U.S. Given a choice of staying home and living in poverty like their ancestors, both groups migrated in search of work and a better life.

In 1938 President Roosevelt established a commission to study the causes of Southern poverty, which he declared to be a major national problem. It was titled, "Report on Economic Conditions of the South". Study results have some interesting ties to defeat of the Confederacy and government policies designed to punish the South.

Mr. Turchin rightly calls our attention to negative Southern attitudes towards the Yankee. Many of these are connected to Northern destruction of Southern homes and property during the war, and Northern military government and exploitation afterwards. I'm unaware of the reverse happening at any time in history.

We're familiar with Dogpatch and Snuffy Smith as parodies of Southerners --
http://www.lil-abner.com/dogpatch.html

What are some comparable parodies of Northerners?
All in the Family?
Seinfeld?

"OZARK HILLBILLIES SOON TO BE EXTINCT; Government Is Buying Ridge Farms of Picturesque Folk for National Parks."
New York Times, May 5, 1935.

Once Uncle Sam bought them out, guess they all moved to Chicago!