Since 1946, in Massachusetts alone, seventy textile mills have been liquidated, generally for migration or disposition of their assets to plants in the South or other sections of the country. Besides textiles, there have been moves in the machinery, hosiery, apparel, electrical, paper, chemical, and other important industries. Every month of the year some New England manufacturer is approached by public or private southern interests offering various inducements for migration southward. Other manufacturers warn their employees that they must take pay cuts to meet southern competition or face plant liquidations.
[...]
Such a movement has been going on for more than twenty-five years in the cotton textile industry. In 1925 New England had 80 per cent of the industry; now it has 20 per cent. Former Governor of Georgia Ellis Arnall and other southerners have freely predicted that the South will also "capture" the woolen and worsted industry, two thirds of which is still in New England, and large segments of other manufacturing groups.
[..]
But the final reason for migration, with which I am particularly concerned, is the cost differential resulting from practices or conditions permitted or provided by Federal law which are unfair or substandard by any criterion. Massachusetts manufacturing industries in May of 1953 paid an average hourly wage of $1.64; but because the Federal minimum is only an outdated 75 cents an hour, many industries migrating to the rural communities of Mississippi pay workers only that less-than-subsistence wage, and those employees under "learners permits" even less. Practically all New England woolen textile mills pay a wage of at least $1.20 an hour; but because of the recent Fulbright Amendment to the Walsh-Healey Act, which has held up the establishment of this wage as the new Federal minimum for that industry, the New England mills must bid for government contracts against southern mills paying only $1.05 an hour. Labor organizations in highly unionized New England have achieved not only better wages but pension and fringe benefits as well. In the South, however, unionization of competing plants has been virtually halted since enactment of the Taft-Hartley Law.
Without adequate Federal standards for social security or unemployment compensation, many employers who move south support a level of benefits far below those paid by New England industry. Federal tax amortization benefits have not only been disproportionately granted to southern plants, but have also been granted to promote expansion in the South without regard to available facilities and manpower in New England. Federally regulated shipping rates by rail, truck, or sea discriminate unduly against New England and are a confused, shapeless mass of regulation. One of the most obviously unfair inducements offered to those considering migration is the tax-free plant built by a southern community with the proceeds of Federally tax-exempt municipal bonds.
Senator John Kennedy, 1952 (or 1954) speech