As someone who owned such a house with tall windows and transoms and all that you expect for natural cooling including tall trees for shade- going from 98 outside to natural cooling of 85 inside if youre extremrly lucky with a breeze and have lots of fans inside doesn't do much to encourage you to do anything but lay around and try not to exert yourself to become hotter.
True. But if the other option is to be a farmer working in the outside? I guess I'm just arguing urban/coastal jobs as a better opportunity for poor whites rather than subsistence farming in the land rejected by the plantation elite.