SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



the booming twenties, when this industrial proselyting 

 reached a giddy climax, all had Industrial Development 

 Commissions of some sort, actively backing an army of 

 local Chambers of Commerce. Though sometimes more 

 enthusiastic than purposeful, this municipal boosting 

 did bring results. If sometimes the new factories were 

 economically wobbly, this generous, high-spirited move- 

 ment furthered the industrialization ideal. 



The Great Depression withered these industrial ef- 

 forts and blighted the agricultural economy which was 

 still the mainstay of most of the people. The average 

 farm-family income never more than a couple of hun- 

 dred hard cash dollars a year in the South dropped 

 to ninety-five. To avert stark starvation the federal 

 Government had to step in with relief programs which 

 during the Roosevelt administration grew and multi- 

 plied and diversified till they came to dominate the 

 work and the thought of great segments of the people. 

 Consciously or unconsciously, for good or evil, the 

 Government not only provided the mainspring of an 

 economic revolution in the South, but it has wound 

 this mainspring up so tightly that it now exerts terrific 

 force. 



Wholly intangible, and thus unlike other products 

 of the New Deal gigantic dams athwart the Tennessee 

 Valley; big, yellow brick schools lording it over so many 

 small towns this change is not without its own signs 

 and portents. The political revolt that dethroned Tal- 



14 



