A WARNING TO THE READER 



From Baltimore to Brownsville so many think that 

 quite the damnedest of all Yankees hail from my native 

 Connecticut, that I have become a little self-conscious. 

 Maybe this is only a sort of inverted state pride. Never- 

 theless, I am so frequently twitted about our blue laws 

 and wooden nutmegs, and the Connecticut Yankee is 

 so universally accepted as the perfect exemplar of the 

 New England conscience which will swap one biscuit 

 for one barrel of flour, even, any day, that it troubles 

 me at times. 



This enforced humility has at least kept me from the 

 grievous fault of offering gratuitous advice. Again you 

 must be warned that in the following pages you will 

 find no ready-made plan of economic salvation. You 

 may be surprised that there is so little consideration of 

 the South's social and political problems which always 

 press so closely upon all industrial and agricultural de- 

 velopments. I have tried to keep strictly to the technical 

 and economic phases, within the bounds of my expe- r 

 rience. 



It would not do to belabor the point, but Southerners 

 and New Englanders stand upon a good deal of com- 

 mon ground. Most importantly we both live in estab- 

 lished communities where we have not only known our 

 contemporaries since childhood, but we also remem- 

 ber their grandparents. Our homes, our schools and 

 churches, the bank and the corner drugstore, our high- 

 ways, even the land itself, are all primed with mem- 



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