A WARNING TO THE READER 



The first time I visited the Tennessee Valley, during 

 World War I, Muscle Shoals was a few naked concrete 

 walls surrounded by a sea of mud through which 

 sloughed gangs of mules dragging in construction ma- 

 terials. I saw the two pioneer alkali plants of the Deep 

 South, at Corpus Christi and Lake Charles, when they 

 also were under construction. 



Many of my old, close friends are scattered from 

 Newport News to Fort Worth, from Natchez to Tampa, 

 and I have enjoyed Southern hospitality in the old- 

 fashioned meaning of that distinguished but abused 

 phrase, from the pillared mansions of Maryland's East- 

 ern Shore to the sprawling ranch houses of the High 

 Plains of Texas. Over innumerable cokes and juleps 

 we have discussed all sorts of things from the soul of 

 man to insecticides. 



One thing above all others that a Southerner resents 

 is the visitor who spends a couple of days in Richmond 

 and -Atlanta, a week in New Orleans, a weekend at 

 Colonel Pendleton's plantation, and after driving a 

 couple of hours over Tobacco Road goes home and 

 writes a book about the South with explicit directions 

 as to just what Southerners should do about it. A New 

 Englander can sympathize with this resentment. We, 

 too, have suffered from these "mental carpetbaggers." 

 Our climate, our ancestors, our industries, how we live 

 and what we think, have now been extravagantly 

 praised, now censured beyond all reason. 



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