A Warning to the Reader 



THIS BOOK needed to be written. There is no doubt 

 whatever about that. And yet I wish that I might sit 

 down with you and chat about how it came to be 

 written and by a Damyankee from Connecticut. 



A revolution is brewing in Southern farms and fac- 

 tories, and it is high time that all of us look into its 

 causes and consider its effects. A new economic era is 

 beginning in which new crops will be grown and new 

 goods manufactured. More important than the new 

 techniques or the new working conditions or the new 

 markets is the new spirit that today inspires the South. 

 I have attempted to reappraise Southern resources in 

 the terms of these new values. 



But you should be warned that this is no exhaustive 

 economic treatise. You will look in vain for charts of 

 prices and wages or statistical tables of production and 

 consumption. This is not that kind of book at all. 



This is a story of men, practical men of vision. 



It is a first-hand account of some of the leaders in 

 this Southern revolution; revealing stories of the men 

 who are doing unusual things in fresh ways. These are 

 the men who are trying to grow cottonless cotton 

 plants; men who are skimming oil off the waste black 



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