SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



covery of facts, but their confirmation by objective, 

 controlled experiment. 



Nevertheless, this lively, popular interest in research 

 is healthy, encouraging, and long overdue, and its sud- 

 den outburst in the textile industry is not exactly typi- 

 cal. However willing the spirit, the flesh of most South- 

 ern industries is weak. But this is typical of almost the 

 whole nation. 



The lack of true research and the need for it in the 

 South was the text from which Dr. George D. Palmer, 

 Jr., preached to the assembled manufacturers at the 

 1940 meeting of the Alabama State Chamber of Com- 

 merce. It was a good, workmanlike job, well turned out. 

 The professor of chemistry at the University of Alabama 

 had the facts and presented them clearly. But he is no 

 soul-stirring orator and he was telling an oft-told tale. 

 This time, however, the familiar theme struck fire; 

 Palmer's sermon made converts who burned with fiery 

 zeal. 



The embers had been smoldering a dozen years. 

 When Herbert Ryding was president of the Tennessee 

 Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, he had lighted the 

 match by asking Dr. Stuart J. Lloyd, dean of the School 

 of Chemistry, University of Alabama, to study the 

 chemical potentialities of the Birmingham section. That 

 lean chemical zealot urged, and kept urging, that busi- 

 nessmen of the South band together to support an in- 

 dustrial research organization upon the lines of the 



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