8 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



that its habits of rural life make up a comparatively 

 large part of its culture. Its leading agricultural product, 

 cotton, may also be expected to play a larger part in the 

 economic life of the section than in other more indus- 

 trialized areas. Add to this the popular view that the 

 South is at once the most crude and the most courtly, 

 the most promising, the most provincial, and the most 

 backward of the regions of the United States. 



The scientific interest in the culture of the South has 

 resulted in many interesting and valuable interpretations 

 of the region. To a social geographer like Ellsworth 

 Huntington, the South is explicable in terms of climate; 

 to publicists like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant 

 the explanation is wholly in terms of race ; to an economic 

 historian like Ulrich B. Phillips, in terms of race and 

 the plantation system; and to a social historian like 

 Walter L. Fleming, partly in terms of the results of 

 Civil War and Reconstruction. Dr. David Starr Jordan 

 stresses the biological depletion wrought by the Civil 

 War. Professor Howard W. Odum has suggested a treat- 

 ment of the contemporary southern situation in terms of 

 leadership, and Dr. Edwin Minis has given an intellec- 

 tualistic interpretation. Professors Holland Thompson 

 and Broadus Mitchell have furnished historical com- 

 mentaries on the South's industrialization of its cotton. 

 Dr. Francis Butler Simkins and Dr. A. M. Arnett have 

 traced attempts of southern rural folk in South Carolina 

 and Georgia to better their conditions of life by political 

 action. Frank Tannenbaum has published a brilliant 

 though journalistic critique of the South in terms of 

 cotton and racial attitudes. Possibly the most promising 

 attempt at regional interpretation is the series of studies 

 planned and under way in the Institute for Research in 



