Vlll PREFACE 



society always prove greater than man's conventionalized 

 representations. Such a study, then, is likely to lead to a 

 sense of failure to a feeling that the cotton culture 

 complex is there, but that it has not been put on paper. 

 Nevertheless, though the picture be incomplete, the writer 

 hopes that it is not misleading. 



This volume is planned as a part of a series of studies 

 in the regional South undertaken by the Institute for 

 Research in Social Science at the University of North 

 Carolina. Taking for their general subject the southern 

 regional field, they attempt to set forth the culture pe- 

 culiar to the American South in terms of its conditioning 

 by natural environment. The writer, as his part of the 

 task, hopes to complete within the next three years a 

 human geography of the South. 



It is a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge my indebted- 

 ness to the experts of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture. Such men as C. O. Brannen, E. L. Kirk- 

 patrick, J. T. Sanders, B. R. Coad, W. J. Spillman, O. E. 

 Baker, and Dr. Joseph Goldberger, until his recent death 

 a member of the U. S. Public Health Service, have no 

 doubt become accustomed to anonymity by seeing their 

 researches quoted as Government Bulletin No. 2. It is 

 to such caliber of scholarship as theirs that the publica- 

 tions of the United States government owe their high 

 scientific rank. No less emphatic are my obligations to 

 the historians of the South, W. E. Dodd, M. B. Ham- 

 mond, Ulrich B. Phillips, the late John Spencer Bassett, 

 and Walter L. Fleming. Their researches must become 

 the common property of all who seek to understand the 

 American South. 



Acknowledgments are due Dr. Howard W. Odum, Di- 

 rector of the Institute for Research in Social Science and 



