AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 19 



turous human spirits to the North and West. This drain has accelerated in 

 recent years. Gerald Johnson, interpreting statistical tables compiled 

 by Howard Odum of the University of North Carolina, estimates that the 

 exodus of Southerners, considered in point of quantity alone, has exceeded 3% 

 million; and that to rear, school, and then lose this many men and women 

 to other parts of our country, cost Southerners at least 17% billion dollars. 



On Thinned Soil, Healing, the South is now coming back. Safer meth- 

 ods of cultivation are developing fast, and being adopted. Healing pine 

 and hardwood are being permitted and encouraged to reforest the worst- 

 torn, cropped-out areas. Second-growth and some surviving virgin timber 

 are being brought under management and cropped with a view to perma- 

 nent security, pleasure, and gain. 



Grassland is coming back, too, but on the most-eroded areas forests 

 must be the mainstay for centuries to come. For although nearly all the 

 topsoil there is gone, there are many trees which can feed on subsoil and 

 flourish. And trees bring up through their roots and trunks and limbs and 

 foliage mineral and organic nutrients that are below the reach of lesser 

 plants, slowly rebuilding topsoil with the years. Within the present century 

 more than 1 1 millions of acres of national forests have been established in 

 the South alone, and the State forests there now exceed 254,000 acres. 



The South is coming back; but you will find little of the lavish old 

 plantation atmosphere, the gay outdoor court life, or the soirees which 

 attended King Cotton at the height of his reign. For the New South is a 

 land of hard work and of rather grim and steadfast purposes. Most of its 

 people are engaged in the tiring, unromantic business of actual long-time 

 reconstruction from the ground up. The tourist business brings in money, 

 and so is welcome. But the thud of the tractor, the plod of working gangs 

 and work mules, the rising whir of new and diversified factories, and of a 

 great woods industry — these are sounds that seem more important to the 

 South than banjo music now. 



Work— and Escape ... It is a common observation among the people 

 of older countries that Americans work like mad, play like mad, and do 



