T. Lynn Smith

Some Aspects of Village Demography

least the over-migration reduced by the intervention of the employment service. And more recently the service has undertaken to work out with employers means of recruiting in distant places that will result in the movement only of such workers as can find employment. If the demand on our labor resources approaches the magnitude that some predict, there will be many problems encountered in mobilizing our available supplies of labor to man all essential defense activities. This will mean not only training millions of workers, but also organizing the labor market on a scale hitherto unknown in this country.

Recent Changes in the Farm Population of the Southern States

T HIS discussion deals with the changes in the farm population of the I3 Southern States during the five-year period, I930-35. The following are among the most important of the findings. i. The farm population of the Southern States increased from I5,586,I49 in I930 to i6,074,I22 in I935, a gain of one-half million or 3 .I per cent. z. During the five years there was a decided change in the racial makeup of the Souths farm population. Thus, the white farm population increased from

LUMPKIN, KATHARINE DUPRE. The South in Progress. Pp. 256. New York: International Publishers, 1940.

most analyzed of all the Nation’s regions, and books of and about the South continue to pour forth from the Nation’s presses. Any new work on the southern region must be of unusual quality in order to compare favorably with some of the works already done. In the reviewer’s opinion the present treatise falls below par as an impartial analytical study of the Southland. A glance at the chapter titles reveals the scope of the book. These are as follows: Land of Cotton, Fruits of the Sharecropping System, Differentials in Industry, Livelihood, Civil Liberty, Labour [sic], Problems of Trade Unionism, The New Deal Comes South, Divisions and Issues, Political Ferment, and Time of Progress. The progressive South, according to the author, includes five chief components: (1) the fight for suffrage, (2) the struggle for organized labor, (3) the Southern Policy Committee, (4) endeavors for increased Negro participation, and (5) the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. Undoubtedly the author addresses herself to some, but not to all, of the significant issues confronting and convulsing the region. In the reviewer’s opinion, however, it is unfortunate that she discusses these in a manner that is more partisan and propagandistic than impartial, judicious, and scientific. One cannot read far in the book without discovering a lack of knowledge of essential facts. A few samples: &dquo;To-day rice has changed its locus to parts of Oklahoma and Texas ...&dquo; (p. 17); Baton Rouge, with its tremendous export trade in oil and petroleum products, is omitted from the list of southern ports (p. 22); Virginia is mentioned as a center of chemical manufacture, but not Baton Rouge and Lake Charles (p. 2 31 Furthermore, many assertions, such as one maintaining that impoverished existence of Harlan miners and Alabama steel workers represents a tremendous advance