The Wilmington Morning Star

South Needs Faith

The eyes of the nation are on the South. The Southern States Industrial Council lists some of the reasons. In a bulletin by Thurman Sensing, the council's research director, the position of southern cotton and timber is emphasized as a result of the application of chemistry and mechanization. "With courage to forego the palliative of subsidation," writes Mr. Sensing, "the South can produce cotton on a basis that will compete with any other fibre. At the same time, Southern timber is being transformed by chemistry into the South's greatest crop, even exceeding cotton. Naval stores have become chemicals that enter into all sorts of commodities from soap to cement, that take part in all kinds of processes from cleaning hogs in the packing house to compounding rubber in the factory . . . Paper, pulp, plastics, and many chemical by-products . . . locked up under the bark (of trees) are bringing realization of the great asset the South has in its forests."

Mr. Sensing also writes glowingly of the cultivation of tung trees from which some five million pounds of oil are extracted annually, and of silk worm cultivation in Texas. He shows that the South's mineral resources produce annually one-third of the nation's mineral wealth. "Verily," he concludes, "the South needs nothing in the way of natural resources to have the broad path of prosperity beating a way to its door."

We like Mr. Sensing's enthusiasm, but we wonder if perhaps his conclusion is properly inclusive. It is true the South has the natural resources, but has the South sufficient faith in itself to have the "broad path of prosperity beating a way to its door?"

This question arises from the fact that the South sends to many of its young men elsewhere to complete their education and technical training, sends elsewhere for specialists to organize and operate its industries, and finds investment for its money all too often in other regions.