Chatham Blanketeer
Vol. 5 NOVEMBER 14, 1938 No. 10
People of South Are Its Greatest Asset
THURMOND CHATHAM
SUCH IS BELIEF
OF MR. CHATHAM
President of Company Says South
Has Unlimited Opportunities
for Advancement
The South has unlimited op
portunities for advancement in
the next 20 years and the first
thing it needs to do is to learn
to utilize its resources and use its
own products, Thurmond Chat
ham, Winston-Salem industrialist,
said today.
Piedmont North Carolina is one
of the richest potential fields for
development of agricultural pro
cessing industries, plastics, gar
ment making and many other
types of production and manufac
turing, he continued, bringing the
subject home to the Twin City’s
immediate surrounding territory.
As the eyes of the nation were
focused more clearly than ever on
Southern states today after an
article in Fortune magazine deal
ing with the economic problems
of the South, the young Winston-
Salem manufacturer, one of the
outstanding textile men in the
United States, spoke of his hopes
for the South and for the Caro
lina Piedmont sections.
Have Opportunities
“The main thing the South has
to wake up to is that we have
the opportunities,” he said. “With
our climate and vast resources
there is no limit to the possibili
ties of development during the
next 20 years. If the South con
tinues to progress, with increas
ed prosperity, it will lead the na
tion in all lines in the near fu
ture.
“The Fortune survey is true in
every respect. The people of the
South are its greatest asset. They
have ambition and initiative.
“Within the past 20 years the
section has awakened to its pos
sibilities, has found that it has re
sources and banking facilities for
which it previously had to depend
upon other regions.
“The South is just beginning to
show the results of what it has
learned during these last two dec
ades,” he declared, in a state
ment that gave warm promise for
the future.
“We could improve our position
by learning to use our own pro
ducts. All southerners haven’t
yet realized that southern pro
ducts are as good, if not better,
than those produced in other
sections.
Machine Industry
“And here in our own Pied
mont, we have unlimited oppor
tunity. The Piedmont lends itself
to the same type of machine in
dustry as New England, a fact
that was mentioned in the For
tune survey.
“There are many branches of
industry just beginning to be
opened up here—processing of
agricultural products, meat pack
ing, manufacturing of dairy pro
ducts.”
The full utilization by the
South of the things its fertile
lands will produce and the in
creased consumption of southern
products by southern people are
the things needed now, he indi
cated.
Soy beans, from which plastics
and other products are made;
ceramics, already an industry in
western North Carolina; canned
goods and dairy products were
especially mentioned by Chatham.
“All ramifications of the tex
tile industry are continuing to
move South,” continued the blan
ket manufacturer. “And there is
an excellent opportunity for gar
ment manufacturing.”
Good Products
“The products produced by
these Southern plants are good
ones. The people are learning
that they are excellent in work
manship, and frequently excel
products produced elsewhere.”
“The South is getting the furn
iture business of the country
now,” he added, “and that is cen
tered in the Piedmont and moun
tain section of Virginia and North
Carolina.”
“Southern people remained at
home and had traveled little in
the past. They did not realize
our potentialities in natural re
sources and agriculture. They are
now learning what the South has,
as compared with other sections.”
Chatham’s comment was one of
a number made by leading men
of the South as the Fortune ar
ticle created interest throughout
the United States.
Rate Equalities' Cited
Abolition of North and South
freight rate “inequalities” was
held “absolutely essential” to in
industrial expansion in the South,
by Bona Allen, Jr., head of the
huge Bona Allen Shoe Co. at Bu
ford, Ga.
“Without a shadow of a doubt
we of the South must have lower
freight rates, equal to those of
the North, before Southern indus
try can expand to the extent of
equality with other manufac
turing centers of the nation,”
Allen declared.
Better times for the entire
country would result from further
industriol expansion in the South,
Fortune magazine pointed out
in its November issue describing
the 11-state region as “the na
tion’s No. 1 opportunity.”
The survey covered Virginia,
North and South Carolina, Geor
gia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama,
Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennes.iee
and Kentucky.
Pointing out that 29 per cent,
of 1937 American investments in
new industrial plants was placed
in the South, the magazine said
that the section continued to
offer sectional poverty “princi
pally because both its agriculture
and its industry are tributary,
rather than primary.”
“Yet both its industry and ag
riculture have been developed far
enough to show that there is no
good reason why the South can
not be built up until it forms not
a tributary region but an in
tegral part of the country and a
level of activity and purchasing
power comparable to the whole.”
Mr. E. M. Hodel returned Wed
nesday from a business trip to
New York.
An artesian well in Arkansas
spouts both fresh, and salt w'ater.