"This is the godsend they've been waiting for! Think, Mr. Chesbro! They've spent millions on advertising and promotion to attract industry--to steal it, if you like. Tax exemptions. Rent-free plant. This flood is worth a billion dollars to them, Mr. Chesbro. If it's as big as it looks from here, it's worth all the sixteen-page ads they'll ever run in the Sunday _Times_. Believe me, I know. There are going to be task-forces from the Bureau of Industrial Development of every southern state calling on every manufacturer and distributor in this area. 'Frightful about your tragedy,' and 'Us Delta folks want to he'p you any way we can,' and 'Don't get us wrong, friend, we ain't out to steal industry from the No'th at a time like this, but--' And then it starts. They'll woo them with sites, with tax write-offs, with cheap labor rates. They'll strip the area of industry, clean as a whistle. Unless." "My God!" said Chesbro, appalled. He had never considered the angle but she was, God knew, dead-right. Nor, he reflected self-pityingly, would _he_ get any such offers. What did he have that would attract a Mississippi chamber of commerce? It was all intangibles that his fortune was going to come from--was almost coming from already, he assured himself panickily. He had come pretty close; it was only a question of time until the legislature authorized the trotting track, until the money borrowed from his wife's father and invested in that promising Geiger-positive tract north of Summit turned up real pay dirt, until-- Until never, now. Not if this frighteningly plausible young woman was right. And she sounded right. He said slowly, "You're a very smart young woman, Miss Froman. Have you had any experience in this field?" She smiled candidly. "Only enough to get the feel of it, Mr. Chesbro. I'm a writer. You might say I've made a study of everything." (And besides, I typed Hesch's thesis for him, didn't I? _The War Between The States, Round Two: A Study in Industrial Dynamics._) He nodded. "You said 'unless.' Unless what?" She said composedly, "Unless we get there first. Unless we form an organization immediately--on a regional basis--to hammer home our side. _Skilled_ labor that's been through the birth-pangs of organizational strikes. They're the roughest kind, and they still lie ahead for the South. Access to the markets. A good life for the management and supervisory workers. Bracing climate. Sound Republican territory." She had him. She could feel it, and she was never wrong. Let him nibble at the bait a while; let him taste it and want it, and bite down into it all by himself--bite down on that buried "we" that would hook him, deep and clean and gasping.