"Perhaps only in the Deep South, as yet protected by the width of the lower Mississippi, is there something approaching a genuine hope, although ironically that may be the product of ignorance. Here the overlords have gone and the poor whites, unsupported by an explicit kinship, have withdrawn into complete listlessness. Some black men have fled, but to most the Grass is a mere bogey, incapable of frightening those who have survived so much. Now, for the first time since 1877 the polls are open to all and there are again Negro governors, and black legislatures. And they are legislating as if forever. Farm tenancy has been abolished, the great plantations have been expropriated and made cooperative, the Homestead Act of 1862 has been applied in the South and every citizen is entitled to claim a quartersection. There is a great deal of laughter at this childish lawmaking, but it goes on, changing the face of the region, the lawmakers themselves not at all averse to the joke." Everything Le ffacase wrote was not only dull, but biased and unjust as well. It was true capital was leaving the country rapidly, but what other course had it? To stay and attempt to carry on industry in the midst of the demoralization was obviously impractical. The plants remained and when a way was found to conquer the Grass we would be glad to reopen them, for this would be a practical course, just as the flight of capital was a practical course; standards of living were now so reduced in the United States it would be more profitable to employ cheap American labor than overpaid Latin or European. _55._ I had now no fixed abode, dividing my time between Rio and Buenos Aires, Melbourne and Manchester. General Thario and his family lived in Copenhagen, overseeing our continental properties, now of equal importance with the South American holdings. Before leaving, and indeed on every trip back home, he visited his son--no easy thing to do, what with the young man's constant movement and the extreme difficulty of going from east to west against the torrent pouring in the opposite direction. Joe had married the female of the snapshot, or contracted some sort of permanent alliance with her--I never got it quite straight and the Tharios were deplorably careless about such details; and she proved as eccentric as he was. No appeal to selfinterest, no pleading he forgo his morbid preoccupation with the Grass for the sake of his family, could move them. "A W--you have seen it, heard it, smelled it. Can't you explain--miraculously touched with the gift of lucidity for fact as you are for the fictions of production, overhead and dividends? Oh, not to Mama--either she understands better than I or not at all--but to the Old Man or Connie?