The study of the fourteen families in Fall River is not as satisfactory as the southern investigation because the standards of English, Italian, French Canadian, Portuguese and Polish operatives are so different. Also it was not possible, as it often was in the South, to get an almost complete record both of family income and expenditure through the books of the companies where the families worked. For these reasons the analysis of the southern families’ budgets is more deserving of attention. Special interest attaches to the study of the twenty-one southern families as it was the first budget study of southern families, I believe. As a background we may quote from the report a brief description of life in a southern cotton mill town: “Certain conditions of the new industrial life foster this isolation. The whole family—men, women, and children—are engaged in the same industry in which every other family in their community is engaged. They have their own churches and their own schools, in many cases furnished by the mill owners. They live, with few exceptions, in houses owned by the mill company. They buy their provisions, in many cases, from the company store. The cotton mill is the center of their lives. Their present and their future are bounded by it. In less isolated industrial communities there is always the prospect of working into some other and higher industrial group. The vision of the southern cotton operative, however, is so limited by his surroundings that this possibility rarely occurs to him. In other industries the father may feel that he can never hope for anything more for himself, but he can at least plan and struggle for a better life for his children. Here the mill demands the children as well as the fathers.” This dependence on the mills serves to make the study more accurate than is usually possible. The rent of company houses was, of course, known and through the courtesy of the mill owners the investigators were allowed to copy from the books of the company not only the detailed expenditures for food, clothing, etc., but what was of more importance, the actual wage of the various members of the family from week to week for an entire year. The total income, in some cases practically every item of expenditure, is therefore known.