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The article presents opinions of residents of Texas Counties on differential community growth. Although an adequate theory of differential community growth rates is still wanting, there is consensus and supporting evidence that the major proximate cause is an expansion of employment opportunities in local industries. However, in attempting to go beyond the observed relation and identify the determinants of industry expansion, it becomes abundantly dear that there are sharp differences of opinion on the subject. There are at least two distinct schools of thought on the determinants of industry expansion at the local level. The "classical school" views differential growth rates as a reflection of the fact that some communities have an advantageous location relative to natural resources, transportation routes, and markets. Accordingly, variation in growth rates is interpreted as a product of impersonal and uncontrolled competition among communities, in the sense that the outcome is generally beyond the control of the residents. In opposition to a mechanistic interpretation of industry expansion, the "leadership school" emphasizes the role of community effort.

The article focuses on the economic development of the Southwest that is defined as the area embracing Texas and the four contiguous states, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. There is great diversity within this area, but the characteristics in common seem to outweigh the diversity and justify analysts' treating the area as an economically meaningful region. In so defining the Southwest, analysts gave major consideration to the fad that each of these states is a significant producer of oil and gas; for analysts hypothesized at the outset that the oil and gas and related industries have played a leading role in the area's development. The supposed importance of these industries, whose rise to prominence dates from about the time of World War I, also helps account for the fact that the article in particular concentrates on the period since 1920. The article is hoping to throw some light on the prospects for further rapid development in the years ahead and perhaps to suggest the kinds of policies most conducive to it.

The article reports that in the history of important societies or nations, the attainment of a condition of economic stability has typically been followed by decline or breakdown in at least the economic sphere and has frequently been accompanied at a more or less remote stage by political, social, cultural, and even moral decay. In other words, stability in the sense of cessation of economic expansion seems to have been one of the indispensable conditions of ultimate demise. The major problem which this study analyzes is whether there is a necessary connection between economic stability and economic decay. The fact of past correlation is accepted. But the inevitability of it, the a priori necessary connection, merits further discussion, for if it is a necessary connection, the Western world is indeed faced with at least a serious problem. In the twentieth century the self-conscious quest for, and emphasis upon, security, the manifestation of the desire for stability, has become a firmly ingrained aspect of policy-security from external aggression, security from internal revolution, security from famine or the business cycle. All societies, of course, are concerned to a greater or lesser extent with these problems.

The article presents information on Great Salt Lake, Utah. Interest in the Great Salt Lake has increased recently because its potential economic resources appear to be close to realization. Economic development will bring problems as well as profit and, in this respect, the Great Salt Lake may be considered a microcosm of what is happening in other areas of economic growth. The map of Great Salt Lake thus takes on a larger meaning in the battle between economics and ecology. The prospect of recovering a vast reserve of important chemicals has stimulated activity in government and business.

This article focuses on the book "The Basis of Japanese Foreign Policy," by Albert E. Hindmarsh. Hindmarsh's little book is a scholarly unimpassioned attempt to outline the practicalities at the roots of Japan's foreign relations. Japanese origins and history are briefly reviewed. The study of the problem of population pressure gains clarity and force from a generous use of tables and charts. Dean Hindmarsh concludes that overpopulation is not only a serious contemporary question in Japanese economics but that it will continue unabated by the purely physical remedies of birth control, migration, emigration, and agricultural development for many years in the future. Again, in a discussion of the astonishing growth of industry and foreign trade, a liberal use of charts and tables is a boon to the reader's understanding. The danger that universal economic recovery offers to continued development along these lines is said to lie in the inevitable rise in the prices of raw materials upon which Japanese industry is dependent as well as in higher prices for the increasing flow of imported foodstuffs.