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This article focuses on the adequacy of the growth record of the American economy in recent years. Within the past several years the question of whether or not the economy is advancing at a rapid enough pace has become a matter of serious interest to the general public as well as the economic specialist. This is true to such an extent that the economy's allegedly inadequate growth rate became one of the major issues in the 1960 presidential election campaign. The question of the adequacy of the growth performance of the American economy has been brought forcefully to public attention from a number of responsible and professionally competent sources. The central question in any discussion of the adequacy of the growth record of the economy is that of criteria. Evidence based upon per capita data rather than growth rates suggests that the economy's performance from 1944 through 1960 was relatively unsatisfactory. Real gains of sizable proportions were recorded in living standards as reflected in per capita consumption outlays, but the primary source of such gains was not the sustained growth iii the economy as a whole, but a large-scale shift in the end-use of the nation's total output. As the 1950's drew to a close, however, the possibilities of further progress in living standards from this particular source were becoming exhausted. The same holds for any future increases in the other major components of the output total, particularly investment outlays. In retrospect, therefore, the era 1945-1960 was primarily one in which the fruits of the economy's massive ware tune surge of growth were adapted to peacetime uses. It was not, an era of satisfactory growth.

This article focuses on the need for constructive analysis, planning, and policy to promote regional economic growth in the southern states of the U.S. The prospects and possibilities for the South's economic development are, of course, closely linked with growth of and changes in the national economy. During the past two decades, the South has shared increasingly well in national economic growth, and similar promise holds for the future. Although there are thus grounds for optimism, the expected improvement could presumably be made greater and more certain. The present momentum of Southern economic development provides a strong driving force which may be harnessed by special and concerted efforts to secure continued advance. Too much emphasis can hardly be placed on the productivity of the South's labor force in terms of its aptitudes, mobility, and employability. For several decades, the South has had somewhat more than its share of low productivity industry. Low-productivity areas are necessarily low-wage, low-income areas as well. A revealing example is the cotton-growing region of the South in which farms are typically too small, under-equipped, and poorly managed to be profitable. Such factors as the one-crop system, sharecropping, race, and an inadequate system of rural credit work in combination to reduce the productivity and cash incomes of these far too numerous farmers.

This article examines the effect of peddling upon industrialization and economic development and the evolution of institutional arrangements in marketing in the Antebellum period. After 1840 peddling in America was undertaken, to an increasing extent, by newly arrived immigrants from Germany who displaced the traditional "Yankees" from the trade. The relationship between peddling and the development of entrepreneurship is explored, along with the special opportunities that peddling provided for economic and occupational mobility in the American milieu. The frequency with which individuals who started careers as peddlers rose to prominence in the fields of merchandising and finance points to the importance of the "schooling" function of this institution for newly arrived immigrants in American folkways, business practices, and commercial possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]