seriously impeded economic progress. Thus the spatial patterns of socioeconomic structure are of particular significance relative to the interplay of traditional values in a modern pluralistic society. Nicholls' has classified the traditional elements into five principal categories: the dominance of agrarian values, the rigidity of the social structure, the undemocratic political structure, the weakness of social responsibility, and conformity of thought and behavior. Hart2 prefers to think of the southern way of life in terms of six patterns of living: a predominantly native-born Protestant population, a distinctive regional diet, strong class distinctions, the peculiar status of Negroes, a talent for self-deception, and a tradition of voting Democratic. No doubt both conceptualizations have considerable merit, but they do not tell us if the situation is changing, and if so, how rapidly. Also masked is the relative standing of the South with respect to development in the rest of the country. A recent study by Hofferbert3 dealing with the socioeconomic dimensions of the forty-eight conterminous states at ten-year intervals fromt 1890 to 1960 shows the relative deprivation of the South vis-a-vis the rest of the country and the extent to which it changed during the 70-year interval. His analysis is based on data for twenty-one socioeconomic variables at the county level of aggregation. A factor-analysis solution suggests that the variation is two dimensional. A fairly consistent 60 percent explanatory level has been achieved by using two factors for each of the eight observation periods. The