Awarded the David A. Wells Prize 1963-64.

IFC Lessons of Experience Paper No. 3. Describes the International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) 20 years of leasing experience in developing countries and assesses the developmental impact of leasing. The IFC has invested in leasing companies in more than half of the developing countries that have a leasing industry today.

Aaron W. Marrs challenges the accepted understanding of economic and industrial growth in antebellum America with this original study of the history of the railroad in the Old South. Drawing from both familiar and overlooked sources, such as the personal diaries of Southern travelers, papers and letters from civil engineers, corporate records, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Marrs skillfully expands on the conventional business histories that have characterized scholarship in this field. He situates railroads in the fullness of antebellum life, examining how slavery, technology, labor, social convention, and the environment shaped their evolution. Far from seeing the Old South as backward and premodern, Marrs finds evidence of urban life, industry, and entrepreneurship throughout the region. But these signs of progress existed alongside efforts to preserve traditional ways of life. Railroads exemplified Southerners' pursuit of progress on their own terms: developing modern transportation while retaining a conservative social order. Railroads in the Old South demonstrates that a simple approach to the Old South fails to do justice to its complexity and contradictions. -- Dr. Owen Brown and Dr. Gale E. Gibson

Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads yields a rich gathering of Southern lore about Jacksonian democracy, foreigners' reactions to the Southern scene, the segregation of women and Negroes, the development of safety devices, the nature and condition of stations and waiting rooms, and the marveling interest of European travelers in that most typically American of railroading inventions--the cowcatcher. At the same time, the author does not slight the spectacular and indeed unparalleled growth of rail travel in the South and throughout the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century, and the enormous changes that rapid transit worked in life styles and in the American economy. Here is fascinating information about early transportation technology and economics, presented in a delightfully pleasant form.