Written as his doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins University and published as a book in 1921, Mitchell's study was a highly influential study of the explosive growth of cotton manufacturing in the southeastern United States from 1880 to World War I. The first scholarly assessment of what would become the leading industry of the region and set within the historical context of that region, Mitchell's book was, as Carlton says, “[r]ooted in the militant modernizing ethos of the Progressive era reform milieu” (p. x).