Using a developmental stages model, the extent and characteristics of manufacturing development in the nonmetropolitan South between 1940 and 1970 were examined. Focus was on whether industrialization comes in different phases and whether its impact on the rural poor varies during each phase. Nonmetro labor markets (counties more than 50 miles from the central city of a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area--SMSA) of the South and Indiana were compared. Data were collected through: (1) statistical time-series (mainly the "Census of Manufactures" and the "Census of Population") and (2) field interviews. In each of six multicounty areas (selected because their nonfarm employment had either grown very rapidly in the 1960's or they had both "success" and stagnating counties) industrial development and antipoverty workers were interviewed in July and August 1974 on the process of industrial development and impact on the poor in their area. Some findings were: (1) distinct stages existed in industrial characteristics, poverty impact, immigration, and community industrial planning; (2) two phases of industrial development were low-wage and labor-intensive and medium-wage and less labor-intensive; and (3) the two phases of industrialization differed in poverty impact--a greater percentage of workers hired were poor in the first phase than in the second. (NQ)