Introduction

Statistics are usually thought of as the dullest of all possible subjects, but statistics that represent people are anything but dull. They can represent change, growth, progress and they can also represent human misery of the worst kind.

Let's take a few examples. Statistic one: in the spring of 1969, President Nixon met in the Cabinet Room of the White House with the mayors of ten great American cities. The ten had been chosen to be as representative as possible, and the group was a highly varied mixture of parties, races and religions. They were alike in only one way: their qualities of energy and intelligence would have set them apart in any company. The really most notable thing about them, however, was this: in the time between being invited to the White House and the day the meeting actually took place, four of them had effectively resigned from office. All but assured of reelection, these four had announced that under no circumstances would they run again.

Four out of ten. That's a statistic. Perhaps these personal decisions were of no consequence in the overall course of history, but we rather think otherwise. To demonstrate why, here are some more statistics: Today two out of three Americans live in metropolitan areas; and, while our country's population has more than doubled since 1900, the number of people in metropolitan areas has increased more than three and one-half times. The trends toward mechanization, the consolidation of farms into large units, and away from farm work in general are so strong that our farm population has fallen until fewer than one in twenty Americans now work on farms of any kind.

Yet none of these statistics mean that there has been a growth of America's "inner cities." In fact, the major centers of population growth have been on the fringes of the metropolitan areas, in the suburbs. Americans seem to like metropolitan living, but the majority of the urbanites live in areas outside the inner cities themselves. Since I960, the central cities have grown by only about one percent, the surrounding suburbs by a staggering twenty-five percent.

Again, these are statistics but what do they really mean? The most important lesson to be drawn, we think, is that there is a continued exodus of well-to-do whites away from the cities and a continued influx of poorer blacks into them. The annual net loss of white city dwellers averages 141,000; the net increase of blacks is about 370,000. Although the Negroes' income level has risen significantly in the past few years, the rate of poverty is approximately twice as high among city dwellers (frequently black) as it is among inhabitants of the suburbs (very largely white).

More "dull" statistics? Perhaps, but the figures give significant clues to the reasons those four mayors had for voluntarily leaving their posts.

Detroit is a typical American city very like any small town in the U.S.A. in many ways, but by any standards of measurement a big city, and one that is almost totally dependent on one particular industry, the automobile business. But while we call Detroit typical, it is somewhat unusual in that labor disputes have played a very important role in its history. The city has suffered two major race riots within the past thirty years. In 1935, thirty-five people died and more than a thousand were injured, all because of interracial problems. Efforts to eliminate the causes of such disturbances were sincere but apparently misdirected: a violent five-day eruption during the summer of 1967 left forty-three dead and countless injured.

Four Studs for the Bride is about Detroit, but in a much more important sense it could be about any city in America. It is Ward Fulton's sequel to The Violated Virgin, his first novel for us and one of the most successful books we have published so far. If you have read the earlier book, you will look forward to meeting again the characters you already know: Suzanne, the charming heroine, essentially a delightful young girl although she is now a tender bride; Sam, her husband, whose good intentions and honest love clash bitterly with his old-fashioned suspicion of his bride's activities and all of Suzanne's old friends from the earlier book. The many admirers of Ward Fulton's The Violated Virgin will be even more delighted with Four Studs for the Bride. More important to us, as publishers, is the fact that this new novel is every bit as entertaining, even more enjoyable as a complete, polished novel on its own terms... and of considerably more sociological value as Mr. Fulton probes even more deeply beneath the surface of Twentieth-Century America and the forces that have combined to make it what it is.

In short, this is a book about people not about statistics. But we think it will profit you to keep those statistics in mind as you read it... because statistics are people.

-The Publishers North Hollywood, Cal. October, 1971