Southern Progress Corporation, based in Birmingham, Alabama, is a publisher of lifestyle magazines and books owned by IAC's Dotdash Meredith.

After Polk died suddenly in 1892, Clarence H. Poe from Raleigh, NC took over as editor (in 1899), and in 1903, he and 3 partners purchased the publication, taking it from a newspaper to a magazine with 36,000 subscribers.

[3] The magazine broadened its reach beyond the Southeast by merging its Raleigh, North Carolina operation with the Southern Farm Gazette newspaper published in Starkville, Mississippi.

This merger of the Progressive Farmer and the Southern Farm Gazette resulted in the need to have a production and printing facility that would be a one-day train trip to both of the editorial offices in Starkville, Mississippi and Raleigh, North Carolina for receiving the typewritten feature stories for publication.

It was decided in 1911 to establish a central office in Birmingham, Alabama,[4] while Clarence Poe and his partners remained in Raleigh, NC and directed company operations from there.

The Progressive Farmer had extended its appeal among suburban housewives, and that segment of its circulation received the new magazine, Southern Living to establish its distribution and advertising rate base.