Newspapers / The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, … / Oct. 15, 1908, edition 1 / Page 2
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How the South May Win Leadership. A Great Opportunity for Our Churches Set Forth in Our Fourteenth Letter From Abroad What we oi the feouth JNeecl to Do is (1) To Care tor Our Resources as Well as Europe Does and (2) to Educate Our People as Well as Germany Does Some Other Lessons From Our Euro pean Neighbors. ' . Luouojr, ucioDer 15) 19 08. we have been upon the high seas, going as fast -as our mighty engines can carry us on the long, long way from Naples to New York. There are yet three more days of the voyage. " But the trip has not seemed long all too short, in fact; and there is general regret on shipboard that we are not to-be out for a full week longer. Certain it is that few travelers have ever been more favored in the matter of weather than we have been; and the joy of ocean, traveling, as everybody knows, depends largely upon the weath er. Barring a heavy summer shower while we were anchored at the Azores, we have had only fair days and blue skies, with breeze enough most of the time to make the .temperature delightful and sunsets more gorgeous than are ever seen on. land, because the most, glorious: tints -are nearest the horizon and obstructions on land prevent your seeing these in all their beauty. But it is at night that the spell and charm and mystery of the sea are most potent, and always to artist and poet the thought of the sea suggests the moonlight upon its unresting bosom. Here again we have been peculiarly favored, for the moon was new just be fore we left Naples and is now at the full," and to sit . out at night upon the upper deck with the open sky above you, and. the moonlight upon the waves as far as the eye can reach well, this is almost enough to wring poetry out of a wooden Indian. v ' ' . Nobody has been seasick so far as I have ob served; and in fact, our party has come to the conclusion that seasickness is by no means such a terror as it is commonly believed to be. As one of my friends remarked: 'fThink what a fool I have been! Here I have -Vaited ten years to come across, dreading the ocean voyage, when it is really the finest part of the whole trip !' And now that both Europe and America are far away so far away that we can almost doubt the existence of any land at all, and imagine our selves the solitary inhabitants of a water-covered pianei it is tne best time that I shall ever have perhaps for contrasting the Old World and the New, for the purpose of seeing what we of the newer countries can learn from our European fatherlands. Be it said then, in the beginning, that this trip has made me gladder than ever tbJat I am an American, much as it has taught me of-the su perior industrial methods of many European peo ples. Uf we only learn (1) to care for our re sources as well as Europe cares for hers, and (2) to educate our people as well as Germany edu cates hers, the time must soon come (as we count time in the lives V of nations) when the United States will stand the acknowledged leader among the countries of the world. My ambition is that we of the South, before this achievement is con summated, shall make our section the foremost section of the United States, and therefore the foremost section of what must become the fore most nation of the earth. . It is a high ambition, and yet it does not seem to me too high for us to set up as a working ideal. We belong to a race that has won the mastery of the world, and to the best branches of that race. I have commented in former letters upon the re markable similarity of the names seen and heard in English and Southern towns ten times as many familiar surnames on the business signs in English towns as I should find in New York or Boston and this is but one evidence of the oft- repeated fact that the purest Anglo-Saxon blood in America is in the". South. English, Scotch, Dutch, German from the masterful Teutonic races our blood has come; and our citizenship has not been diluted by long decades of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Immensely to the advantage of the South in the long struggle for supremacy must be this fact. It must also be to our advantage that "more largely perhaps in the Cotton States than in any THE TWO GREATEST LESSONS EUROPE TEACHES. V If we only learn ( 1 ) to care for our re sources as well as Europe cares for hers, and (2) to educate our people as well as Germany educates hers, the time must soon come (as we count time in the lives of na- tions) when the United States will stand the acknowledged leader among the conn- tries of the world. My ambition is that we of the South, before this achievement is consummated, shall make our section the foremost section of. the United States, and therefore the foremost section of what must become the foremost nation of the earth. . The surest sign; of promise for our fu ture in all our recent history is the cam paign for better schools which has made "such wonderful progress in the South these last ten years. By the time I reached Italy, after traveling in half a dozen other Euro pean countries, I had been so much im pressed by the way inwhich education makes itself felt in every line of commerce and industry that I exclaimed: "A care ful observer, with a few years of travel, ought to be able to guess a country's per centage of illiteracy, simply by an hour's ride through the farms or the towns!" the Southern man is already noted in p reugiuu nas Deen reaucea in most country fable and form: ii is a mixture of mediaeval tra ditions and of ecclesiastical- calisthenics, dead formalism that does not lay hold upon the iu- of the people; and in France .especially the intol erance and formalism of the church is lareelv r0 sponsible for the spread of atheism. I mention this matter at some length bepca the church has an opportunity in the South m, as it has hardly anywhere else in the world, arid because upon its use of this opportunity defend - in a large measure the future rank of our section It is not sentimentalism, Is not a mere pious Wn eralization, but it is the truth of history that no people can achieve and maintain greatness except by adherence. to rigid moral standards. When th old Psalmist said; centuries ago, "Happy is that people whose God is the Lord," he was preachin as good .politics as religion. other section of the world to-day is the old Book of Books accepted as the unquestioned moral and spiritual criterion. ;Much more strongly Puritan how than even New England itself, the South is learning what New England did not learn in time how to combine the sterling uprightness of Puritanism with the warmth and beauty of mod ern culture. To keep the stronger virtues of Puritanism and yet hold on to tolerance and hos pitality and joyfulness this, is the character wnicn, it seems to me, the South should set itself to develop as typical of the Southerner; and the qualities are in us for the making of this product - . iuey are properly bandied. That we have tne qualities of generosity, geniality, and hospital ity is unquestioned; and that an unusual rHH instinct is also ours it takes but a little observa tion in other sections to prove. I have trnio from the Atlantic to the Pacific in America, arid now m most of the leading European countries, ana nowhere have I found Sunday observed as it is in tne south, the chuf ch in such favor, or re- lisrion sr : mntii o nr. - . . . 7 " " Ui tne people's lives. It win oe -well indeed if the church with us shall recognize its great opportunity shall lend itself lu lue occasion, and make itself the mightiest idUor in tne Production of that ideal character of which I have been writing the character will combine the unswerving uprightness of the runian the warmth and geniality for wMch There is another thing, as I intimated in the be ginning, : to which we must give attention, and that is the thorough education of our people. The surest sign of promise for our future in all our re cent history is the campaign for better school which has made such wonderful progress in the South these last ten years. By the time I reached Italy, after traveling in half a dozen other Euro pean countries, I had been so much impressed bv the way in which education makes itself felt in every line of commerce and industry that I ex claimed: "A careful observer, with a few years of travel, ought to be able to guess a country percentage of illiteracy, simnlv bv an hnr's through the farms or the towns!" And this is hardly an exaggeration. The hone of the South is in the education of its people all its people. Every ignorant, Inefficient man, white or black, in a community makes it poorer, makes everybody In the community poorer; and if he can not be educated to do good work, he ought to eivp wajr to some one who can be so -trained. If the South's sons are illiterate, if your sons are illiter ate, no other qualities can save them from defeat In the fierce Industrial struggle of to-day. Our aim1 should be to spend still more money on our schools and to make tffem train more and more for actual life, while the work of experiment sta tions, farmers' institutes, demonstration- workers, farm papers, etc., in educating the older farmers who have passed out of the schools, ought also to have the fullest encouragement a people can give. There is one other thing, moreover, to which we can not give too earnest heed, and that is the conservation of - our natural mentioned this in a previous letter; but I was re minded of it again yesterday when a distinguished Pennsylvanian on our boat told me of his son's trip to Germany last year as the representative of a leading American industrial Institution that was seeking information as to the methods of its com petitors abroad. What the young American found and reported was this: that the American factory had the advantage in nearness and cheapness of raw material, in the thoroughness and efficiency of machinery and equipment, and also in the skill and intelligence of its workmen, and there was. but one thing in which the European excelled economy. The American factorv was more waste ful. - ' . - Of almost everything- the same thing is true. Lands, forests, mines, all are handled with great er care and economy in Europe than in America; and millions of people" make a living from indus tries that our people would laugh at as impossible. In Antwerp I saw, the ragged bales of cotton from the South unloaded at the wharves cotton bought " ur -tu cents a pound; but the ladles of our party tell me that when the lace makers whom I (Continued on Page, 8.)
The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, N.C.)
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