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Diversities of American Life..............................................................................................................................1

Charles Dudley Warner ............................................................................................................................1

This is a very interesting age. Within the memory of men not yet come to middle life the time of the trotting

horse has been reduced from two minutes forty seconds to two minutes eight and a quarter seconds. During

the past fifteen years a universal and wholesome pastime of boys has been developed into a great national

industry, thoroughly organized and almost altogether relegated to professional hands, no longer the exercise

of the million but a spectacle for the million, and a game which rivals the Stock Exchange as a means of

winning money on the difference of opinion as to the skill of contending operators.

The newspapers of the countrypretty accurate and sad indicators of the popular tastedevote more daily

columns in a week's time to chronicling the news about baseball than to any other topic that interests the

American mind, and the most skillful player, the pitcher, often college bred, whose entire prowess is devoted

to not doing what he seems to be doing, and who has become the hero of the American girl as the Olympian

wrestler was of the Greek maiden and as the matador is of the Spanish senorita, receives a larger salary for a

few hours' exertion each week than any college president is paid for a year's intellectual toil. Such has been

the progress in the interest in education during this period that the larger bulk of the news, and that most

looked for, printed about the colleges and universities, is that relating to the training, the prospects and

achievements of the boat crews and the teams of baseball and football, and the victory of any crew or team

is a better means of attracting students to its college, a better advertisement, than success in any scholastic

contest. A few years ago a tournament was organized in the North between several colleges for competition

in oratory and scholarship; it had a couple of contests and then died of inanition and want of public interest.

During the period I am speaking of there has been an enormous advance in technical education, resulting in

the establishment of splendid special schools, essential to the development of our national resources; a

growth of the popular idea that education should be practical,that is, such an education as can be

immediately applied to earning a living and acquiring wealth speedily,and an increasing extension of the

elective system in colleges,based almost solely on the notion, having in view, of course, the practical

education, that the inclinations of a young man of eighteen are a better guide as to what is best for his mental

In this period, which you will note is more distinguished by the desire for the accumulation of money than far

the general production of wealth, the standard of a fortune has shifted from a fair competence to that of

millions of money, so that he is no longer rich who has a hundred thousand dollars, but he only who

possesses property valued at many millions, and the men most widely known the country through, most

talked about, whose doings and sayings are most chronicled in the journals, whose example is most attractive

and stimulating to the minds of youth, are not the scholars, the scientists, the men of, letters, not even the

orators and statesmen, but those who, by any means, have amassed enormous fortunes. We judge the future

Regarding education from the point of view of its equipment of a man to make money, and enjoy the luxury

which money can command, it must be more and more practical, that is, it must be adapted not even to the

higher aim of increasing the general wealth of the world, by increasing production and diminishing waste

both of labor and capital, but to the lower aim of getting personal possession of it; so that a striking social

feature of the period is that onehalfthat is hardly an overestimate onehalf of the activity in America

of which we speak with so much enthusiasm, is not directed to the production of wealth, to increasing its

volume, but to getting the money of other people away from them. In barbarous ages this object was

accomplished by violence; it is now attained by skill and adroitness. We still punish those who gain property

by violence; those who get it by smartness and cleverness, we try to imitate, and sometimes we reward them

It appears, therefore, that speed,the ability to move rapidly from place to place,a disproportionate reward

of physical over intellectual science, an intense desire to be rich, which is strong enough to compel even

education to grind in the mill of the Philistines, and an inordinate elevation in public consideration of rich

men simply because they are rich, are characteristics of this little point of time on which we stand. They are

not the only characteristics; in a reasonably optimistic view, the age is distinguished for unexampled

achievements, and for opportunities for the wellbeing of humanity never before in all history attainable. But

these characteristics are so prominent as to beget the fear that we are losing the sense of the relative value of

Few persons come to middle life without some conception of these relative values. It is in the heat and

struggle that we fail to appreciate what in the attainment will be most satisfactory to us. After it is over we are

apt to see that our possessions do not bring the happiness we expected; or that we have neglected to cultivate

the powers and tastes that can make life enjoyable. We come to know, to use a truism, that a person's highest

satisfaction depends not upon his exterior acquisitions, but upon what he himself is. There is no escape from

this conclusion. The physical satisfactions are limited and fallacious, the intellectual and moral satisfactions

are unlimited. In the last analysis, a man has to live with himself, to be his own companion, and in the last

resort the question is, what can he get out of himself. In the end, his life is worth just what he has become.

And I need not say that the mistake commonly made is as to relative values,that the things of sense are as

important as the things of the mind. You make that mistake when you devote your best energies to your

possession of material substance, and neglect the enlargement, the training, the enrichment of the mind. You

make the same mistake in a less degree, when you bend to the popular ignorance and conceit so far as to

direct your college education to sordid ends. The certain end of yielding to this socalled practical spirit was

expressed by a member of a Northern State legislature who said, "We don't want colleges, we want

workshops." It was expressed in another way by a representative of the lower house in Washington who said,

"The average ignorance of the country has a right to be represented here." It is not for me to say whether it is

represented there. Naturally, I say, we ought by the time of middle life to come to a conception of what sort

of things are of most value. By analogy, in the continual growth of the Republic, we ought to have a

perception of what we have accomplished and acquired, and some clear view of our tendencies. We take

justifiable pride in the glittering figures of our extension of territory, our numerical growth, in the increase of

wealth, and in our rise to the potential position of almost the first nation in the world. A more pertinent

inquiry is, what sort of people have we become? What are we intellectually and morally? For after all the

man is the thing, the production of the right sort of men and women is all that gives a nation value. When I

read of the establishment of a great industrial centre in which twenty thousand people are employed in the

increase of the amount of steel in the world, before I decide whether it would be a good thing for the

Republic to create another industrial city of the same sort, I want to know what sort of people the twenty

thousand are, how they live, what their morals are, what intellectual life they have, what their enjoyment of

life is, what they talk about and think about, and what chance they have of getting into any higher life. It does

not seem to me a sufficient gain in this situation that we are immensely increasing the amount of steel in the

world, or that twenty more people are enabled on account of this to indulge in an unexampled, unintellectual

luxury. We want more steel, no doubt, but haven't we wit enough to get that and at the same time to increase

among the producers of it the number of men and women whose horizons are extended, who are

companionable, intelligent beings, adding something to the intellectual and moral force upon which the real

There is no place where I would choose to speak more plainly of our national situation today than in the

South, and at the University of the South; in the South, because it is more plainly in a transition state, and at

the University of the South, because it is here and in similar institutions that the question of the higher or

To a philosophical observer of the Republic, at the end of the hundred years, I should say that the important

facts are not its industrial energy, its wealth, or its population, but the stability of the federal power, and the

integrity of the individual States. That is to say, that stress and trial have welded us into an indestructible

nation; and not of less consequence is the fact that the life of the Union is in the life of the States. The next

most encouraging augury for a great future is the marvelous diversity among the members of this republican

body. If nothing would be more speedily fatal to our plan of government than increasing centralization,

nothing would be more hopeless in our development than increasing monotony, the certain end of which is

Speaking as one whose highest pride it is to be a citizen of a great and invincible Republic to those whose

minds kindle with a like patriotism, I can say that I am glad there are East and North and South, and West,

Middle, Northwest, and Southwest, with as many diversities of climate, temperament, habits, idiosyncrasies,

genius, as these names imply. Thank Heaven we are not all alike; and so long as we have a common purpose

in the Union, and mutual toleration, respect, and sympathy, the greater will be our achievement and the

nobler our total development, if every section is true to the evolution of its local traits. The superficial foreign

observer finds sameness in our different States, tiresome family likeness in our cities, hideous monotony in

our villages, and a certain common atmosphere of life, which increasing facility of communication tends to

increase. This is a view from a railway train. But as soon as you observe closely, you find in each city a

peculiar physiognomy, and a peculiar spirit remarkable considering the freedom of movement and

intercourse, and you find the organized action of each State sui generis to a degree surprising considering the

general similarity of our laws and institutions. In each section differences of speech, of habits of thought, of

temperament prevail. Massachusetts is unlike Louisiana, Florida unlike Tennessee, Georgia is unlike

California, Pennsylvania is unlike Minnesota, and so on, and the unlikeness is not alone or chiefly in physical

features. By the different style of living I can tell when I cross the line between Connecticut and New York as

certainly as when I cross the line between Vermont and Canada. The Virginian expanded in Kentucky is not

the same man he was at home, and the New England Yankee let loose in the West takes on proportions that

would astonish his grandfather. Everywhere there is a variety in local sentiment, action, and development. Sit

down in the seats of the State governments and study the methods of treatment of essentially the common

institutions of government, of charity and discipline, and you will be impressed with the variety of local spirit

and performance in the Union. And this, diversity is so important, this contribution of diverse elements is so

necessary to the complex strength and prosperity of the whole, that one must view with alarm all federal

And not less to be dreaded than monotony from the governmental point of view, is the obliteration of variety

in social life and in literary development. It is not enough for a nation to be great and strong, it must be

interesting, and interesting it cannot be without cultivation of local variety. Better obtrusive peculiarities than

universal sameness. It is out of variety as well as complexity in American life, and not in homogeneity and

imitation, that we are to expect a civilization noteworthy in the progress of the human race.

Let us come a little closer to our subject in details. For a hundred years the South was developed on its own

lines, with astonishingly little exterior bias. This comparative isolation was due partly to the institution of

slavery, partly to devotion to the production of two or three great staples. While its commercial connection

with the North was intimate and vital, its literary relation with the North was slight. With few exceptions

Northern authors were not read in the South, and the literary movement of its neighbors, such as it was, from

1820 to 1860, scarcely affected it. With the exception of Louisiana, which was absolutely ignorant of

American literature and drew its inspiration and assumed its critical point of view almost wholly from the

French, the South was English, but mainly English of the time of Walter Scott and George the Third. While

Scott was read at the North for his knowledge of human nature, as he always will be read, the chivalric age

which moves in his pages was taken more seriously at the South, as if it were of continuing importance in

life. In any of its rich private libraries you find yourself in the age of Pope and Dryden, and the classics were

pursued in the spirit of Oxford and Cambridge in the time of Johnson. It was little disturbed by the

intellectual and ethical agitation of modern England or of modern New England. During this period, while the

South excelled in the production of statesmen, orators, trained politicians, great judges, and brilliant lawyers,

it produced almost no literature, that is, no indigenous literature, except a few poems anda few humorous

charactersketches; its general writing was ornately classic, and its fiction romantic on the lines of the

From this isolation one thing was developed, and another thing might in due time be expected. The thing

developed was a social life, in the favored class, which has an almost unique charm, a power of being

agreeable, a sympathetic cordiality, an impulsive warmth, a frankness in the expression of emotion, and that

delightful quality of manner which puts the world at ease and makes life pleasant. The Southerners are no

more sincere than the Northerners, but they have less reserve, and in the social traits that charm all who come

in contact with them, they have an element of immense value in the variety of American life.

The thing that might have been expected in due time, and when the call cameand it is curious to note that

the call and cause of any renaissance are always from the outsidewas a literary expression fresh and

indigenous. This expectation, in a brief period since the war, has been realized by a remarkable performance

and is now stimulated by a remarkable promise. The acclaim with which the Southern literature has been

received is partly due to its novelty, the new life it exhibited, but more to the recognition in it of a fresh

flavor, a literary quality distinctly original and of permanent importance. This production, the first fruits of

which are so engaging in quality, cannot grow and broaden into a stable, varied literature without scholarship

and hard work, and without a sympathetic local audience. But the momentary concern is that it should

develop on its own lines and in its own spirit, and not under the influence of London or Boston or New York.

I do not mean by this that it should continue to attract attention by peculiarities of dialect which is only an

incidental, temporary phenomenon, that speedily becomes wearisome, whether "cracker" or negro or

Yankeebut by being true to the essential spirit and temperament of Southern life.

During this period there was at the North, and especially in the East, great intellectual activity and agitation,

and agitation ethical and moral as well as intellectual. There was awakening, investigation, questioning,

doubt. There was a great deal of froth thrown to the surface. In the free action of individual thought and

expression grew eccentricities of belief and of practice, and a crop of socalled "isms," more or less

temporary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public opinion attained an astonishing degree of freedom,I never

heard of any community that was altogether free of its tyranny. At least extraordinary latitude was permitted

in the development of extreme ideas, new, fantastic, radical, or conservative. For instance, slavery was

attacked and slavery was defended on the same platform, with almost equal freedom. Indeed, for many years,

if there was any exception to the general toleration it was in the social ostracism of those who held and

expressed extreme opinions in regard to immediate emancipation, and were stigmatized as abolitionists.

There was a general ferment of new ideas, not always fruitful in the direction taken, but hopeful in view of

the fact that growth and movement are better than stagnation and decay. You can do something with a ship

that has headway; it will drift upon the rocks if it has not. With much foam and froth, sure to attend agitation,

Out of this stir and agitation came the aggressive, conquering spirit that carried civilization straight across the

continent, that built up cities and States, that developed wealth, and by invention, ingenuity, and energy

performed miracles in the way of the subjugation of nature and the assimilation of societies. Out of this free

agitation sprang a literary product, great in quantity and to some degree distinguished in quality, groups of

historians, poets, novelists, essayists, biographers, scientific writers. A conspicuous agency of the period was

the lecture platform, which did something in the spread and popularization of information, but much more in

the stimulation of independent thought and the awakening of the mind to use its own powers.

Along with this and out of this went on the movement of popular education and of the high and specialized

education. More remarkable than the achievements of the common schools has been the development of the

colleges, both in the departments of the humanities and of science. If I were writing of education generally, I

might have something to say of the measurable disappointment of the results of the common schools as at

present conducted, both as to the diffusion of information and as to the discipline of the mind and the

inculcation of ethical principles; which simply means that they need improvement. But the higher education

has been transformed, and mainly by the application of scientific methods, and of the philosophic spirit, to

the study of history, economics, and the classics. When we are called to defend the pursuit of metaphysics or

the study of the classics, either as indispensable to the discipline or to the enlargement of the mind, we are not

called on to defend the methods of a generation ago. The study of Greek is no longer an exercise in the study

of linguistics or the inspection of specimens of an obsolete literature, but the acquaintance with historic

thought, habits, and polity, with a portion of the continuous history of the human mind, which has a vital

However much or little there may be of permanent value in the vast production of northern literature, judged

by continental or even English standards, the time has came when American scholarship in science, in

language, in occidental or oriental letters, in philosophic and historical methods, can court comparison with

any other. In some branches of research the peers of our scholars must be sought not in England but in

Germany. So that in one of the best fruits of a period of intellectual agitation, scholarship, the restless

I have called your attention to this movement in order to say that it was neither accidental nor isolated. It was

in the historic line, it was fed and stimulated by all that had gone before, and by all contemporary activity

everywhere. New England, for instance, was alert and progressive because it kept its doors and windows

open. It was hospitable in its intellectual freedom, both of trial and debate, to new ideas. It was in touch with

the universal movement of humanity and of human thought and speculation. You lose some quiet by this

attitude, some repose that is pleasant and even desirable perhaps, you entertain many errors, you may try

many useless experiments, but you gain life and are in the way of better things. New England, whatever else

we may say about it, was in the world. There was no stir of thought, of investigation, of research, of the

recasting of old ideas into new forms of life, in Germany, in France, in Italy, in England, anywhere, that did

not touch it and to which it did not respond with the sympathy that common humanity has in the universal

progress. It kept this touch not only in the evolution and expression of thought and emotion which we call

literature (whether original or imitative), but in the application of philosophic methods to education, in the

attempted regeneration of society and the amelioration of its conditions by schemes of reform and discipline,

relating to the institutions of benevolence and to the control of the vicious and criminal. With all these efforts

go along always much false sentimentality and pseudophilanthropy, but little by little gain is made that

In fact there is one historic stream of human thought, aspiration, and progress; it is practically continuous,

and with all its diversity of local color and movement it is a unit. If you are in it, you move; if you are out of

it, you are in an eddy. The eddy may have a provincial current, but it is not in the great stream, and when it

has gone round and round for a century, it is still an eddy, and will not carry you anywhere in particular. The

value of the modern method of teaching and study is that it teaches the solidarity of human history, the

continuance of human thought, in literature, government, philosophy, the unity of the divine purpose, and that

I am not undervaluing the part, the important part, played by conservatism, the conservatism that holds on to

what has been gained if it is good, that insists on discipline and heed to the plain teaching of experience, that

refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm over every flighty suggestion, or to follow every leader simply

because he proposes something new and strangeI do not mean the conservatism that refuses to try anything

simply because it is new, and prefers to energetic life the stagnation that inevitably leads to decay. Isolation

from the great historic stream of thought and agitation is stagnation. While this is true, and always has been

true in history, it is also true, in regard to the beneficent diversity of American life, which is composed of so

many elements and forces, as I have often thought and said, that what has been called the Southern

conservatism in respect to beliefs and certain social problems, may have a very important part to play in the

I shall not be misunderstood here, where the claims of the higher life are insisted on and the necessity of pure,

accurate scholarship is recognized, in saying that this expectation in regard to the South depends upon the

cultivation and diffusion of the highest scholarship in all its historic consciousness and critical precision. This

sort of scholarship, of widely apprehending intellectual activity, keeping step with modern ideas so far as

they are historically grounded, is of the first importance. Everywhere indeed, in our industrial age,in a

society inclined to materialism, scholarship, pure and simple scholarship for its own sake, no less in Ohio

than in Tennessee, is the thing to be insisted on. If I may refer to an institution, which used to be midway

between the North and the South, and which I may speak of without suspicion of bias, an institution where

the studies of metaphysics, the philosophy of history, the classics and pure science are as much insisted on as

the study of applied sciences, the College of New Jersey at Princeton, the question in regard to a candidate for

a professorship or instructorship, is not whether he was born North or South, whether he served in one army

or another or in neither, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican or a Mugwump, what religious

denomination he belongs to, but is he a scholar and has he a high character? There is no provincialism in

We are not now considering the matter of the agreeableness of one society or another, whether life is on the

whole pleasanter in certain conditions at the North or at the South, whether there is not a charm sometimes in

isolation and even in provincialism. It is a fair question to ask, what effect upon individual lives and character

is produced by an industrial and commercial spirit, and by one less restless and more domestic. But the South

is now face to face with certain problems which relate her, inevitably, to the moving forces of the world. One

of these is the development of her natural resources and the change and diversity of her industries. On the

industrial side there is pressing need of institutions of technology, of schools of applied science, for the

diffusion of technical information and skill in regard to mining and manufacturing, and also to agriculture, so

that wornout lands may be reclaimed and good lands be kept up to the highest point of production. Neither

mines, forests, quarries, waterways, nor textile fabrics can be handled to best advantage without scientific

knowledge and skilled labor. The South is everywhere demanding these aids to her industrial development.

But just in the proportion that she gets them, and because she has them, will be the need of higher education.

The only safety against the influence of a rolling mill is a college, the only safety against the practical and

materializing tendency of an industrial school is the increased study of whatever contributes to the higher and

non sordid life of the mind. The South would make a poor exchange for her former condition in any amount

of industrial success without a corresponding development of the highest intellectual life.

But, besides the industrial problem, there is the race problem. It is the most serious in the conditions under

which it is presented that ever in all history confronted a free people. Whichever way you regard it, it is the

nearest insoluble. Under the Constitution it is wisely left to the action of the individual States. The heavy

responsibility is with them. In the nature of things it is a matter of the deepest concern to the whole Republic,

for the prosperity of every part is vital to the prosperity of the whole. In working it out you are entitled, from

the outside, to the most impartial attempt to understand its real nature, to the utmost patience with the facts of

human nature, to the most profound and most helpful sympathy. It is monstrous to me that the situation

should be made on either side a political occasion for private ambition or for party ends.

I would speak of this subject with the utmost frankness if I knew what to say. It is not much of a confession

to say that I do not. The more I study it the less I know, and those among you who give it the most anxious

thought are the most perplexed, the subject has so many conflicting aspects. In the first place there is the

evolution of an undeveloped race. Every race has a right to fair play in the world and to make the most of its

capacities, and to the help of the more favored in the attempt. If the suggestion recently made of a wholesale

migration to Mexico were carried out, the South would be relieved in many ways, though the labor problem

would be a serious one for a long time, but the "elevation " would be lost sight of or relegated to a foreign

missionary enterprise; and as for results to the colored people themselves, there is the example of Hayti. If

another suggestion, that of abandoning certain States to this race, were carried out, there is the example of

Hayti again, and, besides, an anomaly introduced into the Republic foreign to its traditions, spirit, aspirations,

and process of assimilation, alien to the entire historic movement of the Aryan races, and infinitely more

dangerous to the idea of the Republic than if solid Ireland were dumped down in the Mississippi valley as an

On the other hand, there rests upon you the responsibility of maintaining a civilizationthe civilization of

America, not of Hayti or of Guatemala which we have so hardly won. It is neither to be expected nor desired

that you should be ruled by an undeveloped race, ignorant of law, letters, history, politics, political economy.

There is no right anywhere in numbers or unintelligence to rule intelligence. It is a travesty of civilization. No

Northern State that I know of would submit to be ruled by an undeveloped race. And human nature is exactly

in the South what it is in the North. That is one impregnable fact, to be taken as the basis of all our

calculations; the whites of the South will not, cannot, be dominated, as matters now stand, by the colored

But, then, there is the suffrage, the universal, unqualified suffrage. And here is the dilemma. Suffrage once

given, cannot be suppressed or denied, perverted by chicane or bribery without incalculable damage to the

whole political body. Irregular methods once indulged in for one purpose, and towards one class, so sap the

moral sense that they come to be used for all purposes. The danger is ultimately as great to those who

suppress or pervert as it is to the suppressed and corrupted. It is the demoralization of all sound political

action and life. I know whereof I speak. In the North, bribery in elections and intimidation are fatal to public

I believe that the fathers were right in making government depend upon the consent of the governed. I believe

there has been as yet discovered no other basis of government so safe, so stable as popular suffrage, but the

fathers never contemplated a suffrage without intelligence. It is a contradiction of terms. A proletariat without

any political rights in a republic is no more dangerous than an unintelligent mob which can be used in

elections by demagogues. Universal suffrage is not a universal panacea; it may be the best device attainable,

but it is certain of abuse without safeguards. One of the absolutely necessary safeguards is an educational

qualification. No one ought anywhere to exercise it who cannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one

should cast a ballot who had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of intelligence

than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and to spell out a line or two in the Constitution. This much

the State for its own protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not a right belonging to

The charge is, with regard to this universal suffrage, that you take the fruits of increased representation

produced by it, and then deny it to a portion of the voters whose action was expected to produce a different

political result. I cannot but regard it as a blunder in statesmanship to give suffrage without an educational

qualification, and to deem it possible to put ignorance over intelligence. You are not, responsible for the

situation, but you are none the less in an illogical position before the law. Now, would you not gain more in a

rectification of your position than you would lose in other ways, by making suffrage depend upon an

educational qualification? I do not mean gain partywise, but in political morals and general prosperity. Time

would certainly be gained by this, and it is possible in this shifting world, in the growth of industries and the

flow of populations, that before the question of supremacy was again upon you, foreign and industrial

We come now to education. The colored race being here, I assume that its education, with the probabilities

this involves of its elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity. I speak both of the inherent justice there is in

giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition and increasing his happiness that lies in

educationunless our whole theory of modern life is wrongand also of the political and social danger

there is in a degraded class numerically strong. Granted integral membership in a body politic, education is a

necessity. I am aware of the danger of half education, of that smattering of knowledge which only breeds

conceit, adroitness, and a consciousness of physical power, without due responsibility and moral restraint.

Education makes a race more powerful both for evil and for good. I see the danger that many apprehend. And

the outlook, with any amount of education, would be hopeless, not only as regards the negro and those in

neighborhood relations with him, if education should not bring with it thrift, sense of responsibility as a

citizen, and virtue. What the negro race under the most favorable conditions is capable of remains to be

shown; history does not help us much to determine thus far. It has always been a long pull for any race to rise

out of primitive conditions; but I am sure for its own sake, and for the sake of the republic where it dwells,

every thoughtful person must desire the most speedy intellectual and moral development possible of the

Some distinguished English writers have suggested, with approval, that the solution of the race problem in

this country is fusion, and I have even heard discouraged Southerners accept it as a possibility. The result of

their observation of the amalgamation of races and colors in Egypt, in Syria, and Mexico, must be very

different from mine. When races of different color mingle there is almost invariably loss of physical stamina,

and the lower moral qualities of each are developed in the combination. No race that regards its own future

would desire it. The absorption theory as applied to America is, it seems to me, chimerical.

But to return to education. It should always be fitted to the stage of development. It should always mean

discipline, the training of the powers and capacities. The early pioneers who planted civilization on the

Watauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, the Cumberland, had not much broad learningthey would not have

been worse if they had had more but they had courage, they were trained in selfreliance, virile common

sense, and good judgment, they had inherited the instinct and capacity of selfgovernment, they were

religious, with all their coarseness they had the fundamental elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, and

the public spirit needed in the foundation of states. Their education in all the manly arts and crafts of the

backwoodsman fitted them very well for the work they had to do. I should say that the education of the

colored race in America should be fundamental. I have not much confidence in an ornamental topdressing

of philosophy, theology, and classic learning upon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and

moral condition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends upon industry, upon thrift,

upon morals, upon correct ethical perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, so that

work in any occupation shall be intelligent, to have selfrespect, which commonly comes from trained

capacity, to know how to live, to have a clean, orderly house, to be grounded in honesty and the domestic

virtues,these are the essentials of progress. I suppose that the education to produce these must be an

elemental and practical one, one that fits for the duties of life and not for some imaginary sphere above them.

To put it in a word, and not denying that there must be schools for teaching the teachers, with the

understanding that the teachers should be able to teach what the mass most needs to knowwhat the race

needs for its own good today, are industrial and manual training schools, with the varied and practical

What then? What of the 'modus vivendi' of the two races occupying the same soil? As I said before, I do not

know. Providence works slowly. Time and patience only solve such enigmas. The impossible is not expected

of man, only that he shall do today the duty nearest to him. It is easy, you say, for an outsider to preach

waiting, patience, forbearance, sympathy, helpfulness. Well, these are the important lessons we get out of

history. We struggle, and fume, and fret, and accomplish little in our brief hour, but somehow the world gets

on. Fortunately for us, we cannot do today the work of tomorrow. All the gospel in the world can be boiled

down into a single precept. Do right now. I have observed that the boy who starts in the morning with a

determination to behave himself till bedtime, usually gets through the day without a thrashing.

But of one thing I am sure. In the rush of industries, in the race problem, it is more and more incumbent upon

such institutions as the University of the South to maintain the highest standard of pure scholarship, to

increase the number of men and women devoted to the intellectual life. Long ago, in the middle of the

seventeenth century, John Ward of StratfordonAvon, clergyman and physician, wrote in his diary: "The

wealth of a nation depends upon its populousness, and its populousness depends upon the liberty of

conscience that is granted to it, for this calls in strangers and promotes trading." Great is the attraction of a

benign climate and of a fruitful soil, but a greater attraction is an intelligent people, that values the best things

in life, a society hospitable, companionable, instinct with intellectual life, awake to the great ideas that make

As I travel through the South and become acquainted with its magnificent resources and opportunities, and

know better and love more the admirable qualities of its people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy upon

the brilliant part it is to play in the diversified life and the great future of the American Republic. But, North

and South, we have a hard fight with materializing tendencies. God bless the University of the South!