Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1882-11-03
The Coming Men Of the south.

n AC OVMAu& INCH VI kAAD JVuGMs
Industrial South.
There are great changes going on in
the Southern States. The influences OF
the institution of slavery, lingering from
year to year since the institution itself
was swept away, have been growing
fainter and feebler as time has worn on
and, at last, on every side IN every State
OF the South it is plainly perceptible
that the Southern people are adapting
themselves, resolutelY and gracefully, to
the requirements of the new order OF
things inevitably and irrevocably around
them. Here and there, it is true, may
be found some stern and stubborn repre-
sentative of the thoughts, the theories, the
habits and the methods of ante bellum
times, who still clings, as far as practica-
BILE, to the sentiments of auld lang syne,
and would faia shut out from his eyes
and his ears the evidences of changes
that bewilder him on every hand. But
this venerable remnant of a race of men
| peculiar to the old slaveholding States is
well nigh alone in his glory now. He is
zone amid the million" that there
are not hundreds and thousands of his
contemporaries still living; not that he is
singular at all in his noble reverence for
all the glories in the glorious past of the
South; nor that he is in anywise an an-
omalY among his own people in his
| devotion to the memories of the brave
men who fell fighting for what they be-
lieved to be the rights and the honor of
the South; but it is in his recalcitrant
temper of irreconcilable opposition to all
modern improvements" upon all old
fashioned things; it is in his constitu-
t;onal incapacity for adaptation to the
new ideas, the new systems, the new
methods that have come along with
the new epoch in the life of the
South, that he shows himself in lone
illness amid the throng of his own
people-many of them his contem-
poraries and compatriots of twenty
years ago-striking sturdily for advance.
ment both for themselves and for their
section, in every path of progress, in
every branch OF industry, in every de-
partment of trade. The man Of the
South who refuses to recognize the in
dustrial revolution and declines to take
any part in the procession of progress,
is monumental man. He stands by
the past, and for the past; and while his
consistency" is respected, his judgment
is most reverently disapproved.
The typical Southern man is no longer
free handed fox hunter whose inherited
fortune is lavished, as long as it lasts.
upon his friends, his horses and his
hounds; he is no longer the gay society
man studying etiquette as the finest of
the fine arts, and cultivating his capacity
for conversation as the most valuable Of
all intellectual gifts; he is no longer a
believer in a classical education as the
first requisite of a gentleman and
an indispensable groundwork for
celebrity in life. The typical
Southern man of other days has
learned new lessons in a new school, and
he is profting by them. He is taking
more practical views of life. He is
graphing more with the robust realities
of life. He Is applying his mind and
his muscle more to accomplishing the
substantial things of life. He is devel-
oping himself more as a man of actual,
useful affairs. He is training his spirit
and his energies more in the direc.
ton of realistic results and less
in the mere accomplishments,
ornamentations and elegancies of
life. 1t is always wise ss
well as brave to look facts in the face
Introspection of ourselves is not always
agreeable, but it is essential to self
understanding, and is wonderfully con-
tributive not only to a generous construc-
ton of the conduct of others, but to an
unpreiudiced estimate of all changes
that may be offered to us for our advan-
tage. And however the people of the
South may look back with tender emo
lions upon their usages and associations
of other days, as candid and intelligent
men they must admit that, indus,
trially regarded, there are in the new
order of things many improvements
upon the old. During the existence of
the institution of slavery we had a noble
race of splendid gentlemen in the South
but at the same time there were splendid
gentlemen in the North too; and
both here and there the race
may be maintained to the
end, not only without deteri-
Grafton but with an increased and ever
increasing development of all the great
manly capacities and virtues, under the
agencies of honest labor of every de.
scription and the influences of that bold
and chivalrous spirit of enterprise char
| acterlstlc OF the Anglo Saxon with free
institutions around him.
The Southern man has the moral,
the mental and the physical forces
adequate to the attainment of any
thing and everything within the
compass of mans capacity to reach,
and now that he is no longer enslaved
by his own institution of negro slavery
he is a sturdier worker in the rugged
fields of industry; his enterprise is ex.
panding; his inventive genius is awaken
ing. Ere two more decades shall have
gone by, the wealth of the South will be
the wonder of the world; and we think
we may safely say that the coming men
of the South, the men who are to guide
us in council and direct us in energy, are
the men who shall have most turned their
thoughts to practical affairs involving
I Al Il