The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-11-16
A PROTEST AGAINST SORDID COM
MERICIALISM.

1t is q matter of genuine regret that
there was no stenographer present in the
House of Representatives on Friday
night to take down in full the magnii-
cent speech of President Henry Louis
Smith, of Davidson College. 1t ought to
be placed in the hands of every man and
boy in North Carolina. One business man
in Raleigh said yesterday that he would
be willing to contribute to a fund to give
it the widest circulation.
President Smith has OWNED the in
fluence that most seriously threatens the
integrity of the people of this and other
Southern States. There is a spirit of sordid
commercialism in the air which measures
everything by the money standard, which
openly puts the Dollar above the Man.
This is seen in high places and boys are
taught that the sole end of education is to
accumulate fortune 1t is bad enough when
this worship invades the world of poll
tics and men are asked to square their
principles with their pockets, but when
it invades our churches and colleges, then
it is poisoning the stream at it's source,
Against this overshadowing evil Presi-
dent Smith inveighed with earnestneSs,
eloQuence and power. 1t may be we'll
doubted if ever, since the day of James
C. Dobbin, a speech more lofty, eloquent
and noble has been uttered in the House
of Commons than the speech of President
Smith. In lieu of the full speech, we
print below an abstract. which gives the
outlines of the address:
Il bring in the few minutes allotted to
me one message to all those concerned in
shaping the character of the young men
and women, the boys and girls of the
South-that the industrial development
and increasing prosperity of the South
must be accompanied by corresponding
growth of intellectual and spiritual Gull
ture, or the idols of the market place
and the factory will displace the purer and
more spiritual ideals of the past.
THE prosperity of the South, her mar
velous accumulation of riches and her
assured financial future are the admira-
ton and envy of the world. The day OF
our bitter, grinding poverty has passed
away fovever and our people are intox-
icated with money making. But it takes
no prophet to see that we are now pass
ing through a most critical, formative
period in our history, and the sun of pros
perity is to prove a severer and more
searching test of our true character than
the furnace OF war
The South, even amid the wreck of her
social system in 1865, with the flower OF
her manhood in a hundred thousand
nameless graves, her commerce destroyed,
her wealth annihilated. her cities in
ruins, even then in defeat and disaster
she was rich. rich in the purity of her
swomanhood, rich in personal dignity, re-
Mgious reverence and in the starry vir-
tues of heroism and self-denial brought
out in the night of defeat.
If these old spiritual and moral ideals
are to be sacrificed on the altar of Nam
mon; if liberal culture, moral standards
and reverent religious spirit are to be
replaced by greedy triumphant CONNER
cialism then the New South in all the
splendcr of material prosperity, with her
blue sky darkened by the smoke of her
factories and millionaire's palace on
every hill, will be infinitely poorer than
the Old South of So
Against this on-rushing flood of vul-
gar materialism let the teachers of our
children stand like rock. If this rising
generation, moulded in mind and heart
by the teachers. can be taught to feel
the eternal value of the things of the
spirit; if~the New South, holding with
Que hand all the priceless moral and spir-
itual assets which enriched the Old, will
reach out with the other for all that
comes with broad culture, and increased
comfort, and national wealth and power,
then here under our sunny sky, on our
fair plains so lately SCARED and desolate,
will be built and perpetuated a Christian
civilization to be the wonder and the
blessing of the world
There is not word of pessimism in this
earnest speech. President Smith is as
DESTROYS of commercial and industrial
prosperity as any man in the State. but
he wishes to save it from the curse of
worshipping the dollar. 1t is in such in
struction as President Smith insists upon
that the State has its only hope to stem
the on-rushing tide of idolatry of wealth
Somehow 1t is Encouraging how FEM
mime instinct can distance masculine
reason in the way of doing things right.