The Lafayette advertiser. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], La.) 1865-19??, 1904-01-20

AN ~ O~A oAV
we believe that you can help us to deal
wisely with our problems, which are
many and grave. The historian and
the economist are to me the most in
teresting of e Whoever else may
be having a dull time in these days,
they. assuredly. are not, for through
them civilization is engaged in look
ing in upon itself in a search for the
laws of human progress. Their labO-
ratOry is humanity. and their aim a
state of society in which men can
make the most of themselves. The
task is an appalling one, but l believe
the names of some of you will be held
in honor by men, because of this aim,
when the more dramatic figures you
study as they stagger under the
burden OF their millions will be quite
forgotten save as mere social phenO-
mena.
"YOu have come, l think, to a very
fascinating portion of the most fasci-
mating nation on earth, considered
from the standpoint of the historian
and the economist. Certainly, no.
where else on earth is there offered to
thoughtful men a more interesting
study in social self-realization or in
the course of this great democratic
experiment. New Orleans, like all
other cities, has not learned the art
of governing itself perfectly, or of
keeping itself clean and making itself
beautiful, or of spending it's money
with perfect wisdom, but it is a COM
munity of very real individuality and
distinction. 1t goes back to the dim
beginnings. 1t is a very palimpsest
of the struggle of the races for the
New World. 1t has ways of its own.
1t has the system and the
emotions of a metropolis. The noble
lines of a wonderful human experience
are visible on its face-experience of
sorrow and loss and disaster of battle
and siege and pestilence, of JOY and
pride and achievement. No Francis
Parkman or Theodore Roosevelt has
told the story of the
WINNING OF THE SOUTHWEST
how it was won, how extended and
how defended. 1 have often wondered
how the historians could let the South
west so much alone, while they told of
lesser things. for its story is a moving
tale of epic incident and epic result.
Great deeds have been done here.
Here an empire was born, and here a
great battle a fought which gave a
hero to democracy, and thus gave to
democracy its opportunity.
1.-THE New Orleans that you honor
with your presence to-day is a CON-
munity of boundless hope, of almost
joyous self-relience, of an exhilarating
realization of independence and self
consciousness. The Southern sea-
board is coming into its own, for the
balance of commercial activity is
tipping, surely, toward this American
Mediterranean. This spirit of hope is
more subtly expressed, however, than
in the roar of mighty bull campaigns,
or in the volume of export statistics.
The divine philosophy of defeat is
revealed in this spirit. 1t is a kind of
mental exsltatiOn, marking the re-
constructive work to men who have
brought the city through the most
thorOughgOing social revolution of
modern times by the use of such en-
pire building tools as patience, grim
ness, energy and faith.
1.-The spirit of this metropolis is the
spirit of the whole region. For forty
years the South was practically an
other nation, building its social order
on the basis of al inherited economic
misconceptiOn. For another forty
years It has been striving to retain
its best traditions, its idealism and
its simplicity, to recover the indus
trialism in commerce and education
which it had lost, and to achieve
naturalization in politics and liberal
ism in opinion. The South has re-
gained the spirit of lndustrislism with
which it started. Many details re-
main to be worked out, but the spirit
is here. BY industrislism, I do not
mean cOmmercialism. COmmercialism
is . mere sordid theory of life. In
dustrialism is the scientific mastery of
the raw material and its wise DISPOSE
ton according to the laws of trade.