The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-04-30
THE PRESENT SOUTH.
By Edgar Gardner Murphy. New
 York: The Macmillan Company.

No orhe. study--brief or extended--of
 the social. industrial, and educational af-
 fairs of the South is of greater value,
 either to the South itself or to the na-
 tion as whole, than this volume of Mir Murphy's. Its merit is based on two facts: First. that while it is written from within the South. by one who, through birth. education and training. has ! shared the Southern traditions and ex-
 perlences. 1t is, at the same time, writ ten within the national perspective" by one who feels thai the nation Is not mere lv the North--as the North has often as- sumed and as the South has not denied
 but embraces all sections as equally sig
 nifcant and equally privileged; and, sec
 ono. that 1t avoids no issue, shirks no fact. and brings to the various problems of the South clear vision, a sound logic,
 temperance and a devotion that are all
 of the very essence of patriotism. Men like MT. Murphy form the highest type of American-and on the dominance of
 their spirit and their ideas rests the fu- ture of this country.
 Mir. Murphy's chief emphasis through out the book Is on the gradual but sure progress of Democracy in the South He holds that the old South-the South of responsibility. the men of family, 'the South that had had power and to whom
 power had taught those truths of life, | those. dignities and facilities of temper | which power always teaches men--was | and is the true basis of nationalism and | Of Democracy. It is the sense of obliga-
 tion. the sense of responsibility. the fine apprehension of honor, inherent in the old South. that has made possible the fu- l slon of aristocracy with the common
 man. Such a Democracy, he points out, could not have been forced; the recon | struction policy attempted to bring it | about by violence, to create 1t over night. to make Republican institutions by military power. to take an aristocratic civilization and hammer 1t into shape be- | tween sundown and sun-up-all of which
 was. in the very nature of the case, im- | DC ssible; Democracy proceeding from | within thing of growth and not ct flat, | the very formi of all forms. which is not U be nailed on from outside The re-
 construction governments themselves were crude oligarchies;- it was when the
 old aristocratic South perceived its bond with the common people and the need
 between them that practical Democracy was born in the Southern States: and
 the fact that the South is nv accepting the qualified negro as participant In the function of government, and that the bal los is for the negro a prize and a reward
 rather than an idle gift, is, as MT. Mur- | phy says, ''of far greater significance in
 the essential history of Democracy than any temporary record of exclusion and
 Injustice" The book protests. through cut. against the crude impatience with
 which the South has been watched. Men have waited" he says 'to see the whole
 fabric of civilization doffed like an | outer garment the fabric of new order involving the deepest issues of memory, | of passion, of pride, of racial and social
 habit-instantly recreated upon a strange | lcom." What the South needed and stiIl needs. so far as any outside help is con cerned, is an understanding of her con- | ditions, realization of her trials, a
 patience and a kindliness-to say nothing l of an appreciation of her great virtues
 of simplicity, reverence, and ardor, and
 os the fact that here, more than in any
 other part of the country, is that Anglo
 Saxon and Anglo-Celtic blood that has
 meant. and still means, so much to our
 national history.
 One of the most important chapters, of | course. is that entitled ''The South and the Negro.' MT. Murphy, in common with others of the thinking men of ths South, insists that the limiting of the franchise to the literate. property-own- ing negro is a step absolutely essential to decency In order to maintain and protect society. the South had been
 obliged to resort to lie, and the contin-
 ucnce of ;his lie was an evil against which the better South has arisen in
 protest It has not proved possible to shut out illlterate white men who fought and suffered for their country, but the
 next generation of white men must bear the same test as the negro-else. indeed,
 as the author declares, the white boy
 is placed at a disadvantage and offered
 the suffrage on the same foolish terms
 as the new-emancipated slave. But what
 Mir, Murphy particularly notes is the
 opportunity given to the negro of the
 South to live-to earn his bread, to ply
 his business, to make his money, to rear
 his family. The South, he says. gives
 to him the best gift of a civilization to
 an individual-the opportunity to live ln- dustriously and honestly.
 MT. Murphy's chapter on "Child Labor and the Industrial South is an address delivered before the National Confer ences of Charities and Correction, held in Atlanta a year ago. It Is a strong argument, wholly unaided by rhetoric, and it Ignores neither the fault of the Southern legislator nor that of the Northern capitalists. It earnestly calls attention. however. to the strenuous eff IOTIS nOW III lAt OOhNh lO dOOhSh child labor in the cotton mills-efforts
 which, already, have met with a partial success
 MT Murphy's chapter on the great educational movement in the South re- veals the poverty of the South in some astonishing figures He states. for ex-
 ample, that the total annual income available for the higher education in
 rine of the Southern States-including
 Kentucky-is $19OOO less than the yearly income of Harvard, and that out of the total of $l57 100000 the South has but $15, 900. What he asks, however, is not
 help" nor ''benefaction" in any sec tional sense; he asks it as due from the nation to her children; the man who gives mot as to local or irrelevant memorial, but as to an expanding asset"
 It is impossible to over-praise such book-to overestimate the effects of its boise, its sanity, It's wisdom. Mir. Mur phy sees the Southern problems in a clear light-sees how they vary in differ ent States. and even in different locali- ties of the same State-sees that certain remedies may be temporary, but are at least worth trying; sees that the new order must come slowly to it's full growth and cannot be forced discrimi-