The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-08-28
THREE IMPORTANT uooKs.

THREE IMPORTANT LOOKS.
 The Problems of the Present South \ discussion q. certain of the educa- tIonal, industrial end poittica! issuee in the Southern Stats5. Dy Edgar Gard nor Murphy.
 This took, written ii, the most broad and judicial spirit. should be the sext hook ,. the whole South.
 Mr. Murphy, from his position in the educational world. speaks from expe- r.encs, wide knowledge and deep study of his subject.
 Esch chapter Geals with a subject ct vital intera.t. Tho old in the New" "The Schools oe the People" "A Con s;-uctivs Sta -esmanship." The Indcs- trial Reviva; and Child Labor" The South and the Negro "A Narrative of Cooperation Culture and Democ : recy." Mir, Murphy begins by statins the immense debt which the New Democratic South owes to the Old Aristocratic South. The old South gave the New that spirit of noblesse oblige which has so largely dominated the development of Southern life"
 It is this spirit that makes the Soutn. . erner the most self-helpful. the most independent person on earth.
 It is this spirit that has enabled the SIuth out of derth and destruction 10 build up our present prosperity
 Mir. Murphy quotes MT. Huxleys dic- tum that emancipation of the negro freed the white man from all obltga- ton to him and responsibility for him. The white man did not take this stand. Even with political and civic power taken from the class who were trained to highest duties of citizezn- ship and put by reconstruction polf- cies into the hands of the younger and untrained element of the South, and into those of strangers and interlopers still the Old South wearied with war. wounded by defeat, weighted with Il poverty sudden and complete, yet ral- lied strength and assumed personally responsibilities to which it was born and bred. It assumed the responsibil ity of curbing the national ascendency of its younger rulers. of ejecting the stronger from its intimate political life of caring for the feeble and inferior race. The vast dumb multitudes more helpless with power than without power"
 Mir. Murphy depicts strongly what no other hand has done so forcefully. the change of the South from en aristoc- l. racy to a democracy, the arrival of the common man." the blessed drawing to- gether of the separate classes of the stronger race. and to fuse them-men of ignorance with men of culture-into unity far more powerful. far more effective than the South had known before" This entire solid South IS leavened with that best leaven of the old aristocracy. that quick sense ot social obligatis the deepest virtue of the nobled aristocracy."
 It is trusting to the right use of this best heritage of the South that Mir. Murphy bases a sure hope for satis |. factory solving of all problames that comfort us.
 That the South should have seemed to outsiders somewhat slow in embrac- ing the public school system. which once embraced 1t holds to firmly. MT. |. Murphy explains that "personalness with which the South has always con- ceived the training of the child"
 Let every man clothe his children's minds in such materials as he can him. self buy for them. just as he clothes their bodies to fit with his fortunes. But this was the method of the classes, now eagerly the classes unite with the masses in Sacduiring a uniform mind equipment. Of how the South assum- ed the responsibility of educating two races we quote: The very theory of emancipation was that the fate of the black man was the responsibility of the nation, yet the issue of war left the negro in his helplessness at the threshold of the South; and the South with the great problems of our citizen- ship challenging her existence and her peace was expected to assume the task of the education of two popula- tions out of the poverty of one. l confess that I think the conscience of the South has something to say to the conscience and the opulence of the na- ton, when. with millions for battle ships. tens of millions for armaments. millions for rivers and harbors, the na- ton allows the academic fabric of pa- per theories to stand between the vast resources of its wealth and the hu- nane appeal, North or South or East or West. of the children of it's citiZen- ship"
 MT. Murphy after reciting the statis- ties of the illiteracy of the South right lv declares: T find no hopeiessness in it, because 1t is the liliteracy, not of the degenerate, but simply of the uninstructcd. Our unlettered white people are native American In stock, virile in faculty and capacity. free in spirit, unbroEen, uncorrupted. fitted to learn and worthy of the best that their country and their century may bring them
 MT. Murphy finds reason to hope and q compensation for the poverty that has made in thousands of instances the cultured Old South the teachers through the public cchools of the New South. This more than anything else makes complete the amalgamation of all classes into one strong democracy. MT. Murphys chapter on "A Constructive Statesmanship' should be brought to the attention and absorbing assinilo- ton of every youth of the South.
 The life-saving importance to our section of the industrial education of the negro Is forcefully set forth These millions of idle hands from which all skill has dropped like a loosened cord. Few seem to realize how every plantation 0: the old South every Southern home was an industrial school for the negro with master and mistress for joint principals. and sons and daughters for assistants. Such a crops of teachers no wealth has since been able to secure to the negroes Not only how to do wa5 taught the negro. but low to live. That he did not always or even often learn the