The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1905-12-27
THE GONZALES MONUMENT.


THE GONZALES MONUMENT.
When Mr.. N. G. Gonzales lost hi,
life in the public service the great ant
special loss was primarily to the poo
people of South Carolina, the peopl,
who have no rich stake in corporation.
and accumulations of wealth. Mr.
Gonzales usually wrote without asking
questions of himself or others as t
whether or not private interest woulc
be hurt and his first consideration was
men. We recognized when he died that
the weak and the unarmed had lost 8
friend and so we said. Newspaper mer
in this State are generally honest, rela.
lively, but few are or have been 30 in
d~iscreetly regardless of powerful men
and institutions as was he. Sometimes
1t seemed to Is that Mr.. Gonzales es-
poused the cause of the poor in an un-
necessarily emphatic way, when their
interests were not actually menaced,-
but be this as it may he was frequently
their certain and reliable champion
against those who were more able and
more likely to subscribe for The State
and pay for advertising space in its
columns. We have therefore been inn
pressed that he was essentially and first
of all a defender of common manhood
rights and we have been a little sur
prised that this phase of his character
has not received more attention at the
hands of his eulogists. We have had
in late years many men of prominence
in South Carolina who have posed as
peoples men" and as a rule, whether
they were sincere or not, they were
paid for it by the people with offices of
profit and honor. When Mr. Gonzales
on the other hand urged the passage of
a bill to restrict child labor he had
everything to lose and nothing to gain.
We doubted the wisdom of that agita-
ton but the unselfshness of it was self
convincing.
In 1894 Columbia consisted of the
penitentiary, the asylum, two or three
small colleges, an undeveloped canal, the
state government officials and the shop
keepers, hotel keepers and laborers
who were dependent upon the trade
and business created by them. The
meetings of conventions and the legis-
lature and the state fairs were an oc-
casional stimulus and kept the town
from dying out right. One afternoon
Mr.. Gonzales and the writer, then a
yoilno naIucnonnr mon xfrara ofroll;,n.
in the south western suburbs of the
city. Mr.. Gonzales began to speak of
Columbia's future, of it's sure, inevitable,
oncoming growth and with enthusiasm.
.;tod
s~SSl1ssa4~eacts and arguments about the
towns resources and possibilities. The
writer held his. peace but his thought
was that the surrounding cabins and
prevailing squalor and dilapidation
seemed sufficient to stife any strug-
Cling hope. But Mr.. Gonzales, in his
newspaper, necessarily spoke of Column
bia in the same spirit of his conversa-
ton and by his persistent and able mar
shaling of figures and appealing facts
drove the apathetic citizens of Column
bia to believe in their city and in them
selves as city builders. Columbia num-
bers among it's wealthiest business men
today some who were moderately we'll
TODD and fully satisfied ten years ago,
men who would have stayed rather
than upheld his hands, and who have be-
come rich largely through the stimu-
lation which he gave to the towns ex-
pansion.
Behind mere material advancement
must always be intellectual and moral
forces and these Mr.. Gonzales contri-
buted without stint or hating and with
a faith born of his vigorous and pene-
trating mind to the conversion of our
village capital into the thriving COM
mercial town. The shaft that has been
raised to his memory does not say it in
words but some Of us who have been
to a degree familiar with the commu-
nifty believe that the life he lived and
the work he lovingly performed were
indispensable to the rescuing of it from
a business lethargy that had Swallowed
it for the century of it's existence.