The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1906-08-10

Cdu NC HO ICdA upOAA4OAh6 VI AhoANA0
ual life, and that unless the boys and
girls Of the rising generation be trained
In initiative, in self-reliance, in honor
and in manliness, they will prove I'M
equal to the competition which they
must meet?
Not many years ago North Caro-
lima banker determined to induce HIS
community torely whollyuponitsel for
capital and management in establish
ing diversified enterprises. out of that
decision has come the organization in
his own and in neighboring towns of
more than so prosperous factories, the
capital, the labor, skilled and unskilled,
being wholly local What he did hun
dreds Of other bankers can do. AS
people we need initiative, we need
energy. we need competition, we need
the "attrition of mind against mind"
we need the stimulus which immigra-
ton would bring, the stimulus that
will force us to develop every latent
power of brain and muscle, and in this,
as well as in every other good work,
the bankers of the South should be
the leaders.
You need not worry whether vast
wealth is to be created in this section
or not. The worlds economic devel-
opment guarantees that, but you may
well stop to consider whether the
boys and the young men of the South
are being trained in work and in char
acter-building as to make sure Of
their holding the dominant position
in this upbuilding or whether they
shall become the hewers of wood and
the drawers of water for others.
Your financial power and yodr posi-
ton, social and business, in your COM
munity throw upon you a greater bur-
den of responsibility than rests upon
any other class of business men in the
South.
Study well your community and
your country; take no narrow view Of
affairs, but know the past and the
present and then you may the better
forecast the future. You may justly
boast of what the South of today is
doing, but stop long enough to look
back to the Old South and its wonder
full business career; stop long enough
to study the character of its great
leaders and you will realize that if the
South of the present and of the future
is to be worthy of the Old South 1t
must, indeed, breed men of broad bust
ness ability, of world-horizon, look
ing beyond the petty politics and pet
ty ideas of narrow-visioned men.
You hear much or the New South,
but /, for one, want to be recorded as
having no sympathy with such title
as it is usually interpreted. The
South of today is but a revival of the
Old South. The New South is but a
child of the old, and owing to the
peculiar conditions attending it's birth
it is not yet so strong, so virile nor so
rich in proportion to the whole coun-
try as was the Old South. Some of
our boosted Southern orators, either
through ignorance of the past or in
order to curry favor with Northern
audiences, have talked of the ante
bellum South as of land lacking in
men of power and world-infuence in
business. They have told us that we
had great statesmen and great war
riors, but they have made many be-
lieve that we were a slothful, a thrift
less people, given only to agriculture
with slave labor. On the contrary,
we should boast as much of the bust
ness leaders, of the scientists, of the
inventors of the Old South as of our
statesmen His skill as an engineer
and the years of training in following
his profession through the trackless
forests gave to Washington much of
the training which fitted him to be-
come the first in war as we'll as the
first in craftsmanship. His father
was an ironmaker, as were many of
the foremost men of the day. The
pioneers of those days who overran
the mountain country of Virginia, the
Carolinas and Tennessee were, as
Swank has so aptly said, born with
genius for ironmaking."
We are prone to forget that many
of the most important inventions of
the world came from the brains of
Southern men, that the cotton-gin
had been invented before Whitney per-
fected it; that the self-binding reaper,
which made an economic revolution
in the world and enabled the wheat
fields of the West to feed all Europe,
was of Virginia origin; that the wealth
er bureau system of today is but the
outcome of the work of that great
Virginian scientist, Commodore Maury,