Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1909-11-12
SOUTHERN bishop
HITS rockefeller
Ridicules Need of Million Dollar
Vermifuge.

MoNGERs.
Bishop Warren A. Gambler, of At
lanta, sends an open letter to the Jour.
nal of that city, in which he takes a
fall out of John d. Rockefeller for his
gift in the interests of the hookworm
disease, which ought to set that multi
millionaire to thinking bit before he
makes another SIMILAR gift. The South.
ern churchman inslnuates that the
Standard OH mans gift is of doubtful
utility, and that Dixie is quite able tc
take care of its head, stomach, and
bowels without any help from the
source indicated. Following is what
Bishop Gambler says:
1t is to be hoped that our people will
not be taken IN by Mr.. Rockefeller's
vermifuge fund and hookworm COM
mission. This habit of singing out the
South for all sorts of reforms, remedies,
and enlightenment is not for our bene-
fit, and the too ready acceptance of
these things upon the part of some OF
our people is not to our credit. Mr..
Rockefeller would take charge of both
our heads and our stomachs, and purge
our brains of ignorance and our bowels
of worms.
QUOTES FROM PICAYUNE.
beg to call attention of the follow
ing article which appeared in the New
Orleans Picayune the morning after
the press dispatches announced the
formation of Mr.. Rockefeller's vermi-
fuge commission.
'The necessity for creating sect onal
prejudices against the Southern people
and States did not stop with the end OF
the civil war of 1876.
"The old hostility engendered then
has passed away, so far as the men who
fought were concerned, and the rally
ing of the young men of the South to
the national flag in the Spanish war,
where they stood shoulder to shoulder
with the men of the North, went far to
extinguish the ancient sectional feeling
against this part of the country.
"But for some reason not fully I'M
derstood it has come to light that self
protested and self-appointed philan-
thropists have taken it upon themselves
to discover and proclaim conditions in
the South calculated to create further
prejudices against the States and the
people of the South so as to divert inn
migration, to alarm the resident popu-
lation, and to place this section of the
country before the world as an affiict-
ed and accused region.
SCANDAL IN COTTON MAKING.
''No sooner had the South begun to
manufacture its cotton on an extensive
scale when it was given out to the
world that most Of the work was done
by youths of both sexes, and largely by
children of tender age, and at such pitt
full wages that the manufacturers of
the North, who employed persons of
full age at high rates of compensation,
could not by any possibility compete
with them, and such hubbub was
raised in the North about it that Sena-
tor Beveridge, Of Indiana, offered in
Congress a bill to prohibit transporta-
ton by interstate railroads of the pro-
duets OF Southern cotton mills where
such alleged conditions obtained.
"A great deal of exertion vas requir-
ed to establish the falsity of ,uch sland-
erous statements against Che South,
and this section is not fully recovered
even yet from them. Next an cutlery
was raised that the Southern people had
become the victims of deadly disease
named 'pellagra,' which was charged
to the use of Indian corn that caused it.
The disease has been traced to Southern
Europe, where it is common, and later
information goes to show that it was
imported in the persons of immigrants.
HOeKwoRM FOLLOWS PELLAGRA.
"But the pellagra panic having failed
OF the expected effect, now comes a
howl about the shookworm.' A nom
professional writer has devoted many
pages and many pictures to the hook
worm in the South in McClure's for
October. He says:
"'All through the South-the Caro-
linas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mis-
sissippi-these abnormal people, the
''dirt EATERS" have been known for a
century, and anemia is universal ma
lady south of the Potomac. ssIt's some
thing these people eat" is the favorite
explanation of it.
Zones first and strongest impress
sion of the ''poor whites is of their
shiftlessness. / remember how dread
fully it used to depress me years ago
when spent my vacations in the
North Carolina mountains. l have
been in little windowless, sleeveless,
one-room cabins, the home of at least 10
persons, where all the cooking was
done over the primitive open fire-ex-
cept when it rained down the chimney
and put the fire out; and there wasn't
any cooking till the rain held up! And
as I talked with the women 1 was al.
ways asking myself, Show can people
live like this? Why don't they go to
work and fix up things?"
SOME STARTLING STATISTICS.
"'It is estimated that scattered ovel
the Atlantic seaboard, from the Poto
mac, round the Gulf, to the Mississippi
River, there are today 1900, 900 of these
poor whites-our native-born whites
suffering with anemia, and hardly ONT
of those 9 600 00O knows or even SuS