The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1910-02-12

poorer you keep him the richer will
be the upper classes" These have
been our great pet fallacies. And a
long time have they been preached.
Hugging this vampire delusion, the
southern plantation owner has seen
vast areas abandoned to broomsedge
and gullies, in spite Of the fact that
intelligent handling would have kept
them productive for 1000 years.
Preaching this fatal doctrine, the
merchant has sold western meat and
scooters and tobacco, when, with
prosperous patrons, he might have
quadrupled his profits by selling sulky
plows and harvesters and carriages
and pianos.
Deluded by this fallacy, the states
man has struggled against fate, only
to die and be forgotten by people too
poorly educated to read his bio
graphy, and too poor in property to
build monument to his memory,
while smaller and meaner men in
sections unshackled by those ancient
errors, are famed in song and story.
Writing editorials in support of the
aristocratic instead Of the democratic
theory Of industry. the editor has
seen his patent-outside weekly fail of
support, when properly trained and
educated people would have brought
him wealth and the head of a pros
porous daily.
Fighting public taxation for better
schools and methods of training or
enriching the average man, your
manufacturer has struggled along
with a small business, when a pros
porous average man would have
given us great industries like those in
the north and west.
Still aruging that education and
training would spoil the workingman.
and that cheap labor is what we need.
your banker has complained that the
South offers no opportunities Cor the
great financier, forgetting that cheap,
unprosperous labor menas small. un-
prosperous banks.
Your doctor, lawyer, preacher.
teacher-each falling in line with
the ancient heresy-has paid the pen
atty in diminished fees, diminished
salaries, diminished influence.
Victims of the vicious teaching
am pointing out. our men Of talent
artists, sculptors, poets, orators.-haye
TOO often fled to other sections or else
among a people unframed to appre-
ciate their genius-when but for
these things you might see statues
or southern leaders in all great
American cities the work of southern
artists in the worlds greatest GAL
leries. the thought of the southern
poet the common heritage of man.
kind. 1t is not that we have had no
mighty dreamers; it is that they sleep
IN neglected graves, trampled under
loot by war and waste and error.
Now, war and waste, thank God.
are behind u.s. Let us also put error
behind us.
or all our errors, our greatest has
been the failure to recognize the fact
that the prosperity Of every man de-
pends upon the prosperity (and there
fore upon the intelligence and eff
ciency) of the average man-and in
many cases the actual acceptance OF
the doctrine that the state is benefit
ed by having cheap, unintelligent
labor We now see, on the contrary.
that such labor Is curse.
And our second great error has
been like unto 1.-THE belief that
even II prosperity Of every man does
depend upon the prosperity Of the
average-we are too poor to train
him. The truth is that we are too
poor not to do so. The fullest and
freest training of the average is the
one and only positive guarantee of
southern prosperity, and by this 7
mean the prosperity not only of our
section and Of our institutions and of
society as whole, but the prosper
ity of every individual-every farmer.
every laborer, every merchant, every
manufactures, every professional
man, every inhabitant--from the bow
who blacks your shoes to the master
mind that builds railroad systems or
governs your state.