Fitzgerald enterprise. (Fitzgerald, Ga.) 1895-1912, 1910-11-26
Removal OF Mercer
From The Macon News.

From The Macon News
Somehow we have been unable to
regard the suggestion of removing
Mercer university from Macon to
Atlanta as seriously made. While
we are not on the inside as to the
considerations and motives for the
movement. We do not feel that
they can be sufficiently weighty and
urgent to bring about the material
ization of so unnatural a proceeding
as this, it seems to us. would be.
To uproot and transplant a pros
porous and thriving educational in
stitution after nearly half a century
establishment in the very heart and
center of Georgia! One would as
soon think of uprooting some wide
spreading century old oak-while
still sound at heart-that had given
shelter and protection to successive
generations of men, and transplant
ing it to other scenes amid which it
could never revive the associations
of its splendid past
For, as the Savannah Press well
and beautifully says in discussing
the proposition of transplanting
Mercer, when a university is
planted its first step of progress is
toward one of stability. 1t grows
up with experience and environ
ment and becomes a corporate part
of the city or town where its first
efforts have been made. The uni
versity depends upon the municip-
atty just as the municipality does
upon the university, each one living
its separate life, but closely inter
woven. Macon without Mercer
would be like a man separated from
a lifelong friend. Mercer without
the influence of the people of the
Central City would lose that intense
devotion which is essential to
the career of a college"
| We feel, as we have said. that
there is not apparent any consider
atoms adequate to sustain the re-
sponsibility and consequences of the
severance of the ties between Macon
and Mercer-tieS which are no
longer those of mere contractual re-
lation, but which have become by
the operation Of time the ties of
consanguinity-bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh If there are
any considerations of sufficient grav-
ity for this removal we have not
seen them stated. There has been
agitation in abundance-chiefly in
the columns of our Atlanta profess
siOnal contemporaries, but no argu-
ments of weight commensurate with
the importance of the subject.
We must be pardoned in this con-
nection, for expressing some mild
degree of surprise that our Atlanta
contemporaries should manifest
such overweening zeal in contribut-
ing to the disturbance of the long
established relations that have
welded Macon and Mercer together
We have no criticism for the Allan
ia spirit when legitimately exercised
in reaching out for new enterprises
and new institutions, but we do
think that there should obtain some
semblance of community comfy
that would restrain a sister city
from the possible imputation of as
sisting in any degree to tear down
the established institutions of an
other. Certainly such enterprise in
pursuit of the acquisition of long
founded educational institutions
seems to us misdirected and mani
Testing anything but a kindly spirit
on the part of our Georgia metropo-
lis.
Surely Georgia is big engouth to
accommodate both Atlanta and
Macon.
Every acre of wet bottom land in