Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1910-01-19
NOT THIS WAY IN THE SOUTH.

T. p O'Connor, the we'll known
Irish member of Parliament and writ
er on political and other current top
les, after studying conditions in New
York has reached the conclusion that
to the mass of the people in the me-
tropolis this country simply means an
opportunity to make better living
than elsewhere, that they have no re-
gard for it's historic past, do not care
snap of their fingers for its great char
acters, and would not, under any con-
ditions, bestir themselves to activity IN
a great issue. Patriotism, in the high
est sense, is practically an unknown
quantity with them. The man of wealth
is far more imposing figure in their
eyes than the statesman or the hero of
the battle field. O'Connor expresses
himself about them in this fashion:
A man said to me the other day,
with Indignation in his voice, that the
Young New Yorker who passes
through the streets to-day never stops
to look at a statue of Washington or
Lincoln or Grant, or any of the other
men who created the nation and pro-
tected it from destruction. To him the
interesting thing to point out is the
house of Andrew Carnegie or Rookie
Teller, or of any of the other men who
have amassed vast fortunes. These
are the really interesting persons.
Yet why should my friend be so in
dignant? This young man who is so
little interested in Washington and
Lincoln, and so much in Carnegie and
Rockefeller, came from Europe, or his
father came before him. He is not
native of the soil, and to him the great
attraction of America was that he
could make money here which he could
not make in his own poor country.
Washington and Lincoln belong to
past which is dead to him; which in
deed, to some extent, is dead to all
America The conditions are entirely
changed.
l doubt very much if it would be pos
sible in the America of today to have
anything like the Civil War which rent
America for four terrible years some
forty years ago. You couldn't get any
of these foreign millions to interest
themselves sufficiently in the question
whether slavery should be abolished
or not. Indeed, there are a good
many of them who think that the slav-
cry of the black man has been succeed
ed to large extent by the slavery of
the white man. For there is deep,
widespread and fierce discomfort IN
America, in spite of all the splendid
wealth, enterprise and energy of the
country.
1t may be that this is a somewhat
exaggerated view of it, or it may even
be to the contrary, minimized state
ment of the conditions that exist in
the North where the old native popula-
ton is in danger of being submerged
under the millions of immigrants
flecking in from Southern Europe.
That his statements are measureably
true no one will doubt. And such be-
ing the case the South can have cause
for still further congratulations that it
still adheres to the old paths, that its
eyes have not been riveted on gold as
the only ambition worth pursuing, that
to it Washington, Jefferson, Lee and
others of it's great sons of the past
century still stand higher than the
Rockefellers and Carnegies and Ryans
and Morgans of the present. It may be
provincialism, but let US all hope it is
provincialism that will last, that the
education of the children along these
lines will continue, and that it will
never be possible for visiting for
eigner to say of the people in one of
our cities that the monuments mean
nothing to them, that the historic spots
have no significance, and that the man
who has grown rich by doubtful means
is the idol at whose feet they fall and
worship.