Bryan daily eagle and pilot. [volume] (Bryan, Tex.) 1909-1918, 1912-02-20
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
or PARCELS POST

southwestern Zimmerman 8 ASS0c1a-
ton, held recently at Kansas City,
William Allen White says:
Il am exceedingly sorry that l can
not attend your convention. 1t seems
to me that the lumbermen of this sec
ton are undertaking a work that
should commend them to all good citi.
Izens.
"The preservation of the home trade
! to the home town carries with it the
preservation of many of our American
institutions.
1T seems to me that a lot OF good
things in American life will pass If
the country town passes. And it will
pass just so surely as Capitalization
Of retail mail order business in cities
continues.
The American country town, the
town of from one hundred to one hun.
dred thousand people, preserves better
than the crowded city and better than
the lonely ranch and isolated farm
life, the things that make America
great. M
Here in these country towns the
spirit of neighborliness Is the prevail
ing spirit Men come to know one an.
other and when any two human beings
come to know one another, in the one
who is intelligent and wise respect al
ways rises for the other. To know
ones fellows always is to sympathize
with them. Neighborllness spells fra.
ternity.
The American country town with
/ its broad circle of friendships, with its
close homely simple relations between
men, with it's spirit of cooperation
and with its economic status that per-
mits the creation of no indecently rich
and no abjectly poor, the American
country town, it seems to me, is the
most hopeful of our American institu-
lions.
ITO destroy that town, furnishing
the market for the farmer and giving
steady employment to labor, means a
reorganization Of our commercial, so.
cial and industrial life that will be
revolutionary-and more matter of
doubtful value.
"The mail order house therefore be.
comes a menace to this country, the
mail order house unrestricted will kill
our smaller towns. creating great cities
with their terrible contrasts of life,
with their cruel social relations, with
their inevitable caste feeling that come
from the presence of strangers who
are rich and poor living side by side.
Friendship, neighborllness, frater-
nifty or whatever you will call that
spirit of comradery that comes when
men know one another we'll. is the
cement that holds together this union
of the states. 1t is not created in great
cities.
Great cities give much in aims but
little in justice. Only as we know each
other well can we treat each other
Justly; and the city is a wilderness Of
careless strangers whose instincts Of
humanity are daily becoming more and
more blunted to suffering, because in
the nature of things suffering in cities
must be impersonal. 1t is not the suf
| fering of friends and neighbors and
| kith and kin as it Is In the smaller
towns. So the mail order house crush
| ing out our towns is drying up the
milk of human kindness in our hearts.
"And that brings us back to first
principles; if we who live in these
small towns in America can not see
that our duty to our country lies first
of all in our duty to our neighbors.
! then we are blind indeed to the basis
of real patriotism, for after all patriot.
ism is only neighborly kindness. Pa
triotism is not in cheering for the flag;
it is not in feeling our eyes filled with
emotional tears at hearing The Star
/ Spangled Banner; patriotism is just
old-fashioned human duty.
ITO sacrifice our neighbor-the man
who helps the town with it's taxes,
with its public business, with its
myriad activities for neighborly right
eousness-to sacrifice that man and
his business for the mere sake of
saving a dollar on the purchase OF
hundred dollars worth of goods is
just as unpatriotic as it is to spit at
the flag.
For the flag if it means anything
means the golden rule the flag means
friendly burden bearing; it means mu-
tual help in trouble; it means stand
ing together against common foes.
"The motto of the mail order house
! is every man for himself and the devil
take the hindermost-and you bet the
devil will
THAT spirit never fails to work; and
the weak man, the unprotected man,
the man alone-the man on the farm,