Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1915-03-05
WILSON HITS HIGH SOCIETY.

Washington, u. c., Feb. 24.-Presi-
dent Wilson delivered an address to-
night at Confidential Memorial Hall at
Il public meeting held in the interest
of Berea Collage, Kentucky, hich is
founded to educate the mountaineers.
Associate Justice Hughes, of the U.
S. Supeme Court, presided. The
meeting MS held for the uplift of ZAP
palachian America" n name which
has been applied by President Frost
of Berea College TO the mountain re-
gion of the south containing in its
isolated valleys and parks 100000
Americans of Scotch and English lin
cage.
Praise for the smile. straight-for
ward people of the Southern noun
tains and criticism of "the airs that
high society itself" were voiced by
President Wilson. His speech in part
follows
"There are colleges and colleges.
have spent the great part of my life
doing what is called teaching but
most of the pupils of most of our
universities Systematically resist
being taught. | remember being
somewhat comforted and treasured
some years ago, after | had taught
for ten or fifteen years, by being told
by n friend of minc ut Yale Uni
versity, who had taught for TWEEN
ty, that he had found that the human
mind had infinite resources for re-
sisting the introduction of knowledge.
Hungry to Learn.
"But here is college filled with
people hungry to learn. If | had
anything that | thought was worth
their hearing,I should love to ad-
dress n body of people hungry to
learn. / have never done it yet.
have devoted the best energies in me
to getting their attention; | have
used every resource of knowledge and
speech that l was master of to call
their attention to the fact that what
! was talking about was worth talk
ing about and worth knowing about.
And after having spent some twenty
five years in that endeavor | do not
know how | could follow these lines
of least resistance. 1t would be a
very novel experience to find that
they were waiting to hear what
had to say. They are hungry because
they have only n vague sense of the
great hinterland lying beyond the
regions that they know.
$50 this college is college of
emancipation, taking the limitations
off of the spirits of these people.
These men at Berea are starting at
the right place; they are starting
with the simplicitis of life, which are
the foundations of life, and are leav-
ing out its sophistries, which are of
no account.
"The object of Berea COLLEGE is to
do what America was intended to do,
to give people who had had it an OPP
portunity and to give it to them
upon acknowledgement terms, upon IA
basis not of birth but of merit, to let
every man have access to what he
can use, to let every man get at the
things which that mind can get the
highest use of, in order to elevate the
life which it serves.
Takes Flying at Society.
A tree does not derive it's strength
from it's flower or from it's fruit. 1t
derives its strength from it's roots.
And so with nation. The nation is
not fed from the top. 1t is not fed
from the conspicuous people down. IL
is fed from the inconspicuous people
up; and these instincts which, like
Berea, go into the unexhausted soils
and tap their virgin resources, are
the best feeders of democracy.
What America has vindicated
above all things else, is that native
ability has nothing to do with social
origin. 1t is very amusing sometimes
to see the airs that high society gives
Itself. The world could dispense with
high society and never miss it. High
society is for those who have stopped
working and no longer have anything
important to do.
"Those who can open up the great
origins of power are those who feed
the nation; and when one thinks of
that old stock in storage there in the
mountains for over hundred years,
untapped, some of the original stuff
of the nation, waiting to be used,
one ought to bid godspeed to those
men who are going there and using
this old capital that has not even
been put out at, interest that has
been, as it were, kept in a chimney
piece until we shall go to it and use
it and find that the usury from it
was someusury of freedom and of
power and of capacity which has been
so characteristic of America from the
first"