Evening star., 1934-05-06

Jnere was not muCn cnance 10 learn Cne
niceties of expression. Sometimes the
girls went on to school, because they
were not much use anyway; but the
boys went to work And now there is
a chance for them to learn something
more, to open ways of thinking to them.
1t must not be destroyed.
This is true story. In my home town
a man telephoned to me from his drug
store. There are some statesmen here
and they've made a bet of S. and they
want you to settle it, They say they'll
leave it to you which of them is right"
Very WELL" 1 answer. slightly puzzled,
"I'll try to answer" well, it's this way:
The boys want to know how to spell
government. Some say it's with an m
and some say it's 'govament'
That's the way they pronounce it,
down there, all but the exceptional purist
-"govament." The "govaments says.
The "govament" won't let you work your
men longer than so and so. Not rightly
certain what is the government, but
now suddenly using the term with hap
piness, feeling that they belong feeling
after these years of isolation that the
South is also a part of the Government.
A STRANGE, tragic, cheerful, incred-
ibly friendly people, with their bad
diet of fried foods their poor sanitation,
their depressing climate, their depress-
ing traditions of gentility; the whites
cursed by the burden of an ignorant,
lazy black population; the blacks
thwarted and coddled by the whites.
No wonder so many of the best moved
North, and now that they have come
home it is good that a new hope has
been given to them.
"A wonderful class of workmen" the
bosses declare at the Norris Dam-"in-
telligent, cooperative, trained. We're
running ahead of schedule now" These
are the Tennesseans, Kentuckians and
others who went away to Detroit. Gin
cinnati and elsewhere, to build up those
cities and their industries and have
now come home With the great Ten
nessee Valley experiment under way,
new world begins right there in the hills.
Power lines will cut across those isolated
valleys, electric light and heat will go
into those two-roOm mountain shackS,
homestead communities will develop,
combining individual initiative and CO.
operative marketing; small compact
electrified houses of brick and stone are
rising. 1 saw those houses at Norris,
and wished I could live in one of them,
with the mountains at my feet and
great river near at hand.
There is going to be a renaissance in
the South" declares man who has lived
in many parts Of it. 1T is the coming
section of the country. Rich natural
resources, good land, cheap power, good
workmen. I want to move in now"
If the economic tangle of cities,
banks, debts, etc, is beyond solution,
perhaps there in the South is develop
ing the way out for many thousands.
A small house set in the hills, little
land for growing things, a village with
its factory, its school for children, its
community house for adult learning, its
vocational school for new training, the
wizardry of electricity for countless uses,
lie dutoHloOIe anu Ine dlTpldne W
bring the world nearer-in other words,
a place such as Norris down in Ten
nessee is on the way to being. Here is
new kind of security in a complex
world. "Ah, wilderness"
Hope comes to the South. If it comes
to stay, it cannot fail to come to other
sections of the country as we'll.