By Richard H. Edmonds.

Were I asked to name the South's greatest industrial task, I should without hesitation reply, “The utilization of the South's most valuable raw material.”

I fancy I hear the questioning comments: “What! Has not the South uncovered about all the sources of its raw material it possesses? Has it not during the past century furnished hundreds of millions of bales of cotton, the bulk of the world's supply, to the peoples of three or four continents? Has it not in the past twenty or twenty-five years uncovered vast beds of iron ore, inexhaustible quarries of the fluxing limestone, mighty seams of coal, incalculable stretches of phosphate rock, great deposits of pyrites, lead, zinc, mica, corundum, copper and gold? Have not its forests of long-leaf pine, cypress and hardwoods become the main reliance of the builder and the manufacturer of naval stores? Has it not, after showing to the wondering nations of the earth its marvelous surface wealth or that which lies close to the surface, gone far into its bowels with drill and piping to bring forth, first, increasing streams of oil for illumination and lubrication, and second, even greater streams for liquid fuel, fixing unmistakably, under normal conditions, the situs of the world's future center of industry?

“Nay more, has it not made immense strides, measured by the expanding figures of two or three decades, in manipulating its own raw material at first hand? Are not the shipyards of Virginia, the furniture factories of North Carolina, the furnace stacks of Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, the tobacco factories of the seaboard and the cotton mills of more than a dozen States, stretching from the Susquehanna to the Rio Grande, evidences of the South's wise use of its natural resources as wealth producers? Are not the roar of the forges, the clatter of the spindles, the hum of the saw, the singing of the lathe heard on all hands as coal, wood, oil and electricity, generated from the mountain flows, furnish a variety of power?

“Has not the South, indeed, been something of a leader, with its cotton oil, its cottonseed cake and meal, its commercial cement made from the slag of its furnaces, and its tentative use of sawdust as a basis of distilled liquors of unique importance in the arts, in the teaching of the lesson that former waste products may become most valuable by-products?”

Very true. No sane man can escape the logic of Southern industrial facts of the 0004 4past quarter-century. Yet the accomplishments of the South, tremendous as they have been, and wrought out through great tribulations, are in fact but indications of what the South could do if it only would.

While uncovering its possessions for the admiration and delectation of mankind, if not for the envy of peoples less fortunately situated, while teaching men not to waste, it has in one particular ignored its own lessons and has practically neglected its greatest store of raw material, the most potent factor, perhaps, of its wealth creation if properly used.

The South has almost forgotten its poor white boys.

Is the statement disputable? Let me modify it, so as to bring out its full meaning.

The South has almost forgotten the wealth-creating potentialities of its poor white boys.

I use the qualifying, Almost, advisedly. Our interrupted history of industrial progress has many records of the appreciation, on the part of the Southern fathers of cotton mills and other industries, of the possibilities dormant in a considerable portion of the white population.

There was William Gregg, the South Carolinian, who wrote and talked and worked in behalf of Southern manufactures. Way back in 1845 he was writing of South Carolinians who never passed a month in which they were not stinted for meat, and urging the building of manufacturing villages as a means of improving the conditions of poor white people, ever willing to take employment, who thus would not only become intelligent, but a thrifty and useful class in the community.

So J.G. Gamble of Florida, in advocating the erection of cotton mills in the cotton States, saw in the collection of the piney-woods population about the cotton mills and the consequent schools and churches a remedy for conditions of ignorance among a numerous white population scattered over the pine barrens and subsisting by hunting and raising stock.

Governor Hammond of South Carolina estimated in the early fifties that of the 300,000 white inhabitants of South Carolina there were not less than 50,000 whose industry, compensated as it was, was not adequate to secure them such a support as every white person was entitled to, and he said: “From this class of our citizens 35,000 factory operatives may certainly be drawn as rapidly as they may be called for, since boys and girls are required in large proportions for this business. Nor will there be any difficulty in obtaining them. Experience has shown that, contrary to general expectations, there exists no serious prejudice against such labor among our native citizens, and that they have been prompt to avail themselves at moderate wages of the opportunity it affords of making an honest and comfortable support and decent provision for the future. The example thus set, of continuous and systematic industry among those to whom it has heretofore been unknown, cannot fail to produce the most beneficial effects, not only on their own class, but upon all the working classes of the States.”

Mr. James L. Orr of South Carolina was an ardent pleader for the industrial life, and in advocating factories and machine shops said: “Young men in our State are commencing to realize that labor is reputable. When the graduates of a respectable 0005 5institution sacrifice false sentiment and go to the machine shop to be educated in mechanism and enginery, as some have recently done, it furnishes the index of a healthful public opinion and gives bright prospects of an increasing prosperity in the future.”

These names are familiar to us. They savor of the South and of Southern accomplishment. But the words and deeds of these enterprising Southerners were reinforced by those of the men from New England, the land of doing things, such as Senator Charles T. James of Rhode Island, who wrote in the fifties from personal acquaintance and observation: “Poor Southern persons, male and female, are glad to avail themselves of individual efforts to procure a comfortable livelihood in any employment deemed respectable for white persons. They make applications to cotton mills, where such persons are wanted in numbers much beyond the demand for labor, and when admitted there they soon assume the industrious habit and decency in dress and manners of the operatives in Northern factories. A demand for labor in such establishments is all that is necessary to raise this class from want and beggary, and too frequently, moral degradation, to a state of comfort, comparative independence and moral and social responsibility. Besides this, thousands of such would naturally come together as residents in manufacturing villages, where, with very little trouble and expense, they might receive a common school education instead of growing up in profound ignorance.”

Nor must we forget that son of New England, apprenticed in his youth to the carpenter's trade, the founder of Prattville, Ala., where in thirteen years he saw established about his gin factory a cotton mill, an iron foundry, a sash, door and blind factory, a flouring mill, a carriage shop and two smithies, three churches and two schools, with dwellings for 800 persons, with nearly every family represented in a local industry. Daniel Pratt was not only a worker himself and a provider of the means whereby others learned to work, but he wrote to his fellows for the encouragement of home industry and home trade, urging support of local tailors, shoemakers, tanners, saddlers, cabinetmakers, pailmakers, broommakers, cotton-gin makers and cotton and woolen factories. His efforts in this direction did not fail of due recognition, for in 1846 the University of Alabama conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master in the Mechanic and Useful Arts, and paid him the following tribute: “Without having devoted your life to literary pursuits, you have attained in an eminent degree that which is the end of all letters and all study—the art of making men around you wiser, better and happier. You have shown in a substantial manner that you value and know how to promote the industrial and economical virtues among men, rendering your own intelligence and honestly-acquired wealth a blessing to all that come within the sphere of your influence. You have shown yourself the friend and supporter of schools for the son of the laboring man as well as of the rich, that all the rising generation may be fitted for that condition of republican freedom which it is the peculiar privilege of American citizens to enjoy.”

These typical utterances seem to justify my Almost with reference to an earlier period of our history. The sharp and sudden blow which nearly severed forever the threads of that history left practically all the boys of the South of that day and for 0006 6two or three generations to come poor, and as the South rose slowly again from its ruins, and gradually out of its poverty increased the provision for education of its rising generation, it was left to the dozen or more institutions originating in the bounty of the general government to stand almost alone as exponents of industrial training. A few of them have met their requirements, but all of them combined are far unequal to the urgent demands.

The South has still almost forgotten the wealth-creating potentialities of its poor white boys.

Is it necessary for me to detail the explanation of that lamentable fact?

May it not be made broadly in the statement that the South, so long occupied as a mere producer of raw material for industry, has been slow to recognize its greatest raw material and to make it available by training its white boys and its white girls as they ought to be trained, to handle its other raw materials to the best advantage?

It is true we have the industrial school at Columbus, Miss, the first, I believe, to be established in the United States, it not in the world, for the sole benefit of white girls; we have the textile school of Clemson College, with its younger sisters in North Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi; the Miller School in Virginia, the McDonogh School in Maryland, and well-developed schools at Blacksburg, Raleigh, Starkville, Knoxville, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Atlanta and in other agricultural colleges, where a limited number of our young men may be set upon the right path to success in industrial careers. These means are, however, very small in comparison with the task for the South, expected to be accomplished through them.

A few of these schools, possessing nothing like the resources of the Massachusetts School of Technology of Boston, the Sheffield Scientific School of New Haven, the Troy Polytechnic, the Philadelphia Trade Schools or the Stevens Institute of Hoboken, have reached a wonderful degree of proficiency, which is recognized in the employment of their graduates at varied wealth-creating tasks in widely-separated parts of the country. These have been actuated by the spirits which sees in difficulties only the incentive to endeavor, and strikingly illustrated in the experience in earlier years of one of our leaders in the cause of industrial training. I refer to Dr. Charles W. Dabney. As a teacher of science twenty-odd years ago he was hampered by the lack of suitable instruments and a well-stocked cabinet. Nothing daunted, he led his pupils into the laboratory of the fields and woods, and showed them the minerals set in their natural cabinets. It was not by chance that of his small class one became State geologists of Georgia, another found his place in the United States Geological Survey, and the third in the Smithsonian Institute. These students in their special ways were but types of other Southern boys, who wanted and who want only the shadow of a chance to show what is in them. We see the value to the South to the boy of technical training in Samuel Spencer, rising from rodman in a railroad engineering corps to the presidency of one of the greatest transportation systems in the South and in the country; in Smith Whaley, relinquishing a career of case and support supporting himself to become the builder of the largest cotton mill in the South; in D.A. Tompkins, gaining in the face of great odds the position of an authority on the 0007 7subject of all that relates to cotton, its manufacture and its by-products, from the boll to the bottle of olive oil, from the spinning room to the engine-room, and from the field to the markets of the world. Is not this body, indeed, representative of the grit developed in the hard school of experience which has brought our successful industrial schools to their present position of usefulness, even though their legitimate goal is hardly in sight?

Some of our schools, perhaps the majority, we must regretfully acknowledge, have not kept pace with the growth in material wealth of their respectful States. For this their faculties cannot be held responsible. In more than one of the struggling institutions are to be found investigators and teachers second to non in earnestness and fidelity to their calling. It is not the fault of the boys. They are knocking for admission in ever-increasing number. The blame lies with public opinion, which permits legislature after legislature to adjourn without receiving sufficient encouragement from taxpayers to justify more liberal appropriations for the kind of public education that pays. That opinion is gradually changing, as, under the guidance of an alert press, the people are beginning to perceive that as is production so ought also to be the means of training men to produce, and are such means so is productive capacity increased.

But that new opinion, with its necessary complement, public spirit, lags at times. Something must be done at once to quicken it into vigorous life. We cannot afford to drowse upon our opportunities. Those of us who have succeeded must reach down—in memory of our owwn sharp adversities and in the determination to save others from them according to our ability —and undertake the task of teaching the South as a whole to do for its poor boys as they should be done by.

Our successful men must set in their private personal generosity in the cause of industrial education the example of general and public liberality to the same end. By their works for them that are to come after they must show forth their faith in the South and their determination that it shall give the reasons for their hope. They must give of their wealth, not in haphazard manner, but upon a strictly business basis, and yet by a method that will surely attract remunerative attention and which ought to be geometrical in its progression.

The plan as it may be briefly sketched is not entirely an untried one. Right here in Atlanta, in the Georgia School of Technology, it has been started through the generosity of Mr. Aaron French of Pittsburg, who has shown his deep practical interest in Southern boys in other ways.

Mr. French's plan provides for scholarships to be held by boys at least sixteen years of age and the sons of families owning less than $3000 worth of taxable property. The scholarships, awarded by competitive examination, run for four years, the holders of them being furnished at such time as the president of the institution may think necessary for expenses, books, fees, etc., to an amount not exceeding $125 a 0008 8year. The holders must give small monthly notes payable after graduation covering the amount of money advanced upon the scholarship and bearing no interest before maturity.

Two ends may be gained by this plan. In the first place, the recipient of the scholarship is relieved of any feeling that he is dependent upon the bounty of others, a feeling which not infrequently induces a frame of mind disadvantageous to men who have to strive, and in the second place, through the payment of the small notes as they fall due, the scholarships will become self-perpetuating.

Mr. French has given us of the South a most valuable hint and sent us a practical example which we may follow only to the benefit of the South.

We should elaborate and expand this plan. Scholarships somewhat similar to those founded by him should be provided by Southern men in every Southern institution which shows itself worthy to administer them. It is not necessary to present $10,000 in cash or in interest-bearing securities to each of the score of Southern institutions, most of which are struggling in the face of many difficulties to do their part in the training of Southern white boys.

There are, it is true, hundreds in South who could provide such a general endowment without crippling themselves in the least. There are men in the South who have already given much more than that sum in the case of education. But however desirable the availability of such a lump sum for industrial training might be, it should best be received as an adjunct to the working out of the plan which I have to propose. I believe the adjunct would be forthcoming, and forthcoming in generous proportions should the plan be successfully launched.

It is a plan combining the elements of self-help and of co-operation of individual enterprise with State progressiveness in an investment which will bring almost immediate valuable returns. Briefly sketched it is as follows:

There are in the South 668 cotton mills, a dozen or more great systems of railways and hundreds of industrial undertakings of various kinds, which without trenching upon their capital or without diminishing aught of the dividends for their stockholders or individual owners, could provide the for at least 1000 scholarships, each matching in amount of annual cost and covering the same time as those founded by our Pittsburg philanthropist. I should like to see 1000 founded at the beginning of the next four years, so that by 1906 we should have 4000 Southern boys enjoying them.

Each cotton mill, steel plant, iron mine, oil well, lumber mill or railroad now able should promise to contribute for four years less or less $125 a year for the necessary expenses of at least one poor boy at a Southern technical school who shall show himself by examination to be capable of enjoying such an aid. The recipient of the scholarship shall bind himself-

1. To repay to the institution in which he shall be a student, by giving promissory notes for small amounts or otherwise, the full amount expended on his scholarship account, the payments to be made out of his first earnings after graduation.

2. To seek employment on industrial lines within the limits of the South, certainly during the time in which he is meeting his promissory notes.

Each donor of a scholarship should promise to give, in selecting employees, either as managers of departments, industrial chemists, members of engineering staffs, etc., preference to the holder of that scholarship who may have qualified himself for such a position.

Some of the donors of the scholarships are naturally likely to prefer that they should be at the disposal of technical schools situated within the State where they themselves have their habitat. This natural desire, however, should not prevent them from insisting this provision be made by the State for the strengthening of the teaching force or the betterment of equipment of the institution entrusted with the scholarship to an annual amount equal to the sum expended on account of the scholarship.

By this plan the State, the donors of the scholarships, the holders of them and the schools where they are expended are linked together by ties of a lofty self-interest which cannot fail to have a notable effect for good upon everybody immediately interested and upon the whole South.

Through a process of natural selection we may expect one of our existing institutions to become the central force of this movement, an inspiration for others, and educating the authorities in the lower grades of our public schools to give the necessary preparatory training, if even at the sacrifice of useless conventionalities.

Self-help in this direction will undoubtedly induce other help. To him that hath shall be given.

Do Southern white boys desire this kind of aid, it may be asked, and are they worthy of it? Both queries are answered affirmatively merely in superficial investigation, but I have indisputable evidence in the facts revealed in Southern institutions themselves.

A little more than a year ago I wrote to the presidents of most of the schools in the South in which instruction is given on technical lines to one degree and another to discover the general inclination of students to pursue industrial careers and the means adopted by them to secure the necessary training. In reply came a number of letters telling the story of earnest endeavor and laudable ambition in the language of simple but eloquent facts. Some of those replies may be familiar to you, but I shall take the liberty of quoting from them, as I deem this a most auspicious occasion for recalling them.

Fifteen per cent of the students of the Maryland Agricultural College were engaged in some form of industrial work towards meeting their collegiate expenses, while there was a growing tendency each year on the part of young men to adopt such a method for aiding their education.

Of the 343 students at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg, fifty-two were regularly employed in work helping them to meet their expenses. Of these fifty-two students fourteen were waiting upon the tables in the college dining-hall, for which they received their board, $9 a month. Several were milkers in the dairy, twenty were employed in the several shops running engines and dynamos, oiling machinery, assisting in forge and foundry work, others tended the furnaces, and others acted as janitors. There were probably twenty or twenty-five more who made a little at occasional jobs in the shops, dairy, greenhouses, creamery, cannery, orchards and gardens.

About $300 a month was spent at Clemson College, South Carolina, by which fifty or more students were enabled to meet necessary expenses. The demand for work was far beyond the supply, and hardly more than 10 per cent, of the applicants could secure it. The fortunate ones waited on the tables in the mess-hall, others milked the cows, while the more advanced had work in the electrical department.

About three-fourths of the 443 students at the Texas Agricultural College availed themselves of the benefits of an annual appropriation by the State to pay for work ordinarily done by outside labor. No labor except that of an expert character was employed from the outside. For example, there was an expert laundryman at the head of the laundry department, but all the labor under him was done by the students, and the same rule prevailed in conducting the steam plant and the agricultural, horticultural and other departments, from ten to fifteen young men every year paying their entire expenses by such work, about twenty-five paying from one-third to one-half of theirs, and the balance earning smaller sums. While most of this class of students were of the country, they were confined to no particular class, the general tendency of all being to turn their attention to agricultural and mechanical pursuits and to depend upon their own exertions for their college support.

About 25 per cent. of the students at the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College were paying part of their expenses by their work, forty-seven were paying nearly 50 per cent., and ten were paying practically their way, while at the University of Tennessee between $3000 and $4000 were paid during the year to sixty or seventy young men and women for industrial work of one kind and another.

These are types of perhaps 1000 Southern boys who are determined to fit themselves for an industrial career, no matter what obstacles they must overcome. From nearly all of the institutions comes the cry of many others seeking an opportunity which the means at the disposal of the institution cannot offer, one president alone having letters from at least 250 young men expressing their willingness to do any kind of work, no matter how hard or exacting its nature, which would enable them to secure a proper education.

This cry demonstrates that one of the drawbacks upon the expansion of industrial training in the South, the almost hereditary demand in some portions of the South that young men could find in a professional career about the only avenue to honor and profit, is a steadily diminishing quantity. But others still persist. Let me mention them as they are viewed by some of our educators.

President George T. Winston of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts: “Under our present system of education boys and girls are educated away from skilled labor. * * * Instead of learning to be skilled with hands, observant with eyes and inventive with brain, our children are given endless lessons in geography and history and rhetoric and literature, lessons which they learn with difficulty and forget with ease.”

President Charles W. Dabney of the University Tennessee: “The great draw-back is that nearly all the public and private preparatory schools teach nothing but books, languages and literature, and no nature, and hold up before their pupils steadily as the only ideals of greatness the professions of the lawyer, doctor, preacher, teacher and literary man. The only remedy is more nature study, drawing and manual training in the preparatory schools.”

President Thomas D. Boyd of the Louisiana State University: “I believe that the only difficulty in the way of technical schools in the South is lack of means. In the North and West large sums are expended either by the State or by private individuals for the endowment and support of technical schools, but there are few technical schools in the South except the land-grant colleges, that derive their support mainly from the United States government.”

President R. W. Silvester of the Maryland Agricultural College: “I certainly find a disposition growing stronger each year on the part of young men of the South to become interested in technical training. The drawbacks to a proper development of this on a very much larger scale is a disposition of the Southern States not to cooperate fully with the national grants in making it possible for advantages of this character to be extended to many more young men than are at present enjoying them. The movements in the farther South seem to be more liberal than in the Middle Atlantic States. The establishment of textile courses in many of the agricultural colleges of the South is bringing many of the young men from rural sections to become trained workers in the mills which are at present making a migration from the North to the South. I think all that is needed for a fuller development of this is the possibility of giving employment and then making known the possibility for such to those who would be willing to accept it.”

President Henry S. Hartzog of Clemson College: “Good preparatory schools are lacking, and many of the technical colleges have to add preparatory departments. The preparatory schools, however, are gradually improving, and many of them have courses of instruction of a distinctive nature to prepare students for the technical colleges. Very few of the Southern technical colleges have endowments, and they have to depend upon the liberality of the States legislatures.”

President J. M. McBryde of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute: “Money for better buildings and equipment and larger teaching forces is the crying need, for the work is far more expensive than the classical and literary training formerly offered in our section, and our legislators as yet are unable to realize this fact.”

President L. L. Foster of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas: “The chief drawbacks in the way of technical schools of the South are, first, a lack of equipment and of facilities necessary to enable them to offer the largest possible advantages to young men desiring technical training, though this obstacle is gradually being overcome; second, financial inability to attend college of a large percentage of the young men who would gladly avail themselves of the benefits of such schools. A fund placed at the disposal of the college authorities of industrial and technical schools, with discretionary power to apply it as circumstances may justify in payment for labor in aid of young men struggling to obtain an education, would be of great benefit to the South. State aid must, in the nature of the case, be equally distributed and impartially given, without regard to the financial condition of students, and hence many needy students cannot be given the amount of work necessary to supplement their means to an extent necessary to carry them through college. I believe there is great need of more thorough equipment in our technical schools. We have confined ourselves to a few simple lines of engineering work. Now we need to train workers in a great many other industrial branches, and as yet the institutions 0012 12of the South have no equipment for such training. The great lesson which the South seems very slow to learn is that it is impossible to make adequate provision for higher education in any direction without the expenditure of large sums of money. All our institutions are suffering from lack of endowment and meager equipment.”

President E.A. Alderman, now of Tulane University: “The drawbacks in the way of proper technical training are, first, some lack of appreciation of its meaning, though this is being rapidly removed; second, the lack of sufficient money to equip and maintain technical work. It is my opinion, from a long and varied study of the subject, that there exists among the young men of the South the most heroic desire to achieve an education at any cost.”

The mail of Dr. Alderman as president of the University of North Carolina was every year filled with letters from young men of gentle breeding and culture pleading for work of some sort that would enable them to gain an education. This fine, beautiful struggle of Southern young men, as Dr. Alderman regarded it, should have a response from Southern men who have succeeded in the struggle.

Chancellor J. H. Kirkland of Vanderbilt University: “The general era of prosperity on which we have lately entered is calling for skilled workmen of every kind, and we are not able to furnish them as rapidly as they are needed. Quite a large number of our undergraduates have been taken from us by reason of this demand. The best way to help young men in or out of college is to help them to work.”

The plan here proposed—the founding of 1000 scholarships—represents an annual expenditure of money less than one-half the combined revenue of Hampton Institute, Virginia, where the negro is being trained upon right lines for his task, and of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, where Booker Washington is expanding mightily the work of his intellectual and educational father, General Armstrong.

Much of that revenue, particularly at Tuskegee, is a product of well-directed and wisely—exerted Northern philanthropy. We cannot find fault with our Northern brethren for spending their money as they please. Where it is spent, as at Hampton and at Tuskegee, in correcting the ills of false educational methods, of which the negro has been a victim for forty years, we can only be thankful that the negro has the benefit of it.

But are the whites of the South to continue to permit our Northern friends to do more for the industrial education of the negroes than we are willing to do out of our pockets aside from taxation for our poor white boys?

Lack of means, do I hear? Yes, we have been poor. God knows our poverty has been spelled in capital letters. But that condition is becoming a memory for many of us. We have learned to acquire and to accumulate. Now we must get into the habit of giving, so that our whole people may be better able to accumulate.

The leadership in this belongs naturally to the men of the cotton mills. The hundred and fifty millions invested in them constitute probably the largest amount of capital represented in one Southern industry. That capital is largely Southern capital, earned by Southern brain and brawn. From it should come the impulse that will create other capital, both for cotton mills and for a myriad of other industries. But the cotton manufacturers are committed to practical, educational philanthropy for another reason.

When Southern industry began to revive, fifty-five years ago, cotton mills became the pioneers in industrial training, offering children of the uplands the chance to acquire ability to tend machinery in the simpler forms of manufacture, and at the same time training them to habits of industry and morality. Not stopping at this, the mill-owners in several notable instances provided the means for obtaining a certain amount of book learning, the first opportunity for schooling offered to the children in many instances. The same liberal and far-sighted spirit has been manifested is these latter days, when the Southern cotton mills have through great tribulation entered into their own. Their necessities, too, have added within three years to the educational system of the South four textile schools, which owe their foundation to the fact that the cotton mills, having demonstrated to legislators material advantages of manufacturing to the State, have the more readily persuaded them to provide the means whereby the State, in the employment of its own citizens in more profitable forms of the textile industry, is to reap the full benefits from the full employment of all its raw material, organic and inorganic, as far as cotton is concerned.

But the cotton-mill men have seen grow up around the mills of New England a hundred industries manipulating iron and steel, wood and leather, primarily to meet the mechanical demands of cotton mills, but in most natural sequence developing upon many other lines of machinery manufacture. They have seen this growth of industry attain such proportions that its leaders have been able to contribute generously to the foundation and support of technical schools of many grades, which have turned out the men and women, giving the community greater and greater industrial efficiency until, from the interplay of about one-tenth that of the South and using raw material brought many hundreds of miles, is able to produce in manufactures by means of its human material, not permitted to remain raw, as much as the fourteen Southern States combined.

We claim, and justly, that in no other land has heaven poured such a vast abundance. We have the cotton, the lumber, the phosphate rock, the coal, the iron, the oil, the tobacco, the lead, the zinc and many other products of the surface of the earth or of the depths of the earth. But of what avail are our natural resources if we must leave them to be developed by others? We have, with all our achievements, only begun to handle this raw material. We have only begun to manufacture close to the contiguous sources of material and power. Much of that power is in oil, coal or water. Much more of it is in our poor white boys. Unless they be brought into the refinery of the technical and the trade school, thousands and tens of thousands with inherent capabilities equal to the best in the world are doomed to eke out a scanty living, doing little for themselves or for their country.

These Appalachians may teem with gold, copper and silver, with granites and marbles, and their foothills be covered with forest growth, which, used as they should be, would enrich the world. But these same mountains teem with a wealth of untrained and unutilized man-power worth more to the South than all their water-powers, equally running to waste, or all other natural resources.

We shall never realize our full possibilities if we permit, as has been done in the past, so much of our human material to remain raw and waste. It is hardly a question, 0014 14indeed, of matching toward the white boys Northern liberality toward the negro. Our very salvation, industrial and social, lies in adequate provision for rendering available our human material, so full of potentialities for good of every kind.

In this age, when the skilled hand and the trained mind turn the scale in competition, we cannot, for our civilization, afford to stand still. We must either advance or fall away. It rests with us, and with us alone, to decide the fate of the South. History will hold this generation of Southern business men responsible for this section's future. It is becoming every minute more and more impossible for one man to live unto himself. It is not enough that you have already created employment where none existed before. It is not enough that 250,0000 persons are today finding steady employment in cotton mills through the great work which you have done. The Voice which spake to Moses as he led the children of Israel out of Egypt toward the land flowing with milk and honey, bidding them go forward, speaks today to the people of this section and bids the South to go forward.

We must advance. We must hasten to turn the mass of undisciplined, scattering, unskilled material for work into a compact army of intelligent, strong and skillful men, disciplined to do.

Let us give the poor white boy his due, and make the South solid for comfort and prosperity.