L^7 A LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 442 314 8 THE SO OF TO-MORK "^^A ^11 iV , i. THE SOUTH OF TO-MORROW HER FUTURE IN MATERIAL WEALTH AND EDUCATION RECEIVED r AN ADDRESS *JUN 23 1910*) BY REV. JAMES W. LEE, D.D. Pastor of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South, Atlanta, Ga. BEFORE THE THIRD ANNUAL EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, HELD AT ATLANTA. GA.. MAY 19. 1908 Pre 88 OF Allen, Lane & Scott Pb ILADELPHIA . By traaeflBi OCT 11 1915 ^^ THE SOUTH OF TO-MORROW. You could not possibly meet, at this time, to consider a question of vaster importance to the South than the one which calls you together. In all respects which con- cern the well being of a population located in a group of States, except in that of education, we are actually and potentially the richest 24,000,000 of human beings under the sun. Our weakness is our lack of education and of institutions of learning amply enough equipped and suffi- ciently endowed to give the rising generation such tech- nical, moral and intellectual training as is demanded by the age in which we live. Our overplus of all the elements which unite to make a people materially prosperous is simply amazing. We have in the South about 24,000,000 of people, living upon a territory equal to 30 per cent, of the total area of the country. And yet the South in 1903 was actually produc- ing 40 per cent, of the total exports of the nation and handling in Southern ports 35 per cent, of all exports going from American shores. New York, the largest of our Northern ports, has an export commerce equal to $327 for each one of its inhabitants, while Galveston, the largest of our Southern ports, has an export commerce equal to $2795 for each one of its inhabitants. Newport News handles five times as much commerce in proportion to population as New York city; Savannah and Bruns- wick each three times as much, Pensacola nearly three times as much and Wilmington and New Orleans each twice as much. According to the United States Geological Survey the South has a total supply of known iron and steel ores equal to those of all Europe and those from that part of the country from which we have been accustomed to get our supplies put together. We have a coal area of 62,000 square miles, while France, Germany, Great Britain and Russia together have only 42,000 square miles. Mr. Edmonds, of the Manu- facturers' Record, declares that there is enough coal in one of our Southern States, say Kentucky or West Vir- ginia, if it could be capitalized at only 10 cents a ton to equal $10,000,000,000. Enough to buy all the railroads in the United States, enough to pay the national debts of Great Britain, France and the United States, nearly enough to equal the entire banking capital of America and almost enough to equal one-third the entire banking capital of the whole earth. We have been receiving for the past five years $700,000,000 annually for our cotton crop alone, and this is only one-third of our income for agricultural products. We receive almost enough money every year from our fruits and vegetables to keep us alive, if we had nothing else. A gentleman in North Carolina refused $10,000 for 15 acres of lettuce. There are single acres in Texas yielding $1000 a year in onions and single acres in Florida yielding $2000 a year in tobacco. Our poor little ground peas advertise our section from the peanut stands of every city on the planet. Our wa- termelons, wrapped in green rind sufficient to protect their big sweet hearts, are piling the sunshine and glory of the Southern climate upon all the dining tables of the American Union. Our peaches, dainty, sweet, beautiful. by their direct appeal to the tastes of those Hving in the frozen regions of the country, are being converted into milHons of coin for the pockets of our thrifty farmers. We surprise, in mid-Winter, the denizens of ice and snow in the North with car loads of real Spring packed in our strawberries and receive therefor enough money to keep the South blooming the year round. In addition to all this, the Southern people are now getting ready to put into operation the magnificent ex- periment of living without intoxicating liquors. This will enable them to add an additional item of $414,000,000 to their annual income. For the nation's drink bill is over $1,242,000,000, and our one-third of that, supposing we drink as much in proportion as the other two-thirds of the people, will give us nearly $1,000,000,000 of pocket change every two years. When they cut the drink bill from their expense account the Southern people will lift nearly one-half a billion of money annually, hitherto used to fertilize appetite and passion, to create poverty, dis- ease and crime, into the service of legitimate industry. In 1878 Stewart L. Woodford, addressing the Cham- ber of Commerce in Boston, said : "Our nation is to grow bread for the world. We are to mine coal and iron for the world. We are to dig and refine gold and silver for the world. The stars in their courses sing this prophecy of coming commercial, agricultural and manufacturing success." When we think of the raw material of wealth, housed since time began, in our Southern mountains and mines and fields we know that the vast bulk of this com- mercial, agricultural and manufacturing success for the fu- ture must come from the South. Since 1878 the United States has had practically a new birth. It has been vir- tually rebuilt. Its structure business has been renewed and it is to-day almost as different from the United States of 1878 as the England of Edward VII is from the Eng- land of Edward VI. Is there any reason w^hy we should not in the next twenty-five years advance as rapidly as we did during the thirty years from 1878 to 1908? Applying the same percentages of increase to the whole country that are known to have prevailed between the years 1878 and 1908 to the years that are to come be- tween 1908 and 1933 we will find that twenty-five years from now we will have a population of 140.000.000, wealth equal to $270,000,000,000. money in circulation equal to $9,000,000,000, a foreign commerce equal to $6,500,000,- 000, bank clearings of $400,000,000,000, bank deposits of $60,000,000,000, farm property w^orth $50,000,000,000, manufactured products worth $45,000,000,000, a wheat crop of 1.000,000,000 bushels and a cotton crop of 30,- 000,000 bales. Take a third of this for the South, where we grow all the cotton, and where more of the raw ma- terial of wealth is found than in all the rest of the country put together, and we find that in 1933 we will have in the South a population of nearly 50.000.000. wealth equal to $90,000,000,000. money in circulation amounting to $3,- 000,000.000, a foreign commerce worth $2,000,000,000, bank clearings of over $100,000,000,000, bank deposits of $20,000,000,000, farm property worth over $20,000,000,- 000, manufactured products w^orth $15,000,000,000, and a cotton crop of 30,000,000 bales, which at 10 cents a pound will bring us an annual income of $1,500,000,000. But then we will not only be getting the price of the raw ma- terial of our cotton, but if we continue to increase the number of spindles in the South for twenty-five years according- to the rate we have advanced for the past twenty-five years we will have in 1933 enough spindles running to use up 12,000,000 bales of cotton, leaving us 18,000,000 bales to sell to the rest of mankind. In addi- tion to all this, remember that by 1920 the Panama Canal will be completed, which will put our Southern ports at Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola. Panama City, Brunswick and Savannah next door to the South American Republics and next door to Japan and China and you can easily understand that it is only a question of a few years when the center of financial and commercial gravity of this country will be along the seaboard of the Gulf States, instead of in the neighborhood of New^ York and Boston. Here are enough figures on one side of our problem to make our heads dizzy. Look now at the other side where we are actually so poor that our bones may almost be seen breaking through the skin of our body. Harvard University alone has an annual income greater by $19,000 than the incomes of all the colleges and universities of the South put together. Of the productive funds held by American colleges Southern institutions have not 10 per cent, of them. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been going to Harvard and Yale, and Columbia, and Chi- cago, and Leland Stanford, and Washington, and the University of California for the past twenty-five years, while not $10,000,000 from benefactions alone have come to Southern colleges in the same length of time. George J. Hagar, in the Reviczv of Reviews, after careful investi- gation of the whole matter, ascertained approximately how much money or material representing money was given and bequeathed by citizens of the United States for religious, charitable and educational purposes each year for ten years, beginning with 1893. He excluded from the total all gifts and bequests of less than $5000 in money or material. He excluded all State and Na- tional and municipal appropriations and all ordinary con- tributions to regular church organizations and mission- ary societies. What was left after excluding all these represented the purely individual benefactions. The fig- ures given below represent the gifts for ten years in round numbers : — 1893 $29,000,000 1894 32,000,000 1895 32,800,000 1896 27,000,000 1897 45,000,000 1898 38,000,000 1899 62,750,000 1900 47,500,000 1901 147,360,000 1902 94,000,000 1903 95,000,000 Making in all for ten years $614,410,000, or an average each year of $61,040,500. Suppose we use this amount for each of the past five years and we will have 1904 $61,040,000 1905 61 ,040,000 1906 61,040,000 1907 61 ,040,000 1908 61,040,000 Making a total of $305,200,000, which, added to $610,- 400,000, makes a grand total of $915,610,000 given in fifteen years by large benefactors to religious, charita- ble and educational purposes. We may safely take it for granted, I think, that $500,000,000 of this went for educational purposes. Southern colleges have not re- ceived 2 per cent, of this half a billion of munificence. It has been said that the proportion of illiterate voters in the South is as great as in 1850 and that 27 per cent, of our white population are utterly illiterate. Now we have a place between this enormous bulk of material wealth on the one side and this pitiable leanness of edu- cational equipment on the other to plant our intellectual theodolite in order to survey the educational conditions of the Southern people. One needs to be gifted with no great insight to see the consequences of this unparal- leled disproportion between our wheel work for making money and our machinery for turning out ideas, be- tween our mind and our matter, between our thought and our things. We cannot long submit to conditions that pamper the body and starve the mind without find- ing ere long our center of gravity as a people dropping from the top to the bottom of ourselves. With a vast mountain of gold on one side of us to enlarge our mate- rial interests and a diminutive hill of mental opportun- ity on the other to feed our intellectual interests we will soon find ourselves like an enormous pyramid, with its base in the air and its apex in the dust; we will find our feet in the clouds and our spirits sprawling on the earth. Like an eagle built for the sky, but of set purpose failing to grow wings, we will find ourselves, as would such a bird of the sun, doomed to the barnyard along with the geese and ducks and fowls of the common dirt. 8 Greece in the period of her glory transmuted her wealth into the moral and intellectual wellbeing of her people and raised up leaders in art, philosophy and patriotism to guide the race in all ages. Egy^pt in the period of her glory converted her wealth into the bodies of her people and passed from history without a single valuable contribution to the enrichment of mankind. Our fathers left us a glorious heritage of ideals, and we, the modern sons of noble sires, should not permit them to be buried beneath the foundries and factories and shops and mills of our coming industrial civiliza- tion. Ever}^ dollar that is used to enhance our financial wellbeing is to be welcomed, if we can match every hundred cents of it with a hundred ideas to dominate it and control it in the interests of our higher life. But it were better to be poor, as the proverbial turkeys of Job, world without end, and still be able to hold up our heads and see keenly and clearly and afar with our eyes, than to get rich at the expense of intellectual vision, moral probity and spiritual health. If the South advances in wealth for the next fifty years at the same rate that has marked her progress for the past ten years we will have among us enough money in from 1958, our time is considered, in what esteem will an automobile in which to ride, an upholstered car in which to cross the continent and a private yacht in which to sail the seas, but when, a thousand years in the future from J 958, our time is considered, in what esteem will we be held, if those who write our history then can find nothing better to say of us than that we were the richest and at the same time the most stupid people — in pro- portion to our advantages — that ever in any age lived on the face of the earth? It were better, infinitely, to be Diogenes with great visions, living in his tub and with independence of soul enough to order Alexander out of his light, than to be Croesus, with his soul damp with the dews of death, inclosed in a charnel house built out of his wealth. Our problems as a section are compli- cated by the presence among us of nearly 10,000.000 of. colored people. The negroes will continue to be a source of irritation and friction and riot in proportion to the number of illiterate white people among us. Whatever of opposition there is to the negro in the South is found among uneducated people. The educated classes owned the negro before the war, and they were then, and con- tinue to be, his best friends. The negroes understand them and they understand the negro. Education of the white people is the solution of the so-called negro prob- lem. It goes without saying that technical education is absolutely necessary as never before in our history. From our schools of practical training we are to get our captains of industry. But most of all we need Christian education, which embraces in its discipline not only the hand, specially, but also the mind in its universal aspects and the spirit in its relations to God and man. Already we are suffer- ing from the emphasis placed upon the practical phases of education, from those phases which regard man simply as a worker in time, in contradistinction from those which regard him as a citizen of eternity as well. Already the wages of a first-class plumber, brick mason, carpenter or engineer is more than twice as much as the average pay of a preacher in the North Georgia Conference. Dr. Charles F. Aked, pastor of the Fifth lO Avenue Baptist Church, New York, said in a sermon two weeks ago that commerciaHsm was impeding the cause of Christianity. He said the pulpit was out of touch with the times and that the preachers were coming to be a laughing stock because they were compelled to live a life of grinding poverty. Religious conditions in the neighborhood of New York may warrant the startling declaration of Dr. Aked, but I do not believe it is true in the South that preachers are out of touch with the times, or that they have be- come a laughing stock to their neighbors. It is true that even here they are compelled to live a life of pov- erty, but this fact is matched by the sentiment long cherished by the Southern people that the deep humility necessary to an ambassador of Heaven can only be developed amid the depressing limitations of a liberal allowance of poverty. It has been thought to be the province of the "Lord to keep the preacher humble, but in order to assist Providence in making complete a diffi- cult task the people have thought it a part of their solemn duty to keep the preacher poor. So between what was thought to be the work of the Lord on the one side and what was esteemed to be the function of the people on the other the clergy of the South have had almost unlimited opportunities for accumulating vast stores of humility. The Southern people are inclined to cherish pity for the preachers because of their poverty ; they have never become hard and mean enough to make of them a laughing stock because of it. But the times have changed. Humanity's life and civilization are larger and higher than ever before. Hence the truth and mercy and love of the eternal demand on the part of the II preacher wider intellectual and spiritual gateways to flow through than ever before. To discount the preacher's message by starving his heart and mind is to close the windows of our souls to heaven's light, and to shut from our eyes the hills of blessed day. Judicial blindness and abysmal night are the portions of that people who put out the eyes, stop up the ears and drown by means of earthly din the voices of their spiritual prophets. When the heart of Savanarola ceased to beat Florence was ruined. Living as we do in the fairest and richest part of the planet, we must know that soon the tide of immigra- tion, coming from all lands against our shores, will start this way. Already the great steel trust is equipping a vast plant in Birmingham, Ala. Millions of the rest- less, hungr\', poverty-stricken peoples of the old world are coming to live beneath our genial skies and to work out their agricultural, commercial and manufacturing salvation in our midst. Shall we educate and thus become as a people the yeast cake of this foreign dough, forc- ing it to rise with our preferences and to take form in accordance with our ideals, or shall we neglect the in- tellectual and spiritual training of the rising generation and thus permit the foreigners to become the yeast cake of our native Southern human dough, forcing it to rise with their preferences, and to take form in accordance with their ideals? Is any one ready to say that the Southern people are not able to equip their colleges and universities up to the level of those favored institutions in the East and North and West? If so, it may be an- swered that any people with patience, courage and in- domitable energv enough to triumph in a single gener- 12 ation over the ravages of the most disastrous war ever waged in history, and then when fully on their feet have moral force enough soon to eliminate by acts of legis- lation a drink bill of nearly a half billion of dollars an- nually, have the innate manhood to amaze all mankind with what they can do. The Southern people can do anything they determine with all their hearts and hands and heads to do. They can take their annual drink bill if they wish of nearly half a billion of money, about to be cut by the force of legislation out of their expense account, and put every dollar of it for ten years into equipping and endowing their institutions of learning. This alone would be enough to make our hill of mental opportunity we now see on one side of us as broad and high as our vast mountain of gold we see on the other.