ages, one of their greatest sources of inspiration was Walter Page.
McIver, a great burly boy, physically and intellectually, so full of
energy that existence for him was little less than an unending tornado,
so full of zeal that any other occupation than that of training the
neglected seemed a trifling with life, so sleepless in his efforts that,
at the age of forty-five, he one day dropped dead while travelling on a
railroad train; Alderman, a man of finer culture, quieter in his
methods, an orator of polish and restraint, but an advocate vigorous in
the prosecution of the great end; and Page, living faraway in the North,
but pumping his associates full of courage and enthusiasm--these were
the three guardsmen of this new battle for the elevation of the white
and black men of the South. McIver's great work was the State Normal
College for Women, which, amid unparalleled difficulties, he founded
for teaching the teachers of the new Southern generation. It was at this
institution that Page, in 1897, delivered the address which gave the
cause of Southern education that one thing which is worth armies to any
struggling reform--a phrase; and it was a phrase that lived in the
popular mind and heart and summed up, in a way that a thousand speeches
could never have done, the great purpose for which the best people in
the state were striving.

His editorial gift for title-making now served Page in good stead. "The
Forgotten Man," which was the heading of his address, immediately passed
into the common speech of the South and even at this day inevitably
appears in all discussions of social progress. It was again Page's
familiar message of democracy, of improving the condition of the
everyday man, woman, and child; and the message, as is usually the case
in all incitements to change, involved many unpleasant facts. Page had
first of all to inform his fellow Southerners that it was only in the
South that "The Forgotten Man" was really an outstanding feature. He did
not exist in New England, in the Middle States, in the Mississippi
Valley, or in the West, or existed in these regions to so slight an
extent that he was not a grave menace to society. But in the South the
situation was quite different. And for this fact the explanation was
found in history. The South certainly could not fix the blame upon
Nature. In natural wealth--in forests, mines, quarries, rich soil, in
the unlimited power supplied by water courses--the Southern States
formed perhaps the richest region in the country. These things North
Carolina and her sister communities had not developed; more startling
still, they had not developed a source of wealth that was infinitely
greater than all these combined; they had not developed their men and
their women. The Southern States represented the purest "Anglo-Saxon"
strain in the United States; to-day in North Carolina only one person in
four hundred is of "foreign stock," and a voting list of almost any town
contains practically nothing except the English and Scotch names that
were borne by the original settlers. Yet here democracy, in any real
sense, had scarcely obtained a footing. The region which had given
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to the world was still, in the
year 1897, organized upon an essentially aristocratic basis. The
conception of education which prevailed in the most hide-bound
aristocracies of Europe still ruled south of the Potomac. There was no
acceptance of that fundamental American doctrine that education was the
function of the state. It was generally regarded as the luxury of the
rich and the socially high placed; it was certainly not for the poor;
and it was a generally accepted view that those who enjoyed this
privilege must pay for it out of their own pockets. Again Page returned
to the "mummy" theme--the fact that North Carolina, and the South
generally, were too much ruled by "dead men's" hands. The state was
ruled by a "little aristocracy, which, in its social and economic
character, made a failure and left a stubborn crop of wrong social
notions behind it--especially about education." The chief backward
influences were the stump and the pulpit. "From the days of King George
to this day, the politicians of North Carolina have declaimed against
taxes, thus laying the foundation of our poverty. It was a misfortune
for us that the quarrel with King George happened to turn upon the
question of taxation--so great was the dread of taxation that was
instilled into us." What had the upper classes done for the education of
the average man? The statistics of illiteracy, the deplorable economic
and social conditions of the rural population--and most of the
population of North Carolina was rural--furnished the answer.

Thus the North Carolina aristocracy had failed in education and the
failure of the Church had been as complete and deplorable. The preachers
had established preparatory schools for boys and girls, but these were
under the control of sects; and so education was either a class or an
ecclesiastical concern. "The forgotten man remained forgotten. The
aristocratic scheme of education had passed him by. To a less extent,
but still to the extent of hundreds of thousands, the ecclesiastical
scheme had passed him by." But even the education which these
institutions gave was inferior. Page told his North Carolina audience
that the University of which they were so proud did not rank with
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other universities of the North. The state
had not produced great scholars nor established great libraries. In the
estimation of publishers North Carolina was unimportant as a book
market. "By any test that may be made, both these systems have failed
even with the classes that they appealed to." The net result was that
"One in every four was wholly forgotten"--that is, was unable to read
and write. And the worst of it all was that the victim of this neglect
was not disturbed over his situation. "The forgotten man was content to
be forgotten. He became not only a dead weight, but a definite opponent
of social progress. He faithfully heard the politician on the stump
praise him for virtues that he did not have. The politicians told him
that he lived in the best state in the Union; told him that the other
politicians had some hare-brained plan to increase his taxes, told him
as a consolation for his ignorance how many of his kinsmen had been
killed in the war, told him to distrust any one who wished to change
anything. What was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him.
Thus the 'forgotten man' became a dupe, became thankful for being
neglected. And the preacher told him that the ills and misfortunes of
this life were blessings in disguise, that God meant his poverty as a
means of grace, and that if he accepted the right creed all would be
well with him. These influences encouraged inertia. There could not have
been a better means to prevent the development of the people."

Even more tragic than these "forgotten men" were the "forgotten women."
"Thin and wrinkled in youth from ill-prepared food, clad without warmth
or grace, living in untidy houses, working from daylight till bedtime at
the dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of equal slovenliness,
the mothers of joyless children--all uneducated if not illiterate."
"This sight," Page told his hearers, "every one of you has seen, not in
the countries whither we send missionaries, but in the borders of the
State of North Carolina, in this year of grace."

"Our civilization," he declared, "has been a failure." Both the
politicians and the preacher had failed to lift the masses. "It is a
time for a wiser statesmanship and a more certain means of grace." He
admitted that there had been recent progress in North Carolina, owing
largely to the work of McIver and Alderman, but taxes for educational
purposes were still low. What was the solution? "A public school system
generously supported by public sentiment and generously maintained by
both state and local taxation, is the only effective means to develop
the forgotten man and even more surely the only means to develop the
forgotten woman. . . ." "If any beggar for a church school oppose a local
tax for schools or a higher school tax, take him to the huts of the
forgotten women and children, and in their hopeless presence remind him
that the church system of education has not touched tens of thousands of
these lives and ask him whether he thinks it wrong that the commonwealth
should educate them. If he think it wrong ask him and ask the people
plainly, whether he be a worthy preacher of the gospel that declares one
man equal to another in the sight of God? . . . The most sacred thing in
the commonwealth and to the commonwealth is the child, whether it be
your child or the child of the dull-faced mother of the hovel. The child
of the dull-faced mother may, as you know, be the most capable child in
the state. . . . Several of the strongest personalities that were ever born
in North Carolina were men whose very fathers were unknown. We have all
known two such, who held high places in Church and State. President
Eliot said a little while ago that the ablest man that he had known in
his many years' connection with Harvard University was the son of a
brick mason."

In place of the ecclesiastical creed that had guided North Carolina for
so many generations Page proposed his creed of democracy. He advised
that North Carolina commit this to memory and teach it to its children.
It was as follows:

"I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the
mind of every child born of woman.

"I believe that by the right training of men we add to the wealth
of the world. All wealth is the creation of man, and he creates it
only in proportion to the trained uses of the community; and the
more men we train the more wealth everyone may create.

"I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and in the
immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting."

Thus Page nailed his theses upon the door of his native state, and
mighty was the reverberation. In a few weeks Page's Greensboro address
had made its way all over the Southern States, and his melancholy
figure, "the forgotten man" had become part of the indelible imagery of
the Southern people. The portrait etched itself deeply into the popular
consciousness for the very good reason that its truth was pretty
generally recognized. The higher type of newspaper, though it winced
somewhat at Page's strictures, manfully recognized that the best way of
meeting his charge was by setting to work and improving conditions. The
fact is that the better conscience of North Carolina welcomed this
eloquent description of unquestioned evils; but the gentlemen whom Page
used to stigmatize as "professional Southerners"--the men who
commercialized class and sectional prejudice to their own political and
financial or ecclesiastical profit--fell foul of this "renegade," this
"Southern Yankee" this sacrilegious "intruder" who had dared to visit
his old home and desecrate its traditions and its religion. This
clerical wrath was kindled into fresh flame when Page, in an editorial
in his magazine, declared that these same preachers, ignoring their real
duties, were content "to herd their women and children around the
stagnant pools of theology." For real religion Page had the deepest
reverence, and he had great respect also for the robust evangelical
preachers whose efforts had contributed so much to the opening up of the
frontier. In his Greensboro address Page had given these men high
praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he
entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North
Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men
chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those
against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost
unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb
the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years--for Page's
Greensboro speech was only the first of many pronouncements of the same
kind--but he never publicly referred to the attacks upon him.
Occasionally in letters to his friends he would good-naturedly discuss
them. "I have had several letters," he wrote to Professor Edwin Mims, of
Trinity College, North Carolina, "about an 'excoriation' (Great Heavens!
What a word!) that somebody in North Carolina has been giving me. I
never read these things and I don't know what it's all about--nor do I
care. But perhaps you'll be interested in a letter that I wrote an old
friend (a lady) who is concerned about it. I enclose a copy of it. I
shall never notice any 'excoriator.' But if you wish to add to the
gaiety of nations, give this copy to some newspaper and let it loose in
the state--if you care to do so. We must have patience with these puny
and peevish brethren. They've been trained to a false view of life.
Heaven knows I bear them no ill-will."

The letter to which Page referred follows:

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I have your letter saying that some of the papers in North Carolina
are again "jumping on" me. I do not know which they are, and I am
glad that you did not tell me. I had heard of it before. A preacher
wrote me the other day that he approved of every word of an
"excoriation" that some religious editor had given me. A kindly
Christian act--wasn't it, to send a stranger word that you were
glad that he had been abused by a religious editor? I wrote him a
gentle letter, telling him that I hoped he'd have a long and happy
life preaching a gospel of friendliness and neighbourliness and
good-will, and that I cared nothing about "excoriations." Why
should he, then, forsake his calling and take delight in
disseminating personal abuse?

And why do you not write me about things that I really care for in
the good old country--the budding trees, the pleasant weather, news
of old friends, gossip of good people--cheerful things? I pray you,
don't be concerned about what any poor whining soul may write about
me. I don't care for myself: I care only for him; for the writer of
personal abuse always suffers from it--never the man abused.

I haven't read what my kindly clerical correspondent calls an
"excoriation" for ten years, and I never shall read one if I know
what it is beforehand. Why should I or anybody read such stuff? I
can't find time to do half the positive things that I should like
to do for the broadening of my own character and for the
encouragement of others. Why should I waste a single minute in such
a negative and cheerless way as reading anybody's personal abuse of
anybody else--least of all myself?

These silly outbursts never reach me and they never can; and they,
therefore, utterly fail, and always will fail, of their aim; yet,
my dear friend, there is nevertheless a serious side to such folly.
For it shows the need of education, education, education. The
religious editor and the preacher who took joy in his abuse of me
have such a starved view of life that they cannot themselves,
perhaps, ever be educated into kindliness and dignity of thought.
But their children may be--must be. Think of beautiful children
growing up in a home where "excoriating" people who differ with you
is regarded as a manly Christian exercise! It is pitiful beyond
words. There is no way to lift up life that is on so low a level
except by the free education of all the people. Let us work for
that and, when the growlers are done growling and forgotten, better
men will remember us with gratitude.

I felt greatly complimented and pleased to receive an invitation
the other day to attend the North Carolina Teachers' Assembly in
June. I have many things to do in June, but I am going--going with
great pleasure. I hope to see you there. I know of no other company
of people that I should be so glad to meet. They are doing noble
work--the most devoted and useful work in this whole wide world.
They are the true leaders of the people. I often wish that I were
one of them. They inspire me as nobody else does. They are the army
of our salvation.

Write me what they are doing. Write me about the wonderful
educational progress. And write me about the peach trees and the
budding imminence of spring; and about the children who now live
all day outdoors and grow brown and plump. And never mind that
queer sect, "The Excoriators." They and their stage thunder will be
forgotten to-morrow. Meantime let us live and work for things
nobler than any controversies, for things that are larger than the
poor mission of any sect; and let us have charity and a patient
pity for those that think they serve God by abusing their
fellow-men. I wish I saw some way to help them to a broader and a
higher life.

Faithfully yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.


III

That Page should have little interest in "excoriators" at the time this
letter was written--in April, 1902--was not surprising, for his
educational campaign and that of his friends was now bearing fruit.
"Write me about the wonderful educational progress," he says to this
correspondent; and, indeed, the change that was coming over North
Carolina and the South generally seemed to be tinged with the
miraculous. The "Forgotten Man" and the "Forgotten Woman" were rapidly
coming into their own. Two years after the delivery of Page's Greensboro
address, a small group of educational enthusiasts met at Capon Springs,
West Virginia, to discuss the general situation in the South. The leader
of this little gathering was Robert C. Ogden, a great New York merchant
who for many years had been President of the Board of Hampton Institute.
Out of this meeting grew the Southern Educational Conference, which was
little more than an annual meeting for advertising broadcast the
educational needs of the South. Each year Mr. Ogden chartered a railroad
train; a hundred or so of the leading editors, lawyers, bankers, and the
like became his guests; the train moved through the Southern States,
pausing now and then to investigate some particular institution or
locality; and at some Southern city, such as Birmingham or Atlanta or
Winston-Salem, a stop of several days would be made, a public building
engaged, and long meetings held. In all these proceedings Page was an
active figure, as he became in the Southern Education Board, which
directly resulted from Mr. Ogden's public spirited excursions. Like the
Conference, the Southern Education Board was a purely missionary
organization, and its most active worker was Page himself. He was
constantly speaking and writing on his favourite subject; he printed
article after article, not only in his own magazine, but in the
_Atlantic_, in the _Outlook_, and in a multitude of newspapers, such as
the Boston _Transcript_, the New York _Times_, and the Kansas City
_Star_. And always through his writings, and, indeed, through his life,
there ran, like the motif of an opera, that same perpetual plea for "the
forgotten man"--the need of uplifting the backward masses through
training, both of the mind and of the hand.

The day came when this loyal group had other things to work with than
their voices and their pens; their efforts had attracted the attention
of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who brought assistance of an extremely
substantial character. In 1902 Mr. Rockefeller organized the General
Education Board. Of the ten members six were taken from the Southern
Education Board; other members represented general educational interests
and especially the Baptist interests to which Mr. Rockefeller had been
contributing for years. In a large sense, therefore, especially in its
membership, the General Education Board was a development of the Ogden
organization; but it was much broader in its sweep, taking under its
view the entire nation and all forms of educational effort. It
immediately began to interest itself in the needs of the South. In 1902
Mr. Rockefeller gave this new corporation $1,000,000; in 1905 he gave it
$10,000,000; in 1907 he astonished the Nation by giving $32,000,000,
and, in 1909, another $10,000,000; the whole making a total of
$53,000,000, the largest sum ever given by a single man, up to that
time, for social or philanthropic purposes. The General Education Board
now became the chief outside interest of Page's life. He was made a
member of the Executive Committee, faithfully attended all its sessions,
and participated intimately in every important plan. All such bodies
have their decorative members and their working members; Page belonged
emphatically in the latter class. Not only was he fertile in
suggestions, but his ready mind could give almost any proposal its
proper emphasis and clearly set forth its essential details. Between
Page and Dr. Buttrick, Secretary and now President of the Board, a close
personal intimacy grew up. Dr. Buttrick moved to Teaneck Road,
Englewood, where Page had his home, and many a long evening did the two
men spend together, many a long walk did they take in the surrounding
country, always discussing education, especially Southern education. A
letter to the present writer from Dr. Abraham Flexner, the present
Secretary of the Board, perhaps sums up the matter. "Page was one of the
real educational statesmen of this country," says Dr. Flexner, "probably
the greatest that we have had since the Civil War."

And this Rockefeller support came at a time when that movement known as
the "educational awakening" had started in the South. In 1900 North
Carolina elected its greatest governor since the Civil War--Charles B.
Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's detestation of
slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed as a small boy; Aycock's
first zeal as an educational reformer had an origin that was even more
pathetic, for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own
mother signing an important legal document with a cross. As a young man
fresh from the university Aycock also came under the influence of Page.
An old letter, preserved among Page's papers, dated February 26, 1886,
discloses that he was a sympathizing reader of the "mummy" controversy;
when the brickbats began flying in Page's direction Aycock wrote,
telling Page that "fully three fourths of the people are with you and
wish you Godspeed in your effort to awaken better work, greater
activity, and freer opinion in the state." And now under Aycock's
governorship North Carolina began to tackle the educational problem with
a purpose. School houses started up all over the state at the rate of
one a day--many of them beautiful, commodious, modern structures, in
every way the equals of any in the North or West; high schools, normal
schools, trade schools made their appearance wherever the need was
greatest; and in other parts of the South the response was similarly
energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the description that Page
gave of Southern education in 1897, accurate in all its details as it
was then, has now become ancient history.


IV

And in occupations of this kind Page passed his years of maturity. His
was not a spectacular life; his family for the most part still remained
his most immediate interest; the daily round of an editor has its
imaginative quality, but in the main it was for Page a quiet, even a
cloistered existence; the work that an editor does, the achievements
that he can put to his credit, are usually anonymous; and the American
public little understood the extent to which Page was influencing many
of the most vital forces of his time. The business association that he
had formed with Mr. Doubleday turned out most happily. Their publishing
house, in a short time, attained a position of great influence and
prosperity. The two men, on both the personal and the business side,
were congenial and complementary; and the love that both felt for
country life led to the establishment of a publishing and printing plant
of unusual beauty. In Garden City, Long Island, a great brick structure
was built, somewhat suggestive in its architecture of Hampton Court,
surrounded by pools and fountains, Italian gardens, green walks and
pergolas, gardens blooming in appropriate seasons with roses, peonies,
rhododendrons, chrysanthemums, and the like, and parks of evergreen,
fir, cedar, and more exotic trees and shrubs. Certainly fate could have
designed no more fitting setting for Page's favourite activities than
this. In assembling authors, in instigating the writing of books, in
watching the achievements and the tendencies of American life, in the
routine of editing his magazine--all this in association with partners
whose daily companionship was a delight and a stimulation--Page spent
his last years in America.

Page's independence as an editor, sufficiently indicated in the days of
his vivacious youth, became even more emphatic in his maturer years. In
his eyes, merely inking over so many pages of good white paper was not
journalism; conviction, zeal, honesty--these were the important points.
Almost on the very day that his appointment as Ambassador to Great
Britain was announced his magazine published an editorial from his pen,
which contained not especially complimentary references to his new
chief, Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State; naturally the newspapers found
much amusement in these few sentences; but the thing was typical of
Page's whole career as an editor. He held to the creed that an editor
should divorce himself entirely from prejudices, animosities, and
predilections; this seems an obvious, even a trite thing to say, yet
there are so few men who can leave personal considerations aside in
writing of men and events that it is worth while pointing out that Page
was such a man. When his firm was planning to establish its magazine,
his partner, Mr. Doubleday, was approached by a New York politician of
large influence but shady reputation who wished to be assured that it
would reflect correct political principles. "You should see Mr. Page
about that," was the response. "No, this is a business matter," the
insinuating gentleman went on, and then he proceeded to show that about
twenty-five thousand subscribers could be obtained if the publication
preached orthodox standpat doctrine. "I don't think you had better see
Mr. Page," said Mr. Doubleday, dismissing his caller.

Many incidents which illustrate this independence could be given; one
will suffice. In 1907 and 1908, Page's magazine published the "Random
Reminiscences of John D. Rockefeller." While the articles were
appearing, the Hearst newspapers obtained a large number of letters
that, some years before, had passed between Mr. John D. Archbold,
President of the Standard Oil Company and one of Mr. Rockefeller's
business associates from the earliest days, and Senator Joseph B.
Foraker, of Ohio. These letters uncovered one of the gravest scandals
that had ever involved an American public man; they instantaneously
destroyed Senator Foraker's political career and hastened his death.
They showed that this brilliant man had been obtaining large sums of
money from the Standard Oil Company while he was filling the post of
United States Senator and that at the same time he was receiving
suggestions from Mr. Archbold about pending legislation. Mr. Rockefeller
was not personally involved, for he had retired from active business
many years before these things had been done; but the Standard Oil
Company, with which his name was intimately associated, was involved and
in a way that seemed to substantiate the worst charges that had been
made against it. At this time Page, as a member of the General Education
Board, was doing his part in helping to disperse the Rockefeller
millions for public purposes; his magazine was publishing Mr.
Rockefeller's reminiscences; there are editors who would have felt a
certain embarrassment in commenting on the Archbold transaction. Page,
however, did not hesitate. Mr. Archbold, hearing that he intended to
treat the subject fully, asked him to come and see him. Page replied
that he would be glad to have Mr. Archbold call upon him. The two men
were brought together by friendly intermediaries in a neutral place; but
the great oil magnate's explanation of his iniquities did not satisfy
Page. The November, 1908, issue of the magazine contained, in one
section, an interesting chapter by Mr. Rockefeller, describing the early
days of the Standard Oil Company, and, in another, ten columns by Page,
discussing the Archbold disclosures in language that was discriminating
and well tempered, but not at all complimentary to Mr. Archbold or to
the Standard Oil Company.

Occasionally Page was summoned for services of a public character. Thus
President Roosevelt, whose friendship he had enjoyed for many years,
asked him to serve upon his Country Life Commission--a group of men
called by the President to study ways of improving the surroundings and
extending the opportunities of American farmers. Page's interest in
Negro education led to his appointment to the Jeanes Board. He early
became an admirer of Booker Washington, and especially approved his plan
for uplifting the Negro by industrial training. One of the great
services that Page rendered literature was his persuasion of Washington
to write that really great autobiography, "Up from Slavery," and another
biography in a different field, for which he was responsible, was Miss
Helen Keller's "Story of My Life." And only once, amid these fine but
not showy activities, did Page's life assume anything in the nature of
the sensational. This was in 1909, when he published his one effort at
novel writing, "The Southerner." To write novels had been an early
ambition with Page; indeed his papers disclose that he had meditated
several plans of this kind; but he never seriously settled himself to
the task until the year 1906. In July of that year the _Atlantic
Monthly_ began publishing a serial entitled "The Autobiography of a
Southerner Since the Civil War," by Nicholas Worth. The literary matter
that appeared under this title most readers accepted as veracious though
anonymous autobiography. It related the life adventures of a young man,
born in the South, of parents who had had little sympathy with the
Confederate cause, attempting to carve out his career in the section of
his birth and meeting opposition and defeat from the prejudices with
which he constantly found himself in conflict. The story found its main
theme and background in the fact that the Southern States were so
exclusively living in the memories of the Civil War that it was
impossible for modern ideas to obtain a foothold. "I have sometimes
thought," said the author, and this passage may be taken as embodying
the leading point of the narrative, "that many of the men who survived
that unnatural war unwittingly did us a greater hurt than the war
itself. It gave everyone of them the intensest experience of his life
and ever afterward he referred every other experience to this. Thus it
stopped the thought of most of them as an earthquake stops a clock. The
fierce blow of battle paralyzed the mind. Their speech was a vocabulary
of war, their loyalties were loyalties, not to living ideas or duties,
but to old commanders and to distorted traditions. They were dead men,
most of them, moving among the living as ghosts; and yet, as ghosts in a
play, they held the stage." In another passage the writer names the
"ghosts" which are chiefly responsible for preventing Southern progress.
They are three: "The Ghost of the Confederate dead, the Ghost of
religious orthodoxy, the Ghost of Negro domination." Everywhere the hero
finds his progress blocked by these obstructive wraiths of the past. He
seeks a livelihood in educational work--becomes a local superintendent
of Public Instruction, and loses his place because his religious views
are unorthodox, because he refuses to accept the popular estimate of
Confederate statesmen, and because he hopes to educate the black child
as well as the white one. He enters politics and runs for public office
on the platform of the new day, is elected, and then finds himself
counted out by political ringsters. Still he does not lose faith, and
finally settles down in the management of a cotton mill, convinced that
the real path of salvation lies in economic effort. This mere skeleton
of a story furnishes an excuse for rehearsing again the ideas that Page
had already made familiar in his writings and in his public addresses.
This time the lesson is enlivened by the portrayal of certain typical
characters of the post-bellum South. They are all there--the several
types of Negro, ranging all the way from the faithful and philosophic
plantation retainer to the lazy "Publican" office-seeker; the political
colonel, to whom the Confederate veterans and the "fair daughters of the
South (God bless 'em)" are the mainstays of "civerlerzation" and
indispensable instrumentalities in the game of partisan politics; the
evangelical clergymen who cared more for old-fashioned creeds than for
the education of the masses; the disreputable editor who specialized in
Negro crime and constantly preached the doctrine of the "white man's
country"; the Southern woman who, innocently and sincerely and even
charmingly, upheld the ancient tradition and the ancient feud. On the
other hand, Page's book portrays the buoyant enthusiast of the new day,
the reformer who was seeking to establish a public school system and to
strengthen the position of woman; and, above all, the quiet,
hard-working industrialist who cared nothing for stump speaking but much
for cotton mills, improved methods of farming, the introduction of
diversified crops, the tidying up of cities and the country.

These chapters, extensively rewritten, were published as a book in 1909.
Probably Page was under no illusion that he had created a real romance
when he described his completed work as a "novel." The _Atlantic_
autobiography had attracted wide attention, and the identification of
the author had been immediate and accurate. Page's friends began calling
his house on the telephone and asking for "Nicholas" and certain genial
spirits addressed him in letters as "Marse Little Nick"--the name under
which the hero was known to the old Negro family servant, Uncle
Ephraim--perhaps the best drawn character in the book. Page's real
purpose in calling the book a "novel" therefore, was to inform the
public that the story, so far as its incidents and most of its
characters were concerned, was pure fiction. Certain episodes, such as
those describing the hero's early days, were, in the main, veracious
transcripts from Page's own life, but the rest of the book bears
practically no relation to his career. The fact that he spent his
mature years in the North, editing magazines and publishing, whereas
Nicholas Worth spends his in the South, engaged in educational work and
in politics and industry, settles this point. The characters, too, are
rather types than specific individuals, though one or two of them,
particularly Professor Billy Bain, who is clearly Charles D. McIver, may
be accepted as fairly accurate portraits. But as a work of fiction "The
Southerner" can hardly be considered a success; the love story is too
slight, the women not well done, most of the characters rather
personified qualities than flesh and blood people. Its strength consists
in the picture that it gives of the so-called "Southern problem," and
especially of the devastating influence of slavery. From this standpoint
the book is an autobiography, for the ideas and convictions it presents
had formed the mental life of Page from his earliest days.

And these were the things that hurt. Yet the stories of the anger caused
by "The Southerner" have been much exaggerated. It is said that a
certain distinguished Southern senator declared that, had he known that
Page was the author of "The Southerner," he would have blocked his
nomination as Ambassador to Great Britain; certain Southern newspapers
also severely denounced the volume; even some of Page's friends thought
that it was a little unkind in spots; yet as a whole the Southern people
accepted it as a fair, and certainly as an honest, treatment of a very
difficult subject. Possibly Page was a little hard upon the Confederate
veteran, and did not sufficiently portray the really pathetic aspects of
his character; any shortcomings of this sort are due, not to any failing
in sympathy, but to the fact that Page's zeal was absorbingly
concentrated upon certain glaring abuses. And as to the accuracy of his
vision in these respects there could be no question. The volume was a
welcome antidote to the sentimental Southern novels that had contented
themselves with glorifying a vanished society which, when the veil is
stripped, was not heroic in all its phases, for it was based upon an
institution so squalid as human slavery, and to those even more
pernicious books which, by luridly portraying the unquestioned vices of
reconstruction and the frightful consequences which resulted from giving
the Negro the ballot, simply aroused useless passions and made the way
out of the existing wilderness still more difficult. So the best public
opinion, North and South, regarded "The Southerner," and decided that
Page had performed a service to the section of his birth in writing it.
Indeed the fair-minded and intelligent spirit with which the best
elements in the South received "The Southerner" in itself demonstrated
that this great region had entered upon a new day.


V

Nor was Page's work for the South yet ended. In the important five years
from 1905 to 1910 he performed two services of an extremely practical
kind. In 1906 the problem of Southern education assumed a new phase. Dr.
Wallace Buttrick, the Secretary of the General Education Board, had now
decided that the fundamental difficulty was economic. By that time the
Southern people had revised their original conception that education was
a private and not a public concern; there was now a general acceptance
of the doctrine that the mental and physical training of every child,
white and black, was the responsibility of the state; Aycock's campaign
had worked such a popular revolution on this subject that no politician
who aspired to public office would dare to take a contrary view. Yet the
economic difficulty still remained. The South was poor; whatever might
be the general desire, the taxable resources were not sufficient to
support such a comprehensive system of popular instruction as existed in
the North and West. Any permanent improvement must therefore be based
upon the strengthening of the South's economic position. Essentially the
task was to build up Southern agriculture, which for generations had
been wasteful, unintelligent and consequently unproductive. Such a
far-reaching programme might well appall the most energetic reformer,
but Dr. Buttrick set to work. He saw little light until his attention
was drawn to a quaint and philosophic gentleman--a kind of bucolic Ben
Franklin--who was then obscurely working in the cotton lands of
Louisiana, making warfare on the boll weevil in a way of his own. At
that time Dr. Seaman A. Knapp had made no national reputation; yet he
had evolved a plan for redeeming country life and making American farms
more fruitful that has since worked marvellous results. There was
nothing especially sensational about its details. Dr. Knapp had made the
discovery in relation to farms that the utilitarians had long since made
with reference to other human activities: that the only way to improve
agriculture was not to talk about it, but to go and do it. During the
preceding fifty years agricultural colleges had sprung up all over the
United States--Dr. Knapp had been president of one himself; practically
every Southern state had one or more; agricultural lecturers covered
thousands of miles annually telling their yawning audiences how to farm;
these efforts had scattered broadcast much valuable information about
the subject, but the difficulty lay in inducing the farmers to apply it.
Dr. Knapp had a new method. He selected a particular farmer and
persuaded him to work his fields for a period according to methods
which he prescribed. He told his pupil how to plough, what seed to
plant, how to space his rows, what fertilizers to use, and the like. If
a selected acreage yielded a profitable crop which the farmer could sell
at an increased price Dr. Knapp had sufficient faith in human nature to
believe that that particular farmer would continue to operate his farm
on the new method and that his neighbours, having this practical example
of growing prosperity, would imitate him.

Such was the famous "Demonstration Work" of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp; this
activity is now a regular branch of the Department of Agriculture,
employing thousands of agents and spending not far from $18,000,000 a
year. Its application to the South has made practically a new and rich
country, and it has long since been extended to other regions. When Dr.
Buttrick first met Knapp, however, there were few indications of this
splendid future. He brought Dr. Knapp North and exhibited him to Page.
This was precisely the kind of man who appealed to Page's sympathies.
His mind was always keenly on the scent for the new man--the original
thinker who had some practical plan for uplifting humankind and making
life more worth while. And Dr. Knapp's mission was one that had filled
most of his thoughts for many years; its real purpose was the enrichment
of country life. Page therefore took to Dr. Knapp with a mighty zest. He
supported him on all occasions; he pled his cause with great eloquence
before the General Education Board, whose purse strings were liberally
unloosed in behalf of the Knapp work; in his writings, in speeches, in
letters, in all forms of public advocacy, he insisted that Dr. Knapp had
found the solution of the agricultural problem. The fact is that Page
regarded Knapp as one of the greatest men of the time. His feeling came
out with characteristic intensity on the occasion of the homely
reformer's funeral. "The exercises," Page once told a friend, "were held
in a rather dismal little church on the outskirts of Washington. The day
was bleak and chill, the attendants were few--chiefly officials of the
Department of Agriculture. The clergyman read the service in the most
perfunctory way. Then James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture, spoke
formally of Dr. Knapp as a faithful servant of the Department who always
did well what he was told to do, commending his life in an altogether
commonplace fashion. By that time my heart was pretty hot. No one seemed
to divine that in the coffin before them was the body of a really great
man, one who had hit upon a fruitful idea in American agriculture--an
idea that was destined to cover the nation and enrich rural life
immeasurably." Page was so moved by this lack of appreciation, so full
of sorrow at the loss of one of his dearest friends, that, when he rose
to speak, his appraisment took on a certain indignation. Their dead
associate, Page declared, would outrank the generals and the politicians
who received the world's plaudits, for he had devoted his life to a
really great purpose; his inspiration had been the love of the common
people, his faith, his sympathy had all been expended in an effort to
brighten the life of the too frequently neglected masses. Page's address
on this occasion was entirely extemporaneous; no record of it was ever
made, but those who heard it still carry the memory of an eloquent and
fiery outburst that placed Knapp's work in its proper relation to
American history and gave an unforgettable picture of a patient,
idealistic, achieving man whose name will loom large in the future.

During this same period Page, always on the outlook for the exceptional
man, made another discovery which has had world-wide consequences. As a
member of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission Page became one
of the committee assigned to investigate conditions in the Southern
States. The sanitarian of this commission was Dr. Charles W. Stiles, a
man who held high rank as a zoölogist, and who, as such, had for many
years done important work with the Department of Agriculture. Page had
hardly formed Dr. Stiles's acquaintance before he discovered that, at
that time, he was a man of one idea. And this one idea had for years
brought upon his head much good-natured ridicule. For Dr. Stiles had his
own explanation for much of the mental and physical sluggishness that
prevailed in the rural sections of the Southern States. Yet he could not
mention this without exciting uproarious laughter--even in the presence
of scientific men. Several years previously Dr. Stiles had discovered
that a hitherto unclassified species of a parasite popularly known as
the hookworm prevailed to an astonishing extent in all the Southern
States. The pathological effects of this creature had long been known;
it localized in the intestines, there secreted a poison that destroyed
the red blood corpuscles, and reduced its victims to a deplorable state
of anæmia, making them constantly ill, listless, mentally dull--in every
sense of the word useless units of society. The encouraging part of this
discovery was that the patients could quickly be cured and the hookworm
eradicated by a few simple improvements in sanitation. Dr. Stiles had
long been advocating such a campaign as an indispensable preliminary to
improving Southern life. But the humorous aspect of the hookworm always
interfered with his cause; the microbe of laziness had at last been
found!

It was not until Dr. Stiles, in the course of this Southern trip,
cornered Page in a Pullman car, that he finally found an attentive
listener. Page, of course, had his preliminary laugh, but then the
hookworm began to work on his imagination. He quickly discovered that
Dr. Stiles was no fool; and before the expedition was finished, he had
become a convert and, like most converts, an extremely zealous one. The
hookworm now filled his thoughts as completely as it did those of his
friend; he studied it, he talked about it; and characteristically he set
to work to see what could be done. How much Southern history did the
thing explain? Was it not forces like this, and not statesmen and
generals, that really controlled the destinies of mankind? Page's North
Carolina country people had for generations been denounced as
"crackers," and as "hill-billies," but here was the discovery that the
great mass of them were ill--as ill as the tuberculosis patients in the
Adirondacks. Free these masses from the enervating parasite that
consumed all their energies--for Dr. Stiles had discovered that the
disease afflicted the great majority of the rural classes--and a new
generation would result. Naturally the cause strongly touched Page's
sympathies. He laid the case before the ever sympathetic Dr. Buttrick,
but here again progress was slow. By hard hammering, however, he half
converted Dr. Buttrick, who, in turn, took the case of the hookworm to
his old associate, Dr. Frederick T. Gates. What Page was determined to
obtain was a million dollars or so from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, for the
purpose of engaging in deadly warfare upon this pest. This was the
proper way to produce results: first persuade Dr. Buttrick, then induce
him to persuade Dr. Gates, who, if convinced, had ready access to the
great treasure house. But Dr. Gates also began to smile; even the
combined eloquence of Page and Dr. Buttrick could not move him. So the
reform marked time until one day Dr. Buttrick, Dr. Gates, and Dr. Simon
Flexner, the Director of the Rockefeller institute, happened to be
fellow travellers--again on a Pullman car.

"Dr. Flexner," said Dr. Buttrick--this for the benefit of his
incredulous friend--"what is the scientific standing of Dr. Charles W.
Stiles?"

"Very, very high," came the immediate response, and at this Dr. Gates
pricked up his ears. Yet the subsequent conversation disclosed that Dr.
Flexner was unfamiliar with the Stiles hookworm work. He, too, smiled at
the idea, but, like Page his smile was not one of ridicule.

"If Dr. Stiles believes this," was his dictum, "it is something to be
taken most seriously."

As Dr. Flexner is probably the leading medical scientist in the United
States, his judgment at once lifted the hookworm issue to a new plane.