THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA THE COLLECTION OF NORTH CAROLINMNA PRESENTED BY J. G. de R. Hamilton G378 UK3 1891P UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 00037546815 This book must not be taken from the Library building. Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 witii funding from University of Nortii Carolina at Chapel Hill http://www.archive.org/details/addressatinaugurOOpage NORTH CAROLINA UNIVERSI TY MAGAZINE. Old Series Vol. XXII. No. 2. New Series Vol. XI. EDITORS: PHI. , DI. George W. Connor, W. E. Rollins, C. F. Harvey. E. Payson Willard. Howard E. Rondthaler, ] t> • th- W. E. Darden; I ^"siness Managers. Published six times a year under the auspices of the Philanthropic and Dialetic Societies. Subscription, $1.00. Single copy, 20 cents. Entered at the Post Office of Chapel Hill as second class matter. ADDRESS AT THE INAUGURATION OF PRESI- DENT WINSTON. WALTER H. PAGE. (We reproduce from the State Chronicle of Oct. 20, Mr. Page's speech, the sentiments of which should inspire new zeal into eveiy student and Alumnus of the University for oiiginal study in the solution of the Race- Problem. We note here with pleasure, that the Societies have begun to take the matter in hand, having appointed a comniittee to confer with the Faculty in regard to the furtherance of Mr. Page's suggestion, and we hope soon to see the plan take on a definite course, for in no way could the Univer- sity of North Carolina be better brought before the people of the United States than by this. — Ed.) Mr. President : — I greet you with the earnest congratulations that befit the taking on of a clear duty which leads to a high opportunity. For it is much to have one's duty clear; to have a clear duty that brings a high opportunity is all we can ask the gods to give. In a time when perplexities hedge men of energy and the right way is often hidden by the number of roads that lead to 62 INAUGURATION OF PRESIBENT WINSTON. places of rest or to eminences of honorable toil, to you the way is straight. By the gentlest change the dignity of the past now takes on energy for the future. To the headship of this venerated institution, we that live on hope and not on memories, welcome you, pledging what help we can give, and, as workers in other ways, the cheer of most loyal comradeship. And this hour of your consecration is a time to us of solemn joy. The hopes we build are high, for as wo read our calendar it is a day of broadening opportunity. In our gentle contention with them that have sat in the way of progress all that we have ever asked is opportunity. And we are glad that it is you that have inherited this high trust; for, deep-rooted in the past and clothed with our best tradi- tions, you have kept pace to the quickened step of a new era. 1 greet you holding the hope of our most venerable institution just when our life swings forward into a larger day. And the gentleness with which great changes come and the old times blossom into new is a rebuke to our impatience ; for how gently this movement forward has been taken ! I see such changes even between my visits here, that the men who die between times seem at once to become part of a long-past epoch It was only the other day for instance that we had the good fortune (and it was an education in nobility and gentleness) — to have Professor Hooper here — the bearer of her stateliest pres- ence that ever clothed the form of man. And of all the fine sights of enthusiasm in the world there never was a finer than that we saw here for so many years — until just now — when Mr. Paul Cam- eron, on commencement day rose from his seat and very slowly, marched upon this rostrum, when the company began to sing the "Old North State." "Give me my hat," he said, and when some one gave it to him, with a flush on his ruddy countenance as beau- tiful as the rosy cheeks of childhood and his gray hair flowing, he waved the hat above his head and cried out : "Hurrah !" "Hurrah !" You will never see a more spontaneous enthusiasm than that, nor a sight that you will remember longer. The very mention of only these two honored and honorable men brings a different atmosphere from the atmosphere you f! INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. 63 breathe here now-an air laden with the perfume of a perfect cul- ture of its kind, that comes now as across the years in lonely hours comes the memory of our childhood. Yet the feet of these gentle and noble men have just now ceased to come and go with us ; and I am sure that their benediction rests on us. It would be a pleasure to-day to assure them that their memory is held dear and their characters shall guide us and their manners be our manners in the broader way that opens to us. And for this broader way it is a memorable privilege to be able to thank the clean hands and the noble aims of your prede- cessor; for he it was that reconstructed the University when the mad revolutionists that desecrated it were driven from it as the money changers were driven from the temple. In a period of des- olation it was he who brought back again the fine spirit of the old times; and he will live as the preserver and the transmitter of our best traditions. Him, too, we honor and love, honoring ourselves thereby. For in our annals his name is safe, and he has passed into our history before he is taken from our thankful companion- ship. The opportunity that came in storm to him, in calm he has broadened and transmitted to you. Thankfully remember, for all men will remember, that much of the reward that you will reap is of labor of his doing. You have a high place, made higher by his bearing in it. But this would be an hour of only idle compliment — unworthy of your purpose and of our solemn jubilation, if we forgot the breadth of that opportunity or failed to hold up a measure of it to-day. It were an event of little consequence if this change of Presi- dents did not bring a change of meaning. The retirement of a veteran to make place for a recruit is not an event worthy of cele- bration; that were merely the even flow of things as men grow up and grow old. But this change is more than that, and in coming to your christening we think we come to celebrate the intellectual awakening of the people. For the one fact that it is now our duty to insist on as you take this high trust and we charge you to remember, is that this is the people's institution. Settle all mortgages to-day that all classes and sections of society have on you. Eenounce forever 64 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. servitude to ecclesiastism and partyism and set out to be the rul- ing and the shaping force among the energies that stir the people and are making of our old fields a new earth, of our long slumber- ing land a resounding workshop. Remembering that this is the people's institution, look with me for a moment over the commonwealth, and we shall see the most interesting social problem on the continent. These people sprung of hardy stock, living out of the currents of the world's activity, nurtured in the simple creed of frugality and reverence in a land where living is easy, have inherited a tra- dition that somehow education is a thing for a particular class; and here, by a strange absence of events and by the accident of location, is one of the very sturdiest communities of the whole English race yet in the crude stage of development of a preceding century. On the hills alike of the Catawba and of the Eoanoke a hundred years ao-o men followed plows of the Homeric fashion drawn by bullocks to make shallow furrows in little fields of new ground to grow little stores of corn. To-day alike on the hills of the Roanoke and of the Catawba you may see men following plows of Homeric fashion drawn by bullocks to make shallow furrows in little fields of new ground (now made new for the second time) to grow the same little stores of corn. Meantime their kinsmen; men of Eng- lish stock, no whit more capable than they, have brought three continents under their sway and the rise of science has made new the intellectual life of men. Here alone, alike on the banks of the Roanoke and of the Catawba great change has come not and the creeds of a century ago have not flowed into wider channels. What a proof of the power of a hindering tradition ! Any other race would have lost its capacity. And what a tribute this is to the fibre of our stock ! For the people of North Carolina have not lost their capacity. Whenever an event of the outside world has broken through our barriers of State pride, they have shown themselves capable, as for example, in our civil war. In that stirring time there were uncommon men developed. They went forth showing endurance and courage even when it was folly to be brave. Of the influences that have chained them, one was slavery, the shadow of which falls long and lingers heavy yet ; another was INA UG URA TION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. 65 a pioneer church that hardened its emotional creed into an ada- mantine intolerance which fashioned for docile necks the yoke of petty ecclesiasticism, whose halter spared not this institution itself; worse than all was a subtle social creed growing out of these things that suppressed individual effort. I recall now how greatly I suffered in my own childhood because at our foremost school (it was then just over the hills here) the boys rated one another according to the military prominence of their fathers, and my father was so unthoughtful as not to be even a colonel. Under these influences the people have slumbered long, and have been the prey of small agitations (see how, for example, they lie bound by the straw of a Farmers' Alliance, led by them of the long beards, to whose dominating delusion our greatest and broadest and most honored and best beloved public servant paid the homage of surrender). Now, not in a 8piritofblame(forwho shall say who is to blame?) it becomes us to-day to see the truth — that during this slumber of the people this institution did not touch them. This institution was little more than the conservator of our best traditions, an asylum where the sons of gentle nature in a rough-time might breathe the air of a preceding era and become the contemporaries of their grand-fathers when their grand-fathers themselves were youths ; where they sat down with their ancestors on the easy terms of comradeship in years, manners, doctrines and ideals, and danced (when the preachers allowed it) with their own grand- mothers in their maidenhood. The strongest men, as a rule, have not been the men of your moulding. In every part of the commonwealth youth have gone forth to be shepherds of millions and leaders of men, whose hands are felt on the markets of the world and who are among the fore- most commercial minds in a commercial era. Yet they never felt the moulding touch of your hands in their youth and in their man- hood many of them are denied the power of repose and do not know the precious secret of refreshing themselves with the poets, or of finding calm in the classics. Yet if our University had touched (could have touched) the people it would have touched such men, and to have fashioned them would have glorified the 66 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON University as its traditions, noble in spite of narrowness, have sanctfied it. But the long, slumbering people are now waking, for a new influence has touched them. The love of gain has never failed as a goad, and it is not failing now. It is calling into activity all the dormant powers of the people. In old fields where time had hardly smoothed the furrows of slave plowmen, we have seen great facto- ries rise ; our people are becoming the builders of cities, the loaders of industry, the architects of fortunes. We are even told, on good authority, that within an area that has our mountains for its centre and this village on its outskirts, the coming masters of the markets of the world will live and work. So a new force is already come — a force that sets little store by ecclesiastical or social habits and that will soon mould a people of money makers and this change brings your change. The University in its new era must become a force alongside this new force — a dominating influence over it. For you know this sacred truth — that the race for wealth leaves the runners exhausted ; and men get punier as they grow richer. What is the proper measure of this new awakening? The measure of the men it produces, and this only. It is not the measure of the wealth produced. Neither here nor elsewhere in this time nor ever is the value of industrial life the sum total of its concrete product, but only and always the sum total of its man- hood. And it is to you, and to you chiefly, indeed to you only, that we have to look for the proper guidance of this new power. To the church we cannot look, for seldom has ecclesiasticism wisely directed wealth towards a broad development. While we are poor we starve the church into mendicancy ; when we get rich it is unreasonable to expect it to show independence. Neither can we look to politics properly to direct our new industrial energy. Politics too clearly and surely profits by wealth and even by the prostitution of wealth for us to expect the wisest training of it. So, too, of the press. Now when this gigantic energy is newly released it brings a necessity, such a necessity as did not exist even in a period of inertia, for a broad balancing force ; and if you look for such a INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. 67 force will find it only here — here where our high ti-aditions of a manly era centre, among which is the tradition that a true inde- pendence of character is better than riches. It is upon this tradi- tion of our earlier times that our salvation now depends. Look forth over the world and in spite of the increasing comfort alike of the few and the multitude, everywhere the duUi-ng touch of money-getting has tamed men's generous impulses and there has been a loss of that virile and prodigal nobility of spirit that made the "old Southern gentleman" before he became grotesque, the most erect man that we have bred. If it seems absured that I speak here against the perils of wealth, I pray you remember it is not wealth itself you have to fear any more than it is from actual wealth that you now suffer; but it is the governing habit of mind that puts a pecuniary value on all things, and this habit of mind has already come. Already in most of our new towns you may see that type of man who, after devo- tion to a narrow creed for several generations has been smitten by prosperity and now presents the spectacle of a gilded and rancid self-righteousness. So the danger and opportunity that now awaits us are the opportunity and the danger of our industrial activity. The North Carolinian of the past we know; we know, too, the North Carolinian of the present, and he is very like his ances- tor. What type of man this new industrial activity is going to make the North Corolinian of the future we can yet only guess, but this is the force that is going to make him. Let yours be the force that guides him. To guide him you must fall into line with him, along with his activity your activity must be felt. Now while an intimate connection between an institution of learning and the industrial activity of the people is easy to talk about, it is difficult to make. What is there, for instance, in common between your young men whose delight is reading Horace and the busy men who are laying the foundation of fortunes by the manu- facture of tobacco ? What can there be in common between an institution whose aim it is to introduce men to the clasBsics, and the activity of men whose aim it is to sell town lots at a premium? Of course, in a general way, this problem has to be met by every 68 INA UG URA TION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. institution of learning, has to be met, indeed, by every individual of high intellectual inspiration. Nevertheless, I do not think there is an insurmountable v^all between these two kinds of activity, because University life has now become so diverse. It is simply a problem of adapting one force to another in a helpful way rather than in hindering way, although I may seem to go very far out of academic paths. I venture to point out one direction in which I think the two forces might be made yoke-fellows, and that of course is in a line of work with which my own labors happen to have made me familiar. You have now here, lying all about you in the every-day life of the people, facts and tendencies that are the crude materials of one of the most interesting problems of this century, a problem that civilized men in every country are eagerly watching; a problem about which students of social science everywhere are making speculations ; a problem on which I dare say you could throw more light than has yet been thrown by all other students put together, because your opportunities are greater than the opportunities of other men. It is a problem in social development, a clear statement of which would bring a reputation that would be world wide, and the University by taking hold on it would put men overywhere under obligations to you and give the institution a new intellec- tual rating. • It is simply this : What is to be the outcome of the living and working together of the two races ? Time long enough has elapsed since the emancipation of the slaves to show clearly the main tendencies that point to further development, and yet, except for a few facts that are thrown upon it by the United States census, there is everywhere a confusing mass of discussion, everywhere a lack of exact information. "Would it seem to you too revolutionary a proposition if I were to suggest that you organize a seminarium of social science and set your eager students to work as a body of enquirers to gather the facts in every county in the State to show precisely what are the relations between the two races, and in what respects these rela- tions have changed in the last twenty-five years? If a company INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. 69 of twenty-five or thirty energetic young men were to go forth, one in one community and one in another, every one equipped with a set of inquiries upon which they had agreed in advance, and were to gather answers to these inquiries by their own investigation, and then if this whole mass of facts were brought together and properly classified and properly interpreted, I say that you would have a piece of literature on an important subject in social science that would be read and welcomed everywhere that studious men live. Nor do I believe that this would be difficult ; for there is not a newspaper in the State that would not feel proud to aid you, and every one could give great aid by opening its columns for you to ask questions, and you might have a volume of correspondence here from men, black and white, from every township in every county in this State even before your next commencement. If at your next commencement instead of orations on abstract subjects about which the learning of youth is so much greater than the wisdom of manhood, you were to present the results of original investigations, I venture the prediction that there will be nothing published from any institution of learning in the United States this year that will be more interesting than of what you would put forth. I am sure, too, that the rigid training which may be got from the collection and handling of a large body of vital facts like this would be quite equal as an intellectual exercise to the training that is got in class rooms. But the main point is not simply that you would have achieved something worth the doing and that you would be doing good training work also, but more important than these is this: that by such work you would be sure to arouse every man who ever thinks, from one end of the State to the other, in your institution and in your work ; and many an old man who follows his bullock over his field of new ground to grow his little store of grain and has wondered whether the negro will always be the negro that he is, would have his attention arrested by the fact that the Univer- sity of all things in the world, was trying to solve and find out facts about which he too had given serious thought. He would have a profounder regard for University than he had ever had, and it might occur to him that it might benefit his son. If you once got the interest of the common people aroused in your insti- 70 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. tution in such logical and natural ways as this, by creating a unity of interests and a unity of aims with the people, I think the day will soon come when your President would not have to wait on the legislature to secure an appropriation large enough to meet your expenses. It would be only a question to submit to a tax and a constantly increasing tax, if necessary, to perpetuate and to make broader the institute that reflects glory on the State and gives him food for his own thought to grow on. This, of course, is but one little suggestion along one line of work, and out of your fertility and the fertility of your faculty suggestions along many lines worth many times more than this will come. The single hint that I would drop is this, that in pro- portion as you lay hold on present conditions and show yourself interested in those things in which the people are themselves interested, you will place yourselves in a position where you can question and shape them, building up and balanciug their thoughts. So that when I said you are happy in having a clear duty, before you, I meant that you have not to face the perplexing questions of a complex culture, but a simple and primary task, fundamental, secondary to none, and more useful than mere aca- demic task, and when I said that this clear duty leads to a great opportunity, I meant the opportunity of doing the noblest and highest democratic work, the intellectual awakening of the whole people whose traditions you have perpetuated aud whose love you hold — a task that owing to the peculiar stage of their development and the peculiar circumstances of hindering, all the world will watch with interest ; and that the builders of commonwealths well might envy you. As we take up this task, we that look forward, (if I have earned a right to speak for them that look forward) beg to remind you, not in a spirit of admonition but in the spirit of work-fellow- ship, that there is but one courage and that is the courage of truth, because there is but one victory and that is the victory of truth, which is the invincible voice of God. This is our token. In consecrating yourself to this, therefore, swear that the day of compromises is done ! To every mendicant tradition that shall ask favors of you; to every narrow ecclesiastical prejudice that INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WINSTON. 71 shall demand tribute ; most of all to the colossal inertia that you inherit in whatever forms they come, in whatever guises they present themselves — to them all say with kindness but with firm- ness: Go honored, hence, go home Night's childless children: here your day is done, Pass with the stars and leave us With the sun. AUTUMN. BY RICHARD WTCHE. Ther's a sadness in the air. Leaves are falling everywhere In the grove, Down the lane. All the night and all the day Frosty fingers work away, Stripping trees Of their leaves. 72 NORTH CAROLINA NEWSPAPERS. COUNTEY NEWSPAPERS IN NOETH CAEOLINA. In the September number of the Century, E. M. Howe, a wes- tern journalist, has an article entitled "Country Newspapers," in which, in a manner true to the life and humorous, he tells of country papers, as he has found them. With some few exceptions, Mr. Howe's descriptions apply to the rural periodicals of North Carolina very forcibly. The soil of North Carolina is peculiarly adapted to the growth and flourishing of country newspapers. Our State is without large cities. Wilmington, our biggest town, with its 23,000 inhabitants, is in the strictest sense of the word, not a city. North Carolina is the provincial State of the Union, and the only one, excepting probably some new western states, that has no city of 50,000 or 100,000 inhabitants. Consequently she is a State of weeklies. Every one of her 96 county seats has two. It is not risking anything to make this statement, for country newspapers go in pairs, dividing the patronage of their territoy or "field" which, while it would furnish a "good living" to the editor of one paper, thus necessarily inflicts two poor editors upon the community. I believe Nortn Carolina has better country editors and news- papers than other states. Perhaps the very fact of its being a more or less provincial State, has something to do with this. Not having any great city to supply her with a great daily, which her citizens may swear by, as Virginians do by the Eichmond Dis- patch, South Carolinaus by the Charleston News-and-Courier, and Georgians by the Atlanta Constitution, it is incumbent upon North Carolina's country editors to exert themselves all the more to sup- ply this want and to give their subscribers a country newspaper somewhat above the average. Perhaps another thing that goes to give this State good edi- tors is the mutual discussion as to how to improve their papers, by the members of the State Press Association, as they annually meet in convention. The papers read in these conventions are often found to reveal depth of thought, convincing argument and at times a sparkling wit.