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<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2" FACE="Times">CHAPTER III</FONT><FONT
 SIZE="+2"></FONT><br><br></center>

<center>
<FONT SIZE="+2">&quot;THE FORGOTTEN MAN&quot;</FONT></center><br><br>


<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">I</FONT></center>

<br><br>IN JULY, 1899, the publishing community learned that financial
difficulties were seriously embarrassing the great house of Harper.
For nearly a century this establishment had maintained a position
almost of preeminence among American publishers. Three generations
of Harpers had successively presided over its destinies; its magazines
and books had become almost a household necessity in all parts
of the United States, and its authors included many of the names
most celebrated in American letters. The average American could
no more associate the idea of bankruptcy with this great business
than with the federal Treasury itself. Yet this incredible disaster
had virtually taken place. At this time the public knew nothing
of the impending ruin; the fact was, however, that, in July, 1899,
the banking house of J. P. Morgan &amp; Company practically controlled
this property. This was the situation which again called Page
to New York.

<br><br>In the preceding year Mr. S. S. McClure, whose recent success
as editor and publisher had been little less than a sensation,
had joined forces with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday, and organized the
new firm of Doubleday &amp; McClure. This business was making
rapid progress; and that it would soon become one of the leading
American publishing houses was already apparent. It was perhaps
not unnatural, therefore, that Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, scanning
the horizon for the men who might rescue the Harper concern from
approaching disaster, should have had his attention drawn to Mr.
McClure and Mr. Doubleday. &quot;The failure of Harper &amp; Brothers,&quot;
Mr. Morgan said in a published statement, &quot;would be a national
calamity.&quot; One morning, therefore, a member of the Harper
firm called upon Mr. McClure. Without the slightest hesitation
he unfolded the Harper situation to his astonished contemporary.
The solution proposed was more astonishing still. This was that
Mr. Doubleday and Mr. McClure should amalgamate their young and
vigorous business with the Harper enterprise and become the active
managers of the new corporation. Both Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday
were comparatively young men, and the magnitude of the proposed
undertaking at first rather staggered them. It was as though a
small independent steel maker should suddenly be invited to take
over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure, characteristically
impetuous and daring, wished to accept the invitation outright;
Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested a period of probation. The outcome
was that the two men offered to take charge of Harper &amp; Brothers
for a few months, and then decide whether they wished to make
the association a permanent one. One thing was immediately apparent;
Messrs. Doubleday and McClure, able as they were, would need the
help of the best talent available in the work that lay ahead.
The first man to whom they turned was Page, who presently left
Boston and took up his business abode at Franklin Square. The
rumble of the elevated road was somewhat distracting after the
four quiet years in Park Street, but the new daily routine was
not lacking in interest. The Harper experiment, however, did not
end as Mr. Morgan had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday,
Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue to be performed
by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one
years afterward, in an even more important post---that of ambassador
to the Court of St. James's. The one important outcome of the
Harper episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the forming
of a close business and personal association with Mr. Frank N.
Doubleday. As soon as the two men definitely decided not to assume
the Harper responsibility, therefore, they joined forces and founded
the firm of Doubleday, Page &amp; Company. Page now had the opportunity
which he had long wished for; the mere editing of magazines, even
magazines of such an eminent character as the <I>Forum </I>and
the <I>Atlantic Monthly, </I>could hardly satisfy his ambition;
he yearned to possess something which he could call his own, at
least in part.

<br><br>The life of an editor has its unsatisfactory aspect, unless
the editor himself has an influential ownership in his periodical.
Page now found his opportunity to establish a monthly magazine
which he could regard as his own in both senses. He was its untrammelled
editor, and also, in part, its proprietor. All editors and writers
will sympathize with the ideas expressed in a letter written about
this time to Page's friend, Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, already
distinguished as the historian of Italian unity and afterward
to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and John Hay. When the
first number of the <I>World's Work </I>appeared Mr. Thayer wrote,
expressing a slight disappointment that its leading tendency was
journalistic rather than literary and intellectual. &quot;When
you edited the <I>Forum</I>,&quot;<I> </I>wrote Mr. Thayer, &quot;I
perceived that no such talent for editing had been seen in America
before, and when, a little later, you rejuvenated the <I>Atlantic.
</I>making it for a couple of years the best periodical printed
in English, I felt that you had a great mission before you as
evoker and editor of the best literary work and weightiest thought
on important topics of our foremost men.&quot; He had hoped to
see a magnified <I>Atlantic, </I>and the new publication, splendid
as it was, seemed to be of rather more popular character than
the publications with which Page had previously been associated.
Page met this challenge in his usual hearty fashion.
<br><br>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To William Roscoe Thayer</FONT></I></center>
<br><br>34 Union Square East, <BR>
New York, <BR>
December 5, 1900.
<br><br>MY DEAR THAYER:
<br><br>The <I>World's Work </I>has brought me nothing so good as
your letter of yesterday. When Mrs. Page read it, she shouted
&quot;Now that's it!&quot;' For &quot;it&quot; read &quot;truth,&quot;
and you will have her meaning and mine. My thanks you may be
sure you have, in great and earnest abundance.
<br><br>You surprise me in two ways---(1) that you think as well of
the magazine as you do. If it have half the force and earnestness
that you say it has, how happy I shall be, for then it will surely
bring something to pass. The other way in which you surprise
me is by the flattering things that you say about my conduct
of the <I>Atlantic. </I>Alas! it was not what you in your kind
way say---no, no.
<br><br>Of course the <I>World's Work</I> is not yet by any means
what I hope to make it. But it has this incalculable advantage
(to me) over every other magazine in existence: it is mine (mine
and my partners', i. e., partly mine), and I shall not work to
build up a good piece of machinery and then be turned out to
graze as an old horse is. This of course, is selfish and personal---not
wholly selfish either, I think. I threw down the <I>Atlantic
</I>for this reason: (Consider the history of its editors) Lowell(<ref>A memorandum of an old Atlantic balance sheet discloses that James Russell Lowell's salary as editor was $1,500 a year.</ref>) complained bitterly
that he was never rewarded properly for the time and work he
did; Fields was (in a way) one of its owners; it was sold out
from under Howells, etc., etc. I might (probably should) have
been at the mercy completely of owners some day who would have
dismissed me for a younger man. Nearly all hired editors suffer
this fate. My good friends in Boston were sincere in thinking
that my day of doom would never come; but they didn't offer me
any guarantee---part ownership, for instance; and the years go
swiftly. I could afford, of my own volition, to leave the <I>Atlantic.
</I>I<I> </I>couldn't afford to take permanently the risks that
a hired editor must take. Nor should I ever again have turned
my hand to such a task except on a magazine of my own. I should
have sought other employment. There are many easier and better
and more influential things to do---yet., ten years hence I might
have been too old. Harry Houghton <ref>A member of the firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.</ref>
has an old horse thirty years old. I used to see him grazing
sometimes and hear his master's self-congratulatory explanation
of his own kindness to that faithful beast. In the office of
Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Company there is an old man whom I used
to see every day---pensioned, grazing. Then I would go home and
see four bright children. Three of them are now away from home
at school; and the four cost a pretty penny to educate. My income
had been the same for ten years---or very nearly the same. If
I was a &quot;magic&quot; editor, I confess I didn't see the
magic; and there is no power under Heaven or in it that can prove
to me that I ought to keep on making magazines as a hired man---without
the common security of permanent service for lack of which nearly
all my predecessors lost their chance.
<br><br>But this is not all, nor half. A man ought to express himself,
ought to live his own life, say his own little say, before silence
comes. The &quot;say&quot; may be bad---a mere yawp, and silence
might be more becoming. But the same argument would make a man
dissatisfied with his own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's
his nose, and he must content himself. So it's his yawp and he
must let it go.
<br><br>I'm not going to make the new magazine my own megaphone---you
may be sure of that. It will nevertheless contain my general
interpretation of things, in which I swear I do believe! The
first thing, of course, is to establish it. Then it can be shaped
more nearly into what I wish it to become. If it seem unmannerly,
aggressive, I know no other way to make it heard. If it died,
then the game would be up. Well, we seem to have established
it at once. It promises not to cost us a penny of investment.
<br><br>Now, the magazines need new topics. They have all threshed
over old straw for many years. There is <I>one </I>new subject,
to my thinking worth all the old ones: the new impulse in American
life, the new feeling of nationality, our coming to realize ourselves.
To my mind there is greater promise in democracy than men of
any preceding period ever dared dream of---aggressive democracy---growth
by action. Our writers (the few we have) are yet in the pre-democratic
era. When men's imaginations lay hold on the things that already
begin to appear above the horizon, we shall have something worth
reading. At present I can do no more than bawl out, &quot;See!
here are new subjects.&quot; One of these days somebody will
come along who can write about them. I have started out without
a writer. Fiske is under contract, James would give nothing more
to the <I>Atlantic, </I>you<I> </I>were ill (I thank Heaven you
are no longer so) the second- and third-rate essayists have been
bought by mere Wall Street publishers. Beyond these are the company
of story tellers and beyond them only a dreary waste of dead-level
unimaginative men and women. I can (soon) get all that I could
ever have got in the <I>Atlantic </I>and new ones (I know they'll
come) whom I could never have got there.
<br><br>You'll see---within a year or two---by far a better magazine
than I have ever made; and you and I will differ in nothing unless
you feel despair about the breakdown of certain democratic theories,
which I think were always mere theories. Let 'em go! The real
thing, which is life and action, is better.
</BLOCKQUOTE>


<blockquote>
<br><br>Heartily and always your grateful friend,
<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>


<br><br>Thus the fact that Page's new magazine was intended for a popular
audience was not the result of accident, but of design. It represented
a periodical plan which had long been taking shape in Page's mind.
The things that he had been doing for the <I>Forum</I> and the
<I>Atlantic </I>he aspired to do for a larger audience than that
to which publications of this character could appeal. Scholar
though Page was, and lover of the finest things in literature
that he had always been, yet this sympathy and interest had always
lain with the masses. Perhaps it is impossible to make literature
democratic, but Page believed that he would be genuinely serving
the great cause that was nearest his heart if he could spread
wide the facts of the modern world, especially the facts of America,
and if he could clothe the expression in language which, while
always dignified and even &quot;literary,&quot; would still be
sufficiently touched with the vital, the picturesque, and the
&quot;human,&quot; to make his new publication appeal to a wide
audience of intelligent, everyday Americans. It was thus part
of his general programme of improving the status of the average
man, and it formed a logical part of his philosophy of human advancement.
For the only acceptable measure of any civilization, Page believed,
was the extent to which it improved the condition of the common
citizen. A few cultured and university-trained men at the top;
a few ancient families living in luxury; a few painters and poets
and statesmen and generals; these things, in Page's view, did
not constitute a satisfactory state of society; the real test
was the extent to which the masses participated in education,
in the necessities and comforts of existence, in the right of
self-evolution and self-expression, in that &quot;equality of
opportunity,&quot; which, Page never wearied of repeating, &quot;was
the basis of social progress.&quot; The mere right to vote and
to hold office was not democracy; parliamentary majorities and
political caucuses were not democracy---at the best these things
were only details and not the most important ones; democracy was
the right of every man to enjoy, in accordance with his aptitudes
of character and mentality, the material and spiritual opportunities
that nature and science had placed at the disposition of mankind.
This democratic creed had now become the dominating interest of
Page's life. From this time on it consumed all his activities.
His new magazine set itself first of all to interpret the American
panorama from this point of view; to describe the progress that
the several parts of the country were making in the several manifestations
of democracy---education, agriculture, industry, social life,
politics---and the importance that Page attached to them was practically
in the order named. Above all it concerned itself with the men
and women who were accomplishing most in the definite realization
of this great end.

<br><br>And now also Page began to carry his activities far beyond
mere print. In his early residence in New York, from 1885 to 1895,
he had always taken his part in public movements; he had been
a vital spirit in the New York Reform Club, which was engaged
mainly in advocating the Cleveland tariff; he had always shown
a willingness to experiment with new ideas; at one time he had
mingled with Socialists and he had been quite captivated by the
personal and literary charm of Henry George. After 1900, however,
Page became essentially a public man, though not in the political
sense. His work as editor and writer was merely one expression
of the enthusiasms that occupied his mind. From 1900 until 1913,
when he left for England, life meant for him mainly an effort
to spread the democratic ideal, as he conceived it; concretely
it represented a constant campaign for improving the fundamental
opportunities and the everyday social advantages of the masses.

<br><br>.

<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">II</FONT></center>

<br><br>Inevitably the condition of the people in his own homeland
enlisted Page's sympathy, for he had learned of their necessities
at first hand. The need of education had powerfully impressed
him even as a boy. At twenty-three he began writing articles for
the Raleigh <I>Observer, </I>and practically all of them were
pleas for the education of the Southern child. His subsequent
activities of this kind, as editor of the <I>State Chronicle,
</I>have already been described. The American from other parts
of the country is rather shocked when he first learns of the backwardness
of education in the South a generation ago. In any real sense
there was no publicly supported system for training the child.
A few wretched hovels, scattered through a sparsely settled country,
served as school houses; a few uninspiring and neglected women,
earning perhaps $50 or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers;
a few groups of anemic and listless children, attending school
for only forty days a year---such was the preparation for life
which most Southern states gave the less fortunate of their citizens.
The glaring fact that emphasized the outcome of this official
carelessness was an illiteracy, among white men and women, of
26 per cent. Among the Negroes it was vastly larger.

<br><br>The first exhortation to reform came from the Wautauga Club,
which Page had organized in Raleigh in 1884. After Page had left
his native state, other men began preaching the same crusade.
Perhaps the greatest of those advocates whom the South loves to
refer to as &quot;educational statesmen&quot; was Dr. Charles
D. McIver, of Greensboro, N.C. McIver's personality and career
had an heroic quality all their own. Back in the 'eighties Mclver
and Edwin A. Alderman, now President of the University of Virginia,
endured all kinds of hardships and buffetings in the cause of
popular education; they stumped the state, much like political
campaigners, preaching the strange new gospel in mountain cabin,
in village church, at the cart's tail---all in an attempt to arouse
their lethargic countrymen to the duty of laying a small tax to
save their children from illiteracy. Some day the story of McIver
and Alderman will find its historian; when it does, he will learn
that, in those dark 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 unparallelled 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.

<br><br>His editorial gift for title-making now served Page in good
stead. &quot;The Forgotten Man,&quot; 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 &quot;The Forgotten Man&quot; 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 &quot;Anglo-Saxon&quot;
strain in the United States; to-day in North Carolina only one
person in four hundred is of &quot;foreign stock,&quot; 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 hidebound 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 &quot;mummy&quot; theme ---the fact that North
Carolina, and the South generally, were too much ruled by &quot;dead
men's&quot; hands. The state was controlled 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.&quot; The chief backward influences were the
stump and the pulpit. &quot;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.&quot; 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.

<br><br>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. &quot;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.&quot;
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.
&quot;By any test that may be made, both these systems have failed
even with the classes that they appealed to.&quot; The net result
was that &quot;One in every four was wholly forgotten&quot;---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.
&quot;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.&quot;

<br><br>Even more tragic than these &quot;forgotten men&quot; were
the &quot;forgotten women.&quot; &quot;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.&quot;
&quot;This sight,&quot; Page told his hearers, &quot;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.&quot;

<br><br>&quot;Our civilization,&quot; he declared, &quot;has been a
failure.&quot; Both the politicians and the preacher had failed
to lift the masses. &quot;It is a time for a wiser statesmanship
and a more certain means of grace.&quot; 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? &quot;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.

<br><br>&quot;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 hope less 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 common wealth 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 brickmason.&quot; 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:

<br><br>&quot;I believe in the free public training of both the hands
and the mind of every child born of woman.

<br><br>&quot;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.

<br><br>&quot;I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and
in the immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting.&quot;

<br><br>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, &quot;the forgotten man&quot; 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 &quot;professional Southerners&quot;---the
men who commercialized class and sectional prejudice to their
own political and financial or ecclesiastical profit ---fell foul
of this &quot;renegade,&quot; this &quot;Southern Yankee&quot;
this sacrilegious &quot;intruder&quot; 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 &quot;to herd their women and
children around the stagnant pools of theology.&quot; 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. &quot;I have
had several letters,&quot; he wrote to Professor Edwin Mims, of
Trinity College, North Carolina, &quot;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.&quot;

<br><br>The letter to which Page referred follows:

<BLOCKQUOTE>
  <br><br>MY DEAR FRIEND:
  <br><br>I have your letter saying that some of the papers in North
  Carolina are again &quot;jumping on&quot; 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 &quot;excoriation&quot; 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 &quot;excoriations.&quot; Why should he,
  then, forsake his calling and take delight in disseminating personal
  abuse?
  <br><br>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.
  <br><br>I haven't read what my kindly clerical correspondent calls
  an &quot;excoriation &quot; 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?
  <br><br>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 &quot;excoriating&quot;
  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.
  <br><br>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.
  <br><br>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, &quot;The Excoriators.&quot; 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.
  <BLOCKQUOTE>
    <br><br>Faithfully yours,
    <br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>.

<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">III</FONT></center>

<br><br>That Page should have little interest in &quot;excoriators&quot;
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. &quot;Write me about the wonderful educational
progress,&quot; 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 &quot;Forgotten Man&quot;
and the &quot;Forgotten Woman&quot; 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 <I>Atlantic</I>, in, the <I>Outlook</I>, and in a multitude
of newspapers, such as the Boston <I>Transcript</I>, the New York
<I>Times</I>, and the Kansas City <I>Star</I>. And always through
his writings, and, indeed, through his life, there ran, like the
motif of an opera, that same perpetual plea for &quot;the forgotten
man&quot;---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 movements
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 concern itself
with 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. &quot;Page was one of the real
educational statesmen of this country,&quot; says Dr. Flexner,
&quot;probably the greatest that we have had since the Civil War.&quot;

<br><br>And this Rockefeller support came at a time when that movement
known as the &quot;educational awakening&quot; 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 &quot;mummy&quot;
controversy; when the brickbats began flying in Page's direction
Aycock wrote, telling Page that &quot;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.&quot;
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.

<br><br>.

<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">IV</FONT></center>

<br><br>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.

<br><br>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. &quot;You
should see Mr. Page about that,&quot; was the response. &quot;No,
this is a business matter,&quot; 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. &quot;I don't think you had better see Mr.
Page,&quot; said Mr. Doubleday, dismissing his caller.

<br><br>Many incidents which illustrate this independence could be
given; one will suffice. In 1907 and 1908, Page's magazine published
the &quot;Random Reminiscences of John D. Rockefeller.&quot; 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.

<br><br>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,
&quot;Up from Slavery,&quot; and another biography in a different
field, for which he was responsible, was Miss Helen Keller's &quot;Story
of My Life.&quot; 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, &quot;The Southerner.&quot; 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 <I>Atlantic Monthly </I>began publishing
a serial entitled &quot;The Autobiography of a Southerner Since
the Civil War,&quot; 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. &quot;I have sometimes thought,&quot; said
the author, and this passage may be taken as embodying the leading
point of the narrative, &quot;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.&quot; In another passage the writer names the &quot;ghosts&quot;
which are chiefly responsible for preventing Southern progress.
They are three: &quot;The Ghost of the Confederate dead, the Ghost
of religious orthodoxy, the Ghost of Negro domination.&quot; 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 &quot;'Publican&quot; office-seeker; the political
colonel, to whom the Confederate veterans and the &quot;fair daughters
of the South (God bless 'em)&quot; are the mainstays of &quot;
civerlerzation &quot; 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 &quot;white man's country&quot;;
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,
hardworking 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.

<br><br>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 &quot;novel.&quot; The <I>Atlantic</I> 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 &quot;Nicholas&quot; and certain
genial spirits addressed him in letters as &quot;Marse Little
Nick&quot;---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 &quot;novel&quot;
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.

<br><br>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. Mclver, may be
accepted as fairly accurate portraits. But as a work of fiction
&quot;The Southerner&quot; 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 &quot;Southern problem,&quot; 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.

<br><br>And these were the things that hurt. Yet the stories of the
anger caused by &quot;The Southerner&quot; have been much exaggerated.
It is said that a certain distinguished Southern senator declared
that, had he known that Page was the author of &quot;The Southerner,&quot;
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 &quot;The Southerner,&quot;
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 &quot;The
Southerner&quot; in itself demonstrated that this great region
had entered upon a new day.

<br><br>.

<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">V</FONT></center>

<br><br>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.

<br><br>Such was the famous &quot;Demonstration Work&quot; 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. &quot;The exercises,&quot; Page once told a friend, &quot;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.&quot; 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.

<br><br>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 zoologist,
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 anaemia, 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 bookworm 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 bookworm always interfered with his cause; the microbe
of laziness had at last been found!

<br><br>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 bookworm 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 &quot;crackers,&quot;
and as &quot;hill-billies,&quot; 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.

<br><br>&quot;Dr. Flexner,&quot; said Dr. Buttrick---this for the benefit
of his incredulous friend---&quot;what is the scientific standing
of Dr. Charles W. Stiles?&quot;

<br><br>&quot;Very, very high,&quot; 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 bookworm
work. He, too, smiled at the idea, but, like Page his smile was
not one of ridicule.

<br><br>&quot;If Dr. Stiles believes this,&quot; was his dictum, &quot;it
is something to be taken most seriously.&quot;

<br><br>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. Dr. Gates ceased laughing and events now moved
rapidly. Mr. Rockefeller gave a million dollars to a sanitary
commission for the eradication of the hookworm in the Southern
States, and of this Page became a charter member. In this way
an enterprise that is the greatest sanitary and health reform
of modern times had its beginnings. So great was the success of
the Hookworm Commission in the South, so many thousands were almost
daily restored to health and usefulness, that Mr. Rockefeller
extended its work all over the world---to India, Egypt, China,
Australia, to all sections that fall within the now accurately
located &quot;hookworm belt.&quot; Out of it grew the great International
Health Commission, also endowed with unlimited millions of Rockefeller
money, which is engaged in stamping out disease and promoting
medical education in all quarters of the globe. Dr. Stiles and
Page's associates on the General Education Board attribute the
origin of this work to the simple fact that Page, great humourist
that he was, could temper his humour with intelligence, and could
therefore perceive the point at which a joke ceased to be a joke
and actually concealed a truth of the most far-reaching importance
to mankind.

Walter H. Page (1899), from
a photograph taken when he was editor of the <I>Atlantic Monthly</I>


Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General
Education Board


<br><br><FONT FACE="Times">Page enjoyed the full results of this labour
one night in the autumn of 1913, when Dr. Wickliffe Rose, the
head of the International Health Board, came to London to discuss
the possibility of beginning hookworm work in the British Empire,
especially in Egypt and India. Page, as Ambassador, arranged a
dinner at the Marlborough Club, attended by the leading medical
scientists of the kingdom and several members of the Cabinet.
Dr. Rose's description of his work made a deep impression. He
was informed that the British Government was only too ready to
cooperate with the Health Board. When the discussion was ended
the Right Honourable Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary of State for
the Colonies, concluded an eloquent address with these words:</FONT>

<br><br>&quot;The time will come when we shall look back on this evening
as the beginning of a new era in British colonial administration.&quot;
<hr>

<references/>


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[[Main Page | WWI Document Archive]] > [[Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences]] > [[The_Life_and_Letters_of_Walter_H._Page|Walter H. Page]] > '''Chapter III'''
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