Diversities of American Life by Charles Dudley Warner
page 14 of 21 (66%)
page 14 of 21 (66%)
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and has he a high character? There is no provincialism in scholarship.
We are not now considering the matter of the agreeableness of one society or another, whether life is on the whole pleasanter in certain conditions at the North or at the South, whether there is not a charm sometimes in isolation and even in provincialism. It is a fair question to ask, what effect upon individual lives and character is produced by an industrial and commercial spirit, and by one less restless and more domestic. But the South is now face to face with certain problems which relate her, inevitably, to the moving forces of the world. One of these is the development of her natural resources and the change and diversity of her industries. On the industrial side there is pressing need of institutions of technology, of schools of applied science, for the diffusion of technical information and skill in regard to mining and manufacturing, and also to agriculture, so that worn-out lands may be reclaimed and good lands be kept up to the highest point of production. Neither mines, forests, quarries, water-ways, nor textile fabrics can be handled to best advantage without scientific knowledge and skilled labor. The South is everywhere demanding these aids to her industrial development. But just in the proportion that she gets them, and because she has them, will be the need of higher education. The only safety against the influence of a rolling mill is a college, the only safety against the practical and materializing tendency of an industrial school is the increased study of whatever contributes to the higher and non-sordid life of the mind. The South would make a poor exchange for her former condition in any amount of industrial success without a corresponding development of the highest intellectual life. But, besides the industrial problem, there is the race problem. It is the most serious in the conditions under which it is presented that ever in |
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