Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/554

550 itself heard so clearly from so many directions, makes the need of some provision for the best liberal training the more necessary; for unless industrial education is informed and guided by such a spirit, the abyss of a dull utilitarianism awaits it.

The Spanish-American war revealed the south of these later days to itself. It gave—happy gift!—a new point from which to reckon time, and showed how far, unknown to themselves, the old slave states had moved since Appomattox. A tide of vigor swept through villages and hamlets, bringing them, for the first time in a generation, in contact with the life of the world. It is not fanciful to attribute the educational awakening of the south to-day in part, at least, to that contact with outside affairs—to the sense of oneness with a great nation. But whatever the cause, the fact is here to reckon with—a desire for education throughout the south such as it has never known, and it is being sought in many cases in the face of great difficulties and at the cost of noble sacrifice. Many a southern man and woman, to-day buried in obscure villages, have fairly earned a brevet for gallantry in action in the struggle with stifling social conditions. There is no more present duty for the American people than to uphold their hands. When a community's poverty, born of its ignorance, is such that the tax levy yields but $18 a year for schools, the vicious circle must be broken from outside. The state must care for those hamlets which can not care for themselves, and by a parity of reasoning, the needs of the south are a charge upon public-spirited men and women everywhere. The response should be prompt and abundant. With the new-born desire for education, the line of greatest efficiency for educational endowments is shifted to the south; the need there is great and basal—and they are next of kin.