f his kinsmen had been
killed in the war, told him to distrust any one who wished to change
anything. What was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him.
Thus the 'forgotten man' became a dupe, became thankful for being
neglected. And the preacher told him that the ills and misfortunes of
this life were blessings in disguise, that God meant his poverty as a
means of grace, and that if he accepted the right creed all would be
well with him. These influences encouraged inertia. There could not have
been a better means to prevent the development of the people."

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

"Our civilization," he declared, "has been a failure." Both the
politicians and the preacher had failed to lift the masses. "It is a
time for a wiser statesmanship and a more certain means of grace." He
admitted that there had been recent progress in North Carolina, owing
largely to the work of McIver and Alderman, but taxes for educational
purposes were still low. What was the solution? "A public school system
generously supported by public sentiment and generously maintained by
both state and local taxation, is the only effective means to develop
the forgotten man and even more surely the only means to develop the
forgotten woman. . . ." "If any beggar for a church school oppose a local
tax for schools or a higher school tax, take him to the huts of the
forgotten women and children, and in their hopeless presence remind him
that the church system of education has not touched tens of thousands of
these lives and ask him whether he thinks it wrong that the commonwealth
should educate them. If he think it wrong ask him and ask the people
plainly, whether he be a worthy preacher of the gospel that declares one
man equal to another in the sight of God? . . . The most sacred thing in
the commonwealth and to the commonwealth is the child, whether it be
your child or the child of the dull-faced mother of the hovel. The ch