ild
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
brick mason."

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:

"I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the
mind of every child born of woman.

"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.

"I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and in the
immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting."

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, "the forgotten man" 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 "professional Southerners"--the men who
commercialized class and sectional prejudice to their own political and
financial or ecclesiastical profit--fell foul of this "renegade," this
"Southern Yankee" this sacrilegious "intruder" 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 con