[Speech of Ballard Smith at the annual banquet given by the
Southern Society of New York, February 22, 1888. John C. Calhoun,
one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society, presided. Mr. Smith
spoke to the toast, "The Press of the South."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--The newspaper has always been a
potent factor in the South--for many years almost exclusively political,
but since the war occupying its more proper sphere and assisting more
largely in the material development of the country. I think every
Southern man will agree with me that the change of procession has been
to the very great advantage of our section. The columns of the
ante-bellum newspaper were too often the opportunity for the indulgence
of excited passions, political and social, and I doubt if our people
could not have better spared the newspaper altogether than to have
permitted the license of accusation, political incitement, and personal
rancor which characterized so largely the journals of thirty years ago.
[Applause.] But they were virile hands which held editorial pens in
those days and the faults were doubtless faults of the period rather
than of the men themselves. It was a splendid galaxy--that company which
included George D. Prentiss, Rhett, Forsythe, Hughes, Henry D. Wise,
John Mitchell, and Thomas Ritchie.
But it is of Southern journalism during these last twenty years of which
I would speak. I have known something of it because my own
apprenticeship was served in one of the most brilliant journals of this
or any other time and of this or any other country. The services of
Henry Watterson to the South and to the country are a part of the
history of our time. [Applause.] His loyalty toward his section could
never have been doubted, and his firmness and broad patriotism served it
at a time of need to a degree which perhaps the firmness and patriotism
of no other man in the South could have equalled. He had for the vehicle
of his eloquent fervor a newspaper which commanded the affection of his
own people and the respect of the North. [Applause.] With the
restoration of order great newspapers--fair rivals to their great
contemporaries in the Eastern and Northern States--have grown to
prosperity in the various centres of the South, and they have acted out
a mission which is in some respects peculiar to themselves.
More important than politics to the South, more important than the
advocacy of good morals--for of that our people took good care
themselves in city as in country--has been the material development of
our resources. The War left us very poor. The carpet-bag governments
stole a very large part of the little that was left. Injudicious
speculations in cotton during a few years of madness almost completed
our bankruptcy. With fertile fields, cheap labor, extraordinary mineral
resources, our almost undisputed control of one of the great staples of
the world, the year 1876 found us a prostrate people almost beyond
precedent. To this breach came several thoughtful, public-spirited,
eloquent men of the newspaper guild. It was our good fortune that in
Dawson of the "Charleston News and Courier," in Major Burke, Page M.
Baker, and Colonel Nicholson of New Orleans; in Major Belo of Galveston;
in the editors of "The Nashville Banner," "The American," "The Memphis
Appeal," "The Richmond Dispatch and State," and above all, in Henry W.
Grady, of "The Atlanta Constitution" [applause], we had spokesmen who,
day in and day out, in season and out, year after year devoted their
thoughts, their study, and their abilities to showing the world, first,
the sturdy intention of our people to recuperate their lost fortunes;
and second, the extraordinary resources of their section. [Applause.]
Certainly not in the history of my profession and perhaps not in any
history of such endeavor, have men, sinking mere personal interests and
ignoring the allurements of ambition, through a more dramatic exercise
of their talents so devoted themselves to the practical interests of
their people. [Applause.] We saw the results in the awakened curiosity
of the world, and in the speedy influx of capital to aid us in our
recuperation. [Applause.]