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.]

CHARLES EMORY SMITH

IRELAND’S STRUGGLES