Chapter IV: Part 4

And not any good can come to the South in the yellow novels which Thomas Dixon is writing. That they are not literature goes without argument; but a novel may not be literature and yet may sell, just as oleomargarine may be colored deep saffron and passed for butter. As literature, then, they will deceive no one except, perhaps, the young who read them and know no better. And this is to be regretted, because there is danger always of the young growing up with false ideas of literature as well as of life, and they may imitate him. There are Dixons in every age of literature. They run from Smollett to the House of Mirth. They take advantage of the sores under the collar of the Galled Jade of Things to put money in their purse. They die and their stuff dies with them. They live as long as they do because the world has many people who would rather look at a sore than a star.

* * * * *

To the older people of the South, who really knew what the Ku Klux was before he fell under the magnifying glass of national politics and became the distorted Behemoth upon which to make political capital, the lime-lighted melodramas of Mr. Dixon bring only smiles. The thing originated in the fun-loving plethora of the surcharged idleness of a summer afternoon among a healthy lot of grown-up boys out for a lark and to frighten newly-freed Negroes. Silence and a mystery appals any Negro. It was a mystery and it rode in sheeted silence. It proved more effective than a shotgun to send prowling Negroes to bed. It meant “ghostes” and if a Negro has any religion in his bones it is the religion of ghostes. It was so effective that it grew and was used as an admirable and effective means of a superior race under the bayonet of their conquerors, to maintain the racial integrity against the flood of freed and elevated slaves. It owes its magnified proportions entirely to the red paint of politics. Then, as with lynchings now, the busy and better people of the South gave it neither their salvos nor their sanction. They were too intent upon planting cotton, developing their great mines and rebuilding their country. It was a half-mystic, half-lawless, much-talked-of lodge of half-necessary lawlessness, whose stock in trade was blood-and-thunder mystery and whose purchaser was ignorant, black Superstition.

It was one of the thousand and one means a superior intelligence will always find to control inferior ignorance without butchering him in blocks or pens.

* * * * *

But in its rollicking and rankest days it was never as bad nor had it ever as strong a hold as lynching and homicide have to-day in all sections of the Republic. And it never saw the day when it was half as cruel or killed and flogged together in a month as many black Negroes as Southern cotton mills kill of the white poor children of the South in a day. Compared to the voiceless, swift-moving Juggernaut of the child-killing cotton mill, Ku Klux was the painted, grinning clown of a country show throwing rotten apples at a coon’s head stuck through a sheet!

* * * * *

And as to child-labor—hear this metaphor:

Deep in the hills lies the little stream which is the beginning of the river.

It is concealed in the ground that it may be protected, for so small is its beginning that a too-rough footstep might destroy it, a ruthless track might change it from the destiny of its way to the sea.

Growing, it creeps forth, but under leaf and mold, under the hanging vines and protecting shrubs and only when it is strong enough to resist all efforts to change its course does it flow out into the open and run the race of its life.

How careful is nature to protect all things which are young.

“Youth is not for work,” she says, and she writes it from the stars of the daisy field to the stars of heaven.

There is no flower which does not shelter its unblossomed buds, if necessary, even with thorns. The wild doe hides her fawn in the bush; the king of beasts hides his in the desert caverns.

Only man has decreed in his selfishness that his children must lose their childhood to the greed of gold.

* * * * *

As for the negro himself, here are some plain, never-lying, physiological, bred-in-the-bone truths about him which the sooner the world recognizes, the easier will the problem of his being be. The Negro is first and always an imitator. He cannot originate. He cannot go upward, save as he copies from the whites, and if that prop be removed, he will quickly go back into barbarism. There is something wanting in the Negro character—in the very fibre of his being—that says as plainly as God can say it of a race: “Thus far shalt thou go and no further.” And left to himself for centuries on the most fertile continent of the globe, he has remained to-day where he was at creation’s dawn. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, the Saxon—all these civilizations have been added to the world, and still the Negro remains as God made him.

There are some people who think they can improve on the Almighty’s plan. The Maker of All did not intend that the Negro should be a white man in a black skin, as some who are solving the Negro problem would think. If He had, He would have made him like the white man and given him that indefinable, inexplicable quality that makes the white man a doer of deeds, a fighter, an advancer, a dreamer, a conqueror. The Negro is none of these. He is merely a good natured, inferior man, a non-combative race, made for some purpose of labor, to be directed always by a superior mind, and in his highest development an imitator.

There has been so much said on the Negro problem lately that I have inadvertently, as it were, thrown out this. It is good for one to be set straight now and then, on first principles. It is easy for man to get all wrong if he starts out on a wrong hypothesis.

* * * * *

In a letter from a correspondent in Medicine Lodge, Kans., the other day, appears a sentence we have been looking for all our lives. “Facts, ideals and a thrill,” he says, “is a terse definition of every great story,” and he is kind enough to say that Trotwood’s fills the definition. “Facts, ideals and a thrill”—I should love to know just who originated that boiled-down recipe for real literature. If I might advise all of my writers (and I am called on daily by letters to help advise many of them), I would say adopt that motto and go write your story. As for us hereafter, we will nail it to our masthead and try to build up to it.

* * * * *

Another well-wisher suggests that we change the words on the title page from Farm, Horse and Home to The Southland—her land and her life. That is not bad, either. We publish this to let you know that we appreciate all such suggestions. We feel that you would not do it if you did not like us. And that is what we are here for—to get you to like us.

And here let us say that the next issue of Trotwood’s will inaugurate a long-cherished idea of its editor. Under the heading of “Trotwood’s Travels through the South,” in a special advertising departure we will visit various sections of our great Southland and tell what we saw. We wish to show to the world just what we have here in the newly awakened South, with all its natural wealth and its old ideals. Nor will we take this space from the body of Trotwood’s—it will be additional. Our first visit will be to the beautiful valley of the Tennessee, at the growing little city of Florence, Ala., the head of the Mussel Shoals. Last week the President signed a bill permitting a five million dollar company to harness the waste waters of the great shoals, giving power to the towns and cities within a radius of two hundred miles of it. We will show what that means and what chances there are in Florence, with all her resources. For the June number the cantaloupe-raising industry of Lawrenceburg, in Lawrence County, Tenn., has been selected—Lawrence County, where one hundred dollars and more per acre were cleared last year in her newly discovered improvement in the Rocky Ford cantaloupe, and lands are trebling in value. From issue to issue we will take different sections of the South, from Georgia to Texas. And as we go we propose to tell the history and the romance of it too. For what is a land without its romance? A woman without a love affair is more interesting.

Business Department

There is hardly a day but we receive from one to half a dozen letters from our subscribers telling us how they appreciate Trotwood’s Monthly and Trotwood. His stories seem to please the people, and they are all loud in their praise, but we do not recall having received anything of a complimentary nature regarding his writing—with a pen. We often have to translate some of his letters for people who fall down when they try to read them, but the following letter written to Mr. Sterling C. Brewer, principal of the Link School, Thomasville, Tenn., seems to hold the record:

The above is a facsimile of the letter written by Trotwood.

Mr. Brewer writes as follows.

“When I received Trotwood’s letter I saw at once that it was a rather a tough proposition, and I turned it over to one of my pupils for translation. She called her chum and they studied it very diligently for awhile, and to make sure that none of it escaped, wrote it down, and it came to me in a small vertical hand as plain as print:

“‘Dr. M. Braver:

“‘I struck pie 10 inches. Pretty if clean and well done of a
jay man. I’d like to charge it some after meat. It would make
a snake sweat trying to propel hayseed. I shall snatch and
extract a pin from prim hind legs (calling no man). Jim Wren is
in Grotmood exactly.

“‘Hoplood towhit to whoo

“‘Fleetwood,

“‘TOBE PALMWOOD MANN.’

“I then turned it over to another pupil that would eagerly chase an obscure fact through a whole set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and here is her translation:

“‘Dr. Bu Brur:

“‘I drank the 10 March. Poetry is clean swell done for a gay
man. I take to change it some of the time too. It would make
a great old hash story of the Prophet Daniel. I shall snatch
an extra pen point if it aint better (calm no man) Jno Der is
Trotword exactly. Hoeneald to meet you by and by

“‘Fretfully yours,

“She fell down on the signature, but said it looked like some kind of a Woodbine, but she wasn’t sure about it.”

We see nothing out of the ordinary about this letter, and can truthfully say that it is a great improvement over some of the “copy” Trotwood sends in. The letter is plain enough, and reads as follows:

“Dear Mr. Brewer:

“I thank you so much. The story is clean and well done for a
young man. I’d like to change it some if I use it. It would
make a great Old Wash story if properly handled. I shall quote
an extract from your letter (calling no names). Your idea is
Trotwood’s exactly. Hoping to meet you some day,

“Faithfully yours

“JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.”

* * * * *

We have a letter from a gentleman living in Montana as follows:

“Gentlemen: I have just learned that your magazine has been
started through my niece.”

We are extremely sorry, and hope the young lady will suffer no ill effects, but we do not see that we are to blame, as we did not tell her to do it. We have no clubbing arrangements with other publications, but in this case we would recommend a copy of the Literary Digest.

Brittain Tobacco Works

Smoking and Chewing Tobaccos

Columbia, Tenn., Feb. 24, 1906.

TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY, Nashville, Tenn.

Dear Sirs—Thinking that you may be interested in knowing
something of the results obtained from our “ad” in your
esteemed magazine we wish to say that we have been highly
pleased with same.

When we began running this “ad” we thought it would pay if we
kept at it long enough, but we did not hope to reap so great
results in so short a time.

We have used other publications as a medium of advertising our
products, but yours has brought us more business than any we
have ever tried. We are in daily receipt of letters coming from
almost every state in the union in reply to the “ad” which you
have been running for us. We have received as high as twelve to
fifteen orders a day as a result of same.

We will ask that you continue same till we advise you to cut
it out and we will not do this so long as results are as
satisfactory as they have been.

Wishing you the greatest success possible, we are,

Yours very truly,

BRITTAIN TOBACCO WORKS.
By W. R. Hutton, Treas.