Let the New South be the Honest South
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
Claude Kitchin was wary of the New South advocates, and did not want to see North Carolina turned into an industrial wasteland as Northerners had already done to their own homes in pursuit of profit. He also saw the Northern industrialists abandon their own States, leave them scarred with empty factories, ruined lives and polluted rivers, and move South for cheaper labor. He did not view this as progress.
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net  

Let the New South be the Honest South:
 
“This was the time when Henry W. Grady, chief prophet of the New South, was at the height of his fame. Grady was making his famous speeches North and South on various occasions, writing editorials for the Atlanta Constitution and articles for national magazines, eloquently pleading for sectional reconciliation and for Northern investments in the exploitation of Southern resources. Grady was a loveable and eloquent man, worshipped especially by the group in the South eager to follow the Northern, industrial pattern.
 

[Claude Kitchin] loved Grady, “to whom all honor and praise are due for his sublime efforts to bring the two sections together and to make their great hearts beat as one”; but he condemned Grady’s tendency to turn his back upon the South’s past and accept uncritically the Northern way. Industrialization within limits was desirable but it must not become the summon bonum. In this matter he preferred the position of Henry Watterston, whom he quoted: “If we are to have a New South let it be an honest South…Let us stand by all that was good in the Old South…and with our past alike to warn and to cheer us, let us turn our faces to the great future.”
 
(Claude Kitchin and the Wilson War Policies, Alex Mathews Arnett, Little, Brown & Company, 1937, pp. 19-20)