III
That Page should have little interest in "excoriators" at the time this letter was written—in April, 1902—was not surprising, for his educational campaign and that of his friends was now bearing fruit. "Write me about the wonderful educational progress," he says to this correspondent; and, indeed, the change that was coming over North Carolina and the South generally seemed to be tinged with the miraculous. The "Forgotten Man" and the "Forgotten Woman" were rapidly coming into their own. Two years after the delivery of Page's Greensboro address, a small group of educational enthusiasts met at Capon Springs, West Virginia, to discuss the general situation in the South. The leader of this little gathering was Robert C. Ogden, a great New York merchant who for many years had been President of the Board of Hampton Institute. Out of this meeting grew the Southern Educational Conference, which was little more than an annual meeting for advertising broadcast the educational needs of the South. Each year Mr. Ogden chartered a railroad train; a hundred or so of the leading editors, lawyers, bankers, and the like became his guests; the train moved through the Southern States, pausing now and then to investigate some particular institution or locality; and at some Southern city, such as Birmingham or Atlanta or Winston-Salem, a stop of several days would be made, a public building engaged, and long meetings held. In all these proceedings Page was an active figure, as he became in the Southern Education Board, which directly resulted from Mr. Ogden's public spirited excursions. Like the Conference, the Southern Education Board was a purely missionary organization, and its most active worker was Page himself. He was constantly speaking and writing on his favourite subject; he printed article after article, not only in his own magazine, but in the Atlantic, in the Outlook, and in a multitude of newspapers, such as the Boston Transcript, the New York Times, and the Kansas City Star. And always through his writings, and, indeed, through his life, there ran, like the motif of an opera, that same perpetual plea for "the forgotten man"—the need of uplifting the backward masses through training, both of the mind and of the hand.
The day came when this loyal group had other things to work with than their voices and their pens; their efforts had attracted the attention of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who brought assistance of an extremely substantial character. In 1902 Mr. Rockefeller organized the General Education Board. Of the ten members six were taken from the Southern Education Board; other members represented general educational interests and especially the Baptist interests to which Mr. Rockefeller had been contributing for years. In a large sense, therefore, especially in its membership, the General Education Board was a development of the Ogden organization; but it was much broader in its sweep, taking under its view the entire nation and all forms of educational effort. It immediately began to interest itself in the needs of the South. In 1902 Mr. Rockefeller gave this new corporation $1,000,000; in 1905 he gave it $10,000,000; in 1907 he astonished the Nation by giving $32,000,000, and, in 1909, another $10,000,000; the whole making a total of $53,000,000, the largest sum ever given by a single man, up to that time, for social or philanthropic purposes. The General Education Board now became the chief outside interest of Page's life. He was made a member of the Executive Committee, faithfully attended all its sessions, and participated intimately in every important plan. All such bodies have their decorative members and their working members; Page belonged emphatically in the latter class. Not only was he fertile in suggestions, but his ready mind could give almost any proposal its proper emphasis and clearly set forth its essential details. Between Page and Dr. Buttrick, Secretary and now President of the Board, a close personal intimacy grew up. Dr. Buttrick moved to Teaneck Road, Englewood, where Page had his home, and many a long evening did the two men spend together, many a long walk did they take in the surrounding country, always discussing education, especially Southern education. A letter to the present writer from Dr. Abraham Flexner, the present Secretary of the Board, perhaps sums up the matter. "Page was one of the real educational statesmen of this country," says Dr. Flexner, "probably the greatest that we have had since the Civil War."
And this Rockefeller support came at a time when that movement known as the "educational awakening" had started in the South. In 1900 North Carolina elected its greatest governor since the Civil War—Charles B. Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's detestation of slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed as a small boy; Aycock's first zeal as an educational reformer had an origin that was even more pathetic, for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own mother signing an important legal document with a cross. As a young man fresh from the university Aycock also came under the influence of Page. An old letter, preserved among Page's papers, dated February 26, 1886, discloses that he was a sympathizing reader of the "mummy" controversy; when the brickbats began flying in Page's direction Aycock wrote, telling Page that "fully three fourths of the people are with you and wish you Godspeed in your effort to awaken better work, greater activity, and freer opinion in the state." And now under Aycock's governorship North Carolina began to tackle the educational problem with a purpose. School houses started up all over the state at the rate of one a day—many of them beautiful, commodious, modern structures, in every way the equals of any in the North or West; high schools, normal schools, trade schools made their appearance wherever the need was greatest; and in other parts of the South the response was similarly energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the description that Page gave of Southern education in 1897, accurate in all its details as it was then, has now become ancient history.