While New York and the East may be the natural publishing place for American magazines, it should not be forgotten that the South has within itself many important problems peculiar to itself. If one should start from the Potomac and travel southwest two thousand miles, barring mountainous sections, he would find, generally speaking, less difference in people, customs, and institutions than he would be going one or two hundred miles north from that river. Coupled with this fact, the following story may not be without significance:
A Northerner who had moved South noticed that his new neighbors had what struck him as being a rather unsatisfactory method of doing a certain thing. So he wrote an article suggesting another method and sent it to a local publication. The editor returned the article, pronouncing what it proposed to be “impracticable and visionary.” The writer then sent the article to a Northern publication, at the same time asking if what it proposed was impracticable or visionary. It was again returned, but the returner stated that, so far from proposing anything impracticable or visionary, the trouble lay in the opposite direction. He said that what was proposed had been in successful operation so long that it would be useless and tiresome reading.
This story seems to me to illustrate the case of innumerable subjects important to the South. In the matter of education, for example, what would sound revolutionary in some Southern States would, I believe, be called pioneer work by the majority of American-born Northerners. Again, in the realm of economics, most of us in the South have yet to learn some of the first principles. As to our code of social relations there are some sections, fertile and penetrated by railroads, which are in vital respects half a century behind the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization. As to our courts of justice, although law has been the favorite profession of our ambitious young men, and although we are supposed to have some of America’s ablest practitioners, it seems that almost none of them ever try persistently to contribute anything towards making either our courts or our politics better, and by so doing accomplish that for which courts and politics are supposed to exist. In conclusion, let it be remembered that not only the Northern magazines are not so directly interested in these matters as are we, but also that when one wishes to make a suggestion to his own section he naturally prefers to do so through a publication in that section.
Some of our newspapers have done creditable work through their editorial columns, but an editor cannot be a specialist in everything. We need, I think, a publication of the nature of a magazine whose editors know what to solicit and can determine whether or not a contribution meets a need. Such a magazine should be free from imitation. With questions of vital sectional importance bubbling and seething all around it, there is no reason why it should give us stories and treatises in competition with Eastern magazines which can pay larger prices for such. Finally, its purpose should be for general rather than partisan interest.
Generally speaking, Southerners seem to me not to be finished writers. While some of our newspaper editors have a plain, unadorned style which is better than the style of most “authors,” nevertheless almost all of us Southerners seem troubled with a limited and inaccurate use of the English vocabulary. But there are plenty of Southerners who know their business and can go to the root of a matter. I believe that most readers who are looking for a Southern magazine would rather hear from these than from the more finished narrators and expounders of nothingness. Finally, a magazine which would put a premium on substance told with clearness and brevity, at the same time emphasizing the fact that a contribution must meet a real need, would have a tendency to develop writers whose work possessed style as well as substance.
Recently I made the acquaintance of Trotwood’s Magazine, and, believing that I noticed in it a strong and sincere inclination to be original, the question arose in my mind, Why should not this magazine, already in actual operation, become a forum for discussing Southern problems? So, if this be Trotwood’s purpose, to it I say, may you succeed; and to Tennessee and the South, give Trotwood a chance. It may prove to be what you have long needed.
J. G. SIMS, JR.
Nashville, Tenn.
Editor’s Note.—Trotwood’s thanks Mr. Sims (who, so far, like many of our readers and contributors, is a stranger to us) for his kind expressions. We learn that he is a graduate of Princeton, and a teacher and writer of reputation. We agree with him that the South has problems peculiar to itself, and that the proper place for their discussion is among ourselves and in a Southern journal. It is the aim and ambition of Trotwood’s to be the medium for this as well as for the development of the South’s great resources. We welcome such communications as the above, even if some of his plain assertions do grate somewhat on our nerves; for only by a calm and fair discussion of the problems which confront us can the truth be ascertained. Some of Mr. Sims’ assertions above are plainly open for discussion, and some are plainly ambiguous. For instance, what does he mean by “As to the code of social relations, there are some sections fertile and penetrated by railroads which are in vital respects half a century behind the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization?” Social relations and civilization are two different things, and as to the former, it is our opinion that the South, in her fight for the purity of her race, the integrity of her morals and the hospitality of her people, surpasses all other sections of this country. In proof of this I will call our esteemed contributor’s attention to the following facts.
1. The white population of the South, never having been augmented by foreign immigration to any appreciable extent, is more purely American than any other section. It is to-day as it was one hundred years before the Revolution. I am not asserting that it is better for this fact, but as a matter of “social relations” I am claiming that it is purely American.