We Need to Set Aside Our Impatience and Let Milk of Human Kindness Flow, Says Editor, March 2, 1923

Mark Twain said that human nature is something of which everybody has some, and that some folks have more than others. Maybe we folks here in Enfield do have more than other folks when things don’t exactly suit us. And maybe we let folks see the seamy side of our nature when the current goes off in the middle of the afternoon and we cannot use our electric curling iron—we used to use curl papers—or when the conversation in the drug store turns to the dog law or the streets—we’ve lived in the mud an hundred years, but we are getting particular about our feet now—and at times we are willing to cuss each other about almost anything.

But sometimes the other side of our nature is shown—the side we seem almost to try to keep covered up. All people have their ups and downs, and differences, from day to day and year to year, largely because they do not understand each other. To understand is to sympathize, to appreciate, to love. When anything happens of a serious nature, we lay aside our differences and act together for the good of a common cause. Do we fail to help because we do not understand our neighbor’s motive for helping? No. We only know that he is helping and we care not to look further than that. Human nature forces the better side of us to the light, and we “turn our clouds inside out” and “show the lining.”

The milk of human kindness flows no more freely anywhere than in Enfield when there is evidence of distress. The recent destruction by fire of an Enfield home, and the immediate and voluntary contribution toward its replacement are cause enough for comment in the highest terms. Let us strive to go about our daily work with the same attitude of mutual helpfulness toward each other, without regard to kith or kin, creed, color or any other temporal condition.

From the editorial page of The Progress, Enfield, N.C., Friday, March 2, 1923, Fred Cooper, editor and proprietor