Venable Vs. Carver
Mr. Editor:
Dr. F.P. Venable is one of the few men I had placed above prejudice, jealousy and narrow thinking. Therefore I received a decided shock Thursday morning in chapel when I heard his attack on Dr. G.W. Carver. This speech of Dr. Venable’s showed him as being made of the same clay as the rest of us. As for me—he took a temporary tumble from the high position I had always accorded him.
The best part of Dr. Venable’s speech was at the beginning, when he admitted not having heard Dr. Carver’s lecture or seen his exhibit, and said that one should have to do that before he could make a fair criticism. Then with rare disregard for his sensible beginning, he slashed the colored man’s reputation as a scientist and as an honest man, until he would seem, to be to an uninformed listener, not only a faker but a criminal who “could be prosecuted in any court in the land.”
In stating that Dr. Carver was “not a scientist in any sense of the word,” Dr. Venable directly opposed the opinions of many active and better informed minds than his own. “Scientists don’t trust to hunches,” said Dr. Venable; but Mr. Edison, the world’s greatest inventor, says: “I think, possibly, my greatest invention was the incandescent lamp, and the singular thing about that discovery was that I was working on an entirely different proposition, and the incandescent lamp flashed into my mind in an instant, and I produced it.” It was intimated that the negro claimed to dream out is products, but Dr. Carver himself said that he usually slept and then worked out his problems early in the morning when his mind was fresh. There was no intimation that he did not “dig, and dig, and work it out,” just as a scientist would.
It was said that the reason he did not accept money for his products was that he could not reproduce them and that they had no commercial value. The speaker should have remembered that Thomas Edison does not offer presidential salaries to fakers and “mixers” without proof of their value, and that products cannot be patented unless full and plain data is given for their manufacture. The colored man has had some of his products patented and patents have been applied for on others.
It was even insinuated that the products he exhibited were not his own at all, but were obtained from some other source and exhibited as his. That is a grave offense to accuse one of committing without either seeing the products in question or hearing what the offender had to say for himself. Such an arch-criminal would hardly take these faked goods and show them in all parts of the country, even in Congress, if he were not positive he could prove himself their maker and reproduce them.
It was grudgingly admitted that if Dr. Carver is a member of the Royal Society of Arts, London he us have proven a true scientist before having this honor bestowed on him; however, it was strongly and repeatedly insinuated, and almost stated for a fact, that he was faking that honor as well. Until it is repudiated by the members of the Royal Society that he is a member, let us take the word of several leading periodicals, notably “Who’s Who” for 1924-25 which says he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Arts, London, 1917.
In all fairness to a member of an inferior race, let us see the points in Dr. Carver’s favor, and if he has any real worth—freely admit it.
D.S.
From page 2 of The Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, N.C., Jan. 24, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073227/1925-01-24/ed-1/seq-2/#words=January+24%2C+1925
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