Are All These Cars and All This Driving Actually Getting Us Anywhere, Asks Col. C.P.J. Mooney, July 21, 1926

Away from the Soil

“When people get away from the soil their days are numbered,” declared Col. C.P.J. Mooney, editor of The Memphis Commercial-Appeal in an address to the Southern newspaper men in Asheville the other day, a speech which is described in The Asheville Citizen as the most intriguing speech of the evening.

“it was the sort of speech which springs spontaneously from a background of wide and intimate acquaintance of men and affairs,” The Citizen reporter says in describing the speech. As the veteran editor began talking one could hear a pin drop in the back side of the lobby of the Grove Park:

“I went out riding this afternoon. I saw some of your magnificent roads. They are magnificent. And I saw people I cars—going, going, going—some 10, some 15 and some 40, and a few 60 miles an hour. And I could tell from the faces of most of them that they didn’t have not get there in a hurry, and in fact had no particular place to go. That is what is wrong with us. We are on our way but we don’t know where.

“As I rode I saw no bits of cotton,” –he paused, and smiled, for his words were as keen as a two-edge sword, though spoken as gently as if they had been uttered by a kindly old grandfather reporting a lot of naughty children,--‘and I saw no blades of corn, and no golden grapes on your hillsides, --and none close to your splendid roads. All I saw was automobiles, automobiles, automobiles,--going and going and going—and nowhere.”

Then he told about the emphasis that modern life places on filling stations, and garages, and miles per gallon, “and the utter want of consideration for good manners, and politeness, and gentleness and goodness.”

The Gastonia Gazette agrees with the Memphis man, saying the trouble with the world is “we are all hell bent for somewhere as fast as gasoline and steam can carry us.”

That is the characteristics of this age all right. You can drive on any highway in any part of the country and some fool driver, with his engine wide open, will pass going nowhere in particular but just the same “hell bent” on getting there.

We let nothing slow us up, that’s why we resort to crime. Gentleness, goodness, good manners and temperateness are unknown to us. We are always in a hurry and in the mad scamper to be on the go we are missing many of the gentler and finer things in life.

From the editorial page of the Concord Daily Tribune, Wednesday, July 21, 1926

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-07-21/ed-1/seq-4/