Date: July 19, 1930
Location: Northampton, MA
Summary: Calvin Coolidge reflects on the factors leading to progress in the South and the nation at large.
(Original document available here)
The rapidity with which the old South is emerging is not generally appreciated. It has attracted new blood and new capital. From a region of plantations it is becoming also a region of industry and commerce. But its economic development is not so great as its change in thought. It is less local and more national.
There are three important influences that are removing its inertia of mind and body. The public schools have been much improved both in housing and courses of instruction. Their power has become very great. The radio has done for people of mature years what the schoolhouse has done for the youth in the way of lifting them out of themselves and giving them new ideas. This is changing the tone and the influence of the local press. And the system of good roads, which is already extensive and rapidly increasing, whereby the automobile has enlarged the circumference of mental vision, ranks very high in the progress of the new South. It has made the country accessible not only to itself but to the outside world. We behold a people of high spirit and great natural endowments under the inspiration of a new hope coming into their own.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge Says: Dispatches Written by Former-President Coolidge and Syndicated to Newspapers in 1930-1931 (Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation)
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of David Wang who prepared this document for digital publication.