racy--education, agriculture, industry,
social life, politics--and the importance that Page attached to them was
practically in the order named. Above all it concerned itself with the
men and women who were accomplishing most in the definite realization of
this great end.

And now also Page began to carry his activities far beyond mere print.
In his early residence in New York, from 1885 to 1895, he had always
taken his part in public movements; he had been a vital spirit in the
New York Reform Club, which was engaged mainly in advocating the
Cleveland tariff; he had always shown a willingness to experiment with
new ideas; at one time he had mingled with Socialists and he had been
quite captivated by the personal and literary charm of Henry George.
After 1900, however, Page became essentially a public man, though not in
the political sense. His work as editor and writer was merely one
expression of the enthusiasms that occupied his mind. From 1900 until
1913, when he left for England, life meant for him mainly an effort to
spread the democratic ideal, as he conceived it; concretely it
represented a constant campaign for improving the fundamental
opportunities and the everyday social advantages of the masses.

II

Inevitably the condition of the people in his own homeland enlisted
Page's sympathy, for he had learned of their necessities at first hand.
The need of education had powerfully impressed him even as a boy. At
twenty-three he began writing articles for the Raleigh _Observer_, and
practically all of them were pleas for the education of the Southern
child. His subsequent activities of this kind, as editor of the _State
Chronicle_, have already been described. The American from other parts
of the country is rather shocked when he first learns of the
backwardness of education in the South a generation ago. In any real
sense there was no publicly supported system for training the child. A
few wretched hovels, scattered through a sparsely settled country,
served as school houses; a few uninspiring and neglected women, earning
perhaps $50 or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers; a few groups of
anemic and listless children, attending school for only forty days a
year--such was the preparation for life which most Southern states gave
the less fortunate of their citizens. The glaring fact that emphasized
the outcome of this official carelessness was an illiteracy, among white
men and women, of 26 per cent. Among t