Education: At Charlottesville

Governor Harry Flood Byrd, brother of Flyer Byrd, stood in the open air amphitheatre at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.). Behind him were distant backgrounds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Before him were fellow Virginians and assembled dele gates to the newly established Institute of Public Affairs. Governor Byrd, following the purpose of the Institute to discuss U. S. political problems, spoke of re-organization of state and county governments, stressed the necessity for removal of legal deadwood. He suggested one session of every legislature in the country devoted solely to re pealing worn-out laws.

Professor Gustavus W. Dyer, Vanderbilt University, broke a bomb in the national veneration for F. F. V.’s.* He said that study of Southern politics proved that Virginia before the Civil War was dominated by the middle class. Seven Governors were “aristocrats by courtesy only.” He adduced other statistics reducing the governing aristocracy of the South to “a soothing but insalubrious myth.” Another observation: City v. Country. “Stupendous pyramiding” of city populations has increased the differences and misunderstandings between urban and rural dwellers. Let city men improve their city government. And let country men let city men gov ern themselves their own way. While city and country reformers quarrel over moral and religious issues especially in the South, in dustrialists are quietly entrenching themselves “behind strong federal breastworks” of which the result will be “the inevitable tyran nies and incompetence of Federal bureaucracies.” Let the South strengthen its state governments to keep pace with its industrial development. — Governor Albert G. Ritchie of Maryland.

*First Families of Virginia, a slogan for the socially substantial.