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| OH. MITCHELL CRITICISM ANSWERED Finds Towns Are Prosperous and People Noted for Culture and Hospitality William Cabell Bruce, former United States Senator, today sprang to the defense of the Eastern Shore. In a letter writter. to the press the former Senator took sharp issue with Dr. Broadus Mitchell of the Johns Hopkins University. The latter, associate professor of political economy, had criticized the Shore as "backward" in its "mental and spiritual development." This tinion of Dr. Mitchell was contained in his report on the lynching of Matthew Williams, a negro, in Salisbury. Dr. Mitchell visited Salisbury at the request of the Federal Council of Churches jf Christ in America and concluded that the lynching was spurred by "geographical isolation, resulting in rather backward c-nditions." In his reply Senator Bruce writes, in part: SHORE NOT "BACKWARD" "Having thrice canvassed every part of the Eastern Shore, as a candidate for a seat In the United States Senate, and having been brought into intimate contact with its people, I wish to deny, if my personal testimony is worth anything, that the Eastern Shore is, as Prof. Broadus Mitchell affirms, 'backward' in its 'mental and spiritual development.'" Again, the former Senator declares: "I do not know whether Dr. Mitchell deems the Eastern Shore to be backward in an economic sense or not. He must; for thrift and mental backwardness are rarely found associated Suffice it to say that the idea is laughable. LAUDS SHORE TOWNS "Some years ago I took occasion to say, in a public address at Salisbury, that I believed that Salisbury was the biggest town of 10,000 inhabitants in the world. It has a hotel that would be creditable to a population of 100,000 souls. It has a fire department worthy to be part of a metropolitan fire department. Its main street at times is so crowded with vehicles that one has to pick his way cautiously across it. "Few more attractive little towns than Snow Hill, Princess Anne, Cambridge, Easton, Cen-treville, Chestertown and Denton are to be found anywhere. The fields that surround them bear every evidence of studious and intelligent tilth. Their hotels hold out every measure of comfort that the wayfarer can reasonably expect in centers of their restricted scope. "One cannot move along the roads that lead up to them without being struck with the heavy burden of transportation that trucks are unceasingly carrying over these roads, and their well-stocked stores, and the numerous motor cars parked, or in motion, 0r> their streets, ate unmistakably indicative of brisk activity. __y. am not a native ©fjthe Eastern Shore, but l esteem it one of the fortunate circumstances of my life that ?l sjhould have sprung from the same family stocks as its good people. No kinder, more courteous, more hospitable, more (intelligent, more moral, more God-fearing people, as a whole, have I ever met. If they have any special infirmities worthy of criticism these infirmities are so inextricably interwoven with their splendid personal and domestic virtues that I. at least, have no inclination to distinguish the ontt from the other." |