For he also was a poor white, just the meat for a nice, religious director of a cotton mill! I thought of another Tennessean, and this time I stood in the Alamo, and again I saw ghosts—for who that has blood in his veins can stand there and not see them? And this was another poor white who died there before he would pull down the flag that floated above him, or could notch on the stock of his rifle the dead Mexicans who were piled up before him—dead—giving to his country an empire and to her coming children an inspiration that is greater than land and gold, “yea, than much fine gold.” And I thanked God again that in his youth there had been no cotton mills in Tennessee to do for Davy Crockett what the bear and panther and Indian could never do. For he, too, was a poor white, and in his day would have been as good for a cotton mill as a coonskin for a pint of whiskey. And his little life would have gone out behind their shuttles of steel instead of the invader’s bayonet, and the mention of his name would have brought no trumpet-blast from the lips of fame: “Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none!” Again I thought of a fighting Tennessean, also a poor white, in his youth, and the legitimate prey of the cotton mills—running his gunboats up Mobile Bay in spite of the bellowing forts and the broadsides of death and the hell of the hidden torpedo. And suddenly the engine stopped and a faint heart shouted from below: “_Back—back—torpedoes!_” But Farragut, from the greatest post of danger, shouted down: “Damn the torpedoes—go ahead!” My friends, a man who would steal from a child his childhood, that which makes all his after life worth living, who would filch from it its body, brain and soul, is a human torpedo—a torpedo of hell. And, in the language of Farragut, I say unto you: “_Damn them and go ahead!_” There was Forrest, another fighting Tennessean and a poor little white trash, one with fifteen brothers and sisters—just the ideal family made for the maw of a cotton mill—for upon such families do they declare their dividends. And if there had been mills in his day there would doubtless have been no Fort Donelson, Tishomingo Creek and Streight’s Raid. He also, like all his fighting predecessors, was a swearing Tennessean. And so I thank heaven for a good, honest, mouth-filling oath in a noble cause. And again I say unto you: “_By the Eternal, stand up for the children of your land!_”