Western Illinois University

A Foundation for Sustainable Rural Community Development

Walter Hines Page

Country Life Commission Member

Walter Hines Page was born in Cary, NC, on August 5, 1855. While serving on the Country Life Commission, he represented Southern interests. Page came to age during the post Civil War Reconstruction. In the wake of the war’s devastation and highly charged Reconstruction efforts, many of Page’s contemporaries amplified the continued schism between the North and South.

Leaders of the old Confederacy were themselves divided. Charles G. Sellers, Jr. (Cooper, 1977, p. xv-xvi) maintained “Page’s own life and career symbolized the way that Southerners during the last century found themselves torn between the unpalatable alternatives of clinging to nostalgic myths about themselves and bowing to the realities of an urban, industrial north.” By the close of the nineteenth century, Southerners continued to be identified with their region rather than citizens of a united nation. Page, however, emphasized reunification with the North and participation in the national life.

Following an academic career that included Trinity College, NC (now Duke University) and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, Page became a journalist and editor. His writing style gained him employment for the New York World. In 1883 he returned to North Carolina and became editor of the Raleigh State Chronicle. Four years later, he moved to New York again and worked for publications including Forum, Atlantic Monthly, and World’s Work. He also became a partner with Doubleday, Page and Company publishers.

As a journalist, Page was a philanthropist, social reformer, and amateur politician. Much like Midwestern journalist William Allen White of Kansas, Page presented a Southerner’s perspective on national issues. National leaders, including presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, recognized many of his ideas. Page consulted with Roosevelt about Southern issues, including lynching and conservation. Cooper (1977) added that Page’s rural origins and early advocacy of agricultural improvement led him to perceive the need to bridge the widening gap between city and country in the United States. His fondest cause on the national scene was the effort to redress the balance between rural and urban America. Page’s views were on recognized when Roosevelt appointed him to the commission.

Before his death in 1918, Page was appointed U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. His journalistic writing would fill many volumes and he wrote three books. “However it is his letters, so rich in literary and human quality and so full of whimsical humor that will stand as Page's most enduring contribution to American literature” (Knowsouthernhistory.net).

Works by Walter Hines Page

  • 1902. The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths, Being Essays toward the Training of the Forgotten Man in the Southern States. New York: Doubleday, Page.
  • 1923. A Publisher's Confession. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Co.
  • 1952. The School That Built a Town. New York: Harper.

Recommended Resources

  • Cooper, John Milton. 1977. Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American 1855-1918 Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Quotation in text above is from WALTER HINES PAGE: THE SOUTHERNER AS AMERICAN, 1855-1918 by John M. Cooper. Copyright © 1977 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.
  • Knowsouthernhistory.net. “Celebrating the South’s People, Culture, History, and Heritage, Walter Hines Page: 1855-1918.” http://www.knowsouthernhistory.net/Biographies/WH_Page (Accessed: June 6, 2008).

Other Commission Members