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3. Center Stage
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81 3. Center Stage In this country, everyone must pay for everything he gets. —THE WIZARD, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz In becoming the owner of the State Chronicle in 1885, Josephus Daniels laid the foundation for a move up the economic ladder. His next objective was to move up the social ladder. A judicious marriage might help on that front. Those who knew Daniels well would have expected him to marry and settle down. Despite the fact that he remained at home with his mother until he was twenty- three, relatively late for that time and place, he was definitely the “marrying type.” The product of a stable home headed by a strong woman whom he admired deeply, Daniels remained comfortable with and sincerely enjoyed the company of members of the opposite sex. He was a family man at heart, and it was just a matter of time before he settled down with a wife. He enjoyed the quest almost as much as he did his rise in the newspaper business. At the time, courting was strictly proscribed. The Methodists in particular could be quite strict regarding social interactions between their young men and women. It was said, in jest one assumes, that Methodists objected to the act of making love while standing upright because they feared it might lead to dancing. Still, Daniels never let his religious convictions stand between him and female companionship, and just as he skirted his church’s strictures on alcohol, he was known to dance now and then. His memoirs and correspondence contain frequent references to dalliances with Tar Heel daughters, especially those from prominent families. During his brief stay in Chapel Hill, this seems to have particularly been the case. In his description of John Manning, professor of law at the University of North Carolina, Daniels made a point of noting the good doctor’s daughters, whom Daniels visited frequently. Similarly, of Adolphus Mangum , head of the Department of Moral Philosophy, Daniels observed that Mangum possessed “eloquence and [was] a delightful conversationalist. Sometimes he monopolized me when I would have preferred to talk to his daughter.”1 Daniels’s ease of manner around women had been a prominent Center Stage 82 feature of his personality since his days studying at the Wilson Collegiate Institute and hanging out at the Wilson skating rink. If Chapel Hill offered more and brighter prospects than Wilson, then Raleigh must have been a Babylon of female companionship.Of the Raleigh scene, Daniels said with humorous understatement, “I found in Raleigh a difference in the social life from that I had known inWilson.” In some cases he chose friends based on the possibilities of interacting with young women in their households. “I made friends, among them the Moores (there was a good- looking daughter),” and he befriended Colonel J. M. Heck, an influential Raleighite whose daughter was “an accomplished lady, Miss Susie Heck.” Daniels even pursued the daughters of his professional competitors, including one in the Hale family, the Raleigh publishing family for whom Daniels had once worked and with whom he now competed in the city’s newspaper market.2 Daniels clearly had an eye on a long- term relationship that he hoped would lead to marriage with a daughter of one of the area’s more prominent families. Because he was from a lower socioeconomic class than the women he longed for, however, he could only maintain the most formal connections with them. Although he mixed well enough in polite company, in his search for a suitable mate, he found it difficult to cross the social chasm between petit bourgeois Wilson and haut bourgeois Raleigh. PartoftheproblemforDanielswasthatthesocialstratificationofRaleigh was better defined and more intimidating than anything he knew inWilson or even Chapel Hill.Years later Daniels would joke about the difference between Raleigh and Wilson, and one can still feel the sting in his social alienation : “My boyhood home was both Democratic and democratic, whereas Raleigh was politically not so Democratic and even less democratic in its social atmosphere.”3 Now in his early twenties, and showing every sign of being on his way to a reasonably successful newspaper publishing career, Daniels had bright economic prospects, but he lacked both a distinguished name and wealth. Thus if he found an eligible young woman from a higher rung of the social ladder, he could settle down and start a family while simultaneously gaining entrée into a more elevated social sphere. On the plus side, his business had...