Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1890-05-17
"The Families of John and Jake"

tne lunuamental principles OF labor reform and
while she pictures an ideal life she only carries out
the precepts of Christianity The world purged
of selfshness, which the writer justly ascribes as
the cause of all the troubles, will indeed be dawn
for the millennium.
John and Jake were sons of two poor washer
women. Johns mother was thrifty and laid by a
little of her earnings and brought John up to as
sst her IN many ways. He could turn the wringer
and fetch the water and iron little, and he could
even mend clothes after they were ironed
This method was viewed with great scorn by
Jake's mother and Jake and all the neighbors, who
had different idea of bringing up' boys
Jake's mother bore all the burdens on her own
shoulders; Jake lay in bed in the morning till
school time, and loafed about the streets after
school, The trouble, the reader can readily dis
Germ, started with the mothers. John was indus
trious. Jake was a loafer John prospered and
when he married his family soon became identified
with the best people. Jake married, drank whis-
key, and his children were beggars, and bye-and-
bye John had to build and maintain prisons and
poor-houses for the Jakes The writer would
strike at the root-education prevention Of vice.
$50! God, helpus rescue these little chidren!'
throbbed the woman heart. And in answer to this
prayer, the Spirit of Good planted in the mind of
one far off the wonderful idea of the kindergarten
the garden where children might be cultivated
as skillfully patiently and enderly as the scenti-
fc gardener eultivates his plants Brought from
the sea, these schools sprang up by scores to
gather the children in. Then was proven
the truth of the saying "a little child shall lead
Them 1t was found more possible to rouse the
father to ambition when he saw the improvement
in his child and many hardened mother became
like wax under the new emotions created by the
tender and beautiful songs sung to her day after
day by these babes of the Kindergarten.
Through the Kindergarten the child was led to the
industrial school, where every faculty was cult
waited simultaneously, and education became what
it should be-a symmetrical culture of the eye,
hand and brain, instead of stupid drill in mere
verbasm. Lessons in constructiveness banshed
forever the old restless desire for destructiveness
Here, too, the writer directs shaft at the public
school system, where
"The children receive the daily dose of cram,
administered much after the method of fattenpg
the Strasburg geese Unless the same
amount was swallowed by all, the wheels would be
retarded, and the machine could not turn out the
requisite number properly stuffed. OF the pity
of it. 1t did not matter so much for the children
of the well-to-do Johns. They had other chances
in life. But it was the one chance for the very poor
"'It is difficult to teach them manners, is it
mott? SAID visitor one day to the teacher of
young mob, composed mostly of Jakes
Manners! exclaimed the tagged looking
teacher; there is no time for teaching manners in
the public schools
" Manners are stronger than laws says Emer-
son. What wonder that dreadful crime and bru-
tality were common IN land where there was no
time to teach children manners.
1.-THE papers are filled, year after year, with
proof that We are becoming nation of bribe-
takers, embezzlers, betrayers of the most sacred
trusts; but there is no time to teach honor in the
public schoos"
To follow the writer in her plans for reconstruc-
ton is to fall into the ranks of the reformer. 1t
all is made to seem so simple. Her every argu-