The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-02-19

Washington, Feb. 19.-The meetings
Of the mothers congress at the Airing
ton banquet hall, at the First Baptist
church and in the basement OF the
First Baptist church are all crowded
daily. Besides the nearly 1000 delegates
the women of Washington are turning
out to the meetings in prodigious num-
bers. All of the meetings are over
crodwed.
Mrs. T. w. Birney, president of the
congress, said in a short morning ad-
dress to the Arlington hall meeting:
Doubtless, each one present has some
idea, more or less definite, as to the
general objects of the congress, but still
the question recurs: How do we ex-
pect to accomplish these ends?' AS to
our objects L may say that the age in
which we live is an age of movements
a time of specialized work, organized, or
at least crystallized effort.
Continuing Mrs. Birney said that this
is a time known re-eminently in the
history of the world as woman's era.
So much has been said and written, she
added, in these latter days about the
higher education, the extended opportu-
mites OF women, that we have failed
to hear the still, small voice of child
hood. She asked how the child question
could be divorced from the woman
question. and then set out to consider
some of the needs of childhood. She
said.
Even the best intentioned parents
and teachers are often, through ignor-
ance of the nature of children, stufnb-
ling blocks in their pathway. How very
strangely the world has worked how at
variance with all natural law. For ev-
cry single kindergarten there are hun
dred, nay, a thousand prisons. jails, re-
formatorieS, asy1umS and hospitals, and
yet society cries that there is need of
more of these. Are we blind, that we
fail as nation and state and individ-
uals TO recognize the incontrDvertible
fact that such demand will never cease
until we cut off the supply?
Let mothers fathers, nurses, edu-
Gators, ministers, legislators, and,
mightiest of all in its swift, far reach
ing influence, the press, make the
child the watch word and ward of the
day and hour; let all else be secondary,
and those of us who live to see the year
1925 will behold a new world and a
new people. Untiring, universal indi-
V1dual effort, with such OrganiZa ton
only as may prove helpful, will build a
bridge upon which a struggling human
ity may safely cross into a new world,
leaving forever the old, with it's un--
ending reformatory methods and its
shattered homes
LAS mothers, especially, who would
fain to see better things in the future
that is to be the inheritance of our chill
dren, we rejoice in the fact that there
never before was a time when at the
heart OF every movement, large or
small, lay such consideration for the
welfare of human beings as today. New
er before was so much strength and
money expended for the education of
the illiterate. Never before was there
such wise and wonderful projects for
preventing pauperism and disease. New
er before was the spirit of Christianity
so active in human affairs. Never was
religion so patient with ignorance, SO
pitiful to suffering, 50 ready to shake
off the ShackleS put upon it by bigotry
and to represent by it's loving activity
the power of the love of Christ"