The age-herald., 1901-02-26

chine. American women nave given beautiful monument to France, now let us join in this movement for a Howe monument at Washington. It has start ed in Alabama. let us push 1t on through the alphabet. The idea of building 1t by the pennies of the poor Is a good one. Perhaps no monument so impresses the visitor in New Orleans as the "Margar- et.'' erected by the nickles of the poor In honor of a milk woman, who left her money to an orphan asylum.
 Views of Mrs. MorrissetIe who is d valued member of the educational com- mittee of the State Federation:
 Yes, l assuredly sympathize with ths desire to raise a monument to Elias Howe. Should not this monument honor his memory by perpetuating his work the application of science to relieve the stress and strain of woman's work? 1 "Howe's efforts were confined to one branch of female labor-saving-bu men and women to-day, in schools of domestic science, are applying knowledge to every department of home life, and girls are learning there what foods are best and how to cook them; how, by sanitation. ventilation and several other actions, to keep the house pure and wholesome; how to make clothes and to launder them indeed, how to do easily and well all those things that fall to the lot of house. keepers.
 Four of these great schools are in the United States-the Drexel Institute and the Pratt Institute in New England, or | of {r science at Denver, in the west.
 Now. can we build as memorial to the inventor who frightened the drudgery of women, school of domestic science in the south? If this be beyond our means, can we endow a chair of domestic science in an Alabama college and call 1t the Elias Howe chair?
 Soon in the vicinity of Niagara Falls will be erected by MT. H. D. Perky the second school of domestic science found ed by this New England patriot. For each of two years he has given to Ala bama scholarship at the Dread Insti- tute, Worcester Mass, his first school. Next year at the Niagara school he will give us four scholarships. Could we help establish there one more scholarship for Alabama-the Elias Howe scholarship and subscribe in such a way as to make 1t perpetual? By all means let monu- ments be such memorials as continue to | develop the principle of a cause or the types of a character to be honored.''
 From Mrs. Ockenden, the first woman member of the Alabama Press Associa- tion and secretary-treasurer of the Mont gomery Memorial Association:
 I've erect monuments to men who de- fend their homes, their principles, their crseds; to the brave and good and true; i; and alas, to men who slay their fellow l men-to men who make war, seldom to I those who make peace and happiness; rarely to the simple good and great, like humble Margaret who fed hungry chill dren in New Orleans or the great think CT like Elias Howe, who out of his mighty brain and mightier heart evolved that which answered the cry of Hood 5 'Song of the Shirt and put new blood into the veins of ghastly women. Recog- milton comes late for him-for he, too suffered-but monuments are educational and one to the inventor of the sewing machine will be an eloquent lesson 70 purblind humanity, too prone to enter tain angels unawares.' Let women build it."
 Miss Annie Kendrick Walker, the bril- liant editor of the Woman's Department of the Birmingham Age-Herald:
 ''Fhe building of a monument to Elias Howe by the women of America would be one of those remarkable instances of the changes wrought by time since it was the women who made a victorious fight against the adoption of the sewing machine in the factories where 1t was l first introduced. When the corset factory which Howe represented sent him to London he met with the most intense op- position on the part of the women, as Is frequently the case that the class to re- ceiye presumably the greatest benefit from a reform is opposed to it.
 ''The hundreds of women subsequently, thrown out of employment by the intro duction of the sewing machine and their natural opposition to the great invention will probably carry little weight today | in the expressions of American women In regard to building monument to the inventor. I doubt however whether the women in the sweat shops would grow enthusiastic over the project, or whether the other thousands of women tailors throughout the land, whose backs ache from long hours spent at a sewing ma chine are blessing the day 1t was in- vented.
 There care hundreds of women who owe their i'll health to the sewing machine There are equally as many who realize that by Its invention work has been cheapened by the subsequet reduction in | wages.
 | "On the other hand I admit many ad- vantages, but do not see that the erec- tion of monument to Elias Howe by the women of this country would be a | labor of love, when 1t is to Elias Howe that women owe much physical suffering 'The constant use of the sewing ma chine is enough to wear out the strongest man. It Is suicide to many women. | The views of a prominent officer of | several state associations:
 When asked for my views as to the monument to be erected in honor of Elias Howe there was no question in my mind | that the American women should club | together with enthusiasm and accomplish the plan. There was however, one ques- | tion, should it be a monument of stone io1 i,, no ,f