The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1902-07-19
Farmers and Public Schools.
For the Democratic Advocate.


MEsSRs. EDITORS The Ellicott City
Democrat, of July 18th, publishes and
commends recent editorial from you on
the extrayagancies and follies of the schools.
If they are not checked by sober and prac-
tical people it will ere long take the major
part of the money of the country to run
the schools
If the schools were really doing what is
claimed for them some apology would exist
for their continued demands on the tax
payer s pockets, but they are not; as regards
the farmers, they are bankrupting and
decimating them, and they are making in
capables and imbeciles out of thousands of
young men, who, but for them, would have
been sturdy yeomen Of the land.
For many years past, thousands of arti-
cles have appeared in both prose and poet
ry, asking, but not answering, just such
questions as those in the following poem,
by Elwyn Hoffman, which take from the
Chicago Farmer Advance.
THE INCAPABLE.
Below him lie the fields he scorns to till,
Above him shine the heights be cannot reach;
The sirens of the dream behaunt him still,
And still the burdened OK S groans doth reach
Up from the length ming furrow, that turns down
Together hopes and daisies one By one
Incapablel He'll coined that bitter word
To be the bearer of a special sting;
sting more keen than felt by those who've erred
Against the laws of Gods adminis' tring
Incapable Paused halfway up the height
He'll sends its heralds to him with the night.
grievous plight Is his, but who's to blame?
Where stands the soulless father of the fault?
Who sent him lust of power-dream of fame
Aud taught his soul from low tasks to revolt?
Who made him hate bis sire because he plods2
Who gave Kim frail desires and fragile gods2
The answer to the above questions is >
The Supporters Of the Public Schools
Our land is filed with these incapables,
and their multiplication goes steadily on.
Everywhere males and females are leav-
ing the farms. The negro in the south as
well as the whites in the north. In both
sections the farmer is continually at his
wits end TO obtain help for the fields, and
his wife is in the same predicament re-
garding the help for the house.
A howl has lately gone up from all over
Pennsylvania regarding the lack Of farm
help An employment agent in Philadel-
phia said he had 900 calls for farm help
and none offering.
The people fail to see that, with the
spread of public schools and compulsory
education, millions more are made into in
capables.
Every agricultural paper in the country
should at least lay before its farmer readers
the public school cause of their troubles.
Then, if they choose TO sustain the schools
still further, they would share the respon-
sibility with the educators, the ministers
the politicians, and, sad to say, the philan-
thropists.
By the by, every planter of the south
should rise up in condemnation of the
Rockefeller Ogden Baldwin educational
combine that proposes to uplift the south
by public school processes. It will damn
it. started the crusade against this COM
bine upon its first appearance. 1t is now
well under way in the South Atlantic
States. The editor of the Charlotte N.
G.. Observer writes me ssWhat you
write is the stuff =
FRANCIS B. LIvEsEY,
Sykesyille, Md.