The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-03-09
WOMAA'S PROBLEM
The School Question is the
Woman's Question.
It is Theirs by inheritance and They Have
Wrestled With it Through Years of
Anxiety.

We tuluk -lnlS time DlOSC suspicious ~
urge general movement of all our edu-
cationa forces in that direction, and
therefore We appeal to all patriotic men
and women who love their State, and es-
pecially that part of their State which
is worth more than all it's timber, lands,
mines and manufacturing plants, to band
themselves together under the leadership
of our educational Governor"
/ quote the above from recent issue
of the News and Observer, because L
believe it contains the spring which is
cry in motion to accomplish the grand re-
! suits to which the educational movement
aspires. That spring is the patriotic
women"
THE Southern woman does not like to
mingle in politics. She has a strong in
: clination to draw her skirts about her
and pass by on the other side" leaving
the men to manage the government in
their own way, and feeling glad to be free
from a responsibility which would GER
.tainly interfere with duties that are more
congenial to her. She hates a campaign
year. and it must be confessed that she
cannot understand how her husband, af
ter an election can resume friendly rela-
tions with men with whom he has en-
gag in a series of moral gonging and bit
ter personalities. She is not made that
wa yand she does not care to try to ex-
ercise her talents in any such manner.
Nevertheless the Southern woman is a
power in politics, and the men know it,
for this reason she is invited to attend
the great political gatherings, where
clever orators tip the point of their argu-
mehts by urging the righteousness of
their views for her sake; she attends
these meetings with reluctance and only
because she is urged to do SO, but when
a crisis is at hand, and she is appealed to
in behalf of her home and her children,
then she becomes active in every way
that her sex and training make possible,
and she throws her whole Influence on
the side of the man who claims to be
fighting for her cause, and / have never
known a campaign in which the women
took especial interest that did not bring
large results, if not victory to the cause
which she espoused; but for all that she
does not like politics.
However, there is a public question
that closely concerns the women of North
Carolina: that is the education of the
children. The problem is legitimately
their own. 1t is theirs by inheritance, and
thus by long possession they have
wrestled with it through years of anxiety
and self-denial, patiently struggling with
the burden as we'll as they could, though
they like the Israelites of old. knew that
they were required to make bricks with
out straw" Bricks to render fit the
walls of the State. The men of North
Carolina have never appreciated the diff
fculties in the way of education; they
have made laws which have never been
enforceds and they have made appropria-
tions of money which have in turn been
misappropriated by ignorant and incom-
petent officials with the best intentions.
They have paid their children's tuition
at private schools, if they had anything
to pay with, and if they had not the chill
dren have been allowed to pick up what
information they could at the public
school, with the help of the toiling
mother, who has filled the breach like the
heroine that she is.
l have known mothers, respectable
white women with living husbands, who
took in washing to pay their children's
tuition at a good school, and l have
known mothers who took in sewing to exc
out a living, who sat up half the night
and did extra sewing to accomplish the
same great purpose.
God alone knows what the State owes
to the mothers, of North Carolina. Even
the. educated. father gives only few
minutes TO inquire into the progress and
occupation of his child's daily life, then
he turns it over to the mother as if he
had performed the whole duty of man,
satisfied that the work will go on some
how; but he never knows how close is
the intercourse between the mother and
child, as the doors of learning are opened
and it stands on the dark threshold OF
knowledge calling to her to hold light.
Then she becomes living dictionary, a
grammar, a history a mythology, an en-
cyclopedia and a general book of refer
sence and biography. The child receives
from her its first impressions of the true,
the. beautiful and the good, in literature
WxEg