The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-04-23

tistics he secured have furnished the pa
pers which put the child above the dollar
with ammunition that has been very ef-
fective: and North Carolina, South Caro-
lima. Georgia, Alabama, are all moving
forward on legislative lines for the pro-
lection of the children and the giving
them the chance of an education. Much
has already been done. Much remains
to be done and will be done, because the
South is a land of kind hearted people.
mill-owners and all, who are not willing
to increase private wealth or public pros
perity at the cost of the children's rights
TO life and health and education
As proof we have only to mention the
Baltimore Manufacturers Record, the
Charleston News and Courier, and the
Charlotte Observer, as distinguished for
their opposition to the Southern Educa
ton Board. to call to mind the attitude of
these papers toward the child-Iabor ques-
ticn The Charlotte Observer, after ar
guing the case for years against child
labor legislation did bow it's head to the
inevitable last year and gave the mill
owners the good advice not to oppose such
.egislation in North Carolina. The
Charleston News and Courier took the
opposite course, and after pleading the
cause of the children, betrayed them, for
motives which the late lamented Gonzales
of the Columbia State did not hesitate to
impeach as unworthy of Southern Jour
nalistic traditions. The Manufacturers
Record has furnished the ammunition for
the child-labor advocates. And in it's
last issue it puts several editorials In
suggestive proximity: "Miseducation
about the South" More Southern hit
eracy Statistics, Returning to Rea-
SON." and Common Sense and Child La
Dor" The first three are direct attacks
upon the Southern Education Board. 1t
says:
1.-The Southern Education scheme is
running the statistical business of
Southern Education and it and it
alone, is responsible for this unceasing
flood of transformation in Northern
papers,
One would think that there had never
been told any lies about the South in
Northern papers until this past year
We speak what We do know and testify
what we have seen when we say that the
Ogden party of last year by it's visit to
tho South and the reports from it in the
leading papers of the country, did more
to disseminate right and just ideas about
the South, than any single agency ever
accomplished in so short a space of time
and furthermore that this statistical
business IS entirely in the hands of com
peteIt Southern men who would be
ever to have published such
wholesale transformation as the Manu-
facturers' Record has done on the child
labor problem.
The Manufacturers Record further de-
poses and says that New England advo-
cate of the Southern Educational
Scheme. though not member of the
Board, is in favor of mixed schools OF
course if the Board is to be held respon-
sible for all the views of people who are
not it's members it will have a large and
varied assortment for criticism But
when man with the brains of Editor
r. II. Edmunds resorts to an argument
like that he betrays the weakness of his |
cause. The last editorial mentioned is a
from a New England paper
published at Fall River of course pro
testing against child-labor agitation. for
the influence of this agitation has walked
up the North as well as the South The |
editorial closes thus
'Child-labor agitation in the South
has brought to the surface divers
Carries of the masculine gender"
SO from time immemoriaI has man
placed the finger of indication upon his
4 wondering world.
This is all that needs to be said. This
attack upon the Education |
Board just before the meeting this |
week of the Educational Conference in
Richmond, has been made with unworthy
motives and for unworthy ends 1t is al
most as bad to invoke the virtue of
patriotism as it is to appeal to the in
5tincts Of religion, for the sake of boil
'tering up failing and an unholy cause.
The effort to prejudice the South against
generous and sympathetic body of men.
If both sections, to weaken their infu
ence for good and so to cripple their use
ILLNESS has been made partly for the
lake of avenging defeats already suffer
I'd in the battle for the childrens rights
md partly to forestall further legisIa
ion against the evil of child-slavery. 1t
s compliment to the Southern Educa-
ion Board that it is held responsible for
good results And the Standard feels
hat it is doing a public service to the
south in thus unmasking these newspa-
'er batteries of detraction and defama-
ion.