Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1903-08-28
HOME INDUSTRIES.
The Advantages OF Home Industries for the
Home Training OF Children.
A Continuation of Rev. E. MarshalI's Views On
Christian Socialism.

One great lack of the social order OF the
present time is the want of home training of
children-the boys and the girls-during their
minority. While they attend school, if they
have good school privileges, they are given
over, for training, to the teachers. Then,
when they leave school, they are Obliged to
seek employment away from home. In a word,
the educated and the uneducated alike must
find employment in some Office, shop, store,
factory or trade; and to find situation they
are, in most instances, compelled to leave
home. Thus, the boys and girls, at the most
critical age, are deprived of home training and
the naturally refining influence OF home.
The Creator, in His infinite wisdom, set the
family not only to populate the earth, but,
also, He gave to the family the fullness of His
owl divine authority to train, to direct and to
command the children, so that the world should
be filled with an orderly and law-loving people.
AS the crucble TO the refining of the metals,
so is the well-regulated family to the prepara-
ton of the children to make orderly and law
abiding citizens.
How may the necessity for young people to
leave home in order to find employment be
remedied?
There is one, and only one, answer: By the
restoration of home industries.
BY home industries is meant household in
dustries, in all respects similar to the household
industries of seventy FIVE or hundred years
ago, but without the olden-time drudgery.
But restore back to the homes all those in
dustres to be worked by all the improved ma
chiuery of the age. Let it once be seen that
those industries beginning to be brought
back to the homes of the people; then all the
necessary in provemen.s in machinery, adapted
to every department of work, will rapidly fol-
low.
Already, gasoline engines and electric-power
engines are at hand, for every practical purpose;
and, what is favorable to economy in their use
is that they cost nothing, and do not materially
deterorate when not in use.
Let the raising of the substances necessary
in the manufacture of textile fabrics be every
where begun, and it will at once give employ
ment to large number of people. The prep
aration of these substance for the spinning
ginny and the loom will give work to another
large class of people.
Let it once be determined by the people Of
the entire country to make at their homes such
things as can there be made, and which are in
local need; then exchange can be made by the
makers of different articles, and thus, the labor
of each requited. Every department of work
would be favorably effected. Every variety of
farm product would find home market. This
would result in great economic advantages, too
numerous to be mentioned in this short article
The rush of tine people fom country to city
would give place to trend of the people from
the cities to the country. The deserted farms
would be reoccupied, and the fields now over
grown with weeds and brush would flourish
with waving cereals and useful grasses. The
hills would be crowned with truit-bearing trees
and shrubbery and vines. The mountain
slopes would be the habitations Of happy fsmi-
lies, cheered by the gambols of well-fed and
we'll clothed and we'll behaved children. Re-
ligion aud morals would be greatly advanced.
Trusts and strikes would disappear Should
there, at times, he over supply of manufac-
tured articles, there would be no panic. The,
people would be scattered over the country, in s
their own homes, aud would find ample means
of support.