The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1903-04-22
A. Truth Unpleasantly Told.

The Southern Education Board,
with headquarters at Knoxville, Tenn,
is doing a goc1 work in trying to
arouse the people of the South to take
more active interest in educational
matters, and is sending out great
deal of literature on this subject. 1t
publishes little magazine called
Southern Education, the last issue of
which contained the following:
The average salary of white teachers
in South Carolina last year was s195. %.
It is said that the average cook in
Charleston and Columbia receives
something like 5000 year! The girls
who fill the bottles in the State dis
pensary at Columbia with liquor get
$500 a year. South Carolina pays the
county jailor as much for feeding and
clothing criminals as she pays her
county school teachers. Yet there is
higher standard of living expected
of a teacher than of cook or of one
who fills hotties in a dispensary
The consciousness of the public must
be aroused to the fact that the train
ing of children is the highest calling of
mankind, requiring broad knowledge
and careful preparation. But real men
and women will not prepare themselves
for vocation which is the last resort
of the needy and the physically iDcom-
petent and which subjects its devotees
to life of poverty and public in
gratitude.
This has aroused the ire of the Flor
ence Times, which replies to it as fol-
lows:
This is a gross Misrepresentation and
is offensive to South Carolina. We
are not doing as much for cur schools
and cur school teachers as we
ought, but we are paying them
better than this magazine would have
its readers suppose. If the writer had
given the figures paid in monthly
salaries instead Of yearly the state
ment might not have tended SO we'll to
accomplish the purposein view by the
writer, but it would have been less a
slander on the people,of this State.
In connection with this statement it is
necessary to say that the average term
of the county school is about three
months. There is world of differ
ence between paying an amount OF
money for three months service and
paying it for a year. Many teachers
have two or three shoots at different
times during the year, others have
business of another kind which they
conduct the rest of the year and the
school is not their only means OF sup
port. It is all very we'll to say that
the school term ought to be longer,
they are growing longer year by year.
Matters are bad enough, there is
no use to make them appear worse than
they are. Such misrepresentations
as this will not make many friends for
the board in this State. Outside in
reference with our affairs are never
pleasing.
We agree to some extent with what
The Times says, but we should not
shut our eyes to real conditions in the
State. The educational magazine may
have misrepresented affairs in this
State, but could this have been pos
sible to do if we had been paying our
teachers as much as we should pay
them2 The truth is a mighty hideous
thing sometimes, and it is doubly so
when even part of the truth about a
thing that we would like to conceal is
paraded before the world.
= It is fact, of which The Times is
doubtless fully aware, that in South
Carolina we pay our school teachers
shamefully small salaries. It is prob
ably true that some of them are not
worth any more than they get, but if
we paid better salaries We could and
would get better teachers.
We ought not to vince if we are CEN
sured along this line, for we fully de-
serve Henderson Mail
A Sumter man has secured a patent
| for /. ,orpo+1aI MOTION machine Did