Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1904-08-25
THE MANNERS OF CHILDREN
World Travellers Declare These Of
This Country to Be the Worst
They Have Seen.

San English lady and gentleman,
who visited me recently, after a six
months tour of the United States, ex-
tending from San Francisco, Seattle
and Los Angeles to the east, we're the
most enthusiastic foreigners with re-
gard to the United States and the
American people that ever met" re-
marked a Washington woman, reports
the Star. During the four days they
spent with my husband and me their
praises for what they had seen here
were unceasing. But they had one crit
ieism, and only one. That criticism
had to do with the public conduct of
American children. They frankly de-
clared that nowhere in the world-and
they are globe trotters of years stand
ing-had they seen such utterly rude
and unmannerly children of both sexes,
as they found all over the United
States-most particularly. they speci-
fed, the children of well-to-do parents.
"They narrated many stories on
corning the roughness of manner, con-
trariness, fiat disobedience, crankiness,
d%isrespect to elders and ~pig-headed
stubbornness of children with whom
they had come in contact in their lei
surely travels over the United States.
l am bound to say that their stories
perfectly agreed with observations OF
my own.
"The thing that appeared to surprise
these English folk the most was that
American mothers rarely or never cor
rected their young children for rude
or even vicious conduct in public. They
told of how, at a Chicago hotel, a little
six-year-old girl, in a bad humor in
the dining hall, deliberately knocked
over the sugar bowl so that the loaf
sugar was scattered all over the floor.
The little girls mother hadn't a single
word Of reproof for the vixen, 1t
seemed.
Dazzling, how could your was all
she said, w%hereupon the dear little girl
promptly told her mother to shut up
an injunction which the mother i'm
mediately obeyed.
"The E~nglishman and his wife posi-
lively declared that in all of their van
derings from the Pacific coast east
ward they had never ono seen a mis-
behaving child corrected or even Sc
verely reproved.
ri am, as my husband says, a mighty
sudden woman when I hear any crit
icism of the United States or the peo-
pie of the United States, and I believe
I am somewhat quicker even than
some of my most intensely patriotic
neighbors to resent criticism from the
tongues of foreigners.
"Yet, in all fairness, I was and am
bound to confess that there was a very
great deal of truth in these remarks
Of the Englishman and his wife re-
specting our children. American chill
dren are rough and rude and willful
and ~disobedient, and whosoever fails
to perceive that they are becoming
more SO every year is simply blind.
There is altogether too much mothers
congress maudliness employed in the
rearing of children in this country
too much of the so-called moral sua-
sion business. There may be children
in the world somewhere who are amen
able to treatment by the moral suasion
method, but l have never happened to
run across any of them myself, and |
have reared and married off a brood Of
six of them myself, quite aside from
the fact that I used to be a child my
self. Too many women are deriving
their ideas of how to raise children
from the more or less mawkish period
ical literature penned on that subject,
and the corrective rod, together with
the eminently effectual slipper and
hair brush's back, have been made OBJ
solete for the purposes for which they
used to be employed. Take a look
around you and count how many nice,
well-mannered, respectful, obedient
young children you know, and you will
be surprised at the conclusion you are
bound to arrive at. Nor is it at all
necessary to suppose that children
have got to be priggish to be we'll be-
haved. I hate to have to own it, as an
American woman and mother, but it
Is a simple fact that has come under
my observation in the course of several
visits to England that English children
are far and away the best hammered
children in the world. The boys are
manly, rugged little chaps, not '~sissies'
by any manner of means, but of re-
spectful demeanor and infallible good
conduct when in the presence of their
elders. They are strictly taught, too,
to be fair and square with each other
when at play with their boy mates.
The little girls are lively and even
hoydenish, but they are extremely
sweet and amiable, to the point of be-
ing 'old-fashioned,' in their manner to-
ward their parents and all older per-
sons. English children, in brief, are
perfectly and entirely lovable. And
the fact is not to be overlooked that.
with regard to English boys at an,
rate the institution known as the
birch is still a prominent article Of
furniture in English households.
"There is entirely too much senti.
mentality in the appearing Of Ameri-
can children; and too much sentiment
tality and patience and indulgence in
making rowdy, leering youths Of our
boys and self-willed, impetuous and
wholly selfish young women Of our
girls.
II didn't admit as much to my Eng
lish friends, but | thought it."
Moral Of the Lesson.
One Sunday a teacher was trying to
illustrate to her small scholars the les