The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-10-11

THE CHILD. IN THE MIDST. When the Lord of the great and the
 The potter whose hand shapes our Sets a child in the midst of the market
 When the world-peoples chaner all Sets "a Child with it's innocent questions,
 Its fower-face dimpled and nne, Tn stbe very hearts core of the clamor,
 A thought of the Maker Divine And men, in their lust for dominion, Crush the beauty and charm from thas Make the nower-face withered ssd Bind the hands and the feet With a
 That childhood can never.umtie Deem not that Jehovah unheeding
 Looks down from the heights of the
 sky. He sees, though we think Him unseeing. Grind down to the life-blood of chn-
 when the poor little bond-servant
 kneels In the pang of it's frishtful abasemsnt- There Is coming dark day. of tudg- And the Lord of the child will be
 there.
 The child in the midst, as we've mar
 Bent -shouldered. duli-eyed and a That cringes at word and at letter,
 That cries for the rest of the grave; With our free flag unfolding above 1t,
 So free from the pine to the palm. And our scared pallied children be-
 There's jar in the lit of our psalm, From the mine where the midnight ens
 From the mill where the ciossed air With the. dust of the weaving that
 chokes 1t;
 From the home. where its fevered With mans toll, when God meant it for
 The child in the midst. in our clay God moulded. greed-marred' calls 10
 For the vengeance were daring this Margaret E. sangster in October Mo
 Clure's.
 The following suggestion comes from the Child Labor Committee of the Ma tional Congress of Mothers to the Mothers Clubs and may lead to line of wholesome thought some of the noble women who are devoted to the in- terest of t"rhe Child"
 No work could do more good than helping a little one to learn"
 The suggestion is as follows:
 The new law of New York which re- ouires children to cover a certain amount of work before leaving school has brought to light the fact that an immense number of children never get beyond the first, second or third grade before leaving school; ] mean that they never accomplish more school work than a normal child should cover in one, two or three years of school at- tendance, though they may comply with the letter of the law and remain nominaly in attendance until their fourteenth birthday.
 While this has been brought to light in a striking manner in New York, 1t Is doubtless equally true in every other great city. It has, therefore, occurred to me that there Is fine field of most interesting and fruitful effort awaiting any group of Mothers Club members who would devote a year to the inc vestigation and help of the public school children who fail of promotion. Many such children become truants out of Encouragement. and from truancy readily take the father step to becoming serious offenders. All chill dren who fail of promotion lose just so much of the good of their few school years.
 have no doubt that it would im- mediately appear that some schools show a much larger proportion of fail ures than others, due to over-crowded class rooms, half time sessions, incom- petent teachers, etc.
 Such school are apt to be in neigh borhoods in which the family life leaves much to be desired, and children are kept at home recklessly to take care of the baby, run errands, etc.
 If you think we'll of this suggestion. will you not get 1t brought to the at- tention of the clubs? It interlocks with the work of child labor commit tees to this extent, that children who are going regularly forward at school are neither at work. nor in danger of falling out of school. breaking the compulsory education law and the child labor law, because they are discouraged and bored And if a child has failed of promotion once, and is taken hold of by wise friend immediately, his diff faculties inquired into, and reasonable steps taken to help him avoid the same misfortune a second time. this may make a fortunate difference in his whole future life.
 Y < .&
 NEW YORK wOMAN's CLUB.
 The following account is given in The Club Woman of the Cosmopolitan Home Club of New York. of which Mrs Richard Henry Savage is President. It will be of interest to club women as A departure in woman's clubdom as 1t is modelled quite after mans idea of a club:
 up to the present time the tendency or women's clubs has been to pursue more or less strenuous purposes They generally stand for something which means hard work. Owning a home. the fundamental Idea of all mems clubs, mas not heretofore seemed to appeal to women The reaction has. however, set in; all over the country women are