The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-09-16

people than Mrs. Blaine, but her son
was too delicate in health to endure
the wholesome public school training.
His mother visited school after school,
searching out a place where she might
enroll her boy pupil She herself
was wise enough to understand just
what she wanted.
One day lady in black called to
visit the Chicago normal school. The
principal, Colonel Francis Parker, was
away that morning, but the teachers
conducted the lady from room to room
in the building. She noted everything
with a discriminating mind and took
her leave. She bought that day one
of Colonel Parker's books on education
and studied it. 1t did not take her
long to decide that the right instructor
for her boy was a teacher trained in
Colonel Parker's normal school. Not
long afterward that gentleman received
a letter telling him that the writer had
visited his school and desired him to
call on her in reference to getting
tutor for her son. The letter was sign
ed ANITA Mccormick Blaine"
81 don't know her. Who is she?
said Colonel Parker. He was actually
so rapt heart and soul in his work that
rich in his own town.
Well, the next step was that little
Emmons Blaine was sent every day in
a carriage from one end of Chicago to
the other to attend the primary aca-
denaic department of Colonel Parker S
normal school. The next step after
that, and the great one, was that Anita
Mccormick Blaine found her own work
the task which, when, at the end, she
lays it down finished, she can point to
and say:
This is my justification for being
born
She founded model normal school
and placed Colonel Parker at the head.
1t was called the Chicago institute
and cost 100000 to build Mrs. Blaine
herself personally assisted in the PLAN
ming of the departments and of the
buildings themselves. She made a
study of pedagogy that she might
know what was wanted. The object
of the institute was to train every per-
son who took it's course to be an edu-
cational expert. Mrs. Blaine even put
her teachers on a salary and sent them
to Europe to study and travel a year
in order to be better fitted for their
work. To perfect her undertaking she
allotted to the new teachers college
regularly the sum of $4,000 year for
its running expenses.
This noble school for teachers, which
OOl1 It's lOQHQSI anu It's WOI hAIl& nGdO
Colonel Parker, were too modest to al
low to be called by either of their
names, is now connected with the de-
partment of pedagogy of the Chicago
university, Mrs. Blaine still footing the
bills. She is so quiet and so unosten-
tatious in her philanthropy that sur
prisingly few people in America know
of it.
The heart and mind of Anita McCor-
mick Blaine, interested through her son,
in all that pertained to primary educa-
ton, early turned to the children of
those mothers who did not have millions
of dollars to spend. Were these little
ones being prepared in the best way
to earn their own living in a world
where labor competition is the fiercest
and most merciless of all? No, they
were not, wise educators declared In
dustrial education, manual training
was the kind of learning needed to start
them right. Thenceforward Mrs. Blaine
studied Industrial problems along with