The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-03-11
MOTHERS ARE FIRST.
President Roosevelt Says They Are
the Country's Best Citizens.

Washington, March lit is the
mother and the mother only who is
a better citizen even than the soldier
who fights for his country. The sue
cesSful mother, the mother who does
her part in rearing and training
Alright boys and girls, who are to be
the men and women of the genera
ton, is of greater use to the COM
munity and occupies. if she only
would realize it, more honorable as
any successful man in it,
President Roosevelt thus opened
his speech to the delegates to the In
ternational Mothers congress here.
The delegates were received at the
White House. He said that he placed
mothers even above the civil war
veterans. He continued:
mo scheme of education, no social
attitude, can be right unless it is
based fundamentally upon the
recognition of seeing that the girl is
trained to understand the supreme
dignity, the supreme usefulness Of
motherhood. Unless the average
mother, unless she bears a sufficient
number of children. so that the race
shall increase, unless she brings up
these children sound in soul and
mind, and body-unless this is true
of the average woman, no brilliancy
of genius no mater1ai prosperity, no
triumphs Of science and industry, will
avail to save the race from ruin and
death. The mother is the one SUI
preme asset of national life; she is
more important by far than the sue
ceSsful statesman or business man or
artist or scientist.
1.-THE man is poor creature who
does not realize the infinite difficulty
of the woman's task, who does not
realize what is done by her who bears
and rears the children; she who can
not even be sure until the children are
well grown that any night will come
when she can have it entirely to her
self to sleep in. I abhor and condemn
the man who fails to recognize all his
obligations to the woman who does
her duty. But the woman who shirks
her duty as wife and mother is just
despise her as we despise and con-
denim the soldier who ffinches in bat
tie.
you cannot have good citizens,
good men and women of the next
generation if the boys and girls are
worked in factories to the stunning of
their moral. mental and physical
growth. Wherever the national gov
eminent can reach it should do away
with the evils Of child labor, and
trust this will be done; but much
must be done by the actions of the
each Of you, in your several states,
all that you can to secure the enact
ment, and then the enforcement of
laws that shall put a stop to the en-
ployment of children to tender age In
doing what only grown persons
should do.
DO not forget that love is what
the family is based on; but don't do
children, don't do grown people the
dreadful njustfce-through a love
that is merely one form Of weakness
of failing to make the child, or
might add, the man, behave itself or
himself. A marriage should be a
partnership where each of the two
parties has his or her rights, where
each should be more careful to do
his or her duty than to exact duty
from the other partner, but where
each must, in Justice to the other
partner no less than to himself or
herself, exact the performance of
duty by that other partner"