Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1911-11-27
WHO RUNS THE FARM !?
The Old Farmer And His Wife moi
College Women, Club Women
And Woman Suffragists.
lCnmmunicated.l


To The Editor The old Maryland
farmer and his wife know exactly
what they want They have no need
of instruction from the president of
the Baltimore Woman's College, DR..
Eleanor Lord, or one of the faculty in
the person of Miss Fannie Cook Gates.
These ladies, with Mrs. Benjamin
w. Corkran, of the club women, and
Mrs. William w. Ellicott, of the
suffragists, are Just now seeking to
convince the farmers that compulsory
education is just the thing for their
growing sons and daughters. albeit /
have not as yet found farmer who
thinks the same. These women have
gone so far as to beg the editors of
the county papers of Maryland TO
give them a column weekly for the
farmers exploitation along the COM
pulsory line. They have secured the
i assent of ten editors thus far.
Let the editors publish them, but
let them also publish the farmers
side of the question, and it will be
amusing to see the women's inability
to reply and the shield they make of
their femininity in defense. / have
found it ever thus with the best of
them all over the country.
The Maryland farmer wants moth
ing that will reduce the white and
black boys around him and his own
sons any further away from work, yet
the compulsionists boast that COM
pulsory education will do this. Mrs.
Corkran, in one of her addresses, es-
pecially emphasized this. She said it
would educate the boy, make him no
longer a drudge and newer of wood
and drawer of water, but give him
an easv job where mental work could
throw out handwork, and with bet
ter compensation. This is the doc
trine the farmers are to hear, the
doctrine which already sees too many
of them selling out or with mortgaged
farms.
But leading and practical men all
over the country are seeing and ac-
knowledging the evils that this doc
trine of ''soft snaps" is spreading.
From juvenile idleness comes juvenile
crime. The country is now flooded
with it. New England has had thous-
| ands of her old farms totally aban-
| doned and New York is now bowling
about the same, while all the states
of the North and West are likewise
complaining. Even for city work the
schools are not educating the boys.
Mayor William J. Gaynor, of New
York, recently delivered himself on
| this subject before a public school.
He has excited the editors and aroused
the educators of the country. The
New York Sun calls him reaction
airy" but let me give fe " lines from
him and let the old farmer compare
it with Mrs. Corkran:
every one of you ought to be get
ting ready to work. If the schools
are teaching you something different
from that, then the schools are doing
great deal of harm in the end in
place of doing good, because every
body has to work for a living. And
there is no one who earns his living
more honestly, or is more to be
honored, than those who work with
their hands, carpenters, blacksmiths
and transfers and people that work
at something.
L II Hdu " IupISSS any IuiuS upOu
the educators of the city and the
teachers, / would tell them of all
things to try an get out of the heads
of the young people growing up in
this generation that they are being
educated to avoid work. They ought
to be taught that they must work
| otherwise education is curse in
stead of a blessing. Unfortunately,
as few people are taught upward,
hey get distaste for work, and that
is creating trouble in this country
Mayor Gaynor, in the same breath,
| took occasion to condemn the woman
| suffragists, and well he might, for
| they stand as the perverters of youth
along with the club and college wo-
| men.
FRANCIS B. LIVESEY,
Clarkson, Md.