The Adair County news. [volume] (Columbia, Ky.) 1897-1987, 1911-04-19

Superintendent of Public instruction,
Frankfort, Ky.
number of the leading school men of
the state, asking them to attend a
conference at the Commercial club.
That conference met on the 31st day
of December last. An organization
was formed, an executive committee
appointed, and it was decided to hold
a state wide convention on this date,
in the interest of the rural school
movement.
1.-The slogan, More Schools and
Better Schools" means to the state
more factories and better factories,
more railroads and better railroads,
more traction lines and better trac-
ton lines, more agriculture and bet
ter agriculture, more citizens and bet
ter citizenship-in brief, school de-
velopment means state development"
Prof. Regenstein then introduced
Captain Brinton B. Davis, president
Of the Louisville Commercial club,
who said:
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens of
Kentucky: 1t is a noble cause that
brings here today. 1t is a cause as
worthy and great as any for which or
ganized society has ever fought. We
see around us some of it's standard
bearers. Men who have truly conse-
Grated their lives TO the uplift of HUI
mainly devoting their time, energy and
talents to the education Of the growing
generations. The Louisville Commercial
Club extends to those gentlemen a cor
did welcome, doubly so because we are
bound by a common interest in the fur
therance of a project for which they
are giving their all, and to which we
fam would contribute our mites.
IT is our duty to so exercise our stew
ardships that those who follow may in
herit a treasure enriched through the
intelligent manner of its application.
We should take for example not the
servant who buried his own talent in the
ground that he might return it intact
to his master, but he who returned ten
talents for the five placed in his trust.
1 believe l am voicing an opinion in
which you will readily concur when
| say that the greatest of our natural re-
sources is the human mind. Without that
great gift, all others were useless in
deed. There are people on this globe
who have been as richly endowed as we
nave Deen Dy MOIn6T EdTIn, DOt VINO,
owing to their ignorance, allowed field
and forest and mine to lie unproductive
and unworked. In other words. they
have not sufficient intelligence to appro-
pirate their resources.
This great natural resource-the hu-
man mind-the greatest of earthly bles-
sings, is then our most cherished heri-
tage and we should not only preserve
it intact. but put it out at every usury
-afr fola
We afford our children greater advan-
tages than we enjoyed, we shall have
the conscientious conviction of having
performed our duty.
The foremost need Of an educational
system is to keep abreast Of the times.
What was good enough for the fifteenth
century was not good enough for the
sixteenth century, and the demands of
the twentieth century cannot be met by
the pottage of the nineteenth century.
The current Of life Is ever onward, but
what shall we say II we cut off the sup
ply at the rivers source.
II we fail to meet the demand of the
times; If we do not interpret the call
Of duty Alright, we shall build around
this prosperous empire a Chinese wall,
within which will grow the rank weeds
of ignorance and idleness and vice and
superstition, barring all the vital i'm
pulses that should act as spring showers
On fertile fields.
Show me the wealth Of Kentucky. You
will point not to the wide fields or the
on-rushing streams, or the waving for
ssts, or the mountains with their treas
ures; nay, you will point to the human
beings who cultivate the fields, WELD the
Ak and saw In the forest, and use pick
and shovel and dynamite to open the
mountain caves. They constitute the
grand asset Of the State of Kentucky:
nay. they are the State.
And what of those who take I'D the
task when we relinquish 1t: those chill
1ren who now go to school to have their