The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1911-01-06
The Effect of Example.
mail and Breeze

more than just hearing of a certain
number of classes recite lessons out
of certain number of books.
The school grounds were bare,
unadorned by any flowers or shrub
berry, so he set to work, with the
help of the scholars, and planted ?
lot of flower beds and set out a
considerable amount of shrubbery.
The kids took an interest in the
planting. as they nearly always will,
and pretty soon the grounds around
the school house began to look
entirely different.
But the important thing that
occurred was this: Not less than a
dozen families in that district, as
tthe teacher noticed, set out flow. =
beds patterned after the ones in the
school grounds.
The children had evidently gone
home and persuaded their fathers
and motherS-more likely their
mothers-that it would be a good
thing to have flower beds. So the
work of the teacher reached out a
good deal farther than he composed
it would when he undertook to
brighten up the school yard.
| believe in the influence of en-
vironment. Education ought to be
a good deal more than the training
of the mental faculties. 1t ought to
be the training Of the tastes, the
love of beauty. The individual who
gets interested in the care of flowers
and shrubbery isn't apt to be loafine
aboW billiard rooms or FONTS or
raising hades generally. The en-
vironment tends to make him a
good man.
Some Of these times the state will
stop making so many laws to punish
people after they hava gone wrong
on account of environment, and try
the plan of educating them to live
right and also making it possible to
live specially and decently.
There is time coming when a
hovel will be no more permitted hy
the state than the selling of bad
meat or impure milk. Municipal
houset, built with an eye to beauty,
furnished with modern conveniences
and situated in tasty yards, will take
the place of the unsIghtly, miserable
and unhealthful novels that disgrace
every city and town in the country.
Let the city or the state build the
houses and let the workingmen who
will occupy them have all the time
they want TO pay for them. If there
is anybody on earth who ought to
have neat, comfortable home
where he can take comfort, il is the
man who has to work hard all day.
He ought to have a good, clean
bath room in his house where he
can take bath after the days work
is over. He ought to have a neat
yard where there are flowers and
shrubbery. 1t is too much to expect
boys and girls to be models when
they are raised IN novels that are
less comfortable than ordinary
cattle sheds.
Where do the police have the
most work to do? Always down in
the slums where the bowels are.
Are the people there so much more
lawless, naturally No. Put them
INTO good houses, surround them
with reasonable comfort and taste
and they would average up pretty
well with your high toned society.
Some of them would make a better
record for the reason that they have
to work while good many of the
high tones are idle, and idleness.
begeis crime. no matter whether the
idler is rith or poor.
II all the money that has been
spent in this blessed land IN buildA
ing jails, penitentiaries and main
tanning courts to iiy criminals had
been spent in building decent houses
e. ,ba noorer Daonfe who have 20