Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1912-01-31
DEMoCRACYS MENACE.
Compulsory Education and Paterualistie
LesislatiOn-Socialist and lndivid.
ualists the Coming Parties.
(Communicated.)

the Compulsory Education Bill is
favored by the Legislators of both
parties. ! do not believe it, yet /
know of at least one Democrat who
favored a bin of the kind in 1910,
and he was State Senator Hammond.
In the last campaign / heard him
make almost fearful appeal to the
Democrats to rise against the negro
if they wished the continuation of the
party. And yet Senator Hammond
fails to see the relation Of compulsory
education to the negro vote. Truly,
there never was fetch that so blind
ed lis worshippers as this one of
education.
Senator Benjamin Tillman and Gov
ernor Blease, both of South Carolina,
have set the pace for all Southern
Democrats on the negro. The former
saws: Educate a negro and you spoil
a field hand and make a candidate for
the penitentiary. Governor Blease
devoted large part of his inaugural
to the question. Here are a few
random sentences:
II am absolutely opposed to COM
pulsory education. Compulsory edu-
cation in the hands of the State
means the disruption of the home,
for it dethrones the authority of the
parents and places paid agents of
the State in control of the children,
thereby destroying family govern
ment. Those agents stand between
the child and the parent-they re-
present the State. They are respon-
sble to the parents. They virtually
say: eve have taken you out of
bondage and made you free; we are
giving you what your unnatural par
ents would not give you"
No child on earth can be subject
to such infences and teachings and
escape initiating the spirit of rebel
lion against parental authority, and
consequent disrespect and ingratitude.
Family government and parental re-
sponsibilty antedate all others, and it
is possible for wild, extravagant and
madly enthusiastic men, who see the
DRY and theory only, to destroy family
government, ALLEVIATE children from
their parents, and force the home into
a scene of strife, rebellion and wretch
edness. / believe in letting the pa
rents keep within their own control
the rearing and education of their
children"
In these words of Governor Blease
we see exactly the cause of 1.-The pass
ing of the home" and of the startling
increase in juvenile crime in all Sec
tions where compulsory education is
in force. Viewed in this aspect it is
not party question-it is a question
that comes home to every man, woman
and child in the nation. The most
ultra Republican papers of the North
and West freely open their columns to
my portrayals of it. Unite1AStates
Senators Hepburn and Bailey, the
former a Republican, just the other
day asked what the nation was coming
to with all the demands now made for
law to usurp the parent and the
home. Congress has of late opened it's
eyes to the dangers and has shut out
much legislation relating to the child.
State Legislators should note the fact
If Maryland passes a compulsory edu-
cation bill, and other bills instituted
by the same class of persons that
have been madly fighting for it, it will
mean the downfall of the Democratic
party of the State and it will, further
more, cement a union with Socialism
that is the drift of all paternal lie =
islation. Then, with the Democrats
and Republicans united on socialistic
measures. what will be the sequel?
Then pratical people will form an OPP
oil In 4 ;.rss 4 4
all the others will be Socialists, as
have long since outlined. The first
person to take up this idea has been
DR.. Julia Seton Sears, of New York
and Boston. She spoke in New York
the other day, stating that within five
years the Socialists and Individualists
will be the only two parties.
That the public schools are breeding
a dependence on the State is now con-
fessed by their most ardent support
ers. A law to compel children to 90
to these schools is equivalent to COM
polling the children to become Social
lists in the full sense of the term, vet
our club women are bound to the fact.
One of the last educators to make
COMMISSION along this line was Mrs.
Ella Flagg Young, the ten thousand
dollar superintendent of Chicago's
schools. Before the Getty Club of
that city she said the other day:
+" The public school in America has
not achieved its purpose. 1t has not
trained the child right. They look
at it this way: The public treasury
is supporting me now and l must see
that it continues to support me- Per-
haps the greatest function of the
school is to abolish that creed of the
herd; but, as yet, we have not found
the means"
In the above Mrs. Young draws at
tention to just what Senator Bailey
did in the United States Senate at
about the same time. The "means"
by which this leaning on the public
treasury" can be stopped is found
only in public school abolition. In
the meantime let all compulsion be
stopped.
FRANCIS RICK TTVESEy