The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1913-09-11

brand or charity on which the Col
Qred Brother fattens, but there are
many good men and women of the
South who know these people, and
who know how to reach them.
Many of the little farms, which
have been handed down from father
to son for generation after genera
ton, are worn out; there is little
money for the needed fertilizers, i'm
proved machinery and ell the other
things by which the farmer of today
can hope to compete with the adj
vanced planters, and it is then the
move to the midtown is seemingly
the only hope. There are lazy men,
and there are drunkards, and there
are bad women in this as in all
classes, but the very large percent
age Of them are just plain, poverty
stricken Americans, touched with
the same fire of ambition which
prompts the European immigrant to
tear himself loose from the soil
which has nutured his ancestors for
generation after generation, and
come to the Land of Promise. What
America" means to the immigrant
of Europe, the "mill-toWn" means to
these poor Southerners. 1t means
opportunity, the marketing of the
ability which some or all the mem
bers of the family may have; to turn
into money, which is so badly needed,
the muscle and the physical labor
which cannot produce results on the
farm, because Of the lack Of all the
necessary things.
There is the core of the Child la
bor," and the illiteracy which have
made Georgia and other Southern
States so we'll known to SO many
readers of magazines and special arti-
cles in the Sunday newspapers.
The cost of school books is abso-
lutely prohibitive; there has been de-
veloped curriculum which is as
close to the college course as an
elaborate expenditure of money and
unlimited opportunity to the school
book trust can make it.
Indian drills and dumb-bell eXer-
cises may be muscle-develOping, but
the average country boy can get all
the muscle developing helping with
the chores after school, and his sis
ter can gain all she needs helping
her mother, but the cost Of Indian
clubs and dumb-bells go down as
some of the extras-and they belong
to the school after they are paid for.
Who plans this curriculum-thi
course of study in our public schools?
Have the parents, the taxpayers,
word to say as to what shall be or
what shall not be taught? Is there
any plan made to fit the needs OF
each community? Is the child in the
country, whose needs will not be be-
yond reading, writing and arithmetic,
spared any of the expense for getting
the outfit which the town child has
to buy?
Is there any sense or reason in this
sort of thing? Is it educating ALL
the children of the State? Is it les
sening the horror of the little mill
and field workers, who are kept from
learning the things which will raise
them to the plane Of independent
men and women?
TO exact an entrance fee of two
dollars per child, for each half of the
school term; to add to this, the
extras" which will take more than
two dollars to pay for; to see the
expense account grow with the adj
vancement Of the child-where is the
"Public" feature in the schools?
And isn't it about time for the tax
payer to sit up and take notice-to
place against the sum he pays annu-
ally for taxes, the figures of illiteracy,
which the magazine and newspaper
writer's find so popular as "fillers"
and special" articles?