The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1913-02-04
MIR. RIVES ADVOCATES
COMPULSORY EDUCATION
Editor of The Dawson News:

And Cain said unto the Lord, Am
1 my brothers keeper?"-Gen. And
he, willing to justify himself, said,
Who is my neighbour THE Cos
pei.
In the Saturday Evening Post of
last week there is an Illuminating ar
ticle on industrial compulsory edu
cation as practiced in Wurtemburg,
Germany, that might possibly do even
as pessimistic a man as my friend,
| DR.. T. H. Andrews, good to read.
! In that little principally, about one
fourth the size of Georgia, there are
over 200 industrial schools teaching
all the handicraft, from mere plant
ing a garden to engineering in all its
| branches; and that little province is
competing with the products of these
! United States, after climbing the tar
if wall of so per cent ad valorem, on
our own soil and before our own
doors, simply because the workmen
are trained from their youth how to
do good work and that shoddy work
imperils their products.
Now we are so silly as to go back
on our pledged word and differentiate
between our vessels and the vessels of
our neighbor simply to crafty pres
ent lust for greediness, and call it
democracy" and when we have,
through the expenditure of millions,
opened up the brightest field for skill
ed labor, for South America is vir-
gin soil compared to us, we are so
niggardly that we will not give of
our plenty to educate and prepare
for this opening field the sons of
our loins," lest, if we compel the
shiftless whites to give their chill
dren a chance by compulsory educa-
cation, we also give the negro a
chance to better his condition.
"There is that scattereth and yet
increaseth, and there is that with
holdeth more than is meet and it
tendeth to poverty" And this is
what Georgia is doing-every mo-
ment she delays putting a compul-
sorry education law on her statute
books and multiplying her appropria-
ton by ten.
But this will raise taxation be-
yond the constitutional limit" you
say. Not if a state board of tax as
SCISSORS is authorized who will put
value. Too many of us are like
the man who, two years since, paid
$40 per acre for land and returned
it to the assessor for IS. The mat
ter of tax valuation, even without the
assessors, lies within the powers of
the commissioners of revenues of
tually their servants and bound to do
their bidding, as witness the supreme
court decision in the case of the Cit
liens of Albany VS.. the Board Of
County Commissioners, when Wat
son was chairman, and from which
source he and his fellows started
A1bany's present growth by providing
good roads and making her the mar
ket place for Lee, Baker, Mitchell
and Calhoun counties.
I hope that every member of the
legislature will learn that ''he who
careth not for his own has denied
the faith and is worse than an inf
del' applies equally well to the man
placed in power who refuses to see
his opportunity and do his duty, as
well as the thriftless convert to
christianity who thought that his du-
ty was done when he shouted 81 be-
lieve in Christi" but whom the apos-
tie would warn that the duties of this
life were not one whit abated, but in
creased by a christian profession.
For to him that knoweth to do
good and doeth it not to him it is
sim"
1 would be glad if the editors to
whom I am sending this would give
space to so much of the Posts article
as in their judgment will benefit
Georgia, even if they have to give it
by sections, continued from week to
week, until all of it is published, for
the newspapers are to a large portion
of the people-and every day their
fields increase-the messengers of
the gospel, good news, of this indus
trial necessity. A. P. RIVES.
Cuthbert, Ca, Feb. 2, 1913.