The Washington herald., 1914-04-13
Who's Who Among
Women
Mrs. Martha S. Gielow. Her Work
for Southern Mountain Women.
by MARY b. MULLETT.

| You know that old, old blue-and-whtte
spread which you guard so carefully
The one that has descended to you from
your mother, your grandmother, your
great grandmother?
OF course you do. II is one of your
treasures. Perhaps your great grand
mother wove 1t herself. II may have
been part of the store that filled her
wedding chest in the good old days that
are gone beyond recall.
Nobody wants to recall them, but II
is a delicate attention we pay to the
past; this polite signing over its de-
parture
! Well, in this case, while the old days
certainly have gone for good. the blue
and-white spreads have not. Thanks to
Mrs. Martha S. Gielow. we can have
hand-woven blue-and-white spreads In
our own wedding :hests-or In our daugh-
ters'. IL that is the point We have
reached.
About nine years ago Mrs. Gielow
founded the Southern Industrial Educa-
tional Association. with Headquarters in
Washington, D. c., with branches In
New York, Maryland. Alabama. ani
California. When Mrs. Woodrow Wilson
became the first lady OF the land, she
consented to be honorary president Of
the society.
But she did not stop at officeholding.
The interior of the White House was to
be rearranged to provide some extra bed
rooms, and Mrs. Wilson promptly or
dered sixty yards of the familiar old
blue-and-white material to be used In fur
nishing one of these rooms. 1t was made
not only into a spread. but also into por-
there's, chair coverings. and cushions.
This order was sent by Mrs. Gielow to
the women in the Southern mountains.
Some one heard of what Mrs. Wilson had
done and another large order followed.
In the little, desolate. lonely log cabins
Of that strangely isolated region, on the
same primitive looms that were used a
hundred years ago. were woven the mt
tings for a White House bedchamber.
The same old designs which were in
use before the war are woven by these
mountain women today. The names of
these designs are as quaint and old
fashioned as il they had just been resur-
rected from some musty and yellowed old
book
There are The Blooming Flower of
Nav" Sunrise on the Walls of Troy"
Big Waters of Tennessee" The Isle OF
Patmos" The Downfall Of Paris,
.'Orange Peeling." Missouri Trouble,
and Democratic Victory"
One rather wished-no matter what
ones personal politics may be-that Mrs
Wilson had chosen this last pattern. IL
would have been SO appropriate under
the circumstances But she Wrhstood
the temptation and selected instead
design called Double Chariot.
The problem OF how to help the South
ern mountaineers is a difhcult one. No
body wants TO drag them from those lit
tie "coves'' and valleys where they have
lived for generations. And yet there is
almost nothing for them to do there TO
earn money.
Mrs. Gielow's plan serves a double
purpose II helps the women TO add to
fhe family income without changing their
habits, or their habitation either.
II is curious how some apparently
trivial thirg brings unexpected conse-
quences Years ago. when Martha Saw
yer was a young girl. her sister married
a mining engineer and went with him
into the mountains of Alabama Natural
w. she wanted her sister to come and
visit her.
II was that visit which stirred Martha
Sawyers heart to sympathy with the
people she saw there: all of them poor,
most of them illiterate through no fault
of their own: for schools were almost as
scarce as pOrpOisoE
She made up her young mind that some
day she would do something to help them.
She began to write about them. so that
the world might know of their need. In
the course of time, she married When
her husband died and she was left with
two children to take care of she found
that her devotion to the South brought
its reward.
She wrote sketches bringing in the
Southern folklore. She composed the mu-
sic for these sketches and gave them not
only in this country. but before distin
guished audiences abroad. With the
money she earned insthis way she cdu-
Gated her children.
Probably she and they could easily have
used every penny of it. But they didn't.
Always she put aside for the mountain
people a part of her income. Fourteen
years ago\the model industrial school at
Hindman. KY. was started with the pro-
ceeds of an entertainment given by Mrs.
Gielow.
" oman to do. she wrote books about the |
South. And almost every cent they |
brought her was devoted to the good OF
the people whose cause she had taken up. |
Some of these books are "Old Andy, the |
'Old Plantation Days |
'Mammy's "Reminiscences" and Uncle |
Sam" The last of these, which was dedi- |
Gated to Miss Jessie Wilson. brought a
of $500 from Mrs. Russell
sage TO the WORK OF lne aSSOClaIlOn.
The rooms in Washington are fitted up |
made by boys in Christ |
SCHOOL. at Arden, n. c. The work Of the |
mountain women is always there on sale. |
Unlike most exchanges. no commission is |
charged these women for selling their |
work They get every cent of the price |
They make the things they know how to |
make: spreads, rugs. portieres, covers, |
quaint rag dolls. and so on.
The association has helped in estab- |
ishing thirty-eight schools in the noun
tains. In all of them Industrial training |
IS given. What Mrs. Gielow and those |
with her most want Is to secure |
an endowment fund to be used for per-
laps twenty-five years. They think that |
Z they can educate two generations of |
he mountain people that will practically |
settle the question. By that time the
people themselves will have reached the /
point where they can handle their own