The Palatka news and advertiser., 1916-12-08

money for the association" writes one
of its enthusiastic members, "but we
are storm proof now, and even the
flood of August, 1915, could not daunt
us. The Galveston spirit pervades
the organization"
Austin, Texas, has the signal honor
of having not only furnished a presi-
dent for the General Federation of
Womens Clubs, but of having furnish
ed it with one of the best presidents
that any woman's organization ever
had. Typically Southern in appear
ance is Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker.
Dainty as a bit of Dresden china"
one of her interviewers has said of
her, yet with sweet seriousness of
expression that reveals some of the
inner qualities of a beautifully bal
anced character.
She came into office fairly teeming
with enthusiasm, and brimful of
splendid plans, and she finished her
administration with many of these
plans crystalized into accomplished
work. Some were too big and won-
derful to be realized without a period
Of waiting, but their seeds have beer
sown, and it is only question of time
before the harvest.
Had she done nothing rore than in
aUgurate Natior.. Baky Week, which
hGC its inception IN her fertile brain,
Mrs. Pennybacker w>uld still have
marked her administration with one
splendid accomplishment. But this
far-seeing mother has visions of SER
vice for the poorest as we'll as the
highest types Of American babyhood,
and her cry that I'VE must AmeI itan-
i7e the immigrant mother AMI her
child, must uplift them, teach them
and help tilen,' has been heard with
peculiar interest in those states where
the constant stream of foreign-b7:n
women with their young childr.' fer
problem that is daily growing lar
ger, and that may assume gigantic
proportions after the close of the Eu-
ropean war. Western Texas receives
these alien people, and Southern Tex
as, touching as it does for hundreds of
miles the boundaries of Mexico, has
felt the want of another reform that
Mrs. Pennybacker has been ardently
urging.
We have clubs in Alaska" says
Mrs. Pennybacker, "clubs that mean
so much to the members that they will
attend them although the paths have
been drifted over by blizzards! We
have clubs in Panama and in Cuba
and the Isle of Pines and the Philip
pines; but why not Pan-American
A Pan-American Con-
gress, that shall go down in history
as the first assembling of the moth
ers of the three Americs."
"The mothers of the three Ameri- |
cas-" This is q beautiful thought,
worded, but before we can
be of any definite help to the women
of Latin America we must first learn
what her environment and conditions |
are, what are her problems and diff
culties, and what her resources, spiri-
tual and material. Then, perhaps, /
we can understand; then, perhaps, we
can help. incidentally, we may be
helped If we learned nothing more
from these women than to initiate
their exquisitely modulated voices. we
should have what Shakespeare terms
IAN excellent thing in woman"
In recent report by congress on
religious work which met in Pana-
ma, it was stated that "in Chile alone
n the year 1909 as many as 40,767
,abies died in their first year because
If alcoholism and anti-hygienic con-
and that "the women of
Columbia work with pick-ax and
shovel on the highways, staggering
lnder burdens too heavy to be borne.
Sixty out of every hundred of these :