The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1916-01-20
A Real "Social Settlement Worker.

"AAI4C tIISle Is ii puOOOSIdp pa OIL Il CIlIu uUCI0
woman, and the story about her is headed
"The General Manager of Cowbell Hollow
and one grows enthusiastic about little women,
when one reads what this little woman has
done
Her name is Adela Fox; she is Ken
tuckan and was born and has lived all her
life within the district of ''COWbell Hollow"
She has taught school there, she has taught
the men, women and children how to live,
and as she has lived with them, while she was
teaching, her work comes very properly under
the head of Social Welfare" work, and most
successful has she been.
Miss Fox is very modest about the results
of her efforts, but those among whom she has
lived and labored speak, in their own way, Of
what she has accomplished.
Just as we have the Black Belt, and the
Cotton Belt, so have we the Frying pan and
Grease Belt, in the South, and it embraces not
only the two other belts referred to- but 1t
takes in mountainous belts that have neither
cotton nor the black settler. In these districts,
almost immune from contact with the outside
world, the skillet of the earliest settler still
reigns supreme in the kitchen. So does dys-
pepsia and indigestion; also there are. enor-
NOUS quantities of lard used, and everything
is fried.
One of the greatest things accomplished by
Miss Fox has been her teaching these noun
talnmen to cook-properly; it is true they
have been able to sustain life, with the food
they prepared, but it is also true that all that
food was swimming in hog grease, before it
was made ready for the table, and in that way
became one of the very best assets for the
"patent medicine man."
Miss Fox has, probably without realizing it,
discovered the only way of helping people of
this sort to "discover" themselves; she had no
board of managers or directors; she has not
applied for outside aid, and she has kept
intact the native pride, which was really the
way she appealed in her efforts to make the
people develop-mentally, spiritually and
morally, to say nothing of the hygenic devel-
Opment which followed as matter of course.
The fact that there is an absence of llllt-
eracy-that it is literally true that every man,
woman and child Chose latter of school age)
can read and write, is in itself marvellous
achievement. The fact that the dialect of the
mountains has almost disappeared in CowbeN
Hollow, and that the place itself has come into
its rightful pronunciation where it was SO
long "Cowbell Holler," speaks volumes for
this frail-looking little woman, who sees moth
ing wonderful in the work she has accom-
plished, and who very modestly refers to what
she has done.
Perhaps no section of any part of the
United States suffers from as much, and as
continued mal-administration, as the rural
and country" sections of the South While
the work accomplished by Miss Fox is won
derful, and should call forth the warmest
admiration of her Kentucky people, it is
criminal that such work has to wait until a
woman, or a man, of the stamina of Miss Fox
is born to do it.
In this country, it is usually regarded as
legitimate to place, teachers, the young
women who are fresh from the normal schools,
who have no more aptitude for the work. in