The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-06-30
Dorothy Dix TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Eighest Paid Woman Writer.

What Kind OF a Mother Are You?-I
The head of the biggest locomotive
works in the country says that when
he is employing a new man that he
looks first at the mans mother. He
doesn't so much as glance at his
father. Father may be a souse, lazy
loafer, shiftless ne'er do well. 1t
doesn't matter Mother is the one who
counts, and if she is hustling,
thrifty, p-and-coming woman, her
son gets the job, and nine times OK
of ten he makes good at it.
It's mother who makes the man. A
time old truth. Read history. and you
will find that every great man had a
great mother. Look about you, and
you will see that every successful
"self-made" man who has risen from
the bottom to the top of the ladder is
the son of a square-jawed, steely-eyed
woman who had a Backbone like a
telephone post. There is no record of
the children of baby dolls and butter
| fly women ever getting anywhere ex-
cept to a tea dance.
It's the mother who makes the man.
| Not alone because nature has decreed
that sons shall inherit more strongly
| from their mothers than from their
| fathers, but because a mothers influ-
ence in moulding her children's char
| acters is bound to be so much greater
| than a fathers During their plastic
| years a mother is with her children
continuously. She forms their habits.
She directs their actions. She i'm
presses her principles upon them. She
holds her ideals before them. She
makes them what they are, just as
surely as the potter fashions the clay
in his hands to whatever form he wills.
| There is no other one thing which
women try to dodge like they do the
responsibility of motherhood. They
! try to shift it on to heredity. They
attempt to evade it by simply refus-
ing to accept it, and by turning their
/ children over to nurses and gover-
rich, or leaving them to grow up on
the streets, if they are poor.
They might as we'll try to dodge
Ged and His eternal justice as the
responsibilities of motherhood. When
He gives a woman children, he makes
her accountable for their fate, and
4 she must answer to Him for the sort
I of job she turns out. 1t isn't cheer
full thought for Stacker mothers, but
it is one they will do well to ponder
this side of the Judgment Bar.
Probably there isn't mother in
the world, no matter how weak, and
silly, and selfish she is who doesn't
want her children to grow up into
being fine men and women. She
wants more. She desires them to be
! successful men and women, admired
and respected by their fellow Great
ures. If mothers wishes were a
magic that could summon fame and
riches to a baby's cradle by waving q
wand over it, there's never a boy who
wouldn't sit in the seats of the
mighty, or a girl who wouldn't walk
in silk attire.
| But, alas, there are no fairy god
mothers bearing miraculous gifts ir
these days. What we get, we must
fight for, and pay for with blood and
sweat, and there are not many
mothers who have the clear sighted.
ness to realize this, or the grit to dc
the Spartan mother act, and send
their children into the fray with the
admonition that it is better to die il
the thick of the battle than to be q
| gutter.