Friday, September 19, 2014

Editorial Calls for Support for Public Education, 1905


“Great Against the Small,” an Editorial from The Gold Leaf of Henderson, September 14, 1905
Charity and Children

The State ought to be kinder and more considerate to its weakest children. However true this may be in other respects, North Carolina in the matter of education is kinder to her strong that to her weak sons and daughters. The per capita tax she levies for the benefit of the young men and women able to play baseball and manage card parties is all out of proportion to the money she appropriates to give the little children of poverty a chance, and year by year sentiment seems to be growing in favor of providing better things for those abundantly able to help themselves.

Here is a chance for some strong, brave man to lead a movement that involves more than all the temperance crusades and other questions that defect the moral welfare. And yet in this day and time and knowledge no man stands forth as a champion for the child! The reason for it is that men are afraid to go up against the educational combine that wields so great power in the State and nation. It is a tremendous proposition to encounter, but somebody will yet arise with power enough to beat back the tide that threatens to overwhelm us.

The college is now the king. The common school is again falling back into the obscurity from which J.B. Holman helped to lift it. It were better for a politician to die fighting for a child than to live a fawning syncophant at the feet of the college cormorants.

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