Show i I iI I A PLACE FOR THE REFORMER IER Reformers now and then ask much of o the tho lawmaking bodies in nation state and city in the direction of legislating goodness into mankind but those yet too often impractical purifiers absolutely fail to apply remedies at their command which require no legislative enactment simply the resolve to do good followed fol followed lowed by action Every community has had its struggle against the curse of liquor gamblin n and d venery and some communities have attempted to hide the festering sores and others have sought to scatter the dis disease disease ease without first applying a cure which might eradicate the tho germs of the contagion o and the affliction has gone on claiming new victims and spreading insidiously Not until the reformers start to labor with the child will the prayers of the good people be answered When the child has grown to manhood and acquired fixed habits it is a discouraging task to reform that mans mind and that mans tastes and passions A few will yield to law and fewer still can be prevailed upon to hold dom dominating domm m passions in subjection but the great mass of humanity at that the mountain from the top of which time of life is bent on climbing Satan offers temptation mell people Nothing appeals to us which We Ve Americans are area a pell cannot be accomplished in a day We are impatient and seek seck to rush to the goal of our ambitions ignoring the long slow but certain course to success And in nothing is this impetuousness more strangely displayed than in the struggle against those immoralities and imper imperfections imperfections which have made so much capital for those who would pose as redeemers When this reforming shall take hold of the child and direct the child mind and firmly fix the child habits then and not until then will true reform have been inaugurated The home and the schools are arc the places for preachment Our schools should be teaching that the wages of sin is death and yet in a moral way our schools like other schools teach nothing of the kind our schools should tell the truth of the destructive effect on body and mind of alcohol our schools should warn boys and girls against the pitfalls of lechery and lewdness our schools should de declare declare clare against the games of chance On these subjects our schools are silent and parents are too thoroughly engrossed in everyday industrialism and social distraction distraction tion to spare the time to impressively labor with their children Later on the children go out into the world with false notions of life and with undisciplined minds and unbridled passi passions ns and then the city the state or the nation is asked to legislate those minds and passions into sUbjection Are we as asa a people acting wisely Are we demanding more than the law can give while neglecting to do for ourselves and our off offspring spring that which we can do but which we demand the law shall do |