1654 THI^ CoRNHI,!, RkADING CoiRSES 



Indian artist, or craftsman, or farmer, who settles in her midst? Will 

 she be willing to aid actively in securing for the Indians on the reserva- 

 tions the best and fairest means of civilization and its benefits? 



These are real questions for New York women in ckibs, reading circlas, 

 and homes to discuss and then decide intelligently. A winter's study of 

 primitive women, including the Eskimo of the Northeast, the Alaskan of 

 the Northwest, the women of the Pueblo regions of the vSouthwest, and the 

 Filipinas across the Pacific, will help to make the New York woman ready 

 for such discussion and decision. She will find her interest widening 

 beyond the Indian women of her State and reaching all the primitive 

 women and their families who are wards of this nation. What the citizens 

 of the United States are to do with the Filipinos is a live question to 

 American statesmen. While the men are thinking about giving the vote to 

 the men of the Philippines, it will be a good thing to have the women 

 thinking about the women and children of those islands. What will be 

 best for them — more or less of American ways and education, more or less 

 of American law and government? vShall they leave their old crafts, and 

 make with their skillful fingers only the things Americans and Europeans 

 want them to produce ? Or shall American and European women leani to 

 appreciate and to use the time-honored crafts and designs of these Filipino 

 women just as they have come gradually to prize the Navajo rugs and the 

 baskets from the Hupas of California? From these primitive peoples 

 Americans should want to get the best their inheritance can furnish. 

 Their case is akin to that of the European emigrants to this land. 



" In Old Nuremburg one day a famous wood carver, fashioning the 

 wooden draperies of a statue, whereof the delicate work betokened a 

 lifetime of artisanship, paused to say to one who watched him, ' You 

 are from America. I have a son in America. He is working in a furni- 

 ture factory, fitting the amis upon chairs. He is not happy in that new 

 land fitting arms to chairs, because he is the son and the grandson and 

 the great grandson of wood carvers in Old Nuremburg.' The old Ger- 

 man's words raise the query ' Is the United States making the most out 

 of its immigrants? ' In these times of specialists and machine-made 

 articles, in a period when the immigrant is so rapidly formed into a mere 

 cog in the wheel of vast industrial enterprises, is it not often forgotten 

 that some of these men at least are offering to the western world the 

 heritage of great talent which is slowly being crushed beneath the wheels 

 of a materialistic Juggernaut? " ^ 



The civilized woman of Europe needs to join her American sister in 

 an interest in the welfare of primitive women and in seeking for knowledge 

 of their physical, intellectual, and spiritual developrnent, which has come 



iQnot^i frona the Christian Science MQnitor for April 6, ipij* 



