MOTHER-OF-PEARL 



3972 



MOTLEY 



MOTHER-OF-PEARL, or NACRE, the haul 

 lining; of shells of certain sea animals, such as 

 the oyster, varying in color from pale grayi.-h- 

 bluo and pink to deeper purple and green. Such 

 shells are found off the coasts of tropical coun- 

 B, particularly around the South Sea Islands, 

 Panama, Cuba, Manila, Lower California, and 

 ralia.and are used extensively in the manu- 

 facture of pocket knives, buttons, beads, um- 

 brella handles, and for inlay in fancy boxes and 

 furniture. Long ago the South Sea Islanders 

 1 mother-of-pearl to make their fishhooks. 

 This beautiful substance is excreted in exceed- 

 ingly thin layers by the animal within the shell, 

 and when it is the product of the larger mol- 

 lusks is sometimes found in circular pieces a 

 foot in diameter. See PEARL. 



MOTHERS, NATIONAL CONGRESS OF. See 

 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS. 



MOTHER'S DAY, a day set apart every year 

 the second Sunday in May in honor of 

 motherhood. The wearing of a white carna- 

 tion is the visible manifestation of the event, 

 which is further celebrated by appropriate ser- 

 mons in the churches and by family reunions. 



The day was first suggested by Miss Anna 

 Jams of Philadelphia; in a public meeting she 

 crystallized the sentiment now hack of its ob- 

 servance with the words : 



In honor of the best mother that ever lived 

 your mother. 



MOTHER SHIPTON, an English peasant 

 woman, locally believed to be a witch and 

 prophetess, who is said to have lived in York- 

 >hire about the middle of the fifteenth century. 

 As she grew older her prophecies and perhaps 

 her sharp tongue made her much feared. Her 

 best-known prophecy is in a short, singsong 

 poehi that appeared about fifty years after her 

 death. In it she said that "carriages without 

 horses shall go" and that men would be seen in 

 the air, which seemed prophetic of the automo- 

 bile and flying machine. 



MOTHERS' PENSIONS, the term generally 

 applied to allowances made by the government 

 for the support of mothers with dependent chil- 

 dren. The fundamental purpose of such an al- 

 lowance is to prevent the separation of the chil- 

 dren from their mother because of poverty, or, 

 in other words, to enable mothers who would 

 not otherwise be able to do so to provide homes 

 for their children. Although the existing legis- 

 lation on the subject shows a great variety of 

 details, the principles are nearly uniform. First 

 of all, the mother must be in actual need, and 

 under some laws she must actually be destitute. 



She must be a lit person, both physically and 

 morally, to care for her children, and she must 

 gi\ e most of her time to doing so. This means 

 that under ordinary conditions she must not 

 be regularly employed away from home. Fur- 

 thermore, if she is receiving a pension, she must 

 maintain a certain standard of living. 



The first mothers' pension law was passed by 

 Missouri in 1911; this law applied only to Jack- 

 son County, in which Kansas City is located. 

 The bill passed in Missouri in 1915, extending 

 the mothers' pension act to all counties, was ve- 

 toed by the governor and so failed to become a 

 law. Illinois, in 1911, passed the first compre- 

 hensive law on the subject, and was followed in 

 1912 by Colorado. To-day more than one-half 

 of the states of the American Union have more 

 or less comprehensive acts providing mothers' 

 pensions. In some states the law applies only 

 to widows, or to those whose husbands are in- 

 capacitated in mind or body; in others to 

 mothers deserted by their husbands, and in a 

 few states also to divorced or unmarried moth- 

 ers. The pension given to each mother depends 

 on the number of her children. For the first 

 child in California the rate is $12.50 a month 

 ($6.25 by the state and a like amount by city 

 or county) ; the amount is $2 a week in Iowa 

 and $3 a week in Michigan; it is $15 a month 

 in Illinois, Ohio, South Dakota and Washington. 

 The mother is entitled to an amount varying 

 from $5 to $12 a month for each additional 

 child. The maximum age of a child for whom 

 a pension may be received ranges from four- 

 teen to eighteen. In most states the pensions 

 are paid through the juvenile courts, but in a 

 few cases through the regular county or other 

 courts. J.C.L. 



MOTION, LAWS OF. See DYNAMICS. 



MOTIVATION, motiva' shun, OF TEACH- 

 ING. See TEACHING, MOTIVATION OF. 



MOTLEY, mot'li, JOHN LOTHROP (1814- 

 1877), an American historian and diplomat, re- 

 membered chiefly for his historical works on the 

 Netherlands, the Rise of the Dutch Republic 

 and History of the United Netherlands. He 

 was born in Dorchester, now a part of Boston, 

 and entered Harvard College when only thir- 

 teen. After his graduation in 1831 he studied 

 at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin. He 

 became intimately acquainted with Bismarck, 

 with whom his friendly relations were contin- 

 ued in after life. On his return to America he 

 studied law but soon ventured into literature, 

 publishing a novel, Morton's Hope, in 1839. In 

 1841 he was appointed secretary of the Ameri- 



