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tical farmers of them, and in their manual training department they teach 

 them how to make and repair farming tools and implements and the common 

 things that are used about the farm. The girls are taught domestic science, 

 art and music. They teach them cooking, sewing and all branches of farm 

 housekeeping. They are especially proud of their music department, where 

 they give piano lessons to the individual, have classes in the violin, and 

 teach vocal music and singing in chorus. They tell how marvelously they 

 have progressed, some of these boys and girls, with their music, because 

 many of our foreigners have much natural ability in music. Their music 

 is helping them in training for their citizenship. 



If every county in Illinois could have and they can a record like 

 Randolph County in Indiana, we would soon obliterate many of our state 

 and local problems. It claims it is the greatest consolidated school county 

 in creation. Seventeen big consolidated schools out in the open country, 

 with big gymnasiums and auditoriums! They have on^y six one-room 

 schools in all the county, and expect to get rid of four of them this winter. 

 All but a few of the children in the county are carried to and from school 

 in motor trucks heated in cold weather. They have nine school orchestras 

 of farm boys and girls out in the country. Every boy and girl in the county 

 that is big enough and able is in school, and 96 per cent of them go through 

 the high school. The census lists less than 1 per cent of all the people in 

 the county as illiterate. 



This sounds as though the millennium was approaching in that county. 

 Don't you think the boys and girls educated close to the farm and its life 

 will remain upon the farms of that county, instead of going to town and 

 city? I do, and they will not be grouchy, dissatisfied citizens, with a ten- 

 dency toward socialism, but will be loyal, patriotic and most desirable 

 citizens; citizens always ready to meet their country's needs and 

 requirements. 



It is like a fairy tale to read of what has been accomplished in 

 Anderson County, South Carolina. John E. Swearingen, a blind man of 

 brilliant intellect, who for nineteen years has been state superintendent 

 of schools, caught the vision and carried it to the people of that county; 

 they caught his vision, and now consolidated schools are springing up 

 rapidly. So much pleased are they with results that the old way has no 

 attraction for them, and they claim they have just begun the good work 

 for the state. 



Out in Colorado they have a large, beautiful building that is situated 

 out in the open, that is just as much a consolidated church as a consolidated 

 school house, and just as much a consolidated school house as a consolidated 

 church. Nine different creeds are represented in the church, and the whole 

 community is as one big family, united by their common interest in church 

 and school. A Sunday morning service will bring four or five hundred 

 people together. I wish I had time to tell you how it was all accomplished. 

 Think of nine different denominations attending a church in a spirit of 

 harmony and co-operation and good will, to do the work of the Lord! 



WHAT WE SHOULD WORK FOB IN ILLINOIS. 



I must not name more of the working of these wonderful schools, for 

 you certainly must know from the few I have cited that when once estab- 

 lished they are there to stay. Then why, oh, why is Illinois so slow in 

 meeting her obligations to the rural boys and girls of our state, when they 

 have been tried and not found wanting in value, and need no more proof 

 of their value to us as a state or community? 



Is it politics? Is it a cultivated indifference fostered by an over-amount 

 of selfishness, or both? Something is wrong, and I put this question to the 

 women of this meeting: Are you going to be willing to have your boys and 

 girls deprived of opportunities that they should have because some one or 

 many have failed to do his or their part? 



Our educational life in the past has been almost entirely planned and 

 directed by men, but today, women, the responsibility and duties of It are 



