Ont Workly Letter irom zt 
= =: Washington 
aed 
By F. J. Dvr. 
ial to the North Shore Breeze). 
“ae Sinton. D. C., Dee. 1—Infor- 
m ration has reached Washington that 
e people of Alaska will be repre- 
Ried here in foree during the win- 
t er and will strongly urge Congress 
0 grant legislation which will tend 
to Oo encourage the settlement and de- 
pment-of that Territory. They 
lieve that they are entitled to lib- 
pal laws under which the immense 
al resourses of the country may 
Eaeaaléned. 
The Alaska delegation will, it is 
stood, be headed this winter as 
last, by Governor Walter E. 
. who, through personal ac- 
intance with conditions in that 
itory, has become an ardent ad- 
voeate of the reforms which the peo- 
ple there have been demanding, and 
who will use all of his influence to 
see that Congress gives substantial 
recognization to their claims. It is 
derstood that in his annual re- 
pe rt to President Taft, he has made 
strong recommendations which in- 
elude the opening of the coal lands 
‘under some system to be determined 
“Ur on to protect the interests of the 
Government and yet enable the peo- 
ple of Alaska to proceed with the 
3, work of development. 
ative Programme in Doubt. 
ENo one seems to have any defin- 
‘ite idea regarding the legislative 
program in the coming session of 
Cor ngress. Almost everyone agrees 
‘that the one thing of prime import- 
ance is the enactment of appropria- 
tion bills which are to provide 
‘means for running the governmen- 
tal machinery until Congress can 
“meet again. Some of the legislators 
express the opinion that if the Pre- 
‘sident should insist upon loading up 
- Congress with a great many ieasur- 
es and insist that they be enacted 
before adjournment the result is 
likely to be that the appropriation 
bills will get stalled in committee 
and that the Congress will expire 
by legal limitation without some 
very necessary, and, in fact, indis- 
 . appropriation legislation 
eing enacted. 
Of course, this has all been said 
before, but it may not be amiss to 
_ renew the suggestion in view of the 
very short working session ahead 
of us. It must also be conceded by 
even the casual observer that the 
¥ 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
President’s policies look somewhat 
less important than they did before 
the recent election. Not that they 
are really less important, perhaps, 
but it is impossible to get away 
from the implication carried by the 
election returns that the country is 
by no means a unit on what Con- 
gress ought to do. It will not be 
known until the President’s mess- 
age is read to Congress just what 
the President will prescribe as fit 
to allay the ills of the nation. 
Make Better Citizens. 
Practical education is what the 
country needs more than it needs 
the ‘‘higher education’’. Too few 
men and women are taught to be 
practical, which after all means to 
be self-helpful. The Bureau of 
Plant Industry of the Department 
of Agriculture is doing a work of 
which more ought to be known in 
helping the people of the South to 
realize a larger benefit from their 
efforts, and showing them how best 
to enjoy their surroundings. Dr. 
S. A. Knapp, a practical scientist 
and a humanitarian, has charge of 
the Farmer’s Cooperative Demonstra- 
tion Work and in his Macon address, 
which should be placed in the hands 
of every citizen of the South, he 
makes these very sensible and perti- 
nent remarks: 
‘‘In attempting to raise the con- 
dition of the colored man we fre- 
quently start too high up and in 
talking of the higher progress talk 
right over his head. When I talk to 
a negro citizen I never talk about 
the better civilization but about 
a better chicken, a_ better pig, 
a white-washed house. Out of 
the 150 negro schools, semin- 
aries, colleges, ete., in the South 
three years ago very few were carry- 
ing out fully, to my mind, their pro- 
per mission. Many of them were 
trying to teach Latin and Greek, 
which would be of very little use to 
most of them. I know of a colored 
section where there were 6,000 col- 
ored people settled during the war 
and a school was started in 1864. 
They have been earrying on that 
school and it is costing $26,000 a 
year. The managers of the school 
came to me year before last and 
said: ‘The condition of those peo- 
ple is worse than it was when we 
took hold. of it- Go down there and 
see what the matter is’. I found 
they were teaching every child that 
knew anything at all to get away 
from that country. They were not: 
influencing the people on the farm 
or helping them at all, They were 
WHISPERINGS. 
A popular Beverly Farms young 
man, who is daily employed on a 
Pride’s Crossing estate, has not had 
much to say lately about his ability 
as a hunter of sea birds. It seems 
that without his knowledge some 
friends anchored off the Moore pier 
a couple of decoy ducks which 
‘“Mac’’ spied in due season. Taking 
a double-barrel shot gun he cau- 
tiously crawled along the beach to 
the pier, and then over the stringers 
of the structure, made difficulty be- 
cause of their being no planking on 
which to walk. Just as he was 
about to draav a bead on his victims 
he accidentally struck the gun 
against a timber, exploding one bar- 
rel, and bruising his thumb. Mueh 
to his surprise and joy the ducks 
did not take alarm so he quickly 
drew a bead and pulled the trigger 
of the other barrel, or at least he 
tried to, but much to his disgust he 
could not move it. By this time he 
began to get wise to the fact that 
he had all this time been chasing 
wooden ducks. His companions, who 
had been in the background wateh- 
ing the performance all this time, 
knowing that ‘‘Mac’’ was not in the 
best of humor over the joke, made 
off in different directions until he 
had cooled off somewhat. 
cultivating their lands with little 
steers that weighed about 500 
pounds. Their sole income was from 
cotton, and I have it from the eot- 
ton ginners that the average income 
of each family in that section was 
only $30 a year. I went to the gen- 
tleman that held the purse strings 
and told him what the difficulty was. 
I said: ‘You are doing a_ great 
wrong. Why don’t you get at the 
people themselves and teach them 
something practical?’ In fact, we 
were all wrong about it. Until we 
took hold of the demonstration 
work the idea was prevalent that a 
man on the farm did not need any 
teaching. Now we realize that the 
problems which we are up today and 
need solution should be presented 
to him; and it is just as much the 
part of our obligation in our great 
system of education to establish lin- 
es of study for the man on the farm 
as for the boy that is developing to 
be the future doctor, the future law-, 
yer, or the future preacher. It is 
also realized that the great foree 
that readjusts the world originates 
in the home. Home conditions will 
ultimately mold the man’s life’’, 
