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Vol. VI—No. 18.
RALEIGH, N. C., MAY 2, 1912
One Dollar a Year.
**Men and Women Wanted**
President Charles S. Barrett.
The greatest assets of this country are not its mighty commerce, its
wonderful acreage or its gold mines. Supreme above all these rise the
assets of manhood and womanhood. And the boy and girl of to-day, too
often snubbed and too seldom studied, are the men and women of
tomorrow,
I speak advisedly when I say that never in the history of the republic
have opportunties been vaster or more plentiful than they are in this year
of our Lord, 1912, I know it is popular to say that the **trusts** and
commercialism have stifled competition and muzzled opportunity.
The statement is only a half truth, I have been from one end of the
country to the other, I have visited every state, I have studied conditions
.in practically every city of importance, I have observed above and below
the surface in every line of trade and industry,
,And, as a result, I am convinced that the loudest cry today is for men
and women—not just men and women, but men and women with trained
ability and character. Across the front of every vocation of moment, they
ought to erect in big letters the sign: **MEN AND WOMEN WANTED,**
It would be the absolute truth, provided the men and women were properly
equipped to answer the advertisement.
Do not treat your boy or your girl simply as a private possession, to be
worked in the fields when you need help, to be yanked out of school in their
most receptive years in order that you may squeeze a little money out of the
land. Money won in this way is the dearest bought imaginable. Money,
won at the expense of the men and women of to-morrow, is blood-money.
Not only will the parents themselves pay for it some day, but the penalty
will also be visited upon the republic in a weakened citizenship, whether of
husbands or wives or mothers.
The old fool adage runs ‘^children should be seen and not heard,** It*s
a lie. They should be both seen and heard. Seen with the eye of loving,
self-sacrificing intelligence, heard with the ear with faculties keen enough
to catch the tramp of posterity, as well as the patter of today. Unless we
follow this course, we fail in the duties, not only of parenthood, but equally
of common American citzenship.