Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1890 — CLAUDE MATTHEWS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [ARTICLE]

CLAUDE MATTHEWS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Indianapolis Journal. The Newport Hoosier State contains the following: ‘ *Hon. Claude Matthews, the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, is one of those fine-haired, aristocratic farmers who has no love for bur common schools. He has been a resident of this county about twenty-five years, and during that time he has lived within two hundred yards of a country school, but the shadow of none of his children ever darkened the room. He was too tony to permit his offspring to mix with the common children of the neighborhood. He preferred to hire a governess to instruct his children. Do the people of the State of Indiana want to electa man to such an important office who is too lofty to patronize the common schools of our county? It is said oil and water will not mix, and we guess Kentucky blood will not mix with Hoosier blood.” The Hoosier State is published in the county of Mr. Matthew’s residence, an& dOubtless knows whereof it speaks. No man is obliged by law to patronize the public schools, and it is no disgrace to a man to be able to employ a private tutor or governess for his children if he thinks the public school is not good enough for him. But no man who feels and acts that way has a right to pose as the special friend of the people and representative of the farming class. Mr. Matthews is a Southerner, and probably his exclusive ideas in regard to education are inherited. In the South the public schools never did amount to anything, and it was the custom of wealthy whites to employ private instructors, but in the North the social and educational conditions are very' different. The public schools are the people’s college, and a man who is too aristocratic to patronize them ought not to be eleeted Secretary of the State that supports them. __ If the Republicans turn out and vote in November, the victory will be theirs.