Smyrna Times

DELAWARE CITIZENS MEET AND
DISCUSS PLANS FOR THE YEAR

GATHERINGS TO BE HELD THROUGHOUT THE THREE COUNTIES

Bishop Cook Heads Special Committee to Arrange for Said Meetings—
Requests Are Already Coming In

At a recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the Delaware Citizens Association held in the Senate Chamber, Dover, a report outlining subjects for discussion in a series of meetings to be held throughout Delaware, within the next two months, was adopted. The plan, presented by Bishop Cook, chairman of a special committee to make recommendations on the subject, will enlist the assistance of prominent citizens in carrying a knowledge of the ideals of the association to all Delaware. Requests for meetings have been received to date from seven committees. The report outlines three subjects that the committee feels need to be brought to the attention of Delaware people.

First, the rapid change that is taking place in the State as the result of good roads chiefly, but due also to telephone, radio and other such agencies. "Communities," Bishop Cook declared, "formerly almost isolated, have been brought into close and continuous communication with the current of life from outside their borders. There is a constant stream of motor cars up and down the State. In the past seven years this has worked great changes and will continue increasingly to alter the character of the State. The call is insistent that the citizens should make the largest and most intelligent use of these forces. It is fatal simply to drift."

"In the past the drift has been from the country to the city, where the opportunities are greater. But the city is proving a poor place to live and rear a family. Here is Delaware uniquely placed, a most attractive place in which to make a home: a strip of fertile land capable of intensive cultivation, within short distance of great city markets, waiting, it would seem, just for a better understanding of its advantages on the part of its own citizens to leap ahead."

Second, the type of Delaware's population. "Looking at the State from its racial aspects," the report continued, "It is made up chiefly of so-called Anglo Saxon stock of American origin, with little mixture of the foreigner or foreign born. It is much more homogeneous than is usually found in this part of the country. It is almost equally divided in population between the city and industrial element of Wilmington and the rural and agricultural element in the state. If these elements contend against each other, it means a division where there ought to be close co-operation and unity. A central city is necessary to an agricultural district: an agricultural district, necessary to a city center. Fundamentally, their interests coincide."

"The state is small in population, which makes the success of an effort for unity in action all the more feasible, but at the same time threatens to engulf the state between larger ones both North and South, unless there is developed a Delaware 'spirit' which shall come to be widely recognized because of the intelligence and the quality of its citizens." Some of the smallest nations have most powerfully influenced mankind. Greece, the Palestine of the Jews, the islands of Great Britain and Japan are examples. Delaware is small, but it has the chance to develop the highest type of American life, if its citizens will learn to co-operate so as to make the best use of their opportunities.

This leads to a consideration of the possibilities in "Adult Education" in the state. "Education," Bishop Cook insisted, "in any proper sense is life-long: not simply acquiring information but learning how best to adapt ourselves to the conditions about us; to so use its forces that life may be continually enriched and beautified."

"The most important field is not, then, the schooling of children, but the education of adults who have it in their power to make such changes in political, social and economic life as their experience may inspire them to undertake." Every great social change has been accomplished by this kind of education in adult life, where, by conference and comparison of experience, men and women educate each other.

"This is what the Delaware Citizens Association seeks to start. It has no political plans, no schemes for school advancement, no other axe to grind. It seeks simply to provide a means whereby the citizens of the state may discuss their problems—social problems, health problems, problems that have to do with political integrity, care of dependents, all of those of general interest, and come to conclusion as to what ought to be done and how to do it. To a share in this, the Delaware Citizens Association invites all people of the state."