Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/489

452 the American Revolution, historic work has been emphasized and innumerable landmarks have been saved from the decaying tooth of time. She encouraged the marking of the trails followed by the pioneers of the nation, and almost every month some new achievement in this line has been recorded in the annals of the society. The trail of the first adventurers to the Golden West has been marked by the Pueblo Chapter of Colorado; the Natchez trail by the Tennessee Daughters; the Oregon trail by the Daughters of Nebraska. General Harrison's military road has been marked by the Daughters of Ohio and Indiana, and the path of Daniel Boone by the Daughters of the American Revolution of Kentucky. But while urging the marking of historic spots, Mrs. Scott has always urged on the society that deeds are more prolific of results than words, and she deplores that so many believe that patriotism is best expressed by enthusiastic devotion to the past. She gives profound deference to the past, but under her leadership the seventy-six thousand women who compose the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution are endeavoring to obtain exact knowledge of present conditions. Her ambition is that the Daughters shall play an important part in forming public opinion upon certain vital national questions—child labor, the Juvenile Court, patriotic education in all its scope, playgrounds, the observance of a safe and sane July 4th, the preservation of historic spots and records, and the conservation of the national resources in the interest of the future homemakers of the nation. Mrs. Scott's optimistic philosophy put in epigrammatic form is, that there "exists in the heart and mind of every loyal American woman, latent civic and moral sentiment that needs only to be aroused and intelligently focused, in order to make of women one of the most potent and resistless factors for good in the civilization of the twentieth century."