Bardwell, D. L. "Report on High-School Libraries in New York City," Sixteenth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, New York City (1914), pp. 43-50. 500 Park Ave., New York City: Department of Education. Gives tentative budget for high schools of 1000, 2000, 3000 pupils, equipment, and supplies needed, list of periodicals, outline of lessons. Newberry, Marie St. "A Normal Budget for the High School Library," Proceedings of the National Education Association (1914), pp. 817-20. Williams, Sherman. High-School Library Problems. New York Libraries February, 1916. Better choice of books and larger appropriations. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TEACHERS' SALARIES, TENURE, AND PENSIONS I. REPORT ON SALARIES Owing to the effect of the world-war on prices, the committee has deemed it advisable to make a more extended report on salaries than otherwise would have been necessary. Not only have definite recommendations been made, but data have been appended which support the recommendations made. The committee has been fortunate in securing the services of a number of persons in preparing this report. While the committee agrees with the conclusions and recommendations set forth, the persons writing the different parts are responsible for the statements of facts. The report is submitted with the hope that it will not only meet with the approval of the National Education Association, but be found helpful to legislators, school officials, teachers, and the general public. JOSEPH SWAIN, Chairman ERNEST C. MOORE MARGARET A. HALEY DAVID B. JOHNSON HARLAN UPDEGRAFF GRACE C. FORSYTHE JAMES FERGUSON THE NATION AND THE CRISIS IN ITS SCHOOLS Apart from the prosecution of the war itself, there is no more urgent problem now before the American people than that created by the threatened collapse of the teaching profession. Collapse is an extreme word, but so is the emergency it describes. The drafting into other work of large numbers of the most capable teachers, the continual opening of new doors of opportunity to thousands of others, the utterly inadequate financial provision for the majority of the remainder-these are no longer matters for debate. They are facts. And they are facts ominous with disaster for the nation. If the American people cannot be made to see the situation and to supply an early and drastic remedy, we shall run the risk, even tho we win the war, of losing much that makes the war worth winning. Our schools are the spring and origin of our democracy. Of what avail will it be to spend our blood in defending the forms of democratic society if the life that is to fill and energize them is lost? And if our schools suffer, it will be lost. It is futile to declare that this is a matter for the future. If the war has taught us anything, it has taught us that the future becomes the present with fatal rapidity, and that failure to provide for that future in advance is criminal. Foresight then is what is wanted, and again foresight, and yet again foresight. The American people now have a supreme opportunity to exercise foresight in the matter of their schools. Will they exercise it? Or will they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? INDUSTRY ATTACHES VALUE TO EDUCATION Fortunately there are a few departments of education which anybody can see are not only indispensable to the life of the nation, but are as integral parts of the prosecution of the war as the building of ships or the training of armies. A blind man can see that if the teaching of chemistry or engineering or medicine in this country were to suffer, the military arm of the nation would soon be crippled. Fearful lest the supply of skilled workers should fall off, industrial leaders are realizing more fully every day how dependent they are on the flow of trained men from the hands of the schoolmasters. Within a month, for example, a manager of one of the largest munitions plants in the country came to the head of the department of chemistry of one of our colleges with the declaration that he was in need of a chemist particularly fitted for work of a character which he specified. "You have the very man we want," said he, naming an assistant professor of chemistry in the college in question. "You must let us have him." "But I can't," replied the professor. "Our department cannot get on without him. He cannot be replaced." "How much is he receiving here?" inquired the manager. The head of the department mentioned the salary. "We will double that," declared the manager without an instant's hesitation, "if he will go to work for us tomorrow morning." "We cannot meet that offer," said the professor, "but if you take him, don't expect us to keep on sending you the groups of trained chemists that that man has helpt to turn out in the past." The manager hesitated; the thought seemed to sober him. "You're right," he exclaimed. "I see it. Keep your man. He is more indispensable to us here than he would be in our plant." And the manager went away to seek some other solution of his problem. That incident presents in miniature the relation of technical education to the war. Every day this war becomes more of a war of expert knowledge. The man behind the desk is as essential as the man behind the Indeed he is the man behind the gun. gun. All this is so plain in the case of subjects like chemistry, engineering, and medicine that an apology is almost necessary for dwelling on it. But it does not appear to be so plain in the case of subjects just as really, albeit a bit more indirectly, connected with the war. And when it comes to education generally, to the majority of the public it does not appear to be plain at all. EDUCATION PRESERVES FRUITS OF VICTORY The argument in many minds seems to run something like this: “Our business at present is to win the war. By all means let us keep the technical schools that have a bearing on that business running full blast. As for the rest of the school system, time enough to attend to that when the war is over." Now, if we knew that the war would be over in a year; or if the country were financially at its last gasp, with taxation passing the limits of the tolerable—if luxury were entirely eliminated, and waste and extravagance things of the past; or if all the able-bodied men and women were at the front, in the factory, or on the farm-then there might be a gleam of reason in a proposition to close the schools till the war was over, or to let them pass into the hands of admittedly inferior persons. Even under such circumstances the proposal would be a desperate one. Culture and education are by their nature continuous things. They are a kind of birth. You cannot disturb the process of physical birth in a nation without disaster. Neither can you interrupt its spiritual and intellectual life and expect to take it up, unimpaired, where it was dropt. It would be tragedy indeed if the present generation were to win the war only to have the fruits of victory wasted by a generation incapable of understanding or using them. A WAR OF SCHOOLMASTERS Here it is that we touch the center of the misunderstanding concerning this war and general education. This is not merely a war of chemistry and engineering, a war of technical knowledge pitted against technical knowledge; it is a war of cultures and ideals, of ideas pitted against ideas. In this sense it is literally a war of schoolmasters; and only the hope of victory in this latter struggle makes the sacrifices of the other conflict seem worth while. But to achieve that victory the ideas and ideals for which we stand must be kept pure and free-flowing at their source. For that deeper war behind the other is bound to go on long after the physical strife has ceast. Everywhere men make the capital mistake of supposing that the good or the evil of this war is a thing that will be definitely settled on the day when victory is attained and the treaty of peace signed. There could not be a grosser error. The upshot of this war for humanity, the final good or bad of it, is going to depend on what the nations do as a result of it, on whether it gets the better of the brain of humanity by stunning it or whether the brain of |