agency and is fraught with potencies which no one who has attended one of its recent meetings would attempt at this time to estimate. Coming as a spontaneous evolution from the rural South and at a time when all the conditions were ripe for cooperative effort, its development has been so rapid, so inevitable; it has brought to light and attracted to itself such unexpected and incalculable forces, that even those most intimately associated with the movement have found themselves borne on by its current to issues which they could not foresee.

The originators of the conference," says President Ogden, "did not know the extent of the forces with which they were dealing nor the greatness of the power they were calling into being." If the fathers of the conference have found its development a surprise, it could not be expected that the public at large should understand it. Two years ago when it first came into public notice many thoughtful people were disposed to regard it as an innocent and ephemeral fad that would pass away with the fashions of the season. Later, when it had demonstrated its vitality, it came to be a source of grave apprehension. Any power not understood may easily assume sinister aspect. Every meeting of the conference has been the occasion of repeated explanations of its theory; it has already borne abundant fruit as result of its direct action and of the agencies which it has called into being; it has drawn to itself the sympathetic cooperation of the educational leadership of the South, both within and without the teaching profession, and yet the legitimate inquiry comes, What are the aims, what is the nature, what the probable future of the conference? To this inquiry let the conference in its genesis, its development, and its present work return its own answer.

I. GENESIS OF THE CONFERENCE.

66

The Conference for Education in the South owes its origin to Rev. Edward Abbott, rector of St. James parish, Cambridge, Mass. He speaks of it as a movement whose momentum and force I realized but little at the time," but as a movement to improve educational conditions in the South he conceived it, called it into being, and directed its early organization. The circumstances leading up to and attending the first conference can not be better given than in Dr. Abbott's own words, which we may quote from a letter dated August 31, 1903, and written in response to an inquiry concerning this matter:

I have been for many years [he says] a member of the Lake Mohonk Indian Conference, assembling annually in the autumn by the invitation of Mr. Albert K. Smiley, at his Lake Mohonk Mountain House above New York, and there enjoying his princely hospitality.

In the summer of 1897 circumstances gave me the occasion for a somewhat extended journey through the eastern Southern States. Mrs. Abbott and I visited Norfolk, Portsmouth, Raleigh, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and Asheville, and crossed the mountains by way of Lenoir and Blowing Rock and Roan Mountain into Tennessee, and so on and up to Capon Springs, where we were to spend a few weeks of leisure. In the course of this journey we made many visits to schools of various grades, both for blacks and whites; saw something of the conditions of the mountain whites, and found our interest deepened in the educational and religious efforts put forth by many different organizations and institutions for the general benefit of the South. This experience, added to previous interest in the schools at Hampton, Raleigh, Cedarville, Ga., and elsewhere in the South, sensibly increased our thoughtfulness respecting the problems presented by this great field and the manner of their solution. I was especially impressed with the separateness of much of the work, the isolation of many of those engaged in it, and the opportunity and need for acquaintance, cooperation, mutual counsel, and sympathy.

It was in the course of our visit to Capon Springs, at the hotel then conducted by the late Capt. William H. Sale, that I conceived the plan of a Capon Springs conference in behalf of the cause of Christian education at the South, after the plan

of the Lake Mohonk conference of the friends of the Indian. And on the evening before our departure for the North I managed to get hold of Captain Sale and sit down with him in the quiet writing room of the hotel. I then and there told him what was in my mind; of my interest in the southern education problem; of what I had seen of poor whites and ignorant blacks, and of the need of coordinating efforts and workers; and then of Mr. Smiley and his Lake Mohonk house, and of the Indian conference there year after year and of what it had accomplished, and finally proposed to him the plan of using his Capon Springs house for a similar conference of the friends of education at the South. Captain Sale listened with great respect and courtesy to all I had to say, thanked me for the suggestion, said he would take the proposal under advisement, consult with his son-in-law, Mr. Nelson, who was engaged with him in the management of the hotel, and write me later his decision.

In the course of the autumn I duly received a letter from Captain Sale telling me that he was disposed to try the experiment of a Capon Springs conference of those interested in the cause of Christian education at the South, and designating the date the following spring when the conference might be called, but upon one condition-that I would arrange the details for the meeting. He would offer the hospitality of the hotel and extend the invitations, but I was to furnish a list of suitable persons to be invited, draw up a programme of subjects and speakers, and, in general, prepare and carry out the plan in all its details. To this end I was invited to prepare and lay before him a detailed schedule for the conference, his part of which he would undertake gladly to carry out.

This was the starting point. As nearly as I remember, I invited Bishop Dudley, of Kentucky; Doctor Frissell, of Hampton; Rev. A. B. Hunter, of St. Augustine's School, Raleigh; President Dreher, of Roanoke College, Virginia, and Rev. George Benedict, of Cedarville, Ga., all of whom I knew personally, to unite with me as a provisional committee of arrangements, and this invitation was accepted with signs of much interest. Much correspondence ensued. The brunt of the preparations devolved upon Mr. Hunter and myself, he acting from the first as a very efficient secretary. He and I met early in the new year at the Rittenhouse Hotel, in Philadelphia, and perfected the arrangements and appointments for the first conference. A list of invited guests was drawn up and submitted to Captain Sale, all of whom, with some others, were duly invited, and the programme of topics and speakers was decided upon and the proper invitations sent out to speakers. By midwinter, I think, everything was in train.

And so the first Capon Springs conference for Christian education at the South was held at Capon Springs from the 29th of June to the 3d of July, 1898. Captain Sale's hospitality was most generous and ample. A goodly company of invited guests responded to his cordial invitation. Bishop Dudley presided. Important papers were read and discussions conducted by experts in the field; and a "Message and appeal" was adopted, addressed to all concerned.

Thus was planted the seed out of which has grown the Southern Educational Conference, with its widely representative membership, its command of large resources, and its large and comprehensive grasp of a very serious and critical situation.

Cooperating causal forces.—Such is the origin of the conference as it first existed at Capon Springs, but the real origin of the conference as we know it to-day must be sought in a larger complex of forces operative in southern life and in our larger civilization. As before indicated, this movement is a natural evolution from existing conditions, and he who would understand it must keep these in mind.

The new régime.-The close of the civil war marks the end of the old régime in the South and the beginning of the new, the most thorough-going social revolution of modern times. It meant the complete upheaval of cherished traditions, the transformation of institutions and habits of life, and even of fundamental points of view, social, political, and economic.

The old hereditary aristocracy supported by slavery gives place to a political and industrial democracy. The war frced not only the black slaves but a large class of white slaves as well-slaves to an iron-clad caste system. This submerged class came with the new régime into a freer life with new aspirations, new courage, and larger opportunities. On the part of all classes the new order called for radical readjustment, for in a democracy of free individuals each must win for

himself his place, and must show himself worthy of the place by winning it anew every day. In the new South not birth but worth determines place, and the criterion of worth is social efficiency.

The new education.—It is evident that this new order called for a new definition of the individual. Freed from the old institutions which had submerged him he must be stated in terms of the new social relations; no longer limited by the boundaries of caste, he must be conceived as a factor coordinate with his fellows in the larger social life. This conception of the free individual in terms of his social function carries with it the consciousness of needed preparation for this function. The freed man must be prepared for citizenship. This free citizen is also conscious of his worth as man, conscious of the fact that he is end as well as means; that therefore he has a claim to the full, free development of his personality. This conception of citizenship and of manhood as potential in every child has given rise to the modern public school, supported by the State for the education of all the people. This institution, impossible under the old régime, has had its development since the civil war. Just as the French after the revolution conceived a system of national instruction as the essential instrument in the hands of the State for transforming crude and monarchical material into republican citizenship, so the people of the Southern States after the war turned instinctively to the public free school as the chief factor in the work of reconstruction. The progress made within the past thirty years is nothing short of the marvelous when viewed in the light of the difficulties to be overcome. The fact that some of the States, as Alabama, for example, are appropriating more than half their total revenue to educational purposes gives evidence of an abiding faith in the new education.

Causes of retarded progress.—If the progress in popular education has not been all that its champions have wished for it, if the public school in the South to-day is very far below the standard set by other sections, it is due to serious obstacles in the way. And it is the consciousness of victory over many of these difficulties that has contributed so largely to the fine enthusiasm of the present educational campaign. Of these retarding influences perhaps the most persistent, and in many respects the most difficult to meet because of the subtlety of its manifestations, is the half unconscious conservatism inherited from the old South. While conserving much of the old life that is vital as well as beautiful, and thus contributing its part to the larger life of the future, it has at the same time clung to old forms which have been outgrown and which progress demanded should be cast aside. There was the old aristocracy, for example, refusing to recognize the new individual, and clinging tenaciously to aristocratic ideals and institutions totally out of harmony with the democratic spirit of the modern world. In education this manifested itself in a vigorous opposition to the public school. Prior to the war the Southern States had no public schools for the education of all people. The education of the slave, involving obviously enough the destruction of the system, was impossible. There was no system of schools at all adequate to the education of all the white children. There were universities, academies, and private schools for the education of those who could afford it. This indifference, and even opposition to the education of the masses, was an inheritance from England. So deeply ingrained was it in the tissue of southern society that when the public school appeared as the child of the new régime it was instinctively opposed; opposed in part, perhaps, because it was a product of the new order; opposed because it was public, offering equal opportunities to the plain people; opposed because it was free. Against these odds the system of popular education has had to fight its way to recognition. And to understand the present enthusiasm of the teacher and educational leader at the South one must appreciate the loneliness of his struggle at the time when he had to fight his battle single handed and alone.

Add to this the poverty resulting from the war and reconstruction. The war

alone cost the South one-tenth of her white male population and three billions of property. Reconstruction squandered the rest; it emptied the treasuries and handicapped future generations with bonded debts amounting to more than $300,000,000. North Carolina, for example, was left with a debt of $35,000,000, almost a third as much as the total valuation of her property; Louisiana with a debt of $40,000,000; Alabama with a debt of $18,000,000, and Tennessee with one of more than $14,000,000. Under these trying conditions the southern people began the work of rebuilding their fortunes and their institutions.

From this experience the schools suffered a double handicap, for, in addition to their inability, from extreme poverty, to give to schools the support they needed, the people had learned to "hate all taxgatherers and to distrust all schemes for the public welfare,' interpreting them as devices for the private gain of the schemers." "a This gave rise to constitutional limitations which are still in many parts of the South a barrier to adequate local taxation for educational purposes. The work of building schools was further retarded by the fact that southern society is organized on the basis of the family as the unit. This type of organization, with a population essentially rural, sparsely settled over large areas of country, has made it extremely difficult to create anything approximating a public or corporate spirit and to secure the cooperation necessary for any public enterprise. If to this we add the double burden of building and maintaining separate schools for the two races living side by side, we may form some conception of the obstacles to be overcome.

Thus the educational leader at the South, with the conservatism of the old aristocracy against him, with an appalling and unjust debt hanging over his head, with extreme poverty staring him in the face at every turn, has had the herculean task of creating public spirit in a society extremely individualistic in its organization, and of inducing a stricken people, taught by harsh experience to hate all taxgatherers and promoters, to build a double system of schools, one for the education of a people but yesterday their slave. With faith and courage he wrought and awaited his time.

The new generation.-But the years have brought to the South improved conditions. The young men of the present generation are facing toward the future; and this, without destroying veneration for the past, has given a new inspiration and a larger courage for the present. These "young captains and young soldiers of industry," in the words of Doctor McKelway, "refuse no reverence for the veterans of the civil war on either side, but the men of this generation are determined to run it. The sons will preserve and will magnify the fame of their fathers, but they will not foster or fight over again their feuds. They believe in factories quite as much as in pantheons, in energy more than in inquests, and in schoolhouses more than in graves."

Material prosperity. The aspirations of these young leaders are reenforced by a remarkable industrial development. Within 20 years, from 1880 to 1900, the South increased its wages paid to factory hands from $76,000,000 to $350,000,000; its production of pig iron from 397,000 tons to 2,500,000 tons; its output of coal from 6,000,000 tons in 1880 to 50,000,000 tons in 1990. During the same period the total output of her manufactured products was increased from $338,791,898 in 1880 to $1,173,422,565 in 1900. The development of textile industries within the period has been phenomenal. The number of spindles has been increased from 667,000 in 1880 to 5,000,000 in 1899. In the one year 1899 there were erected in the South 365 new cotton mills, as against 17 in the New England States." And

a Dabney, "The Public School Problem in the South," Report of the Bureau of Education, 1901, vol. 1, p. 1009.

See Proceedings of the Fourth Conference for Education in the South, pp. 89-90.

this is but the beginning of the development of almost unlimited possibilities, of which the people of this new generation are becoming conscious. But this mere beginning of an industrial evolution has already accomplished three things for education. It has initiated an era of prosperity, which makes an adequate system of schools a thinkable possibility; the establishing of larger trade relations incident to industrial progress has tended to strengthen and expand the social consciousness, and has brought to bear upon education, as upon all social questions, a larger perspective; and, finally, it has demonstrated that the traditional curriculum, organized for the education of ministers, physicians, and lawyers, is inadequate to the demands of modern life. The effect of this whole tendency appeared in a wholesome unrest, finally issuing in the present educational renaissance.

Returning national consciousness.-With this growing consciousness of creative ability and the hope which it carries with it of economic independence, there has come to the South the desire to regain the place which it once held in the councils of the nation. During all these years of preoccupation with the rebuilding of material fortunes the memory of past leadership has lingered as a beautiful dream. With the bounding, buoyant life of this present generation, this dream has been transfo: med into a definite aspiration.

The dream of world leadership.-Then comes the epoch of national expansion quickening the national consciousness throughout the land. There has come to all our people in these latter days the feeling that we are climbing into world leadership. At any rate, we have assumed the position of a world power, and it is clear that our destiny is to be wrought out in cooperation with all the other modern nations. This larger aspiration, carrying its larger responsibility, has brought to the American people, South as well as North, a keener sense of the solidarity of American life, and has put the provincial thinker under the necessity of trying to interpret the life and institutions of his own community in terms of the larger movements of civilization..

Into this larger life the Conference for Education in the South of 1898 was caught up and transformed into the Conference for Education in the South as we know it to-day. Although organized by a small body of men interested primarily in the southern negro. it rapidly developed into an open forum for a frank discussion of all the problems and interests of a democratic society so far as they center in the education of the child.

Before the conference there were in the educational work all over the South men of vision and of power. These are men who, in the words of Doctor Dickerman, "with clear intelligence and unwavering purpose, have toiled while others slept, giving themselves with all their hearts to the task of thinking out these intricate mazes of popular necessity and trying every clew to a solution. They are to be found in every State and distributed in positions of educational power, clear-headed, pure-hearted scholars who find no joy so unalloyed as to serve the people among whom they live." But these men were working out their problems in lonely isolation. In the conference they found a clearing house, and the vague dreams and unexpressed aspirations of individuals have been, as by magic, transformed into a social ideal with a definite programme.

II. PERIOD OF SELF-DISCOVERY.

The period from the first meeting of the conference at Capon Springs in 1898 to the fifth meeting at Athens, Ga., in 1902, is one of rapid expansion and of selfdiscovery. The men who met as the guests of Captain Sale in the first conference knew that the South contained a large colored population but yesterday freed