anew. To that great and new country let us dedicate ourselves-that country which is to be realized by the emancipation of every man born of woman who calls himself not Southerner, not Westerner, not Northerner, but that greatest of all names-an American.

The conference has thus come by rapid strides into full possession of its general aim. Beginning, as we have seen, with the problem of educating the negro at the South, it soon discovered that the education of the negro was inextricably bound up with the education of his white neighbor. Taking up the problem of universal education, it was seen that the individual can rise only as the community rises, and that effective reconstruction of the public school system in the South waits upon the quickening of the social conscience. The social problem thus raised grows at a bound into a national interest vitally related to national aspirations, and therefore involving the mutual privileges and responsibilities of American citizenship. The conference is thus consciously playing its part in the competition of the nations by contributing its share to that larger educational activity which we see so conspicuous at the end of the century in all progressive countries, and which Dr. G. Stanley Hall has truly said constitutes the chief business of our modern civilization.

2.-Discovery of the forces which the conference was to call into its service.

The conference enlarged its aim as it became conscious of the greatness of its power. In its infancy it was not a conspicuous force in southern life. It took it three years to command public attention. The men who composed it in the beginning were men of force, thoroughly capable of leadership in a large movement, but they were small in numbers and represented but a phase of the educational work in the South. They represented the combined forces of philanthropy and church loyalty and organization as directed toward the education of the negro. They had no intention of attacking the larger educational problem or of appealing to the whole educational force of the South. But the movement, once begun, was forced by the logic of its own development into larger and larger fields of endeavor, while at the same time it offered the one opportune point of contact for all those forces which had been working in isolation for the cause of education in the South. They gravitated toward this center by natural law, and made the conference from year to year a revelation even to its leaders.

Public school teachers and officials are proverbially ready to respond to any call which holds out promise of better things for popular education. If they have any fault, as Professor James has said, it is that they are "just a mite too docile.” But in this case we trust they have not been borne away by a popular fad. No movement since the beginning of the public school work in the South has given them so much of new inspiration and new life and promised so much in the way of substantial results. As soon as the conference became definitely interested in universal education through the public school it found at its disposal a vast complex of forces waiting to be organized and directed. So enthusiastic, indeed, has been the response to the influences of the conference that it may be said to have at its ready command the whole machinery of the public school system of the South. Just how this is being utilized we shall see later.

The remarkable progress already made has been made possible by the wholehearted cooperation of the colleges and universities. And this is a new thing in the South. While the university is supposed to stand for leadership, it has not been disposed to lead the movement for popular education; the typical university man has not been in sympathetic touch with the public school men; but folding his academic robes about himself, he has stood aloof in what he has regarded a noble isolation, as if knowledge were for knowledge's sake, and for him. Cherishing his musty conceptions of an intellectual aristocracy, he has willfully and per

sistently ignored the yearnings of the toiling thousands, whom to help into larger lives should constitute the reason for his being. But a change is coming over the spirit of these institutions, as they are dominated more and more by the spirit of young men who are in touch with the modern world, with its larger and more vital statement of culture in terms of social service. This tendency has been immeasurably strengthened by the conference, which has not only embodied this conception of culture and service in its creed and voiced it many times in its programme, but has been from the beginning a living example of it. Mr. Ogden, in his address before the third conference, urging the claims of the business man to a place in its councils, says:

The plain man of affairs needs to be within the educational circle that by his very presence he may remind even higher education that all training of the intelleet should have only for its end and aim the good of the people. Art for art's sake is a heresy. Learning for its own sake debases; does not lift. Intellectual development that makes man superior in his own esteem elevates the mind at the sacrifice of character. The world is run by the two-talent men, and the two-talent men must be recognized if intellectual life is to have a healthful growth. Of all the sham aristocracies, the meanest is the intellectual. Its type is lower than that of mere money arrogance, as the sharpness of its sting is more bitter and keen. The highest institutions and the most cultivated persons should find the noblest exercise of their greatest power in such service as will most surely lift the mass. When the two-talent and the ten-talent men meet on a common level of service for humanity, the association is ideal.

This spirit has dominated the conference in all its deliberations and activities and has infected everyone who has come into touch with it. The circle of college and university men in its councils has widened year by year. They have been active in the organization of its boards, have given generously of their time and thought and energy in organizing and directing educational campaigns, and have found it a privilege and an honor to do personal service in the field. State universities which have lived apart and fed on ambrosia for so long as to become anæmic are now putting themselves into vital relations with the State systems of schools, and are thus entering upon a period of renewed vitality for themselves and of larger service to the States. Doctor Dickerman, in speaking of our higher institutions of learning, says:

They are only in the infancy of their development as engines of popular enlightenment; they have in them undiscovered possibilities, comparable to the forces of electricity twenty years ago, and fresh, unimagined puttings forth of power are coming to send thrills of re-creative life wherever the homes of men are found.

This new ally in the cause of popular education is already making itself felt on its own ground, as well as in the field and in the conference.

Another force of incalculable possibilities which this movement has drawn into its service is the public press. Doctor Frazer, field agent in Virginia, in his report to the Richmond conference, says:

One of the most helpful agencies for the creation of a public sentiment more favorable to free schools has been the State press. Almost without exception the religious and secular papers have opened their columns to educational news and have published valuable editorials bearing upon the needs of the schools.

This is indicative of the generous interest and cooperation of the press throughout the South, and even many of the large dailies and weeklies of the East and several of the great magazines have done valuable service by putting themselves in sympathetic touch with the work in the South and then interpreting its national significance to the larger public.

In many of the States the women's organizations are rendering invaluable assistance in awakening public sentiment, improving schoolhouses, and even in effecting school legislation. The Federation of Women's Clubs in Alabama, for example, secured the establishment of the girls' normal and industrial school at Monte

vallo, took an active part in the campaign against child labor, and led a movement for the betterment of school houses and grounds. At the Athens conference, in recognition of the work of the women of Georgia, the General Education Board gave to the State normal school at Athens $7,500 in scholarships to meet the 46 scholarships of $50 each already provided by the women of the State, offered to duplicate for three years all new scholarships of $50, not to exceed 50 in number, which these women would provide up to January 1, 1903, and added $4,500 to the $6,000 which the women had raised for the Winnie Davis Memorial Hall. Doctor Buttrick, who announced the gift, said in closing:

We ask that we may have a little part in the great work which has been inaugurated by the people of the South and in which the women of Georgia are bearing so honorable and noble a part.

Doctor McIver reported to the Richmond conference the organization of a woman's association for the betterment of the public schoolhouses of North Carolina. He reported 20 counties as having good organizations, and said their purpose was to form an association around every public school where two or three women could be found who would give their services to the work. Doctor Frazer, in his report, recognized the work of the Richmond educational association, through whose efforts the conference had been brought to Richmond. These examples serve to show what an agency for effective service the conference has found in these organizations.

And then the politician, what shall be said of him? It taxes the memory of no one to recall the time when he was afraid to raise his voice in behalf of the public school. To-day Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana boast their "educational governors," while in many other States officials in high position have spoken out in no uncertain terms for free schools adequate to the needs of all the people.

It is still more encouraging to know that these men are not mere timeservers, riding into public favor on a wave of popular enthusiasm. Governor Aycock took a positive stand with the schoolmen in North Carolina at a time when it meant probable defeat, and side by side with the schoolmen the fight for schools for all the people was made and won. Governor Montague went all the way from Richmond to Montgomery last February to meet with the public school officers of Alabama and discuss with them the relation of the child to the State. He welcomed the conference to Virginia last April, attended many of its sessions, and entertained it in his home. The moral support thus given the movement by the broad-minded and large-hearted cooperation of those highest in authority can not be overestimated. It causes the humblest teacher in the land to take up his task with new courage and an added feeling of civic usefulness and of self-respect.

These are typical of the forces which the conference and the Southern Board have developed and attracted to themselves. With their simple and constructive creed of upbuilding society through the education of the child they have offered & common point of contact for all the forces-social, religious, political, and economic-which are working for the higher evolution of American democracy. President Ogden graphically stated this strategic position of the conference in his annual address at Richmond:

All are perfectly familiar with the sovereign demands-material, intellectual, spiritual-of educational interests. Executive combinations of many sorts-land, buildings, taxation, legislation, systems, methods-are under requisition for the service. Its infinite details increasingly enlist the unremitting toil of hundreds of thousands of painstaking teachers-men and women-representing every grade of instruction, from the simplest to the most abstruse.

For the moment, in the center and foreground of this vast perspective stands this conference-a composite aggregation of men and women, interesting because so varied in its personnel.

Some are profoundly ignorant of the technicalities of education, quite unfamiliar

by personal knowledge with even the recitation rooms or the methods of contemporary school life. Others are within the sacred fraternity of teachers, and in the group may be found representatives of every rank in the teaching profession. Still others are charged with the official responsibility of educational management on behalf of the State or corporate bodies. But all are here with one accord in one place-officials and citizens, professionals and laity-by reason of a common belief in the beneficent power of education and because each distinct element is essential to the spirit that must vitalize the conference.

The solvent, the fusing power, that creates the common point of contact is the belief, perceived in varying degrees by all here present, that the great social duty of our age is the saving of society, and further that the salvation of society begins with the saving of the child.

3.-Defining its methods of operation.

The conference, as we have said, is now in full possession of its general aim. Future development must be looked for along the line of devising new methods of work, new ways of organizing and using the forces at its disposal to make them more effective in the accomplishment of desired results. Much, however, has already been accomplished in the way of defining general lines of activity. The development of these constitutes, perhaps, the most interesting aspect of the history of this movement.

Genesis of the Southern Education Board.-The Southern Education Board and the General Education Board grew out of the same conditions and supplement each other in function. The conference had its origin in the need of cooperation to make more effective the missionary work in the South. The first conference developed the need of the organization of agencies controlling contributions from the North to schools in the South. The situation calling for such organized effort was first presented by Rev. A. B. Hunter, of Raleigh, N. C., in a paper on “Cooperation among schools: "

We all have a common interest [he says] in securing the interest of generous people in the work. If that interest is turned aside by appealing to false or unworthy motives, we all suffer. It is estimated that since 1870 the North has been giving to negro schools in the South at the rate of about $1,000,000 a year and that it is giving that amount now. This sentiment of sympathy is readily recognized by many who have only their own personal ends to serve, and it has become a nuisance in the business offices of large northern cities to receive the visits of those who are soliciting money for negro schools, basing their appeal upon this well-recognized feeling of sympathy. Sometimes the salary of the solicitor consumes a large part of the money collected. If the public confidence is once weakened by these efforts of unworthy men, damage will be done not only to the institutions which they represent, but to all the negro schools.

Rev. George T. Fairchild, of Berea College, Ky., in presenting a brief by President Frost, of that institution, calls attention to these same evils and further urges the need of cooperation to prevent the waste of effort and means. "Evils come," he says, "from too many schools in limited territory, while large regions are left destitute." He points to the associated charities in large cities as an example of increased efficiency coming from cooperation, and urges the necessity of an approved list of institutions made out with reference to age and equipment, efficiency of administration, and location.

The conference embodies the spirit of these two papers in the sixth article of its Message and appeal," which is as follows:

VI. The principles now widely recognized and applied under the head of associated charities, tending to prevent the bestowal of gifts upon unworthy persons, have a proper field for exercise in the support of institutions of learning in the more needy parts of our land, and, while fully realizing the practical difficulties in the way of any such application of those principles, we are of the opinion that the gifts of the North in aid of educational work of the South should proceed upon lines of intelligent, equitable, and discriminate selection, and that great care should be taken by the people of the South in authorizing appeals for outside

aid, though such aid is greatly needed by worthy institutions both for support and endowment.

The second conference gave new impetus to this demand for organized effort and turned the direction of it into larger fields. Doctor Dickerman, in a remarkably forceful paper on “Cooperation in educational work," upon the basis of a survey of educational conditions in the South, in which he points out in detail the great need of better houses, longer terms, more efficient teachers, and improved methods, urges with irresistible force that neither the church nor private enterprise can accomplish the task of educating the people; that the public school is the only hope of popular education, and that in the school systems already organized under the Government we find the only agency representing sufficient organization to cover economically and efficiently the vast territory within the 1,300 counties in the South. He shows by citing numerous instances that the generosity of the North, by being diverted into improper channels, frequently works an injury, antagonizing and crippling existing schools, dividing the educational forces of the community instead of harmoniously developing them; that in this hurtful rivalry sound standards are abandoned and superficiality and pretense substituted for a well-graded, thorough course of education; that by giving young pupils the names and forms of superior education these privately supported institutions tend to bring the public school into discredit.

The conclusion is evident. The cause of education in the South can be served best (1) by bringing the existing public schools into a more efficient state of organization, and (2) by directing the generosity of the North and the best efforts of the South to their better equipment. In connection with this last point we get the germ of the main function of the Southern Education Board.

In the last analysis [says Doctor Dickerman], that which is before all other things is popular interest in education among the people to be benefited by it. This must precede the schoolhouse and precede everything. People will never get much out of any privileges till they feel their value. But feeling their value, appreciating how much a good school signifies to them, their children, and the righborhood, they will not be content with a term two months long nor with an incr pable teacher nor with humdrum methods. Having a noble conception of the school, nothing will satisfy them till they see its realization.

In these suggestions we have a foreshadowing on the one side of the organization of local initiative and control, and on the other the organization of outside aid to supplement local effort.

With regard to the second type of organization a more explicit statement is found in Mr. Baldwin's paper on The present problem of negro education."

It is our duty [he says] to organize a general educational board, by which effective work may be accomplished throughout the South; that funds given to the negro cause may be given through such an organization, or to schools approved by them, so that the giver may be sure that his contribution will be used effectively. The North to-day is tired of giving indiscriminately to a multitude of colored schools in the South. Many of our rich men, who are charitably disposed, and who want to give largely to the negro cause, demand that any school asking for funds be under good business management and that effective industrial training shall be given. The mere advertisement or statement that industrial training is given at any school is no longer sufficient inducement to procure funds. The approval of an educational board, properly organized, will be in itself a warrant to those who may contribute that their gifts will be expended properly.

Then, toward the close of his paper, Mr. Baldwin gives the suggestion for a "general organization for Southern industrial education” for both races.

The conference expressed in its resolutions its appreciation of "the urgency of the need for a general committee of direction in harmony or in conjunction with the management of those [the Slater and Peabody] funds to guard against the haphazard and in some cases harmful use of money contributed at the North for negro education."