Worcester, W. F. and D. W.: Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. Vol. XVI. Family Budget of Typical Cotton-Mill Workers. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911.

An intensive study of the standards among cotton-mill families in Fall River, Mass., and in certain southern mill towns.

DISCUSSION

JOHN W. CARR, superintendent of schools, Bayonne, N.J.-We have discussed the question of teachers' salaries and rediscussed it, again and again. We have collected data and written reports and published them. The public realizes that in most places teachers' salaries are inadequate. The real question at this time is, "What are we going to do about it?" I offer the following as a brief synopsis of what seems to me to be a practical program:

1. Keep down other expenses so that there may be funds for increasing teachers' salaries. In making up the school budget, it usually happens that everything else is provided for before any provision is made for increasing teachers' salaries. The result is that other school expenses are increasing far more rapidly than the advance in teachers' salaries. Let us keep down the "miscellaneous expenses" and we shall have more money for teachers' salaries.

2. Standardize expenses, and in many localities there will be sufficient funds to pay reasonable salaries to teachers without increasing the burdens of taxation at all. By standardization of expenses, I mean the paying of a reasonable price for all commodities and service which are really needed, but no more. I give a few examples by way of illustration. In 1903, there were more than four hundred country schools in Indiana each with an enrolment of fewer than five pupils, and more than eleven hundred such schools with an enrolment of fewer than ten pupils. By consolidation, these schools could have been taught with one-third the number of teachers. In a small city, the amount expended for books and educational supplies exceeded $17,000 per year. A careful estimate of the supplies actually needed was made and money appropriated accordingly. The result was that altho the attendance had increased more than a thousand, yet the annual decrease in expenditures for supplies was more than $2,000. By many small savings, the amount available for teachers' salaries may be materially increased.

3. Utilize the various teachers' organizations for the study of tax laws and the laws and practices for collecting and distributing school funds. Appoint active executive committees whose duties it shall be to see to it that the funds which are voted are really available for school purposes. In many localities if the tax dodgers and dead heads were made to pay up, there would be adequate funds for teachers' salaries.

4. Organize and maintain educational publicity committees-local, state, and national. The people want to know what the great body of teachers really need in the way of support in order that they, the teachers, may do their work most effectively. In most communities that is all that is required to secure the necessary legislation to provide minimum salary laws, permanent tenure, and adequate pensions. The great report of this Association on "Teachers' Salaries and Cost of Living" has done and is doing much to acquaint the people with real conditions, but such work needs to be supplemented by permanent committees whose duties are to keep the public informed.

5. Lastly, let us go to our homes, formulate a reasonable salary schedule for the particular locality in which we live, and then see if we cannot get it adopted. In my humble opinion the most difficult problem we shall have will be to agree among ourselves as to what is a reasonable schedule. Let teachers agree among themselves on a schedule which is reasonable, and in most communities the schedule will be adopted. Nothing is dearer to the hearts of the American people than their public schools, and in the end they will see to it that their teachers receive reasonable compensation for their services.

L. E. WOLFE, San Antonio, Tex.-The physical, intellectual, and moral powers of the twenty million children of this country are active for good or evil, during twelve months of each year. Likewise, the needs of the teacher for food, clothing, and shelter continue for twelve months of each year. In other words, neither the teachers nor pupils belong to the class of hibernating animals. On account of the foregoing, our schools should be in session, in cities, towns, and villages, practically the year round; and in order that the

work might not unduly fatigue teacher or pupil, it should consist of a judicious combination of books, industrial training, and play. The general practice in other lines of employment is twelve months' service with two weeks' vacation. The work of the schoolteacher is more fatiguing than some other kinds of employment because, in our almost exclusive book course of study, we attempt the unnatural and irrational.

This lengthening of the school term would incidentally give teachers a larger salary, but not in proportion to the lengthened term, for the salary now paid teachers for six to ten months' service is practically a yearly salary, since teachers seldom earn anything from outside service. While I believe at least an eleven months' term is sooner or later inevitable, in most communities this term will be reached gradually. With the lengthened term and the book-industrial-play course of study will doubtless come the lengthened school day, especially during the longer days of the year. Think of a half-million teachers, in a nation-wide chorus, lamenting the want of time to teach the modern, many-sided course of study, when they are not using more than half the time already available.

In view of the continuously diminishing purchasing power of money since 1897, and the ever-increasing investment by teachers in professional improvement, thru summer schools, correspondence, and other non-residence courses, the able report of our committee on teachers' salaries and pensions together with this and other discussions is very timely. In order that this report may bear fruit thruout the country, a synopsis of it should, from time to time, be sent to school board members, the press, and state teachers' associations with the request that the subject be given a half-day on the program.

But such salary agitation has its dangers, already apparent in many quarters; namely, that praiseworthy movements for increase of salary may degenerate into a scramble for higher salaries that will overshadow efforts for the professional improvement of the teachers. Greatly increased emphasis should be given to the improvement of teachers in service. Superintendents in counties, and superintendents, supervisors, principals, and superior teachers in cities and towns should be organized for the professional improvement of the teaching corps, with a graded course of study definitely related to schoolroom efficiency, and with credits leading to higher certificates, and higher salaries. There is a tremendous waste in our present poorly organized teachers' meetings.

Not only do the interests of the children demand that professional growth and efficiency be prime considerations, but that efficiency be made a chief factor in determining advance of salary. I am reliably informed that in some cities, a rule conditioning advance in salary upon attaining a high rank in efficiency is nullified by an organized pressure inside and outside of the teaching force, resulting in according this high rank to practically the entire corps.

The signs of the times indicate that there is an irrepressible conflict between the members of the board, superintendent, and members of the teaching corps who believe that efficiency should be a prime factor in determining salaries and promotions, and those who believe that length of service alone should determine salary.

The making of efficiency a prime factor in salary schedules is in the interest of the children, is in line with the practice in the business and industrial world, and ought ultimately to prevail thruout the country. With the universal adoption of this principle will come more definite standards and tests of efficiency, greater reliance upon the supervising corps in determining the promotion of pupils, and possibly the more general practice of promoting teachers with their pupils.

Again, the world-wide movement for efficiency in both public and private expenditure should react powerfully to stimulate efficiency in educational expenditure. Public service is notoriously inefficient and wasteful; and we must not deceive ourselves by supposing that public-school service is an exception to the rule. There are probably few school systems in this country in which an able superintendent (held to definite results by an independent committee), if given an absolutely free hand in selecting, promoting, training, and dismissing teachers, could not add 20 per cent to the efficiency of the system. It

seems harsh to speak of dismissing teachers for inefficiency, yet it is not nearly so bad as depriving helpless children of their only opportunity to prepare for their life-work. Besides, a vigorous policy of appointment, promotion, training, and dismissal would save to the school system in efficiency many times what it would cost to pension the teachers who are inefficient on account of age.

Again, the fact that, in common with the other civilized nations of the world, we are rapidly approaching a tax burden that will be confiscatory, re-emphasizes the necessity of permitting neither whim nor false sentiment to prevent the adoption of every available element that makes for efficiency.

DAVID B. JOHNSON, president, Winthrop Normal and Industrial College, Rock Hill, S.C.-No achievement of the National Education Association could be of more vital importance to the welfare of the country than to secure for the teachers' calling dignity, security, independence, proper financial and social rewards, and certainty of support in old age or in case of disability.

The present inadequate salaries and insecurity of position are keeping many of our best men and women out of the teachers' calling, which should command the services of the best brain and character of our land. The good school is the hope of the country, and the good teacher is the hope of the school. What a prosperous, well-governed, lawabiding, progressive, enlightened country, flowing with milk and honey, we would have in a few years if we had in each schoolroom a devoted, skilful, intelligent teacher, imbued with the spirit of civic service and having scholarship and patriotism and social leadership and the freedom and independence resulting from adequate salaries, permanency of position, and security as to the future! Then, indeed, would appear the Golden Age.

The salaries of teachers were low enough ten or fifteen years ago, but since that time the cost of living has been steadily increasing, so that the purchasing power of a dollar now is only about 70 per cent of what it was then. As a result, it is not to be wondered at that so many teachers drop out of the work every year. In some of the states of the south more than one-fourth of the teachers drop out annually.

The exhaustive discussion of pension systems, by President Henry S. Pritchett, in the 1913 report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is worthy the study of anyone interested in this subject. Dr. Pritchett strongly favors pensions for teachers of the public schools, but urges a careful study of the whole question before any plan is adopted. He shows that pensions are justified upon the grounds of a larger social justice and as a necessary condition to an efficient school system.

TOPIC: PRINCIPLES AND AIMS OF EDUCATION

A.

COMMON-SENSE AND BEYOND

WILLIAM L. BRYAN, PRESIDENT, INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON, IND. In our time a multitude is bent upon establishing a new education in which children shall be taught to earn their bread. Meanwhile a stout minority is afraid that this new industrialism will sacrifice the essential interests of the spirit. It has been suggested to me that I should speak on some phase of the profound conflict between these two points of view. I shall try to suggest in a few words my view of the underlying philosophy of that conflict.

In a word I may say that I do not agree with either side in this conflict when it is opposed to the other. I do indeed believe that an industrialism

which excludes or slights any accent of the spiritual life is perilous to the individual and to society. But I also believe that an idealism which ignores or slights the spiritual values of the industrial life is equally perilous to the individual and to society. I agree with the idealist Bergson that the intellect itself was very largely developed on this planet by the making of things with the hands. And I agree with the idealist John Dewey that the college professor who chastely withdraws from concern with the economic life and who imagines that he is the special conservator of the higher culture is the victim of an illusion and is, in fact, a tame parasite. The spirit in which I believe is the spirit incarnate. I wish at this time, however, to dwell especially upon one side of this question and to affirm the practical reality of the forces which transcend the immediate vision of common

sense.

We must all live in the world of common-sense, with its familiar things, tasks, and ways of doing. The laws of that world are harsh, and are enforced by penalties such as failure, hunger, misery, and death. The best thing which the world of common-sense does is to make us work at sensible tasks. This is the best safeguard against insanity and the best means of developing practical judgment and efficiency. The worst thing which the world of common-sense does is to make us blind-is to make us believe that there is nothing beyond itself, nothing but superstitions, speculations, theories, dreams.

Physical science has done much to correct this false belief. When, in the fall of 1752, Franklin sent a kite up into a thundergust in order to catch lightning in a bottle, his kite went clear and clean out of the world of common-sense into another world of which common-sense by itself knows nothing at all. The lower end of that kite-string was held by the man who wrote Poor Richard's Almanac. He wrote of thrift: "An empty bag cannot stand alone." "Diligence is the mother of good luck." He wrote of prudence: "An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow." He wrote of pretended wit and learning: "The most exquisite folly is made of wisdom spun too fine." "There are many witty men whose brains cannot fill their bellies." It was this supreme genius of common-sense who went out in a rising storm to find a new world, not like Columbus with ships, but with a kite and a bottle. And he found it. He and others of his kind found a world incalculably more vast and rich than the America of Columbus. They found the world of force, within whose infinite ranges our world of common-sense floats like a bubble. It is the special business of science to send up kites of every sort in every direction. A university is a station for the flying of kites. The fire that comes back along their strings we must have. It bakes our bread. And the same fire, blazing high, lights up for us the immeasurable world of force invisible to common-sense.

Exactly the same connection exists between common-sense in its application to the conduct of life and the higher spiritual laws by which we are

begirt. The everyday rules of thumb for the conduct of life are essential. They teach us, as children, the first necessary lessons of obedience. They teach us common ideals and ways of doing, so that we can live together in families and as neighbors and citizens. To paraphrase St. Paul, commonsense is our schoolmaster, to bring us to the truth. But common-sense never teaches us the whole truth. It does a man fatal harm to believe that it can. It does a man fatal harm to believe that he can choose for himself a little world with little purposes, little standards of success, and little rules of cunning, and there can shut himself in safe from the living God.

There has lately appeared the biography of a man who thought he could do this, tho, like many of his kind, he believed in a sort of absentee God who might make trouble after death and who might be appeased by the founding of a theological seminary. Fifty years ago this man was one of the richest in America. Like Rousseau, Benvenuto Cellini, and others, he wrote with naked frankness the inside facts of his life. He wanted one thing-money. He believed really in nothing else. What would bring money was practical and good. Whatever stood in the way must be brushed aside. He brushed aside considerations of friendship and loyalty. Again and again he tells of betraying and ruining his own partners. "Business is business," he said. He tells of organizing the farmers of Putnam County, New York, into a protective league against Vanderbilt's Hudson River steamboat monopoly, and then selling out the farmers to Vanderbilt. "The dog that snaps quickest gets the bone," he said. He tells of arranging to get his partners into his debt so as to have them in his power. "You own your debtor," he says, "body and breeches. You are the cat; he is the mouse." He brushes aside considerations of patriotism. "Such far-off things as wars in Mexico, Missouri Compromises, slave wars in Kansas could not be allowed to come in and take my thoughts away from business." Again: "I saw very quickly that the War of the Rebellion was going to be a money-maker for me." "It's good fishing in troubled waters." He tells of corrupting officials of the government in the interest of stock manipulations, but adds: "We didn't dare to make offers of the kind to Old Abe. Lincoln was an impractical man as far as money went. All he thought of was saving the Union." Finally, he brushed aside considerations of loyalty to his family. In his last days his greed for money on any terms so possessed him that he proved an unsafe trustee of the estates of his grandchildren, and he was dismissed from his trusteeship by the court. By an accident of fortune which does not always happen, the millionaire lost all his money and died in poverty and solitude.

His philosophy of life is expressed in a paragraph by Balzac: "The more cold-blooded your purpose," says a worldly countess to her young relative, “the surer you will be of success. Strike without pity, and the world will fear you. Treat men and women as post-horses. Ride them