upon men.

Therefore the schools should place upon its older pupils genuine school responsibilities that will prepare for the responsibilities of life.

Can the schools ignore the lessons of the war? Only a few have been mentioned, but there are scores of others. Many of the needs of war are but the needs of peace in condenst form. Vocational education has had the opportunity to prove its worth to a doubting world as if by a miracle. To keep the confidence of the people it must minister to needs long neglected by the schools. It must aid in giving every boy and girl thruout the land not only the fundamentals of citizenship but the ability to earn a living and the culture to enjoy it.

SCHOOL EXPENSES CONSIDERED AS AN INVESTMENT

S. O. HARTWELL, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ST. PAUL, MINN. After the great conflagration of war, which has burned into men's lives and souls, we are entering the period of readjustment. What are now the valuable things which should absorb interest and effort, which should be conserved and refined? What centers of wealth and hope and peace shall we seek, and how are they to influence daily thought and action ?

In this trial by fire we have seen the terrible waste and at last the downfall of a system of education conceived in sin and misshapen by the iniquity of two generations. We are seeing, perhaps less clearly, in the great achievements of our own men the sure, tho partial, success of a truer educational spirit-I say partial because the great occasion which has disclosed the virility and initiative of a trained democracy has also shown that the training offered in public education has not been so universal or so thoro as we had thought. Strange gaps in the former plan and new needs for approaching days have been revealed as never before.

This may seem far from the immediate topic of our program. I do not think so. If the struggle of these years has shown anything of the principles of life it has emphasized the enormous profit and fundamental need of public education. One of the two or three great sources of wealth spiritual or riches financial is education. Its investment value we must both realize and proclaim. Within our own circle we do in a way realize it, but we must do more. In the technical language of the street, we must sell it to a careless and sometimes doubting public-furthermore, we must sell it for cash.

Financial support, or lack of it, makes or modifies all sorts of progress. We sometimes hesitate to admit that, but the only wise way is to plan on that basis. The slow progress of education seems to me often caused by our easy-going acceptance of the public view of educational costs, which considers them "running expenses" and as such most acceptable when lowest, while in fact they are a vital part of the public's investment

in training. The mistake is natural; it comes in part from the superficial analogy between school accounts and production accounts of establisht business. The business man (and educational men are likely to concur, or at least talk, in the same way) usually regards buildings and plant, the things that are groupt as "outlays" in school reports, as invested capital. The general public, partly from the same view and partly because buildings and equipment are concrete and visible, holds the same opinion. As a result buildings and equipment of a fine type are frequently secured, and large problems of investment of this sort are sometimes met with surprising ease. Witness the latest notable example, the voting by the city of Buffalo of $8,400,000 for a school-building program. The business view of the value of a large investment to secure good and economical working conditions is widely accepted, and then the business corollary of low running expenses is immediately applied. To an extent this comes as an accepted corollary, but it is strengthened as building costs make their appearance in tax returns because of the further theory that taxes represent a liability, when in truth legitimate taxes, wisely expended, must be an asset.

Right here we wish to question the easy-going analysis of business advantages mentioned. Is it not a fact that a successful business man or corporation reserves a portion of his investment for "working capital,' a sort of reservoir for running expenses until the product begins to bring its own returns? Frequently, as demand and then production grow, this reservoir has to be increast. Make any deduction you wish on account of manipulation or watered stock, yet each of us could doubtless name offhand great lines of production in which this natural process is going on. The telephone, numerous other applications of electricity, the automobile, and the tractor will occur to us at once as recent examples. In these cases the working capital becomes a sort of revolving fund to which surplus and occasional new issues of securities, in the form of stocks or bonds, give periodic enlargement.

Our contention then is simply this. The larger cost items of school maintenance, including that most important one, salaries of teachers, represent working capital. They should, of course, be managed with care and judgment, with all the financial insight we can gain; but they are a public investment for future profit. We hear at once this objection. Your analogy is wrong. The schools have no marketable product, and profit either does not exist or, at least, cannot be measured. On the other hand all school men ought to know and should be able to show the public that they are in the most profitable business there is for others. Education is an immense dealing in futures, with none of the gambler's risk except on the size of the returns. Granting for argument that one part of the return is not easily measured in terms of money, it is nevertheless clear and in extent immeasurable. I happened to live for many

vears in Michigan, whose state seal carries in Latin the legend, “If you seek a beautiful peninsula, look about you." That motto was adopted in the days of pine forests and malaria and was true even then. Now it carries the content of a vigorous commonwealth, whose industries and citizenship bear the inevitable stamp of its strong public schools and colleges and its great state institutions, such as the Mining School, the Agricultural College, and the University of Michigan. Look about you in any of its towns or cities. Only the blind will fail to observe the civic returns from prompt and energetic investment in education. Most of our states can show the same sort of thing.

Let us put that aside. There is an actual provable financial profit, and we want to emphasize again the statement that it may be traced to early educational investment and is comparable to the size of that investment. You will recall several studies in recent years of the results of training-on wages and hence on living conditions. Some have been made by school people, some by manufacturers, and a few by industrial commissions. A definite summary is found in Dr. C. Caswell Ellis' The Money Value of an Education, a pamphlet publisht by the Bureau of Education. On the prewar basis of wages no boy, considering his profit as capital, could afford to stay out of school for a lower wage than $9.00 per day, since the earning power of groups of boys who have finisht high school represents that investment advantage over the earning power of boys dropping out at the sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. Massachusetts, with the high per capita of educational costs, has a very high per capita of wealth. On the other hand the states showing the lowest school expenditure are at the foot of the wealth scale. Illustrations do not prove a point, but in this case the illustrations used summarize the evidence.

The war in its application of scholarship has proved the same thing. Some of the facts are already known, others are fast coming to public knowledge, and the increast appreciation of the practical value of general education is noticeable. Each one has doubtless found many illustrations in his own line of war reading. I will refer here to only two. In a recent number of Collier's Weekly progress in ordnance manufacturing and improvement was described in great detail. To my mind one of the most remarkable applications of science there shown is the method by which Dr. Millikan, of the University of Chicago, and his assistants improved the range power and effectiveness of the small-caliber guns without any mechanical or structural change in the guns themselves. A second illustration is the wonderful work of the psychologists in shaping and successfully applying the personnel system thru which recruits were supplied to all the parts of the army during 1918.

Truly, if we can carry over the capitalization of intellectual power into the arts of peace we may hope ultimately to make war impossible. We know that sentiment for and appreciation of education have increast,

but we must recall to the public mind that these victories of training and applied science have come thru the most colossal backing of scholarship and statesmanship with funds. Are we willing to make even a reasonable. investment in peace? We can talk of the high prices, increast cost of living, and needs for larger salaries all we please, but in our effort to increase school funds (an effort just now vital in almost every community) I believe that emphasis on investment by the public for the saving of its own life will have greater carrying effect. The latest figures publisht by the Bureau of Education show that the average school-maintenance cost in the United States meant, in the year 1914-15, a tax of twenty-five cents on each hundred dollars of true valuation. Of course many communities are above that, but that is the average for the country. We must admit, I think, that the public is not yet acting on the theory of viewing educational expense as investment. Indeed, expenditure on that scale hardly reaches the dignity of a tax. It is rather in the class, sometimes used by churches and itinerant lecturers, of a "silver offering."

The point of view we have tried to emphasize is not new, but in present conditions it should be stated again and again, for at least two reasons: (1) We need ourselves to realize that a basic test of educational progress lies in financial support. (2) Granted that the great aims of education. are ideal, we must sell to the business world the fact that faith without works is vain, and that money used in support of ideals is simply crystallized work. We have had in late months three great investments in the tasks of securing righteous peace: an immense concentration of intelligence, rivers of blood, and oceans of wealth. May we not at least claim toward making the nation "in peace secure, in justice strong" an investment basis for the expense of public education? We look to education for the increase of both general intelligence and general wealth. Only as we secure these can the investment of blood, already made, be made

secure.

ADJUSTMENT OF SCHOOL HOURS TO MEET CONGESTION AND COMMUNITY NEEDS

ERNEST L. THURSTON, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, WASHINGTON, D. C. The "war policy" of the superintendent of schools of the District of Columbia involved among other things broad adjustment of school hours to meet needs coupled with organization at any time of new classes in subjects proper to public education, for which a demand existed. The experience of the war years measured in students saved to the schools and in new students attracted has opened our eyes to the opportunities that are ours by adjustments of time. We stand ready to teach around the clock face.

A school system is never too large to consider the individual student. War drew a host from school to outside employment. We saved many .to full or part-time school work by adjustment of hours, or by organizing in night schools standard classes with credit in day courses toward later graduation. The part-time student needing special training for his outside work was given opportunity to get it.

Groups of higher students were saved to school by organization of intensive courses-longer hours-fewer weeks-and thus earlier graduation. Our summer high schools are organized on the intensive plan. It is closely related to the plan elsewhere for the Working Boys' Reserve, whereby lengthened school hours and included Saturdays make possible the full units of work in shorter time and an earlier release to farm and industry.

Certain flexibility of hours will increase the efficiency of the night-school service. Our white night schools and colored night schools open at different hours to meet the needs of the respective communities. The night schools, because of their attempt to give real service to meet community and government need, have grown tremendously. A three-night system was doubleshifted as a six-night system. Early classes were organized in popular subjects to relieve stress and to accommodate those who could not come at other times. Afternoon classes were also organized. Moreover, classes for beginners in subjects like shorthand were opened at frequent intervals, and frequent gradings made to classes of different speeds. Our night schools even ran thru the past summer.

A proper working out of plans for part-time and trade instruction must depend in some degree on willingness to make time adjustments rather than on school insistence on certain fixt hours.

Especially in Americanization work must there be freedom of time adjustment. The foreign element works under varied conditions and at all hours. We have only scratcht the surface in this work, in part because we have not recognized that fact. Many whom we seek to reach will not come if difficulties and inconveniences, however slight, stand in the way. We found that Greek waiters in restaurants could come only in midafternoon; now we have a mid-afternoon class and likewise morning classes for others. And to reach the women we are beginning to send out visiting teachers, who go into the homes, make friends, and gather little groups together at any convenient hour for instruction purposes.

Congestion of laboratories, manual-training shops, typewriting rooms, and other special facilities may be relieved and greater service rendered by opening these facilities for extra classes before and after hours. Students are easily found—often the adjustment really benefits them. And as for the teachers-if we establish a unit of work for day or night, adjustments of service and service hours are easily made. Let us use all the time there is for service to the community in the way of public education.