from which the bricks used in the Tuskegee buildings were made; and the pupils in the geography class had before them some of the products of Japan and of the part of Alabama where the institution is located, and were being taught why these products are exchanged and the various commercial routes used in the exchange. So well was the work being done that the visitor "wished that grammar, geography, arithmetic, and geometry might have been taught to him in this human and absorbingly interesting fashion." That Tuskegee Institute has already won a high place among the educational institutions of the country is indicated by the active interest taken in its work by prominent men in the North and in the South, and by the fact that the former president of Columbia University, Mr. Seth Low, is the president of its board of trustees.

THE JEANES FOUNDATION.-Miss Anna T. Jeanes, of Philadelphia, April 23, 1907, placed $1,000,000 in charge of a board of trustees to administer in securing better rural schools for the negroes of the United States. The trustees organized in February, 1908, and elected Doctor James H. Dilliard, of New Orleans, as president. The board is at present endeavoring to carry out in a practical way the desires of Miss Jeanes along the following lines:

1. Funds are supplied to a county or parish superintendent with which to employ a trained industrial supervisor of negro work in his county or parish. This director is instructed not only to supervise industrial work already established but also to introduce it wherever it may be deemed advisable. Efforts are also made to interest the people in better school-houses and school-grounds. The employment of these supervisors is generally known as the Henrico Plan, because it was first used in Henrico County, Va.

2. Teachers are employed to do extension work in the schools within easy reach of some central school which they use as their headquarters. This plan gives closer supervision and more immediate help to the regular teachers.

3. A third plan has been to put a man into a county and set him the task of creating a more intelligent public sentiment for the betterment of rural schools and country

life in general. He is also expected to supervise the teachers and to organize them for self-improvement.

What is being accomplished is well indicated by a report made upon the work of one of the most successful of these industrial supervisors. "He commenced at once (in the county to which he was assigned) to organize in each colored school visited a school improvement association, cooperative corn and cotton clubs and, where the school children and patrons cultivated the grounds, gave lessons in agriculture and got them to agree that the proceeds arising therefrom should inure to the benefit of the school in equipping the same and in extending the length of the school term. The school-yards have been cleared off and planted in trees and flowers, corn and cotton clubs organized and work done on the little farms, and manual art and domestic science introduced into most of these schools, where wood work, raffia and straw basket making, and sewing are being learned by the children, who seem cheerful, industrious, and making progress, while this work does not seem to decrease their interest in books."

It should be added that the general interest brought about by his work in this Alabama county has already resulted in a lengthening of the school term two and in places even three months, in the establishment of an annual county colored fair, and in a social contact and community cooperation that promise only the best results.

PART VI

CHAPTER XI

FOREIGN EDUCATIONAL INTERESTS.

Argentina.

BUENOS AYRES has set an example in business enterprise that may well be copied by many older and presumably further advanced cities. Realizing the importance of the opening of the Panama Canal as an opportunity for worldwide trade expansion, it has decided to spend $40,000,000 upon the improvement and enlargement of its port facilities. What this may mean in the way of stimulating trade, industry, and the general welfare cannot easily be estimated. That it will give this port facilities for docking and handling freight which will make it exceptionally attractive to the unattached ("tramp") steamers, in which the great bulk of the world's commerce is now carried, is evident. The ports that afford the best and quickest means of changing cargoes are the ones these steamers will frequent, because each day saved in this way tends toward the opportunity for additional voyages during the year and therefore toward extra earning capacity. And increased business for the port should tend to a prosperity and progress that should be reflected in the schools for its people.

Australia.

HOW IT CARES FOR ITS POOR CHILDREN.-In the Contemporary Review for October, Edith Sellers gives a most interesting account of what South Australia has been doing for its children. Until in the early eighties South Australia regarded and treated its destitute children as little paupers. But realizing through the rapid spread of pauperism that this form of relief was causing the very trouble they desired to cure, the government passed the excellent law of which Miss Sellers speaks as follows:

No matter now how poor or degraded a child is, he or she does not rank as a pauper and may not be lodged in a pauper institution to suffer the degradation of such a life. In fact, normal children may not be lodged in any institution but must be provided for in homes, "just as they would be were they being provided for by their own parents, instead of by the state." They must also be brought up in the country amidst wholesome surroundings and where they may have a chance to lead free, happy human lives. There is a State Children's Council which is virtually a government department that takes care of their relief. This council appoints local committees to act as care-takers of these children and to see that they are properly housed, clothed, and fed, and that they attend school regularly, and are treated kindly. The council can take under its care any child who is unruly, a truant, or a beggar, or any whose parents are vagrants, drunkards, or criminals, or who have forfeited their claims to their children by allowing them to live in unwholesome surroundings. Of any such Miss Sellers says, "His children are lost to him until such time as he can prove that he has changed his ways and may be trusted to bring them up properly.

A child is boarded out under a subsidy system until it is 13 and then on a service system until it is 18 or in the case of certain girls until 21. "Under both the subsidy system and the service, the council's wards are lodged with respectable working-class foster-parents, who, in the case of subsidy children, must live within easy walking distance of a good school." The laws are stringent in dealing with those who deal neglectfully or wrongfully with these wards of the state. During the service period, which begins at 13, the child practically becomes an apprentice, and pay must be given for its services. If a boy, the fosterfather must be a farmer or a skilled artisan, and part of his wages must be turned over to the council, which deposits it for him in the savings bank. The foster-mother of a service girl must teach her housewifery, how to cook, clean and wash; she must teach her also how to make her own clothes; perhaps, too, if she can, how to trim her own hats. "The law requires her not only to turn the girl, so far as she can, into a good servant, but also to fit

her to be a good citizen, a good wife and mother." These arrangements have been working admirably for both girls and boys, and South Australia is accomplishing its set purpose of having no paupers in the land. Instead of pauperizing the children she is turning them into self-respecting, self-reliant, thrifty, hard-working men and women.

Belgium.

MOTHERHOOD INSTRUCTION.-Although the social and economic conditions of the poor in Europe are far less favorable than in the United States, the importance of surrounding motherhood and early infancy with proper conditions is well recognized there. Where so many of the men are needed for the army and where the industrial competition is so severe, motherhood must be protected and infant life not unnecessarily endangered. With the wider entrance of woman into the industries, and with her increasing social and economic importance, is coming a recognition of the fact that in the protection of the mother lies much of the welfare of the nation. The welfare of the mother and that of the child are so inseparable that consideration of the health of one necessarily involves interest in the hygienic care of the other. Europe has fewer free hospitals than America, but there are a number of institutions which have for their specific purpose the combined care of mothers and their babies.

One of the best of these institutions is Doctor Miele's Euvre d'Assistance Maternelle in Ghent. A large part of the population of this city is employed in textile mills. Many married women are employed in the factories, where the hours are long, the wages low, and the infant deathrate correspondingly high. An article by Theodate L. Smith in the Pedagogical Seminary for March states that until ten years ago about a third of all the children born in Ghent died before completing the first year of life. “In 1910 Doctor Miele set himself the task of devising some means of checking this waste of infant life, due in large measure to poverty, ignorance, and oppressive social conditions." His plans have been worked out mainly along the following lines: 1. He established a free clinic for mothers and babies