Mayor Harrison, and of which President Harper of the University of Chicago is chairman, in a recent report said:

The need of a commercial high school may be seen in the decreasing proportion of boys in the secondary schools, a fact due in part to a failure to furnish the kind of instruction adapted to them. Your commission is so fully persuaded of the importance of this action that we recommend that the first expansion of the school system take this form, and that, at the earliest possible date, a public high school be established, with a course of study extending through at least four years, planned to afford a liberal training, and at the same time to prepare its pupils for the various kinds of business activity, and to qualify them for the highest positions in the commercial world.

Says Edward Brooks, superintendant of schools of Philadelphia : "We organized a commercial high school last year, and look with favor upon it, because it is the form of education demanded by the times."

. Similar reports come from Cleveland, O., and other cities of progressive tendencies. A few announce the intention of meeting the demand by enlarging the makeshift commercial course which now exists in nearly every high school, and which, under the shadow of other courses, with little or no encouragement from the "powers that be," with the cheapest teachers and the poorest rooms, has done little more than demonstrate its right to exist. The Washington, D. C., Business High School, with its separate building, a progressive faculty, and an independent course, affords us a splendid example of the possibilities of business training under favorable conditions.

Perhaps the most encouraging feature of the agitation for the commercial high school is the changing attitude of the teachers of the older courses in higher institutions of learning. Professor E. J. James, of the University of Chicago, who, by his writings and study of the great commercial systems of Europe, has done more for business education than any score of men that could be named, voiced the sentiment of intelligent collegians generally when he said:

We can conquer the educated and half-educated people of this country for secondary and higher education only by offering them courses of study which, while they are of a strictly educational character in the best sense of the word, shall also have some bearing on their future everyday life, shall have some direct relation to the work they are called upon to do in the world.

A professor of Latin in a state institution of learning said to me recently:

. I favor commercial high schools and commercial courses in higher institutions of learning, not only because I think they are needed, but because their establishment will directly and indirectly help the classical courses.

The platitudes, "Education is for life," "Education must shun materialism," "The shop is early at war with the school," are not so frequent in educational literature as formerly. Yet there is a large class of educationists who agree with the following gem from the writings of a note professor:

Mental muscle, discipline, may be developed without a single item of information being obtained as such, and it may be cultivated in a more pleasant and scientific way, if the utilitarian idea of obtaining information be not present.

Contrast that with the words of John Ruskin :

I believe that which is most profitable to know, it is also most profitable to learn, and the science which it is the highest power to possess it is also the best exercise to acquire.

I hold it to be self-evident that it is the duty of the nation to give every citizen an education that will not only make him a better citizen, but will assist him to achieve the highest possible success; and, while it is true that success is due to natural ability and circumstances as well as to education, yet the turning-point between success and failure is so small that, in these days of intense competition, nations must equip for life by giving a training in the schools that will have a direct as well as a disciplinary bearing on life's problems.

The aphorism, "Our nation needs trained leadership," is a current phrase heard from pulpit and rostrum, and re-echoed by teachers everywhere, but the interpretation of the same seems to be, leadership in public policy or the professions only. We need leadership as fully trained for commerce and finance as in letters and politics. There is certainly an incongruity in teaching civil law and international law, which cannot be of direct use to Too per cent. of the population, and ignoring commercial law and the science of domestic and international commerce, that would be of direct and permanent value to almost every student in the schools.

The average high-school teacher, principal, or superintendent has no liking for the commercial branches. His thought is principally on the beauties of literature, the profundity of philosophy, the science of pedagogy, or the redemption of the world. When asked about the value or advisability of introducing a commercial course, he usually approves with an air of condescension. He has persistently disregarded the expressed wishes of school boards with respect to commercial work, because, if the pupils were to be prepared for admission to the university, there was no time for other work; and, with the entire machinery of the school directed toward preparing for courses in higher institutions, is it to be wondered at that young business departments in such surroundings should fail to grow? Yet, with shorter courses and weaker equipment in many respects, the business college, standing alone, has grown until it has been recognized as a most important element in our great educational system. The work of the business colleges and their large fee-paying constituency, together with the reports from the great commercial schools of France and Germany, and the phenomenal success of those countries in international trade, have awakened the great cities of our country to the fact that our high schools are not giving any real business training. The

boy who graduates from the average high school lacks in essential business qualifications. He is not methodical, nor accurate, nor observant of details, and he cannot solve the simplest problem in bookkeeping. Indeed, few of the teachers are able to discount a note drawing interest. They are helpless before the most common business transactions, and excuse themselves by calling them "puzzles." Teachers of reputation argue in support of the fallacy that "interest is money paid for the use of money," and a superintendent of high rank was unable to explain a partnership settlement involving a reappraisement of property, altho capable of winning the applause of assembled pedagogs with profound dissertations on "the cuteness of children,” “tabulated results of examination of the eyesight of two thousand children," or "tabulated results of the effects on the race of the children's tendency to suck their big toes," etc.

The teachers in commercial high schools should be men of affairs, active business-men, with all the qualifications of teachers in other departments in addition, if possible. The practicing lawyer and physician are the best teachers in their respective schools. As well place a bull in a china shop as a classical graduate, with a penchant for poetry and the higher criticism, and with no practical experience or inclination toward business affairs, in the commercial department. Some attempts in the line of establishing such departments have been especially ridiculous for this reason. The spirit of the teacher of the business high school should incline toward business affairs rather than toward scholasticism. When he attends the National Educational Association with his friend, the teacher of sciences or the classics, he prefers to visit the factories, the administrative offices, and note the pulse of trade, while his friend properly visits the museums and art galleries. Find me a teacher in a business school who has never visited a factory nor examined its methods, who has never visited a real bank or a real business house, nor looked into their books, makes no investments nor looks for any, and I will show you a theorist and a fraud. The teacher of science who teaches from books alone is a poor teacher, and the same is doubly true of the teacher of business.

Passing over the current arguments for the commercial high school, relating to justice from the taxpayer's point of view, the state's need of trained men for foreign commerce, the need of the individuals themselves, the need of something to induce the young men to go to school, etc., I will say that to my mind the strongest argument in favor of business training is its moral effect. What, commercial education a moral training? Yes, my friend of "higher motive" reasoning, it will do for the nine boys what your teaching has done for one. It will, by appealing to the lower motives of securing business prosperity thru economy, thrift, and health, do more to root out tobacco using, gambling, idleness, and spendthrift habits than all your preaching, however

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eloquent. Time will not permit an enlargement of this thought. Reflect on it, however, and look for the boys of your acquaintance who are showing ideal results from their high-school training. Search among the classes of society that stand highest in the public esteem as exemplars of the moral virtues, for examples of unconscious business laxity-and reflect, reflect!

The commercial life will absorb the great majority of the pupils who enter the high school. Then the commercial high school is needed. The course of study will not differ materially from that now in the high schools, but its purpose and thoroness will be much different. Reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, English, composition, correspondence, and bookkeeping will be taught for use. Then, when the students can be encouraged to build upon this foundation, give them the studies that are both utilitarian and culture-giving — industrial geography, study of the products of commerce, commercial law, history of transportation, banking, and trade, shorthand and typewriting, civil government, elements of political economy, American literature, general history, one or two modern languages for use, natural philosophy, chemistry as used in the industrial arts, and United States and English history. Students trained in such a course will go forth from the schoolrooms without dread of the "cold, cold world." They will know and understand their limitations, and their hopes and ambitions will lead them to "do great things, not dream them all day long."

The commercial high school is here. It is based on principles eternal, and is a product of the heart universal. Business is becoming recognized as more than secularity. Its mission is no less divine than teaching or preaching. It may be above and beyond the realm of mere materialism. The study of it, giving power to earn a living, and advancing our national commercial prosperity, may also develop character and become a means of grace; and so long as ambition lives in the hearts of men, or a government exists by the people and for the people, so long will the light of education for use, falling upon the fields of human toil and the pathway of human sorrow, help to transform earth into a suburb of the New Jerusalem.

DEPARTMENT OF CHILD STUDY

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION.- WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1899

The department met in the First Congregational Church, with the president, Will S. Monroe, of Massachusetts, in the chair.

After briefly welcoming the audience, the president read the following notice :

A reception will be tendered to the members and friends of the Child Study Department at the State Normal School on Thursday evening, July 13, from 7:30 to 10 o'clock.

In the absence of the secretary, Mrs. Alice W. Cooley, Miss Mary L. Gilman, Minneapolis, Minn., acted as secretary.

During the session a telegram was received from the vice-president, Professor Reuben Post Halleck, of Kentucky, regretting the necessity of his absence, and sending cordial greetings to the department.

The president appointed E. G. Lancaster, Colorado Springs, Colo., vice-president. A letter received from Miss Kate Stevens, secretary of the London branch of the British Child Study Association, conveyed words of greeting to the department.

A telegram from the New York Child Study Society, in session, expressed cordial greetings.

The president appointed the following nominating committee:

G. W. A. Luckey, of Nebraska.

Herman T. Lukens, of Pennsylvania.

E. G. Lancaster, of Colorado.

The following program was presented:

"Status of Child Study in Europe," by Will S. Monroe, State Normal School, Westfield, Mass.

"Child Study in Normal and Training Schools," by Miss Gertrude Edmund, principal of Training School, Lowell, Mass.

"The Adolescent at Home and in School," by E. G. Lancaster, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colo.

"Child Study: The Missing Link between the Home and the School," by Miss Anna B. Thomas, State Normal School, California, Pa.

SECOND SESSION.- THURSDAY, JULY 13

The department was called to order by the president at 3 P. M., and the following program presented :

"Children's Interest in Literature," by Miss Isabel Lawrence, State Normal School, St. Cloud, Minn.

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'Children's Drawings," by Mrs. Louise Maitland, State Normal School, San José, Cal.

"A Curriculum of Applied Child Study for the Kindergarten and the Primary School," by Mr. Frederic Burk, superintendent of schools, Santa Barbara, Cal.

'Racial Traits in the Group Activity of Children," by Mr. C. C. Van Liew, State Normal School, Los Angeles, Cal.