Government by influence, and other addresses

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

AND OTHER ADDRESSES

By the Same Author

THE MAKING OF OUR MIDDLE
SCHOOLS. An Account of the
Development of Secondary Edu-
cation in the United States.

Crown 8vo. $3.00

GOVERNMENT
BY INFLUENCE

AND

OTHER ADDRESSES

BY

ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN

COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION OF THE
UNITED STATES

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK

LONDON, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA

1910

UQ8TS

COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND Co.

THE UNIVERSITY PRBRS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

TO
JAMES BURRILL ANGELL

NOTE

THE addresses included in this volume
were delivered on various occasions dur-
ing the first three years of my service
in the Bureau of Education. Those of the
number which have already appeared in print
have been scattered through various publications,
some of them of limited circulation, and it is
safe to assume that there are not a dozen per-
sons any one of whom has seen more than two
or three of the whole collection. For permis-
sion to reprint in this form, acknowledgment
is made to the publishers of those periodicals in
which certain of the addresses were first pub-
lished. The names of publications in which any
of them have hitherto appeared are mentioned
under their several titles. Alterations have
been freely made in the text and considerable
portions have been rewritten for this volume.
Occasional repetitions have, however, been pur-
posely retained.

E. E. B.

WASHINGTON, August 26, 1909.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 1

II. THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES 25

III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL EDU-

CATION 43

IV. SOME RELATIONS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

AND SECULAR EDUCATION 61

V. THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS .... 75

VI. THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE MOVEMENT FOR

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION .... 97

VII. POSSIBLE CO-OPERATION BETWEEN THE EDU-
CATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES Ill

VIII. ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE IN THE FIELD

OF EDUCATION? 119

IX. CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES : SOME OF

THEIR NEEDS 145

X. TRAINING FOR MOTHER- WORK 167

XI. THE WORK OF WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS IN

EDUCATION 185

XII. THE DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF UNIVERSITY
AND NORMAL SCHOOL IN THE PREPARATION
OF TEACHERS 197

XIII. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AS A NATIONAL IN-

TEREST 209

XIV. THE ART OF THE TEACHER 219

INDEX 241

I

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

An Address delivered at the Commencement Exercises of the
University of West Virginia, June 17, 1908, and at the
University Day Exercises of the University of North
Carolina, October 12, 1908. Published in part in the
University of North Carolina Record, October, 1908.

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

THE subject of which I am to speak is
suggested by a saying of George Wash-
ington, which may be found in one of
his letters to Henry Lee, written in 1786. The
correspondence had to do with "the present tu-
mults in Massachusetts," referring doubtless to
what is known as Shays' rebellion. Lee had
urged that the influence of the Congress be
brought to bear, with a view to ending the out-
break, and Washington replied, "Influence is
not government."

This saying went to the heart of the difficulty
under which the new states of that time were
laboring. It was the "critical period " in the
history of the country. Independence had been
won, and nationality had not yet been achieved.
The Congress had no power. It could exercise
an influence and nothing more, when the only
hope for peace lay in authority, with force at its
command. But that critical time was abnormal
and could not last. The saying of Washington
is true for all time if we take it to mean that

4 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

influence where there is no authority is not gov-
ernment. What I shall endeavor to show is
that under ordinary conditions the power of
government, in steadily increasing measure, is
to be exerted in the form of influence and not
of force, and that government by influence is
one of the chief concerns of modern education.
A generation after Washington wrote this
letter, Daniel Webster was a member of the
constitutional convention of Massachusetts. In
the course of one of the debates of that body he
turned to the subject of taxation for the support
of schools, and thereupon made use of the fol-
lowing words : "This commonwealth, with other
of the New England states, early adopted, and
has constantly maintained the principle, that it
is the undoubted right, and the bounden duty of
government, to provide for the instruction of all
youth. . . . We regard it as a wise and liberal
system of police, by which property, and life,
and the peace of society are secured. . . . We
hope to excite a feeling of respectability, and a
sense of character, by enlarging the capacity, and
increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment.
By general instruction, we seek, as far as pos-
sible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to
keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn
the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well
as the censures of the law, and the denunciations
of religion, against immorality and crime. We

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 5

hope for a security, beyond the law, and above
the law, in the prevalence of enlightened and
well principled moral sentiment."

We have here the doctrine stated in the clear-
est language and in its lowest terms. It is
easier, cheaper, and better to keep order by
making men moral and self-governing than by
maintaining more guardians of the peace. This
is the doctrine in its lowest terms, for it takes
account only of the police function of govern-
ment and of education only as forming law-
abiding citizens. But if influence is the better
part of the power of the police, then in an en-
lightened state, when we come into the wider
ranges of governmental activity, influence must
play a still larger part and force a relatively
lessening part. Government by influence, in
other words, is destined to be a generally pre-
vailing mode of government.

We are proceeding here on the assumption
that governments aim to further self-govern-
ment. A central government does its best work
when it does most to promote local self-govern-
ment of a really effective kind. Local government
does its best when it promotes individual self-
government among its citizens. This is not to
say that the best government is that which
governs least. Freedom and rule are not the
opposite ends of a see-saw, one going up when-
ever the other goes down. The more a good

6 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

government does, the more freedom there is,
through increase of moral and intelligent self-
control. But it is not self-government alone
which is an end of government. The end is a
co-operative self-government. It is not enough
that men be made free, as regards external con-
straint, but that as free men they shall work
together for common ends. Through such free
co-operation the empty principle of liberty
acquires a moral content. To get together and
work together, not through compulsion from
without but through an inner purpose and con-
viction — that is a consummation which men
are seeking in our time, and government itself
is one great means to that end.

We have recently seen a striking example of
this newer political ideal, in the conference of
governors at Washington. That gathering is a
thing to be pondered, from many points of view.
Just on the eve of a great political contest, a
President who is himself a consummate party
leader and who stands for the most advanced
federalism of our time, called into conference
the governors of all of the states and territories,
for a discussion of questions affecting the general
welfare. The response was as frank and un-
reserved as was the invitation. All who could
be present, nine-tenths of the whole number,
were there. On all hands it was understood
that the purpose was not to subordinate the

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 7

states but rather to quicken their activity in
ways in which the states could work together.
The representatives of the states not only carried
out their part of the program, but on their own
account went forward into new arrangements
for future co-operation. And so that most diffi-
cult thing in political history was accomplished,
a positive advance, in which the balance between
the parts and the whole, between individuals
and their society, was held to its true level.
Here is not only government by influence, but
the fruit of long years of government by influence.

The terms which we are using may be em-
ployed in different meanings, and a little more of
precision is desirable at this point. After I had
in all innocence chosen the title for this address,
I came upon exactly the same expression used
to describe some of the worst tendencies of our
political life. Influence is a thing not unknown
in the baser forms of politics, but in such use the
accent is often transferred to the penultimate syl-
lable. Government by influence finds its deadly
opposite in government by "in/Zwence."

What we are now considering is the organized,
permanent, and coherent influence embodied in
the institutions of education. Public libraries
and great academies of science and the arts have
their part in its exercise, but we can speak here
of only common schools and universities; and
since equal attention cannot be devoted to both

8 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

in our one short hour, we must, in this university
gathering, consider chiefly the university side of
the matter.

But it is not to be forgotten that, in this coun-
try, schools and universities have been welded
into one system and their influence is one in-
fluence. In our striving after universal educa-
tion, the university and the primary school
represent the two poles of universality. The
school is for all of the people, but can teach only
a small part of human knowledge. The univer-
sity is for all of the sciences, though only a por-
tion of our people can come under its direct
influence. But the university unfolds the general
scheme of knowledge and investigates the prin-
ciples of selection by which the scope of instruc-
tion in the elementary schools is defined. On
the other hand, the training and the ideals of
schools of the earlier grades, elementary and
secondary, are the groundwork of instruction in
the universities; and the needs of those schools
have somewhat to do with the arrangement of
university courses, since the schools are the
channels through which the good things that
universities have to offer are chiefly spread
abroad. We cannot too strongly emphasize this
solidarity of our various teaching institutions,
for it is one of the surest guarantees of our es-
sential democracy.

There is, moreover, one aspect of elementary

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 9

education which must be noted in passing. The
primary school as a moral agency broadens out
into special schools for wayward children and
the new activities of the juvenile court. Through
the juvenile court and the public sentiment
which has brought that court into being, the
educational purpose is gradually spreading
through our whole criminal jurisprudence. We
do not give over the punishment of wrongdoers,
for a government that does not punish in case of
need is no government at all. But we are learn-
ing that in many instances society has more to
gain from the moral education of the criminal
than from his punishment, and we have come to
prefer education to vengeance wherever it can
be made to yield a better return. The modifica-
tion of our penal practice by educational aims
and methods is accordingly one of the no-
table developments of the modern system of
government.

It is a change in the direction of government
by influence. The state seeks, as rapidly as
possible, to replace external compulsion by
internal self-control on the part of its citizens.
Purposes consistent with the common good, sus-
tained by knowledge of the meaning of those
purposes, and brought within the sphere of hope
by the trained intelligence and will which make
them possible of attainment — these are to re-
place the rule of force as fast as human nature

10 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

shall render such a change practicable. " Final
causes" by little and little are to supplant
" efficient causes" in our political relations. No
one but an enthusiast or a doctrinaire could
expect government in its entirety to be so trans-
formed, short of a millennium too remote to
give us much concern in present-day politics.
But the most practical of politicians cannot
overlook the fact that modern states are com-
mitted to the program of a steady expansion of
government in the form of education, involving
as it must a relative lessening of government in
ilie form of force. Herein lies, more particularly,
the program of modern democracy.

If this brief glance at elementary education
has helped to a clearing-up of our terms, we
may get some hint of the wide range of this mode
of government in a consideration of the univer-
sity, as the most advanced and mature of its
organs. Here again we must limit ourselves to
a very few representative instances, having in
mind particularly the service rendered by state
universities.

Governors and legislatures now turn ordinarily
and naturally to their state universities for com-
petent information and opinion on a great variety
of subjects. Within the past decade particularly
we have seen this governmental habit taking
root. In one state during a recent session of the
legislature more than a score of important bills

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 11

were submitted by the governor and by legis-
lative committees to different departments of the
university of the state, for expert advice as to
certain of their scientific bearings. In another
state advice is freely taken at the university
with reference to the statutory form of all meas-
ures of special importance, and the state com-
missions which discharge some of the most
important functions of government are organized
in close touch with those departments of the
university in which the best knowledge of the
subjects under consideration is to be found. In
still another state the examination of agricul-
tural fertilizers, and other administrative re-
sponsibilities of large practical importance, are
devolved upon the agricultural college and the
university. This is but a small indication of the
extent which the practice has already attained,
a practice which largely affects institutions on a
private as well as those on a public foundation.
It is impartial publicity, especially in the form
of scientific information, that is especially ex-
pected from the universities. At their best
estate, in furthering such impartial publicity
they are lending a new character, a new and
peculiar dignity, to the government of our
states. They are working with the steadfast
stars that in their courses fight for righteousness.
Of the countless ways in which such influence
makes for better things, let me mention here but
two:

12 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

In the first place, the increase of statistical
knowledge and of interest in statistics is having
one result that could hardly have been foreseen.
Numerical statements become significant only
through comparison. But when comparison is
made between the statistics of different munici-
palities or institutions or corporations, it is com-
monly found that they represent such diverse
methods of recording and reporting facts that
they are in reality incommensurable. The im-
mediate outcome of such a discovery is not in-
frequently irritation and a misuse of strong
language. An old proverb which declares the
truthfulness of figures and brings them into
patriotic association with the boyhood of George
Washington, comes in for its share of satirical
abuse. But this is all on the way to something
better. Those who care to know the truth have
more allies than those who would misrepresent
or conceal the truth. The steady pressure of a
demand for figures that can be compared be-
gins after a time to affect the systems of ac-
counting from which such figures are to be
drawn. Under modern business methods an
improved system of accounting is a key to the
betterment of business processes and a key also
to that publicity which is the ground of a good
understanding between a given concern and its
constituency. The statistical report affects the
accounting, improved accounting benefits the

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 13

business accounted for, and together they bring
the better business into better relations with the
people whom it serves. So a scientific report
becomes the mild influence through which a
real reform is accomplished; and if the thing
reformed should chance to be some branch of
the public or semi-public service, in which the
commonwealth is vitally concerned, we find
that a result of really governmental dimensions
has been accomplished.

An illustration might be drawn from the later
work of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The services of the statistician of that body in
devising improved forms for accounting in the
transportation systems concerned, which may
serve as a basis for more nearly uniform and
comparable reports, marks an important ad-
vance not only in the work of the Commission
but also in the internal administration of all
American railroads. Of like significance is the
activity in recent years of the National Census
Office, in promoting greater uniformity and
precision in the fiscal accounts and reports of
American municipalities.

Let us turn now to a very different aspect
of government. The form in which any piece of
legislation is cast is oftentimes a question of
chief concern. A policy which has won out
overwhelmingly at the polls may fail at last or
be too long delayed because of the neglect to

14 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

embody it in a measure which can stand the test
of constitutionality. This is a test which may
not be applied till the law has gone into effect,
and usually not until the legislature which passed
the law has been succeeded by another, or by
two or three or more. This is so in the nature
of things. It is not to be expected that a court
should pass upon a constitutional question when
it has no case before it and no argument of
counsel pro and con. Yet much more can, un-
doubtedly, be done than is customarily done,
out of court, in the way of a preliminary exami-
nation of given measures with reference to the
constitutional questions involved.

A variety of other questions may properly
enter into such preliminary scrutiny: the re-
lation of the new act to preceding acts, the
enumeration of acts and parts of acts which it
repeals, and all of those other points of finished
legislation which even a layman can dimly ap-
prehend, but which, in the presence of lawyers,
legislators, and jurists, it would embarrass him
to enumerate. There is a fair field here, it would
seem, for faculties of law or university depart-
ments of politics and jurisprudence to do a work
comparable with that which has been done for
nearly forty years by the "Parliamentary Coun-
sel to the Treasury" in Great Britain. And
courts and legislatures and the people at large
would benefit by such a service.

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 15

A preliminary scrutiny usurps none of the
proper functions of legislatures and courts. Its
influence, however, could hardly be limited abso-
lutely to the form as distinguished from the
substance of our laws. For such service, reg-
ularly organized, as it should be, and carried
on through a series of years, must necessarily be
more and more affected by studies in compara-
tive legislation. The men engaged therein must
come to see the growing need of certain practi-
cable uniformities in the legislation of different
states. Their advice in the more general ques-
tions of legislation, beyond the realm of partisan
politics, must become increasingly valuable.
Such procedure offers much to hope for in the
improvement of our annual output of new laws,
as regards their consistency, their constitution-
ality, and their workmanlike and workable
character.

I have merely hinted in the briefest manner
at two of the many ways in which organized
influence as represented by the university is
taking its place along with positive law and the
power that enforces law in our modern systems
of government. But this movement is not going
forward without interruption or question. We
must now take account of the fact that our
legislative bodies in particular are commonly in-
disposed to turn over any of their ordinary func-
tions to other men or bodies of men, who may

16 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

be designated as "experts." It is the policy of
referring legislative questions to commissions
whose members are not members of the legis-
lature to which objection is made. The reluct-
ance of our federal Congress to commit the
framing of tariff schedules to a tariff commission
is a case in point, and many others might be
cited from our recent legislative history, both
state and national.

I would say that, in the main, this attitude
is clearly justified. It is the business of a
legislature to enact legislation. The members
are chosen by the people for this purpose. It
would be shirking responsibility for them to del-
egate this function to others who have not been
so chosen by the people. They are to interpret
the will of the people, in the forms of posi-
tive law. They have the training and experi-
ence, or are at least in control of the machinery,
which would enable them to ascertain the mind
of the people upon any question of public policy,
more accurately than it could be ascertained by
any scholastic or scientific body. Theirs is
accordingly a high calling, and it is a matter of
general concern that their office should be re-
garded with respect and confidence.

But it becomes increasingly clear that every
large political question has not only a side of will
but also a side of knowledge. It is a necessity of
good government that the will of the people, as-

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 17

certained by fair political processes, shall proceed
on a firm basis of knowledge, ascertained by
adequate scientific processes. A legislative body
does not gain in public confidence when it in-
sists upon employing bungling processes of its
own for the ascertainment of the facts of any
science, which a scientific body is equipped to
ascertain without waste of effort and with all pos-
sible precision. In like manner, a scientific body,
however competent in its own field, fails to com-
mand public confidence when it enters the field
of partisan politics, and employs in a bungling
way the processes of which successful politicians
are masters. In either case, the trespasser upon
another's field is only made ridiculous. But since
science and politics manifestly must have more
and more to do with each other in our modern
life, it is of urgent importance that each should
respect the functions and methods of the other,
and that the organs of both, in their respective
spheres, should command full public confidence.

It follows that, as scientific bodies which seek
to secure legislation must entrust their cause to
legislators and politicians who have won public
confidence, so legislative bodies which require
scientific information for any purpose may best
turn to scientists of established competence to
obtain such information.

This view is, I think, to be strongly empha-
sized ; and equal emphasis is to be laid upon its

18 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

obvious corollary, that governments cannot be
adequately served on their scientific side by
sporadic and temporary commissions, constituted
ad hoc. Those great and permanent public in-
terests with which government has to do, require
the service of permanent scientific bodies, as
thoroughly grounded and tested by time and as
impressive in their constitution and traditions as
are the other organs of government. Much of
the objection to special commissions arises from
their transient and tentative character. It can-
not be expected that legislatures will bind them-
selves to the practice and custom of referring
scientific questions for scientific determination,
except as established institutions, comparable
with themselves in dignity and reputation, shall
become the bearers of such responsibilities. The
sciences, moreover, are so inwrought one with
another, that isolated institutions, representing
single branches of knowledge, cannot ordinarily
serve these great ends. It is only the institution
in which the various sciences are all cultivated,
in their various relationships, which can fill this
large place in our governmental system. Modern
governments, in other words, have imperative
need of the modern university. Nor is this an
altogether new and modern need. It might
easily be traced back to medieval precedents,
without abatement of its new urgency under
these modern conditions.

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 19

In the subjects to which it has given special
attention, a state university should be peculiarly
fitted to render such public service. Its libraries
and laboratories have grown to meet the needs of
passing years; its faculties contain men well
seasoned in their several departments of knowl-
edge, together with young men fresh from the
best world-centers of instruction ; it has its long-
tested method and apparatus for the selection of
competence and the detection of incompetence;
it has long concerned itself with the wider inter-
ests of tho state, economic, sociologic, and pro-
fessional, and can readily turn its investigations
toward new and related needs as they may arise ;
and its every department is reinforced in any
undertaking by the organized whole of the in-
stitution, with its traditions of scientific excel-
lence and of unselfish public service. Without
political influence of a partisan kind and with
little power to enforce any statutory requirements,
the university may render the strongest possible
support to other branches of government, by
merely ascertaining and putting forth scientific
information concerning things in which the state
is vitally concerned.

It is not to be forgotten that what has been said
of the scientific side of government applies
equally to the side of the arts. It is greatly to be
desired, and is, indeed, inevitable, that govern-
ment in America shall concern itself more seri-

20 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ously than it has hitherto with art as a public
good and a public necessity; and that the fine
arts shall find in our twentieth century univer-
sities as complete an academic organization and
equipment as that which the nineteenth century
has gained for the sciences of nature.

In view of the growing dependence of modern
states upon science and the arts for the attain-
ment of their political ends, it has been sug-
gested of late that the institutions of education,
with the university at their head, may fairly be
regarded as a fourth branch of government, co-
ordinate with the executive, the legislative, and
the judicial branches. The service which these
institutions have to render is so distinctive and
so indispensable that this characterization is
not wide of the mark. Education is, indeed, both
more and less than such a governmental power.
It is less, in that it commands as yet only partial
recognition as having any governmental charac-
ter whatever. It is more, in that it underlies all
government, and trains the citizens who are to
make our governments whatever they may come
to be. In certain particulars our American edu-
cational systems are more nearly analogous to
the ecclesiastical establishment where church and
state are united. Such comparisons, however,
can serve for only a partial characterization of
this most universal agency of modern civilization.
But public policy in America, and doubtless in

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 21

other lands, would seem to demand at least so
much as this, that there be secured to our schools
and universities an adequacy of financial support,
a deferential regard, and an independence of ac-
tion within the limits of public responsibility,
which shall be comparable with that accorded to
any one of the ordinary branches of government.
While the responsibility for our American edu-
cational systems rests primarily with the states,
it must be clear that the federal government can-
not be indifferent nor inactive as regards these
concerns, when education has to do with such
fundamental interests of our national life. Gen-
erally speaking, the states have now advanced
further than the nation in the employment of
educational institutions as an arm of government.
But the nation has gone further than the states
in the equipment of special offices of scientific
research. In state and nation alike, I am per-
suaded, the full value of the sciences for govern-
mental purposes can be gained only by some form
of academic organization. Scattered laboratories
and libraries, the special investigations insti-
tuted from time to time, the labors of special in-
quirers, no matter how competent in their several
fields — all of these things must be brought into
some form of conscious and permanent cohe-
rence, if they are to do their proper work in our
governmental scheme. They are so brought
together here in your vigorous and rising univer-

22 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

sity. They must be so brought together in the
capital of the nation, whether the resulting insti-
tution shall bear the name of university or any
other worthy name. When such a national in-
stitution shall finally come into being, it will be
found to have unnumbered avenues of public
service, for in it government by influence, so far
as our national life is concerned, may be expected
to reach its highest and most varied development.

But in a wider sense all academic and cultural
institutions throughout the land have their share
in the governmental influence of the nation. This
is true whether they be public or private in their
formal organization. The special responsibility
of public schools and state universities cannot
be overlooked. But all agencies of organized
and permanent influence, scientific, artistic, or,
in broader language, spiritual and moral, are
parts of our one system of essential government.
In this land more than in any other land, such
agencies are carrying the new burdens of gov-
ernment and blazing the way for new modes of
government. The more recent trend of our his-
tory lends double emphasis to this conviction.

We have taken a new place among the nations
of the earth, and it is a matter of moment in world
affairs that we preserve our essential character
under the strain of these new relationships. The
most obvious need that the new times have
brought is the need of a larger army and navy.

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE 23

That need is unmistakable and will be met, if it
has not already been met. The most imperative
need that the new times have brought is the need
that we continue to give to influence rather than
force the leading place in our political program.
The new expenditures required to meet the need
of more battleships and a larger standing army
must be matched by new expenditures for the
increase of knowledge and intelligence and
moral power. If our expenditures for the higher
influence shall lag behind our expenditures for
force, we shall find the center of gravity of our
policy shifting from its former placing among
the finer elements of our national character to a
new center in our military establishment. It is
not necessary to exaggerate this danger. But
danger there is, and it should not be blinked.
We cannot escape it if, over a term of years, we
permit our expenditures for war to grow more
rapidly than our expenditures for education.

Our power in the world depends upon keep-
ing our ideas, our standards, our convictions to
the front. To spread abroad the love of truth
as the scientist loves truth, the conception of
justice as it prevails in our highest courts, the
appreciation of honor and of beauty, and that
freedom bounded by self-restraint which belongs
alike to morals and to art — to spread these
things abroad, and through them to win the
admiration and confidence of the peoples of

24 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

other lands — that is the program for our world-
politics if the higher influence is still to play
its part in our affairs. Let all institutions of
science and the arts join with our governmental
schools and universities to magnify these things,
along with our provision for the national defense.
Their influence will double the strength of our
army and our fleet, and will keep us still in the
forefront of the world.

This new age, young men and women, as I
have tried to assure you, is an age in which men
are to be ruled more by their aims than by their
fears. The forces of this world are to be subject
to the purposes of the spirit. In a thousand ways
which no one can foresee, men will try to make
you believe that force rules and the spirit can
only obey. Let no man take thy crown. The
spirit rules, and force is only its minister. You
are to be of those who will make this state a
state in which righteousness is uppermost, the
righteousness which religion cherishes, the right-
eousness which has its firm allies in science and
the arts and in all liberal education. There is no
private learning in a public school nor in any
school. Science and public service are two sides
of the same shield. You are servants of the state
and the nation to-day, and we count on you and
your fellows throughout the land to maintain our
government as a government by ideas, a govern-
ment by truth and righteousness.

II

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES

An Address delivered at the Commencement Exercises of the
University of Cincinnati., June 1, 1907. Published in
the University of Cincinnati Record, June, 1907.

II

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES

THERE is a noticeable difference in the
way the men of different cities speak of
the cities to which they belong. Each
city, large or small, seems to be represented in a
certain prevalent tone, of pride or disparagement,
in which its citizens refer to their citizenship.
And this tone comes in time to be so deep-seated
and habitual that it can be altered only with the
greatest difficulty.

It is good for any city and good for its people
that it should be an object of their respect and
pride. When Paul asked to be heard by the
Chief Captain at Jerusalem, he said, "I am a
man which am a Jew of Tarsus, ... a citizen
of no mean city." The words won for him his
hearing, and they have reflected honor on the city
of Tarsus through all the Christian centuries.

We Americans are ready to speak with familiar
reproach of the things that lie nearest to us. On
the whole, it is well that this disposition should
take its course, for it guards us against a too easy
complacency. There is something wanting in any

28 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

society that cannot stand a fair amount of criti-
cism and even ridicule from those who know it
best. Let criticism, even of the gargoyle-cartoon
variety, have its way. Let it tap along our social
engineries till the cracks and hollow places are
revealed. But if our patriotism comes near
enough home to touch the immediate community
in which we dwell, we shall make the main note
of our speech concerning the place of our abode
a note of confidence and hope and pride.

For the most part, we find our people ready
enough to plume themselves on the bigness of
their cities, and on anything, indeed, that can be
expressed in the superlative degree. That is our
"Hyperbole of praise comparative." But I
think we may observe among men of positive
strength a certain reticence in the use of adjec-
tives of comparison. Things can be compared
only by being thrown into the same class. And
for the more important things in the world such
classification is pretty sure to obscure some of
the characters which thoughtful men regard as
things of price. No, comparatives and super-
latives are not generally the most veracious forms
of speech. That self-respect of cities of which I
wish to speak to-night does not rest mainly on
comparisons.

Let us turn our attention, then, to the things
concerning the higher life of cities in which citi-
zens may be expected to take an honorable pride.

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES 29

We do not forget that cities have their side of
shame which must on occasion be exposed ; and
we do not deny that the grosser triumphs of
mere fatness and wealth in cities may have a
glory of their own. But for to-night we will con-
cern ourselves only with the things of higher worth
and of good report. If there be any virtue and if
there be any praise, let us think for a little time
on these things. But in making some analysis of
the things that confirm the self-respect of cities,
you will not expect me to make immediate appli-
cation to your own Cincinnati. The fame of your
city is so broadly grounded and secure that all
that I have to say might find notable illustration
here. But it would not seem altogether felicitous
that a stranger should undertake to assign praise
before an audience who knows this community
so much better than himself. Let the application
be of your making. It can hardly be doubted
that so it will be abundant and will be fairly
distributed.

The higher life of the city is not an abstract no-
tion, a thing apart from the city's material well-
being. It is grounded in economic and commer-
cial conditions. It is well that the citizen should
take pride in the variety and extent of the city's
commerce and manufactures, in the intelligence
and integrity which mark its prevalent business
methods, in the soundness of its banks, in the
abundance of opportunity for labor, in the good

SO GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

understanding between employer and employee,
and in the general well-being of its laboring
people. Without such conditions as these the
higher interests of the city will be cramped and
dwarfed; and it is, moreover, exactly in the
maintenance of economic soundness that the
moral strain of its men of affairs finds some of
its finest testing and manifestation.

Closely connected with these things is the natu-
ral pride in the city's government. Such pride
may well be excited when the people of all sec-
tions and classes interest themselves in the
affairs of the municipality and participate in its
political life; when the government has long
been free from scandal, or when the occasional
misconduct of public officials is promptly dis-
covered and punished; when the burdens of
taxation are fairly distributed and cause no more
than a normal amount of grumble ; when police
and fire departments are conducted squarely and
efficiently; when the health department shows
results in a low and diminishing death rate, and
epidemics are few and of brief duration; when
water, light, and transportation may be had with
no large percentage of exasperation over and
above the ordinary cost of service.

Add to this a city's pride in its public parks,
its children's play-grounds, its well-paved and
shaded streets, in the architectural excellence of
its public and private buildings, including sani-

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES 31

tary regulation of the homes of the very poor —
and we have a fair stock on which to grow those
spiritual graces which are the finest flower of the
city's life.

After all the rest is said, the crowning glory of
any city is its men, who make every other excel-
lence possible. Who are its eminent lawyers and
judges? Are they men of more than ordinary
learning and insight and power to carry a con-
vincing argument ? Have they persuasiveness of
speech backed by a mastery of large affairs and of
legal and moral principles ? Are there among its
physicians and surgeons men of unusual skill ?
Are its ministers of religion men of great devo-
tion and great eloquence, wise in the spiritual
concerns of their age and foremost in good works ?
Have its artists painted pictures and its authors
written books that are a gain to the whole wide
world ? Are there in it men and women of large
philanthropy who have skill to make their benefi-
cence actually help toward self-help and self-
respect, instead of breeding up new pauperism
for others to relieve ? Are its social leaders
women of that fine and kindly grace that strength-
ens and purifies while it delights and entertains ?
And what of the public spirit of the city's men of
affairs ? Have they large thought for the public
good, beyond their private concerns ? We have
had notable examples in our day of cities whose
business men showed the power of pulling to-

32 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

gether in any great public concern, and the lack
of that power and spirit has been to the discredit
of other communities. It is bad for the self-
respect of a city to look upon the ruins of any
great public enterprise which has failed for lack
of wide co-operation.

The public press of a city may be one chief
source of the city's pride. We have seen exam-
ples in which a town of relatively small popula-
tion has for long years influenced public opinion
far and near through the daily issues of a news-
paper edited with unusual ability. And in our
more populous cities the influence of the news-
paper press is a large element in municipal great-
ness. So, too, a city takes pride in the influence
and general sagacity of its leaders in political
life. Under our American system, every remotest
district of the land shares in the government
of the state and in the national government
at Washington, in the persons of some of its
chosen citizens. A city may well lift up its
head, when from its people men are designated
to bear the largest responsibility in state and
national affairs and in representing this nation in
its dealings with foreign powers. The glory of
cities is their men of righteousness and strength,
and it is good for a city to do them honor so long
as their strength holds fast by righteousness. In
some communities the position of "leader of
the bar," accorded by common consent, is held

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES 38

almost as definitely as the position of mayor of
the city, and for a longer term. And there are
communities, even cities of the larger class, that
recognize in like manner their "foremost citi-
zen," and claim him as a public good, however
private his manner of life may be.

Finally, in this enumeration, we must mention
among the grounds of a city's pride those long-
standing organizations of men which may claim
the dignified title of institution. There are its
churches, each with a half -private history of its
own, but each in its own way carrying the gleam
of eternal aspiration through the fabric of the
city's life. There are its hospitals, its benevolent
and fraternal and industrial organizations, its
libraries, its music and dramatic art. Shake-
speare, a symphony orchestra, and a circulating
library are pretty shrewd tests of the civiliza-
tion of cities.

The most significant of institutional tests ap-
pears in the state of public education. Our peo-
ple are generally ready to declare the praise of
their public schools. It is well that this should
be so, and the schools are generally worthy of
their confidence. But unfortunately there are no
readily applicable standards by which the public
can discriminate between what is wTholly worthy
of praise in the schools and what is chiefly
in need of improvement. One indication, cer-
tainly, of excellence in a system of public educa-

34 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

tion is its ability to hold the attendance of pupils
beyond the earliest grades; and its provision of
a succession of well-ordered and closely connected
schools, one above the other, by which the way
has been made clear and direct, for the poor as
well as for the rich, up into the highest ranges
of education which their natural abilities may
fit them to reach. In this community we have
the unusual example of a city system of schools
carried forward till it culminates in a city
university.

There are two influences which are working
side by side throughout the land for the making
of a higher civilization. They are the influence
of cities and the influence of universities. The
ideals of these two are not the same. Not in-
frequently they must antagonize each other. At
other times each is supplemented or even rein-
forced by the other. The standard of the uni-
versity represents the noblest things in our literary
inheritance and our philosophy. It stands for
the highest development, the continuous devel-
opment, of pure science; and in our American
educational system it has come almost equally
to stand for the best attainments in the applied
sciences. There is promise that in future it
will join art to science, and so greatly enlarge its
purpose and its influence. Already the begin-
ning of this movement of the fine arts toward
affiliation with the universities is seen, and we

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES 35

may confidently expect that the movement will
go on without interruption. In literature, in
philosophy, in natural science, the university
stands for pure devotion to truth, without a
thought of gain or of any extraneous advantage.
Its moral purpose is expressed in sheer, unself-
ish devotion to the public good as furthered by
an unswerving search for truth.

The life of the city, on the other hand, involves
the employment of the most concrete and power-
ful forces, material and economic. It makes of
wealth and man's ambition a kind of universal
instrument of its activities. But its foremost
characteristic is its concentration of human
intercourse. It sharpens the faculties of men by
insistent opposition of ideas ; but it also teaches
men urbanity, an open-minded appreciation of
the differing tastes and standards of many and
diverse minds. It sets, moreover, a standard of
its own in the meeting of men with men, a stand-
ard of social manner and common courtesy.
Its moral purpose is seen in the effort to find the
best ways of varied co-operation with one's fel-
low men, for the furtherance of the common
good.

There is nothing more vital in our modern
life than the interaction of these two ideals —
the academic freedom of the university and the
efficient cosmopolitanism of the city.

Wherever a great university is located in a

36 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

great center of population the two types of in-
fluence meet and mingle in ways that are full
of significance. But where the two are bound
together so intimately as in this community,
where the university is part of the public system
of education and the crowning member of that
system, there is opportunity for peculiarly fruit-
ful relations between them. The university is
at once an added mark of civic distinction and
an agency deliberately erected by the city to
influence and possibly to recast the ideals and
purposes of the city's life. What, under these
circumstances, have they a right to expect each
from the other? And in the first place, what
may the university expect from the city which it
adorns ?

I can speak only as an inquirer into general
educational movements and not as one having
any intimate knowledge of the local situation
here in Cincinnati. From this point of view,
it would seem that the university may expect the
city to understand its place and purpose, to hold
it in the foremost rank among the objects of
civic pride, and to give it the moral and financial
support that it needs for the attainment of the
highest academic ideals. The purpose to be a
full modern university is a high ambition and
more difficult of attainment than can be readily
appreciated. For the modern university reaches
out over many fields of knowledge. In the most

THE SELF-RESPECT OF CITIES 37

of those fields the best equipment, in books and
apparatus, is costly and must be frequently re-
newed. A university, too, must have chiefly
men: men of such eminence in their several
fields that they are known in the great world of
scholarship; men who are growing by research
and becoming better known from year to year;
men of such devotion to science and to the public
good that they are an honor and an asset of
great worth to any community to which they
may belong. Such men are in demand in the
university world. There are not enough of
them to supply the need. The utmost care in
the selection of such men and care to hold them
when they have been attached to the university
are among the first requisites in the management
of such an institution. Every university rightly
desires to have in its faculty at least one or two
men, or more, who are the recognized leaders
of the world in their several departments.

The relation of a city university to the city
system of schools adds emphasis to considera-
tions such as these. It is to be a drawing force
which shall lure young people of promise up
into those grades of study in which their talents
may expand and reach their fit employment. It
is to set high the standard of scholarship and
of training for efficiency. The community should
understand the greatness of this service and
should turn the powerful forces that it has always

38 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

at command to the support of the institution
which renders such service.

What, in turn, may the city expect from the
university? It may expect that every pupil in
every one of its primary schools and higher
schools will be better taught, and will receive
more of stimulus to higher things, for what the
university has to give. It may expect that the
hard commercialism of city life will be relieved
by association with pure devotion to science
and things of the spirit. It may expect that
its reputation will be enhanced and men shall
find it a better place to live because the univer-
sity is there. It may expect that the other things
which make for its honor and the higher life, its
libraries, its museums, its music and all of the
arts, its institutions of religion and philanthropy,
will all receive manifold reinforcement and bet-
terment, direct and indirect, from those influ-
ences which the university shall in time send
forth.

And this is not all. For the city and the uni-
versity must each react upon the other. The
industrial needs of the community will give
stimulus and direction to activities of the uni-
versity. Pure science will be brought home to
the processes of daily life. Your factories will
do better work and make profit from the saving
of what now goes to waste, because of better
machines and methods and better men that the

THE SELF-RESPECT OP CITIES 39

schools will provide to meet the present need.
The best commercial experience will be gath-
ered up by the university and be organized into
courses of training, and from those courses of
training men and women will go forth to carry
the better methods everywhere. Teachers trained
in this university and in other universities will
carry the higher culture and the spirit of scientific
improvement into all of the elementary schools
and so into all of the city's homes. Through
such activities as these, the university will break
through the isolation which has too often
shrouded institutions of learning and will give
itself frankly and freely to a real participation in
the real life of the city. The outlook to such
reciprocal relations between these two great,
formative influences in modern civilization is
encouraging and inspiring. The modern uni-
versity is almost a city in itself. The modern
city is responding to university influences. And
when a great community assumes direction of a
great institution of learning, it cannot fail to edu-
cate itself in the very endeavor to understand
and to maintain the higher education.

One thing in particular I should like to say
to the men of the University of Cincinnati, and
one thing to the members of this graduating
class. As a friend and brother, let me charge
you, of the University, as I would charge the
members of any university : Hold fast to the aca-
demic ideal of pure devotion to truth. You are

40 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

seeking to bring the university into the closest
touch with the city's varied needs. And that is
well. It is clearly the work for universities in
this day, and untold good is to come from that
work. But while doing this work, leave not
the other undone. Your most effective service,
your most practical service, depends ultimately
upon your steadfast devotion to pure scholarship
and scientific ideals. Do not lower any scientific
standard for the sake of popularity. Do not let
zeal for immediate commercial applications di-
minish your zeal in the pursuit of truth for its
own sake. Your strength and influence and your
ability to serve are all bound up with your essen-
tial loyalty to the abiding spirit of the true uni-
versity. Such loyalty is a thing hard to achieve
and desperately hard to maintain, but it is your
very life.

I have no reason to believe that special ex-
hortation is needed here; but is not the need a
present need and the danger of defection a
present danger everywhere, because of the very
loftiness and severity of the ideal ?

And you, young men and women of this class,
let me charge you that from the university you
carry into the life of the city a lasting devotion to
the things that make for the city's good name.
The true ideals of the university and the higher
ideals of the city are in harmony with each other,
and the city can greatly extend and enlarge the
education given you by the university. But

THE SELF-RESPECT OP CITIES 41

there are lower ideals of city life with which the
true university spirit must wage incessant war-
fare, and I hope you will wage that warfare by
direct participation in the political and social
affairs of the city. The great enemies are indif-
ference and cynicism. When men try to per-
suade you that the improvement of the life of the
city and the progressive wiping-out of evils is all
an academic dream, be fully assured that you are
tempted of the devil. The merit system in the
public service, the attempt to improve the condi-
tion of the very poor, the striving after a better
understanding between capital and labor, and all
other urgent questions in the life of our munici-
palities — the true university spirit has something
to offer toward the solution of these problems.
But if the problems were easy there would be no
need of the university spirit in dealing with them
and no need of your giving them a thought. It
is exactly because they are hard, and because
men say that nothing can be done, and because
university ideals are held to be quixotic and
powerless in the face of such real difficulties,
that you who have caught the university spirit
should enter the struggle and stay with it to the
end. If university graduates will fight it out
along that line in all the cities of our land, it will
appear that there is nothing better for the self-
respect of cities than the things that universities
have to give.

Ill

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICUL-
TURAL EDUCATION

An Address delivered at the Fiftieth Anniversary Exercises
of the Michigan Agricultural College, at Lansing,
Michigan, as Part of the Proceedings of the Twenty-
first Annual Convention of the Association of American
Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, May
30, 1907. Published in Bulletin 196 of the office of
Experiment Stations, United States Department of Agri-
culture, December 10, 1907.

Ill

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL
EDUCATION

THE pioneer farmers of America had a
double interest in life. First and fore-
most, they were pioneers, with all of
the dangers and excitements of that pioneer life.
Secondarily, they were farmers. It was hard
and rude and unskillful, the farming in which
they were engaged, but it gave them the neces-
saries of life. When the first dull opposition of
nature was overcome, when cabins had been
built and woodlands cleared and the plow had
in some way done its first work, the soil showed
itself responsive and fertile enough. For a time,
at least, life was easier. But the zest of pioneer-
ing was gone, and the more adventurous of our
people soon moved on to the West, where they
might feel the thin edge of civilization still cutting
its earliest way through raw nature and barba-
rism, and know that that keen edge was their
own life and endeavor. The farmers who re-
mained behind were now farmers only and no
longer pioneers. They saw the first rank fertil-

46 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ity of the soil fall back into more moderate
bounds. Their life became tame and binding.
New wants arose with the rise of new social
relations. A few in every community were
able, by insight and energy, to keep still in the
front of things in that new age, but for many
the occupation which made up the greater part
of their life had become an unpromising, unin-
spiring, unenlightened servitude. In this jubi-
lee, to-day, we are to recall the ways in which
new zest has been brought into the depressed
life of the American farmer, the ways in which
his farm has been made part of a new frontier
and he has been made once more a pioneer.

At first the improvement of our husbandry
was the work of a few men, and these were men
whose interest in farming was, in large part, a
public interest. George Washington was one
of the earliest and one of the most influential
of these. First in war and first in peace, he was
also the first American farmer of his day. His
outlook over the educational needs of the new
nation included proposals for the establishment
of boards of agriculture, a military academy,
and a national university. Other statesmen
with a care for agriculture and other farmers
who were statesmen in their view, urged that
practical provision be made for the collection
and dissemination of agricultural information.
In the opinion of these men it was information

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 47

that was chiefly needed to insure the general
improvement of the farming industry — informa-
tion regarding the experience and experiments
of those who were already most advanced in the
practice of husbandry. The new awakening
in European agriculture had great influence
among the leaders of American agriculture at
this time.

It was while we were still under the Articles
of Confederation that a beginning was made in
the formation of agricultural societies. Pennsyl-
vania and South Carolina had established such
societies before the adoption of the Constitution.
New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut fol-
lowed during Washington's administration. The
publications of these societies had begun to ap-
pear before the close of the eighteenth century,
and agricultural fairs came into being in the first
decades of the nineteenth century. Various
endeavors to secure the establishment of a na-
tional board of agriculture had led, before the
day that we here celebrate, to the first seed dis-
tributions through the national Patent Office,
and to the first separate agricultural appropria-
tion, in 1854.

Through these several movements, supple-
mented by a comparatively early development of
an agricultural periodical literature, and through
many later developments of agricultural organiza-
tion, the growth of interest in the improvement of

48 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

rural conditions has long been actively fostered.
But our attention to-day must be centered upon
the development of organized agricultural educa-
tion, and to that subject we will turn without any
further delay.

Let us first note some bearings of agricultural
education which have often been discussed, but
must be considered here again in the interest of
true educational perspective. Historically it has
been found extremely difficult to bring the sub-
ject of agriculture into any manageable peda-
gogic form. The fact that everybody in the
country knows something about it is at first a
hindrance rather than a help. It is difficult to
treat the subject in such manner as to avoid on
the one hand an excess of platitude, a repetition
of what every one knows, or thinks he knows, and
on the other hand an excess of unutilized natural
science, deeply interesting in itself but hard to
apply on the farm. Certain other subjects, of
which education itself is one, share in this handi-
cap. It is a difficulty met with in European
schools of agriculture, and it had not been over-
come in Europe or America when the Michigan
State Agricultural College came into being. The
most effective training for manual occupations
was still some form of apprenticeship, apart
from schools, while the school had long held the
foremost place in preparation for literary pur-
suits. How to combine, in one educative process,

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 49

the advantages of the school and the advantages
of the apprentice system, was the problem of
agricultural education. In one form or another
it has been the problem of all our education for
special occupations in the past half-century.

For the student of educational history, then,
this problem of agricultural education appears
as one phase, and a peculiarly difficult phase, of
the larger problem of training for any particular
vocation in life. You will not look to me to con-
tribute anything to the special history of this
institution, which others, here on the ground,
may be expected to treat so much more effectively
than I could treat it. But my theme deals rather
with that broader movement of which the notable
history of this institution forms a part.

It would be difficult to say just where and how
systematic instruction in the principles of agri-
culture took its rise in this country. Such instruc-
tion was given in some sort in Moor's Indian
School, out of which Dartmouth College arose,
back even in colonial days. Benjamin Franklin
proposed such instruction for the academy at
Philadelphia, the forerunner of the University of
Pennsylvania, but it does not appear that this
part of his plan was realized. In the twenties
and thirties of the nineteenth century great in-
terest was excited in the so-called manual labor
schools. It was proposed that a farm be attached
to the schools, and that those who were studying

4

50 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

during a part of the day should engage in ordi-
nary farm labor during another part of the day.
The purpose, to be sure, was primarily to offer
students an opportunity to "pay their way"
through school. But there was a thought, too,
of instruction in the better methods of farming,
and at least a vague dream of something better
yet, the vital union of thought and manual toil.
Some of the old-line colleges showed at least
good- will toward the scientific aspects of agricul-
ture. Columbia even established a professorship
under which agriculture was ranged alongside of
other sciences. Then, just at the middle of the
century, the state of Michigan provided in its
constitution of 1850 for the establishment of an
agricultural school, and seven years later this
institution, the first of its kind and grade in the
United States, was ready to enroll its first stu-
dents. Pennsylvania had already incorporated
its Farmers' High School, but it was preceded by
two years in the actual opening by this State
Agricultural College of Michigan. A little later
in that same notable year, 1857, Justin S.
Morrill of Vermont first introduced in Congress
his measure for the endowment of agricultural
and mechanical colleges in the several states by
the national government.

What is especially worthy of note at this point
is the fact that this movement, which was pri-
marily a movement of the people or rather of the

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 51

leaders of the people, found parallel embodiment
in both state and national legislation. At first
both the states and the nation moved but slowly
and tentatively. But within a few years large
beginnings had been made. In this as in other
public interests, within the broad limitations of
the national Constitution, working adjustments
of state and national agencies to each other have
been made from time to time, in view of practical
needs rather than of academic theories.

The great, epoch-making act of this whole
movement was undoubtedly the Morrill act,
which finally reached its passage when civil war
had lent new power to the spirit of nationality in
the national legislature. In signing this act, on
the second day of July, 1862, Abraham Lincoln,
that "new birth of our new soil," that surveyor
of western lands, who was to bring to an end the
labor of slaves on our American fields, took his
decisive part in the effort to make our American
tillage the work of men made free by knowledge
and enlightened skill.

By the Morrill act of 1862, the national gov-
ernment gave aid to the states, in the way of
liberal grants of lands ; it encouraged the states
to do in their own several ways the work of higher
education in the domain of agriculture and the
mechanic arts. While technical studies were
brought to the front in this act, it refused to draw
a line of opposition between those technical sub-

52 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

jects and the training which makes for liberal
culture. And both technical and liberal training
were joined with military instruction, as prepara-
tion for the defence of the nation's life.

Other important acts soon followed: That
establishing a national department of agricul-
ture, in 1862, which department was raised to
cabinet rank in 1889; and that establishing a
department of education, in 1867, which depart-
ment was reduced to the rank of a bureau in
1869. In their different ways these two govern-
ment offices have both had to do with the ad-
ministration of the later acts for agricultural
education, and I think I may add that on their
effective co-operation depends the full realization
in the future of the high purposes for which
those acts were passed.

After the Civil War the establishment of agri-
cultural colleges went steadily forward till such
institutions, aided by the land grants of the gen-
eral government, had been erected in all of the
states, with eventually sixteen schools for colored
students added in the southern states. The
association of these colleges was organized, the
Hatch acts brought new aid from the general
government for the maintenance of experiment
stations, the second Morrill act added its large
federal appropriations for the furtherance of the
ordinary work of the colleges, the summer grad-
uate school was organized, the Adams act pro-

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 53

vided for advanced research in agriculture, and
finally the Nelson amendment to the agricultural
appropriation bill of 1907 has brought still larger
financial support to the colleges, together with
permissive provision for the use of a part of the
federal grant in the training of teachers of agri-
culture. It is a record of notable advance, and
we can hardly doubt that the great heart of
Washington would have been glad to see the re-
sults that we may see to-day,

When we attempt to interpret the course of this
educational development and to plan for further
advance, we need the help of some general con-
ceptions relating to our social organization. For
it is evident that agricultural education cannot be
a thing apart and alone. Its real and lasting
strength is to be found in its connection with
general education. And the strength of general
education and of all of its special developments
is to be found in the connection of the schools
with the real life of our people.

Passing over all other views of our democracy,
however essential and interesting they may be,
permit me to call attention just now to the func-
tion of those who are called leaders in a demo-
cratic society; for we now commonly recognize
the fact that democracy does not dispense with
leaders, but rather makes the strongest demand
for positive leadership. In such a society it is not
for one individual or one class simply to lead

54 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

while another class simply follows. The true
leader in a democracy is one who, while leading
in all reality, is capable of learning from his fol-
lowers. And the followers of such a leader in a
true democracy are not those who follow because
they do not think, but those who follow because
they think and are able to recognize their leader.
They follow because they are convinced. So our
whole social fabric is made up of leaders who
must learn if they would continue to lead, and
their peculiarly restless and skittish constitu-
encies. Here as everywhere the relation of lead-
ers to constituencies is permanent and essential,
but within that permanent relationship there is
continual interplay and shifting of parts. It is a
normal condition with us that those who have the
subordinate part should be increasingly intelli-
gent, critical, and ready to assume the actual
leadership.

This is the state of things that our system of
education fosters and must continue to foster.
It must bring forth scientific experts who shall
be able to teach the people the principles under-
lying the arts of life, and it must train up a people
to make for the expert an intelligent constitu-
ency, quick to seize on all that he may offer for
the betterment of their practice, and quick to
reject those suggestions that they cannot put to
use. So our public health rests upon the co-
operation of highly trained experts in medicine

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 55

and sanitation and a people who can act intelli-
gently upon their directions and regulations. So
our public and domestic architecture is im-
proving slowly — very slowly — through the co-
operation of architects who know their art and
a building people who know their architects, and
who follow them in part and frustrate them in
part. So, too, our agricultural education must
proceed. There must be training of the highest
sort for our agricultural experts. More than that,
at the topmost reach of our agricultural education
there must be that which is not commonly recog-
nized as education at all, the pure research of the
pure scientist. For no education can continue
to be really alive unless it draw directly, from
some source of new and abounding knowledge,
a fresh supply, never yet handled and made com-
mon among mankind. It may be very little that
any year or any age may have to give that is
altogether new, but that little will sweeten all
the rest.

Then, our system of education must reach
down to schools of the lowest grade, the little
country schools, in which the capable constitu-
ency of the great experts is to be trained; and
there, too, some of the future leaders are to make
their first beginnings. The most of those in such
schools are to live by the practical art of farming.
But in these days they are to have the skill to
take the science of the scientist and transform it

56 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

into the art of their lives. They are to read
agricultural bulletins and understand and use
them. They are to pick their way and keep from
being mired in the mass of such literature now
provided for their reading. They are to attend
institutes and conventions, where they will listen
with discrimination to long and learned papers,
and make short and pertinent speeches of their
own. They are to* find the farm interesting in the
highest degree, because of new hopes of profitable
production which it offers and because of its
connection with the great world of ideas.

When we grow more skillful, we shall make
elementary schools of a better-rounded type, in
which the book-learning that has long been the
distinctive province of the school shall join to
itself the best things in the old system of appren-
ticeship, and from that combination shall arise
something better than either one in its lonesome
isolation. Already we are beginning to make
institutions somewhat of this order, and it will be
done much better yet as time goes on.

This, then, is what we may see as the ideal, in
agricultural education and equally in education
of other kinds, and perhaps of every kind: A
system of schools complete in its sequence from
the lowest to the highest, in which the study of
books is closely joined with training for some of
the practical arts of life; in which all practical
training is kept in vital touch with general edu-

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 57

cation; in which the ability to form sound and
stable judgments is sought throughout as a thing
of great price ; in which the higher schools send
into the lower schools an unbroken succession of
teachers who both know the truth and are able
to bring others to a knowledge of the truth ; and
in which, finally, the stream of knowledge fresh
and new, from some department of pure research,
shall never fail to keep fresh .and bright the old
wisdom of the ages gone before. Or, in more
concrete statement, our elementary schools and
high schools in country communities are still to
be primarily schools of general education, but
with much more of training in the arts of the
farm, and the sciences lying near to those arts;
our state colleges of agriculture and mechanic
arts are to prepare young men and young women
to read intelligently the literature of scientific
agriculture, to form independent judgments in
agricultural matters, and to bring their new
knowledge into connection with the real work of
the farm; these state colleges, moreover, are to
provide well-trained teachers of agriculture and
related subjects for the elementary and secon-
dary schools; the colleges of agriculture, still
further, are to be co-operative educational in-
stitutions and not merely special and local insti-
tutions — they are to co-operate with similar
institutions in other states, in order that the work
of one may be strengthened by the work of all,

58 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

and co-operate with the universities of their sev-
eral states for the innumerable advantages to
both which may come from such united effort.
The national Department of Agriculture is un-
doubtedly to continue its remarkably wide and
influential work, its expert investigations, the is-
suance of its manifold and vastly useful publi-
cations, and its furtherance of all manner of
agricultural education and research in the sev-
eral states. Finally, the Bureau of Education is
to do as thoroughly as possible the part of this
work assigned to it. I venture the hope that with
enlarged resources it may do more than it is now
expected to do, and all without trespassing on
the proper field of other institutions.

Let me speak a little more particularly of the
part of this program which falls to the education
office of the general government. It can do its
best work, I think, as a co-ordinating influence.
It can bring to the notice of the less favored in-
stitutions information concerning the experience
of more advanced institutions. It can call atten-
tion from time to time to the relation of agricul-
tural education to general education. It can
survey the educational field and possibly point
out dangers to be averted or weak places to be
strengthened. It can, finally, discover things
that need the doing and are not attended to by
any other agency, and can see that some part of
such lack is supplied. So much as this I hope the

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 59

Bureau of Education may be able to do for our
agricultural education. And so much as this I
may say it will undertake to do as far as its re-
sources will permit.

In conclusion, the view cannot be too strongly
stressed that all of this agricultural education is a
contribution to the general education of the
American people and to the betterment of Ameri-
can life. You who celebrate the fiftieth anniver-
sary of this institution realize, as the history of
this college has shown, that it is not simply larger
crops and better breeds of stock and a more
profitable output of farm manufacture for which
you are laboring ; but through these means and
through all other interests of the modern farm
you are working for the improvement of Ameri-
can citizenship, and that with special reference to
the needs of this great state of Michigan. May
you long continue to serve the Commonwealth
and the larger Republic as faithfully and as suc-
cessfully as you now serve them. And may every
good cause in this land feel the reinforcement of a
wholesome and vigorous life in the homes of our
country communities, which have been made
more prosperous homes and better homes because
of the work that you are doing here.

IV

SOME RELATIONS OF RELIGIOUS

EDUCATION AND SECULAR

EDUCATION

Read at the Conference of the Religious Education Associa-
tion at Los Angeles, California, July 10, 1907. Pub-
lished in Religious Education, October, 1907.

IV

SOME RELATIONS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
AND SECULAR EDUCATION

KSLIGIOUS education cannot perma-
nently employ methods which are out of
harmony with the methods of secular
education. Those methods may differ with the
different subjects to which they are applied, but
they cannot permanently contradict each other.
The one will gradually assimilate the other.
And the one that will assimilate the other, in any
age, is the one that in that age has the wider
hold on the convictions of men.

The relation of these two, each to each, varies
and must vary from age to age. In the mediaeval
period it was institutional religion that exercised
the wider sway, and secular education, if such it
could be called, departed only occasionally or
furtively from the ways of religious education.
Now it is natural science that commands the
more nearly unanimous assent of mankind.
Science represents the united thought of our
modern world, and modern education is allied
with modern science. It is this type of education

64 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

that is dominant to-day, and we may confidently
expect that in this age it will in large measure
assimilate religious education to its standards
and its processes.

The march of education, having this scientific
and secular character, is one of the mightiest
spectacles of our modern world. It is the central
and unifying fact of modern civilization. The
religion of this age is cleft by innumerable differ-
ences of faith and polity; that is, for the time
being, it is normally and necessarily sectarian.
There are seeming exceptions, but they will not
disprove the rule. The science of this age is the
same science all over the world. And modern
education, overpassing partisan and sectarian
bounds, overpassing even local, national, and
racial bounds, is fast coming to be in its main
features the same throughout the world, and to
constitute one dominant, world-wide, human in-
terest. Der Glaube trennt die Volker, die Wissen-
schaft vereinigt sie.

We cannot doubt that this age of sectarianism
has a part of its own to play in the religious his-
tory of the nations. If it is a peculiarly unstable
and transitional stage in the life of the church,
it may be no less important to the rounding out
of that life into its fulness than any other stage
through which the church has passed. But so
long as religion is predominantly sectarian, it
may not expect to regain its ascendency over

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION 65

the institutions and the methods of education.
Universal education gravitates toward universal
knowledge and toward universally recognized
forms of thought. The partial and unprevailing
view of any party or sect is not at home in public
schools, even though it be a view which shall
eventually lead the world. Religion in its mod-
ern relations, sectarian religion, is a breeder of
disturbance in those national systems of educa-
tion in which it now holds a place in accordance
with a tradition all unconsciously outgrown.
Disturbance is often wholesome, but not disturb-
ance of this kind ; for it is full of bitterness, and
often it appeals to simple prejudice. Such dis-
turbance doubtless will continue, working some
little good and any amount of harm, till the
tradition which sustained the official teaching of
religion among those peoples shall be cast aside.
Where the tradition has already passed away or
where it has never become established, the teach-
ing of any system of religious doctrine is to
be steadily excluded from public and common
schools. Formal instruction in religion will be
out of place in public schools wherever and so
long as religion is sectarian, wherever and so
long as the method of religious teaching is
greatly at variance with the methods of secular
education.

And will the time ever come when these limi-
tations will no longer prevail? I am not a

5

66 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

prophet, but I have no doubt that such a time
will come — not in our day, but in the course
of generations or of centuries. The topmost
crest of the sectarian wave in our religious history
would seem already to be past. It is a wave
centuries long and it may be ages long, but it is
a receding wave. Men still emphasize their
religious differences ; but already there is notable
gain in the emphasis of religious agreement. It
is a change that points toward a day when secta-
rian distinctions shall be decisively subordinated
to religious affirmations as wide as undegenerate
mankind. The differences will not disappear,
and agreement will not be attained by the mere
cancellation of differences. But the differences
w7ill, I think, become subordinate and tributary.
And, by ways that none but a prophet can fore-
see, by revivals of religious thought and power
such as the world has not yet known, the spirit
of man will come to new convictions of religious
verity, and they will be wider and deeper than
the unities of the past.

We cannot doubt it, for we believe that religion
as well as science stands for a permanent need
of the human soul, and stands in truth for the
supreme need of the human soul. As long as
our temporal incompleteness brings its manifold
strain upon the life within us, so long we shall
find ourselves stricken with need of some eternal
perfectness. And the religion which answers

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION 67

to this need will be either the conscious and
dominant interest of our lives or the large back-
ground of our lives; unless it be indeed in
occasional conditions of disease, sporadic or
epidemic, where for a time the sense for religion
may seem to be altogether lost — yet only for a
time.

But in education and religion, as in all things
else, no age is final and complete. Every age
must do its part in preparation for the next, it
must contribute its part to the whole of human
history. Yet, if the conditions of this age are
not permanent, they are permanent and impera-
tive for this age. Let us now look a little further
into present-day relations of education and re-
ligion, viewing them as a stage in the long-con-
tinued development of such relations — a process
that has run through ages that have been and
must run through the ages to come — yet as
having a certain immediate finality for the times
in which we live.

So far as modern education is concerned, we
see that it is allied not only with modern science
but with democracy. Even in monarchical lands
this is true, in subtle ways that are very wide
in their reach. In our own land the alliance
between education and democracy is open and
absolute. Our secular education, as both demo-
cratic and scientific, finds its greatest elevation,
it makes its warmest claim to the devotion of

68 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

men, on the moral plane. Democratic education
seeks the good of every man because he is man,
and so reaches its high moral conception of
social service. Scientific education teaches men
to follow truth for the sake of truth, in the full
conviction that human interests and clear truth
must in the end be one. In its pure devotion to
truth, natural science is moral, unswervingly
moral. The best that education draws from the
scientific alliance is not even the perfected method
which science has to teach, but its moral eleva-
tion, its power to awaken a new devotion to truth.
In loyalty to truth and in disinterested social
service our public education rises to the summit
of its power.

What, then, is the character of religion, in this
age of sectarianism, which may call for special
consideration at this point ?

Religion is not only a permanent human fact,
but certain of its aspects and elements can be
distinguished as likewise abiding through his-
toric change. Consider the aspects of doctrine,
of ritual, of institutional organization, and of
ethical spirit, not to mention others at this time.
The student of ecclesiastical history knows how
indissolubly these are bound together; but he
knows also that in the history of the Christian
church now one and now another has held the
dominant place. Such shifting from age to age
of the center of gravity of religion is of the deep-

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION 69

est significance in the history of the higher life
of mankind.

In the religious thought of these present times
we see a turning away from the doctrinal and
the ecclesiastical elements that laid a strong hold
on the minds of men in other days. Within the
church the interest in these things is languid as
compared with that of an earlier age. And we
cannot forget that a great part of the religious
aspiration and emotion of our day arises outside
of the church. It will not be contained in the
old dogmatic and institutional forms. It has
not made new forms for itself, and, in truth, it
does not much care to make new forms. Yet
that is not to deny to it altogether the religious
character. It is an overflow religion. For the
most part it may be recognized as an overflow
Christianity.

Now, if there are no institutional forms and no
systematic theology that have succeeded in gath-
ering up and unifying this overflow of religion,
it does, in fact, find some internal unification,
which makes of it one tendency and not many
unrelated tendencies. And that unifying prin-
ciple is humanitarian and ethical.

Even in the church, and particularly in the
Protestant churches, it would seem that the
turning away from those earlier centers of reli-
gious conviction, the system of doctrine and ec-
clesiastical polity, were to work out as a definite

70 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

turning to a center of moral conviction. But
not moral as touching mere practice according
to customary standards. It is rather the moral
as essential righteousness with which we are
here concerned. And again, not righteousness as
a term in a system of theology, but righteousness
as apprehended by the large human sense which
values the right above the wrong, and that
overwhelmingly.

Already the signs of such new centering of
religion clearly appear. For many in this present
age, religion is reached by way of the moral
sense, rather than morals by the way of religion.
It is not that the historic authority, the miracles,
the incense of religion, bring men to religious
convictions, which thereafter are the ground of
all of their moral convictions; but it is rather
that through the moral sense, through hunger
after righteousness, they find a moral universe
in which the all-righteous God is their Father.

It is not to be supposed that this new cen-
tering of the religious life is the ultimate term of
our religious development, any more than those
earlier centerings have been. It has its dangers
and inadequacies, as they had. Other centers,
perhaps those that the past has known, but in
new form and heightened power, must send
forth a corrective influence in their turn when
this age has done its work. But this age, I think,
must work out its religious advance, a great and

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION 71

true advance from the point at which it began,
by realizing the full meaning of those moral con-
ceptions which have taken strong hold upon it.

We have come now to a point where it will
appear that, for the sake of religion itself —
in order that religion may do its proper work
- education must be true to its proper character
for the age that it serves. The most vital meet-
ing place for education and religion in this age is
on the moral plane. Through its new emphasis
on moral conceptions, education itself, secular
education if you would call it such, may help
religion to work its way through and overcome
its present-day sectarianism. Education will be
the best ally of religion in this age if it hold true
to its alliance with science and democracy.

Observe how vitally the several lines converge.
Democracy stands for the brotherhood of man.
Religion bases that brotherhood on what is
ultimately a more cohesive and organic concep-
tion, the Fatherhood of God. But where an
earlier age found the brotherhood of man through
the fatherhood of God, this age seems destined
to find the fatherhood of God through the broth-
erhood of man. Pure devotion to truth is found
in both religion and science. Historically, the
religious sense for truth appears as a very differ-
ent thing from the scientific sense for truth.
They seem, indeed, to antagonize and cancel
each other. Yet farther down they are at one.

72 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

And from that farther depth, below the roots of
the everlasting hills, their unity must arise into
the day of human history.

If this be a true reading of the signs, the same
moral conceptions are coming to be the upper-
most convictions in science, in democracy, and
in religion. It may not be too much to expect
that this unity shall some day come to full reali-
zation, and may we not then find that diverse
religions have come to unity among themselves
in this very process of coming into accord with
democracy and science on the high ground of
moral conviction? I am very sure that this will
not be all ; but I think this may be a part of the
way by which religion and education shall do
their work together for this age, and for the ages
that are to follow.

For the present, then, we may be content to see
a large part of mankind making their way, even
unconsciously, toward a genuine religious faith
through their moral aspirations and endeavors;
while we still hold to that ultimate creed that our
moral life will never come to its best until its
deepest convictions are joined with hopes and
affections and beliefs touching some larger and
more enduring life, the true and eternal life of
the Spirit.

Finally, the relationships of modern education
are to be widened. A too absorbing alliance
with natural science is to be avoided, even if

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION 73

modified by the alliance with democracy. A
closer alliance with modern art is to be culti-
vated. At an earlier period, education suffered
from a too absorbing association with art, par-
ticularly with literary art. Now new relations
with the arts are desirable, to correct the
dangers of the scientific alliance, in its more
extreme manifestations.

And art, too, has moral implications which
are ineradicable. Its narrowest devotees can-
not isolate it altogether from the rest of life.
While warring against a too narrow devotion to
natural science, it meets both science and reli-
gion on the moral plane, and in some degree it
mediates their differences. It recognizes values
as well as facts ; it prizes instinct and the mass
play of human emotion as well as analysis and
geometric law ; and — chiefly this — it has can-
ons which represent the matured experience, the
chastened pang and rapture, of the race, and
are not to be disclosed or verified in any
moment of time by any individual fragment
of the race.

When modern education has fully entered
into this threefold alliance with natural science,
democracy, and art, its newer, safer, and more
fruitful alliance with religion will, we doubt not,
be near at hand and even at the door.

V
THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

An Address delivered at V underbill University, June 15,
1909. Published in the Methodist Review, September,
1909.

V
THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE subject upon which I am to speak
is either one of the dullest or one of the
most interesting in all the world. That
depends upon the point of view of the listener
and upon the speaker's own interest in what
he has to say. As everybody knows, the talk
about morals which may be designated as mor-
alizing is prosaic and platitudinous to the last
degree. This is a fact of common knowledge,
and it sometimes obscures our appreciation of
another fact, namely, that there is no set of ques-
tions about which men to-day speak with greater
warmth than questions of right and wrong. In
the social circle, at the club, in our public jour-
nals, to say nothing of courts of justice and
schools and churches, the thoughts and emotions
of men are most deeply stirred when discus-
sion reaches some vital question of wrong and
righteousness.

There is substance in questions such as these.
They are daily food for men and women of

78 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

force and character and influence. An ancient
writer told of the blessedness of the man whose
delight is in the law of the Lord, and added that
"in His law doth he meditate day and night."
A fine picture is this of the man who draws his
strength from familiar converse with high and
moral themes. "My son," another wise man
said, "if thou . . . incline thine ear unto wis-
dom . . . then shalt thou understand the fear
of the Lord, . . . then shalt thou understand
righteousness and judgment and equity."

So, even at the risk of missing my aim and
being platitudinous and moralizing after all, I
purpose speaking directly to the subject of
morals to-night — to this most inviting subject
of private and public righteousness. The theme
is peculiarly inviting when one is face to face
with a class of university students, for the finest
personal gains from a university course are
found in the heightening of one's ability to deal
with the highest questions of all, which in large
measure must always be questions of the ethical
realm; and a university graduate, always a
public beneficiary and therefore a debtor to his
community and state and nation, is expected to
render public service in the furtherance of public
morality.

The very bigness of the theme, however,
renders it obviously impossible to discuss it in
this hour in any systematic or comprehensive

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 79

way. I am sure you would be appalled and
wearied from the beginning if the speaker were
to attempt such a task. He is the more free,
accordingly, to exercise a certain caprice. He
may select a few topics here and there without
much order or rationality, merely because he
would like to say something about them, and
when he is through with these, he may come to
an end. With all deference, then, to those heroic
listeners who would prefer a discussion some
hours in length with logical heads and sub-
heads and a rhetorical beginning and end, I
beg you to let me follow this simpler and less
exacting way.

In the first place, then, let us think of the
moral life as a process of growing better. In
this view we may indeed be not far from the
essential character of all true morality. A tree
that does not grow does not live, and a stationary
goodness is hardly a possibility. We may go a
step further and say that no man can be good
except by being better than he is by nature.
But this putting of the case amounts to pretty
much the same thing as the other; for any sort
of excellence once achieved soon becomes habit
and second nature, and the only way one can
then continue to be good is to go on outgrowing
the virtue which he has already accomplished.
Among the most hopeless characters in human
society is a good man who does not change,

80 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

whose virtues are wrought out to a finish like
the features of a marble statue, a man who
nevermore will strive and sweat and resist
temptation even unto blood. We may say the
same of communities. A highly moral and irre-
proachable society may, after all, be immoral
in its stationary complacency. There is better
hope for genuine righteousness in a changing
order which is striving after improvement. It
may run great risk of moral loss for the sake of
the greater moral gain. There is hope for such
a community in that its virtues are not to be
kept under glass but rather to be worked out
and lived through and then discarded for some-
thing better.

Then, there are two sides of morality which
we should consider, the side of wisdom and the
side of companionship. One-half of genuine
morality is ideas. This fact is not to be forgotten,
particularly when we are under the stress of
intense convictions or of emotional appeals from
without. One good half of all morality is wis-
dom, and therefore it is the duty of every man
to be wise. I have just been reading over again
the Imperial Rescript on education which is the
basis of moral instruction in the schools of Japan,
and I am struck by the fact that among the stand-
ards of virtue which it sets up, along with the
exhortation to "be filial to your parents, affec-
tionate to your brothers and sisters," and "bear

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 81

yourselves in modesty and moderation," is this
further exhortation to "pursue learning and cul-
tivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual
faculties and perfect moral powers." In many
ways our American standards are different and
must be different from those of the Japanese,
but we need no less than they to inculcate as a
moral duty the obligation to follow after knowl-
edge. Our righteousness will be a low and un-
stable value, it will fail us in our time of need,
unless it be grounded in our most coherent
thought as well as in our impulses and our
sentiments.

There are two ways in which the strain comes
at its worst in our moral life. One is the sudden
and unexpected test, the perplexity or tempta-
tion which arises without warning and must be
met on the instant. The other is the long-con-
tinued stress of untoward circumstance which
wearies out the patience and brings an emotional
tension to its highest pitch. In both of these
cases the steadying power of thought is most
sorely needed. In both of them our thinking in
the time of need must be largely determined by
the thinking we may have done before the need
arose. We cannot school ourselves to right think-
ing in the very hour of emergency. The schooling
must have gone before. The emergency is the
test, the final examination that tries its quality.
From this point of view the deliberate training

82 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

of our schools and colleges comes to a higher
dignity. It is, all the time, preparing for some
far-off emergency. It is preparing for the exer-
cise of judgment in some crisis, when passion
shall claim absolute control.

I have had other occasion to make note of the
close connection between the judicial spirit and
the scientific spirit. To cultivate the scientific
spirit in the schools is to prepare for the exercise
of the judicial spirit in the affairs of life. In both
we have an example of the value of impersonality.

There is an aspect of human life in which we
must shake ourselves free from personal con-
siderations and look upon things objectively and
impartially. We shall never get the highest good
out of personality until we have given fair play
to this impersonality. The judge on the bench
and the scientist in the laboratory are not to
be swerved by immediate personal preferences.
They are seeking the truth which shall stand the
test of all time and circumstance, and which shall
therefore serve the personal needs of the world
and not the personal whims of the passing hour.
So our education, wrhich shakes us free for the
time from a thousand little desires, partialities,
and preferences, from prejudice and partisan-
ship, is building up within us that judicial spirit
for which we shall find sore need when we meet
the instant issues of life.

But if such wisdom makes one half of our

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 83

moral life, it is personality that makes the other
half, the warmer and more exhilarating half. It
is a part of man's duty to be wise, it is also a part
of his duty to be companionable. One of the
brightest of our bright men has said, "Be good
and you will be lonesome." It would not be so
bright but rather more true to say, "If you don't
get over being lonesome, you can't be more than
half good." Our ideal of public and private
virtue is not the ideal of the isolated moralist, who
would simply instruct his fellows and make of
the community his personally directed kinder-
garten. It is rather the ideal of the man who
joins warm hands with his fellow men to go for-
ward with them in a common cause.

It is not easy at this point to say exactly the
right thing and neither more nor less. How shall
a man keep step with his fellows and yet lead them
to better things ? How shall he lead them unless
he be a part of their life, a partisan with them, a
sectarian with them, a partner of their loves and
hates, whose aspirations are their own ? It seems
an insoluble problem, and yet it is the problem
that the moral leaders of our race have solved.
Macaulay said of Peter the Great that he civil-
ized his people and was himself a barbarian. A
moral leader of to-day will lead his people with-
out leaving his place in their ranks.

There are some who will tell you that you can-
not lead others in the way of improvement if you

84 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

are too much better than they, that you must
have some of their vices if you would lead them
into virtue. And this doctrine easily runs to the
extreme in which the would-be leader cannot be
distinguished by any loftiness of his ideals from
those whom he would lead ; and one short step
beyond this, the leader falls below the level of
his followers and becomes indeed a hindrance to
their progress. It is hard enough to decide in any
particular case, and it is the particular cases that
count. I do not think that any man ever finds it
necessary to be less moral in order that he may
help his fellow men to be more moral; but the
truth that there is in this compromising view is
the truth that his companionship makes up a
large part of a man's moral life. Under ordinary
social conditions an austere separatist not only
forfeits the greater part of his influence through
his separatism : he forfeits thereby a great part of
his own moral life, not only in the lower moralities
but in the higher moralities as well. The com-
pany that a man keeps is and must always be a
great part of himself.

What I have said thus far comes to this, that the
moral life is found at its best only where there is
found a well-balanced growth in righteousness.
Now, there is another way of looking at the round-
ing out and balancing of the moral character, con-
cerning which something may be said. Taking
account once more of both the individual and the

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 85

community, what shall we say of the cultivation of
special virtues, what of the prosecution of special
reforms ?

A man makes it his particular business to rise
early in the morning, to be benevolent, to wage
war on gambling or profanity. A woman under-
takes to tell the literal truth in all her social in-
tercourse. A community organizes a campaign
against drunkenness or municipal corruption.

It is obvious enough that the special undertak-
ing distorts the perspective of our moral world.
The campaigner in the one Cause not only makes
himself a thorn and a weariness to those who are
not enlisted in the same campaign : he inevitably
exaggerates that aspect of righteousness to which
his attention is devoted, and so far forth he ren-
ders it more difficult for the world to understand
the main significance and worth of righteousness.
He glorifies reform and thereby discounts some-
thing better than reform, the practice of building
right, from the ground up, on the lines of a well-
wrought plan. In nine cases out of ten he lays
his emphasis upon some negation, and so gives
greater currency to that word of universal paraly-
sis — Don't. What shall we say to things like
these ?

The first thing to be said, in order that there
may be no mistake, is that, in the world we live
in, the special reform is inevitable and indispen-
sable. With all of its drawbacks it is still a main

86 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

reliance of humanity for any moral awakening.
Human nature is not big enough to do all things
at once. It must ever and again become absorbed
in the partial task, or else spread itself out over
a world of possibilities in thin, reflective, even-
balanced inefficiency. Better than this, a thou-
sand times better, are those nodes of concentrated
activity where practical men see the urgent need
of their time and fight their fight with the Enemy
as they find him.

But when so much has been said, we may re-
turn to the undoubted evils that attend any reform
campaign, whether it be a campaign in the spirit
of a man or in society at large, and may see if
anything can be done about them. Those evils,
in a word, are the evils that go with favorite vir-
tues. No man can devote his best energies to a
selected and preferred virtue without danger to
his moral life. The favorite virtue brings with
it a favorite vice or a whole company of favorite
vices. One of these is likely to be the vice of self-
righteousness. Another is that of intolerance.
Still another is that peculiar form of vice in which
the exaggerated virtue is made a substitute for
other, starved and neglected, virtues; the one
great good covering a multitude of sins, in a way
which scripture precedent would not warrant.

The members of a band of thieves pride them-
selves upon their loyalty to the gang. The high-
wayman who robs the rich gives generously to the.

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 87

poor. A body of young men who uphold the high-
est standard of truth and honesty show an easy
conscience as regards drink and gambling and the
social evil. Even women of the purest virtue, as
the word virtue is commonly used, are sometimes
sadly lacking in the sense of fair play, as men of
honor understand fair play, and fail to realize that
uncharitable words are another form of vice.

Favorite vices go with favorite virtues. This
fact should not deter us from cultivating chosen
virtues when occasion may demand, But it
should put us doubly on our guard. Let us have,
if need be, the campaign against a conspicuous
wrong. But let it be recognized as an emergency
measure. Our main business is right living, all
round and all through. The great reform has its
necessary work to do. But, as soon as possible,
that work is to be finished. It is to be laid aside,
in order that the regenerated individual or com-
munity may enter upon the normal course of
general growth. That normal course is the course
in which wisdom joins with tolerant fellow-
ship, holding men up to an ideal of everlasting
improvement.

It is here that we are chiefly concerned with the
culture of righteousness — in maintaining and
confirming the general conception of life which
looks to incessant moral betterment. Here is a
subject for the daily meditation of wise men and
women, for the training of children in the schools,

88 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

for consideration in every profession, institution,
and society which has influence in the shaping of
our corporate or individual life. Let us think
often upon these things and let us seek after the
better ways.

But many of you, I am sure, have felt a lack in
this discussion hitherto. It has had reference to
virtues and vices as if these, in aggregation, made
up our moral being. You have felt that righteous-
ness cannot be achieved by adding one pagan
excellence to another ; that we must have regard
instead to motives, to faith and hope, to some
vitalizing spirit which shall bring to every man a
moral strength beyond the strength of any man.
You look, in other words, for some recognition of
the religious side of morals, with the conviction
that the thing omitted is the really essential thing.
This view appeals to me so strongly, and accords,
in fact, so nearly with my own thought, that I
should be altogether unwilling to let the occasion
pass without some mention of this aspect of my
subject, though the difficulties of this part of the
discussion are obvious and plentiful.

Any attempt at the cultivation of righteousness
merely by the cultivation of enumerated virtues
can give us only an incoherent and machine-made
morality. The moral life, to reach its highest
efficiency, must hold with the largest wisdom and
the highest fellowship to which the moral agent
can attain — that is, with his religion, or what

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 89

serves him as a religion. Only so can it come to
its proper coherence and vitality.

How much of vitality and coherence religion
may supply will appear from a mere passing
glance at some of the conceptions of Christianity.
We speak of righteousness. In the words, "Be
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which
is in Heaven is perfect," all human excellence is
thrown into such comparison that it looks black,
as a candle flame against the brightness of the
sun. But while all human worth suffers this
deep disparagement, the value of the human soul
is raised to such a height that it can be calculated
only in terms of the death of the Son of God.
Hope reaches no less a pitch of confidence than
that this mortal life shall share in the life of God
Himself, and all perspectives of this earthly ex-
istence are readjusted to the view from the gates
of Heaven. Love, purified, quickened, elevated,
by the vision of love divine, made universal in
the recognition of human brotherhood, becomes
the ruling motive of life. The uplift of such
conceptions, when they are fairly apprehended
and appropriated, is well-nigh inconceivable.
Their dynamic possibilities are past all compu-
tation. In a world in which such ideas are at
work, as positive convictions in the hearts of
men, we cannot doubt that the greatest moral
elevation will be attained in lives which ac-
knowledge their supremacy.

90 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

Yet the very loftiness of these conceptions for-
bids that any one human mind should actually
take in their full significance. To assimilate
them in their entirety is the work of the human
race in the ages upon ages. One age, one society,
one individual, may interpret them in part. Even
that is a great achievement. But the partiality
of the interpretations cannot be overlooked when
we are dealing with the moral interests of present-
day society. The man, the church, the people,
who approach the moral life by the starry way,
which is also the cloudy way, of the religious life,
cannot escape the same need that all others are
under, the need of cultivation of the moral senti-
ments, the need of daily betterment as regards
moral insight and the practice of righteousness.

A man's religion may indeed become for him a
preferred virtue with its attendant vices. I was
told, once on a time, of an influential man of
business who gave largely to the support of the
church and became deeply interested in its ac-
tivities. A friend suggested that he should join
its membership in his home community. He
asked to see the list of its communicants. This
list he ran through quickly, then threw it down
in disgust.

"Do you think I will go in with such an [ex-
purgated] set- he did not say expurgated;
the word merely represents what I have done
with his speech- "Do you think I will go in

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 91

with such a - - set of dead-beats ? They don't
pay their debts." Now, assuming that this re-
mark, apart from its profanity, was justified in
the situation to which it was applied, what was its
significance ? I think it showed that the man of
affairs made a favorite virtue of paying one's
debts, and let it excuse his measure of irreligion ;
while the church members to whom he referred
made their religion a favorite virtue, and let it
excuse their measure of laxness as regards their
business obligations.

Perhaps a more common case may be found in
the devoted adherent of some form of religion
whose special indulgence is in the vice of self-
complacency, of self -righteousness. It was this
that called forth the sharp rebukes of Jesus in
his meetings with the Scribes and Pharisees. It
would be hard to estimate the injury which this
failing has done to both morals and religion in all
the ages. Clear thought, again and again, has
lost its rightful influence among men because
joined with this uncompanionable vice, this
enemy of all goodly fellowship, intolerance
toward those who follow other ways.

And there are other ways, which may be
Christian, profoundly so, while not bearing con-
spicuously the name of Christ. The two poles
of Christianity may be found in the Fatherhood of
God and the Brotherhood of Man. Each of these
implies and involves the other. A theological age

92 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

laid conscious emphasis on the doctrine of the
Fatherhood. A humanitarian age now lays its
emphasis on Brotherhood, and is often hesitant
and reticent as regards the language of Our
Father. It may be that this reserve is not irre-
ligion at all, but only the way in which this age
can most surely approach the real experience of
religion.

Yet the responsibility for an orderly interpre-
tation of Christianity, consecutive with the in-
terpretations of the past, rests in this age with
the church, as in all other ages. The church is
still the teacher of religion. The necessary sepa-
ration of religious instruction from our secular
schools leaves this great burden, with all of its
weight and all of its honor, with the church alone.
For my part, I believe the church will not fail to
carry that burden safely and well, and even to
larger issues than can at this time be foreseen.

But in this very separation of functions, an-
other moral responsibility, great and high, is laid
upon our secular education. I have spoken of
the value of impersonality, as it appears in one
necessary stage of the making of human charac-
ter — the impersonality of courts and of sciences,
which are no respecters of persons. These things
ultimately are not impersonal, for they help us to
a purer and truer understanding of human rela-
tions. But they do this by first casting out human
prejudice, passion, and preference, casting out

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 93

all hopes and fears, and leading men into the im-
partial recognition of objective reality. Now, I
think I shall not be misunderstood if I say that
the teaching of morals apart from religious sanc-
tions has a place in our scheme of life analogous
to that of these impersonal disciplines. It is not
impersonal as regards human relations, but only
as regards that unseen world with which religion
is concerned. And here, I think, it is not ulti-
mately irreligious, but only, for the time, non-
religious. As such, it has a part to perform, a
part of great dignity and importance, in setting
forth those purely ethical conceptions, unmixed
with any thought of supra-natural rewards and
punishments, which even the ancient pagan world
found to be strong meat for its noblest intellects,
and which appear to not a few writers of this
modern age to be the highest themes with which
the mind of man can deal.

It is not that I would offer such teaching as
sufficient for all human need. Men need good
news and a Father in Heaven as much in this
age as in any former age. But the study of
ethical knowledge and the training in simple
morality of life is not only of value to the
individual doer and student : it is of value even
to religion itself. It brings the teachings of
religion ultimately before the impartial judg-
ment of that simple sense of difference between
right and wrong which the Creator has put

94 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

into the spirit of man, and has trained and
developed through the long course of his history.
The strongest appeal which religion can ever
make is the appeal to this human sense of moral
difference; and the cultivation of that sense,
through science and literature and historical
studies, through conduct in the little world of the
school, is the noblest service which our general
education has to render. It is a service to re-
ligion and law and common intercourse and to
every other interest of our modern life.

This is your Commencement, members of
this graduating class. You commence to be bach-
elors of arts and various other things. You are
coming out from this University into more direct
participation in the world of affairs — affairs
which reach their highest difficulty and highest
significance in questions of right and wrong. The
boys in a swimming pool, particularly on a chilly
day, are wont to call to their fellows on the shore,
" Come on in, the water is fine ! " And so we who
left school life for active life a good many years
ago now call to you, young men, "Come in, this
Twentieth Century is fine !" Science and inven-
tion are making readjustments a daily necessity.
Prosperity is making it harder every day to hold
up to the old moral standards. There is great
danger that with a better living we shall get a
poorer life. People are crowding now, where a
generation ago they were few. Yet we feel the

THE CULTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 95

need of sharing more fairly all good things of life
with all of our fellow men. Faiths are changing.
Even while we hold them most tightly we find
that they are gone, leaving only their clothes or
their shadow behind, and we do not see clearly
what is to take their place. Come in ! It is a
world of genuine difficulties in which it is worth
while to live and take one's part as it comes.

Faith, Hope, and Love — they are with us
yet; justice, truth, and the law of righteous-
ness — they loom as large as ever. Though
their forms are less sharply defined, yet none
the less surely they dominate the scene. Lib-
erty and law are wrestling with each other
still. They clinch like deadly enemies, and
the sweat of their conflict now and again is
red with human blood. Yet they are lovers,
more true to each other than were even David
and Jonathan, and their struggle is all for the
good of mankind. Come, young men, and take
your part. Be as wise as you can with the
heads that have been given to you. Be as com-
panionable as you can without becoming less
wise. And do not doubt that the God of your
fathers will help you as He helped your fathers be-
fore you and that all that Heaven gave into their
lives, Heaven will give into your lives as well.

And you, young women, who are about to leave
this institution, you will find many alumnae of
American colleges awaiting you. And these

96 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

American alumnae have already acquitted them-
selves so well that larger work, larger responsi-
bilities, larger joy of service, are sure to be yours.
Come, young graduates, men and women both,
and enter upon a new course of study, the life-
long study of righteousness, which, as it is a study
laid out for us by God Himself, when He laid the
courses of all human affairs, shall through its
various leadings lead us back to God.

VI

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE MOVE-
MENT FOR INTERNATIONAL
ARBITRATION

An Address before the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the
Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration,
May 23, 1907. Published in the Report of the Meeting.

VI

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE MOVEMENT
FOR INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

B^ way of introduction, I may venture to
repeat the recommendation touching this
subject contained in my first annual re-
port as Commissioner of Education. It reads
as follows:

The second recommendation which I would respectfully
present is concerned with the fact, which every year makes
more obvious, that our public education has passed into
an international stage in its development. The approach of
the second International Peace Conference at The Hague
has turned public attention to the many-sided modern
movement toward a peaceful adjustment of international
relations. Governments, in striving to maintain an honor-
able peace, require the reinforcement of popular senti-
ment, and it is of the utmost importance that such public
sentiment should steadily demand a peace which makes
for righteousness, and no other peace than that which will
make for righteousness. A public sentiment calling for
such peace will be stable only when it rests upon an appre-
ciative understanding of other nations. In this there is a
great work for education the world over, that it help the
nations understand one another. Whatever the schools
may do to this great end will count for real education.

100 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

Can any form of learning, in fact, be more liberalizing,
more expanding, more tonic, than the insight gained
through knowledge of other peoples, our contemporaries,
who with us are the makers of modern history ?

Already a considerable movement is under way looking
to the annual commemoration in the schools of the United
States of the opening of the first Hague conference, which
occurred on the 18th day of May, 1899. Such a celebration
seems eminently desirable, by way of laying due emphasis
in the schools upon the vital relations of modern peoples
one to another. I would accordingly recommend that, so
far as consistent with state and local conditions, the 18th
day of May in each year be designated as a day of special
observance in the schools. It is particularly desirable that
in the celebration of this anniversary day, and in the in-
struction of the schools throughout the year, the effort be
made to promote an insight into the true aims and aspira-
tions of our own nation and of the other nations with whom
we are to work together in the making of a higher world
civilization. This view calls for a more thorough teach-
ing of geography and history in the elementary schools,
that the first notions formed by the children in those schools,
of our relations with other lands and peoples, may be true
and temperate; it calls for a better teaching of modern
languages and literatures in our secondary schools and
colleges; and in the more highly specialized studies of
commercial and technical schools, it calls for more thor-
ough and accurate instruction in all subjects having to do
with the relations of our home land with foreign lands.
\/ This is not a foreign view of American education, but
rather an American view; for it is already clear that
American institutions can reach their full development
only by finding their rightful place in the current of the
world's history, and that only by so doing can they become
fully American.

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 101

While no one will attach supreme importance
to the special observance of one day in the school
year, even such annual emphasis upon this
theme will not be without its value. I am the
more disposed to think that it may be of some
significance, from the fact that the idea of such
observance has arisen quite independently in
the minds of different persons engaged in widely
separate educational service. I had planned
to make this recommendation and had actually
written the first draft of it before I knew that
such a plan had occurred to any one else. When
it transpired that a well-defined movement to
this end was already under way, I was glad of
the opportunity of adding what I might to the
impetus of that movement.

It is clear, however, that a celebration which
breaks from a clear sky on one day in the year
and passes from thought when that day is past,
cannot take a deep hold on the minds of many
children. Nor do I think we have a right to
devote one day of the school year to a purpose
which has no connection with the ends of general
education. It is not with a view to propaganda
of an isolated reform that this day is entitled to
its special place in our school calendar, but
with a view to a neglected and essential element
in general education. And that element is an
appreciative understanding of other peoples
than our own.

102 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

The child brought up apart from other children
misses his best chance of a practical education.
So a people that goes on in ignorance of other
^/ peoples or in blind antagonism to other peoples,
misses its chance of adding their civilization to
its own. It is just this element of a liberal
education which should be emphasized in the
schools, not one day in the year but throughout
the year — such a knowledge and appreciation
of the other peoples of the earth as shall help us
to add the good things of their civilization to our
own civilization and to live with them in the
enjoyment of civilized relationships. Even well
down in the elementary schools, the effort of our
little Americans to overcome the primitive dis-
trust and disparagement of the peoples of foreign
lands is a liberalizing influence. It is, indeed, an
Americanizing influence.

But this, after all, is but a small part of what
the schools ought to do to promote international
arbitration. The best that they can do, in the
long run, is to foster the genuine spirit of arbitra-
tion, and to establish those modes of thought
that dispose men to arbitrate their differences.
Let us consider here three ways of settling differ-
ences among men, and see what the teaching
of the schools may be expected to do by way of
furthering that type of thought which lies nearest
to arbitration. The primitive way of settling a
quarrel is an appeal , to arms, a decisive physical

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 103

fight. This is the spontaneous method of un-
controlled anger. But it has in it many nobler
elements, and chief among these is the religious
faith that the God of might and right will add
His strength to the strength of the righteous
cause. Each combatant is sure that the righteous
cause is his own, and the strong sweep of his
anger and his faith is seen in his readiness to
risk losing all in the hope of gaining all. A second
way is the way of compromise. A willingness to
compromise shows that the parties to the quarrel
hold one thing as of greater value than the
things for which they are contending, and that
one thing more precious than all the rest is peace.
Or, at least, each of the contending parties holds
that a fragment of that for which it strives,
together with relief from strife, is better than
the chance of gaining all through hard and
dubious conflict. Compromise has, no doubt,
its rightful place and in the daily dealings of
men with men it must play an important part —
a larger part, indeed, than we commonly realize.
But on the whole it represents a weaker attitude
than the attitude of direct antagonism backed
up by strong conviction. An age in which com-
promise takes the leading place instead of a
subsidiary and intercalary place, an age dis-
tinctly characterized by the spirit of compromise,
is not "an age on ages telling" when "to be
living is sublime."

104 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

A third method of settling a dispute, a method
hard to practice and even hard to define, the
method which arbitration ultimately represents
and reinforces, is the method of finding some
ground of positive agreement higher than the
ground taken by either antagonist at the begin-
ning of the strife. In every dispute between
honest and intelligent disputants we find some
show of justice in each of the conflicting claims.
The method of war crushes the claim of one
side, with all the good and bad there is in it,
and gives victory to the other side with all of
its bad as well as its good. The method of com-
promise takes the course which leads to peace,
even though much of the good of either cause be
sacrificed by the way. The method of arbitration
would seem to be merely the method of com-
promise through the agency of a third party,
but essentially it is more than this. For every
well-conducted international arbitration contrib-
utes to the building up of a higher conception
of international obligations, of world relations,
and is accordingly in its effect a bringing of the
disputants together on higher and more stable
ground than either of them occupied when the
strife began. I think this view may be abun-
dantly justified by examples from modern history.
There is not time, however, for such illustration,
and the bare and general statement must be left
to stand alone.

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 105

The immediate question is that as to the re-
lation of public schools to the type of thinking
which lies back of arbitration procedure. It
seems clear that this is the very type of think-
ing which is characteristic of modern educa-
tion at its best. It is the type of thinking which
should be promoted in schools of every grade,
in the interest of liberal culture, rightly under-
stood. It is by promoting such culture and estab-
lishing such modes of thought among our people
everywhere that the public schools can lay the
surest foundation for the arbitration principle.

The watchword of this movement may fairly
be taken as the watchword of all modern educa-
tion, and we may phrase it in the words, Let us
look for a better way. The spirit which it repre-
sents is at one with that of modern science —
of that science which is undoubtedly the domi-
nant influence in the methods of modern edu-
cation. For science, with all of its strength of
conviction, holds its doctrines not as records of
final attainment nor as banners set up for a battle
to the end, but rather as well-laid steps of an
ascent. It expects something better beyond,
expects to rise above its present knowledge and
belief; and in that expectation it is able to look
upon any intelligent opposition as indicating the
need of finding some higher principle which
shall solve the present difference. Even in the
lower schools, by ways that are often intangible,

106 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

this spirit is making its way. It is not too much
to hope that it will become broadly character-
istic of the teaching of all of our schools, and
when it has become so characteristic of that
teaching, the principle of arbitration will be
grounded in the educational consciousness of
our whole people.

Before we leave this discussion, there are two
added considerations to which attention should
be called. The arbitration movement looks for
its success to the cultivation of a decent respect
for the opinions of mankind. In the heat of
national anger it is too much to expect that any
people will welcome from its opponent the sug-
gestion that there are better grounds on which
they may hope to meet. If, however, our people
have been trained from their youth to recognize
in every sharp difference of opinion the pos-
sibility of there being some higher and better
ground of agreement, undiscovered as yet, there
cannot fail to be in time a little greater readiness
to appeal to an impartial world, to peoples not
involved in the dispute, and to respect the sug-
gestion from without of a better way to an hon-
orable peace. It is here that an increased un-
derstanding of other nations than our own may
be expected to reinforce the teaching that leads
men to hope for a better way. It is not simply
that a knowledge of other nations, well taught
in the schools, will lead us to consider more

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 107

carefully the claims of an antagonist in time of
trouble, but that it will prepare our people, or
any people, to look with more favor upon an
appeal to the judgment of the civilized world.

In the second place, such an appeal to an
impartial tribunal would be strengthened in
the minds of any people if that people were
grounded in some of the fundamental principles
of human law. On other grounds than this, it is
to be desired that the elementary principles of
legal right should be more distinctly taught in
our schools along with the principles of common
morality. This is not the place to enlarge upon a
topic like this, which must be subordinate to the
main discussion of this occasion. But it is not
out of place to say that those great elementary
principles of right and justice which have been
the nourishing thought of many of the greatest
minds of our race, are in themselves a most
desirable element in the liberal culture of all our
people. I cannot but think that a people trained
to have respect for principles such as these will
be so much the better prepared to accept in time
of controversy the view that neither party to the
dispute is the rightful judge of the cause, but
that the cause should be judged by a competent
and regularly constituted tribunal which should
have no selfish interest in the question at issue.

Briefly stated, then, the contention of this paper
is as follows: That the schools of our whole

108 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

people may properly contribute to the move-
ment for international arbitration only in ways
that contribute to the general purposes of educa-
tion, but that positive improvements in educa-
tion are called for to-day in ways that must
inevitably reinforce the arbitration movement.
Among these ways are endeavors to promote
among a given people, as our own, a more inti-
mate and appreciative knowledge of the character
of other modern nations with whom this people
has to do ; the promotion in the schools of that
type of thinking which readily passes beyond its
partial convictions, no matter how earnestly
held, to larger views in which opposing convic-
tions may find their rightful recognition and come
to agreement; the teaching in the schools, as a
part of our instruction in morals and civil gov-
ernment, of some of the elementary principles
of legal justice, which shall enable our people
to adjust themselves freely and consciously to
the reign of law in all great human affairs. The
argument amounts to this, that our education
of all the people shall be made at once more
scientific and more humanistic in its character,
and that the schools shall teach the people in all
their concerns to look for a better way.

Let it be added that education cannot be
expected to prepare the way specifically for the
arbitration of any particular cause. When in-
ternational irritation has arisen and there is

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 109

threatening of war, the work of education for the
time is under arrest. Not only the laws but the
teachers as well are silent in the clash of arms,
or in the clash of temper which threatens an
appeal to arms. Our hope is that education may
exercise an influence far in advance of the crisis,
which shall turn men to some international
tribunal before the irritation has arisen to violent
anger from which there is no appeal but to arms.
Education can do very little to allay the wrath
of nations, but it can do much to hold the na-
tions back from uncontrollable wrath while the
question is still new and in the balance. The
schools cannot prepare to-day for the crisis of
this year. They are to prepare to-day for the
crisis of ten years hence or a generation hence.
But this of itself may be a work of inconceivable
significance. And the way in which so great a
result may be compassed is the way of making
familiar and natural to a whole people, and to
possibly antagonistic peoples, a mode and habit
of thought, a moral devotion to conceptions of
justice and righteousness, which shall give to
the advocates of arbitration their chance to be
heard and understood.

VII

POSSIBLE CO-OPERATION BETWEEN

THE EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

Contributed to a Discussion in the National Council of
Education, at its Meeting at Cleveland, Ohio, July 1,
1908. Published in the Proceedings of the National
Education Association for the year 1908, and in The
Independent of August 6, 1908.

VII

POSSIBLE CO-OPERATION BETWEEN THE

EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF

DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

THE suggestion which was made to this
Council one year ago, that steps be
taken to bring the National Education
Association into closer co-operation with similar
bodies in other lands, was offered in the con-
viction that the greater part of the work of
education in all lands is one work, and that all
teachers among civilized peoples have a common
cause. There is abundant ground for this belief.
The legislative bodies of many nations have
found enough of common interest to make
possible an Interparliamentary Union, and that
international body has profoundly influenced the
course of recent history. Yet parliaments are
the centers of positive nationalism. We may
fairly expect to find more elements of unity in
the schools of different nations than in their
legislatures. And such undoubtedly is now the
case.

The world relationships of universities have
been recognized, with varying clearness, for

114 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

seven or eight centuries. The earlier develop-
ment of schools for the people was more closely
connected with the rise of modern nationalism.
This gave us higher schools which emphasized
unity, alongside of lower schools which empha-
sized difference. Such a distinction of course
goes down to the fundamental constitution of
society. It cannot be maintained, as a principle
of sharp separation, where the distinctions be-
tween social classes have been smoothed out or
are in the way of disappearing. Nations which
have a traditional enmity to keep alive toward
some of their neighbors — a memory of ancient
quarrels which colors all their history — are at
a disadvantage in this regard. In so far as class
distinctions persist in such societies, with some-
thing of the finality of caste distinctions, a lower
class will be taught to hate another people while
the highest class is learning to understand other
peoples.

But this condition can hardly continue, un-
modified, in our modern world. The many care
to learn what the few have known. The scientific
spirit forbids us to teach in the lower schools
what is untrue from the standpoint of the higher
schools. Then, there is a New Humanism in the
world, which is surely spreading abroad. This
new humanism recognizes the fact that to know
and understand living men, both individuals and
nations, is a great part of any complete educa-

INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION 115

tion. This humanism tinges all of the social
and the international striving of our time. It
tinges our education. I have had occasion before
to speak of one little symptom of it — a straw on
the waters of our primary schools — in the wide
popularity of that children's book, the " Seven
Little Sisters," by Miss Andrews. And for more
pretentious indications of the same current you
would not have far to seek.

We live already in a world in which men are
trying to understand one another. Men are
trying to understand their neighbors, and that
is the better part of democracy. Men are trying
to understand other peoples and nations, and
that is the foundation of our new world-politics.
The reason why we may hope to understand the
rest of the world, the reason why we even care
to understand the rest of the world, is that our
differences stand out from a background of
agreement, a substratum of ultimate unity. The
differences are picturesque and interesting, and
at times they command the whole field of atten-
tion. Without national peculiarities and even
oppositions, our world-unity would be a poor
thing, a dull and insipid uniformity. But we
must not forget that, after all, the differences get
their life and worth from that underlying unity.
The time has come when men can give attention
to the common human purposes of all the tribes
of men without suspicion of treason against

116 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

their own government. In our own land this
is pre-eminently true. As Mr. Stead has said
of us, "America is the one great international
country of the world."

When Professor Payne of the University of
Virginia a few years ago made his comparative
study of the public elementary school curricula
of the leading culture nations, he found an ap-
proximate agreement in the subjects of instruc-
tion and in the relative amount of time devoted
to different subjects in the schools of representa-
tive cities. Aside from differences as to the
inclusion or exclusion of religious doctrine, the
most important variations were those relating
to the language employed and studied and the
content of instruction in the national history and
literature. Even here the instruction in the
schools under consideration might readily be
compared with reference to its form and the
principles guiding the choice of materials in
those subjects. So striking, indeed, was the
agreement which his study revealed that Pro-
fessor Payne was led to make the following
remarks :

It is to be feared that our educational theorists have
sometimes excused themselves from making a compara-
tive study of these different curricula by an exaggeration
of the supposed disparity of aim and the consequent im-
probability of gaining suggestions of worth. The tables
. . . show such a slight difference of curricula in the ele-

INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION 117

mentary schools of the several countries, that it makes one
suspect either that the aim of education does not determine
what shall be studied, or that the aims of the several
countries do not differ as much as has been supposed.1

And again,

No one can fail to be impressed with the fact that the
general principles which govern the selection and arrange-
ment of the subject matter of the elementary curriculum
are practically the same in the four educational systems
here studied.2

Without doubt, national differences must still
be more influential in determining the teaching
of the lower schools than that of the univer-
sities. In some degree this difference must, I
think, be regarded as permanent. A strong
nationalism and even a certain wholesome pro-
vincialism are to be cherished in those schools.
But it is quite as important, and is in truth
essential, in this modern age, that the lower
schools preserve their continuity with the teach-
ing of the universities and their loyalty to as-
pirations which all civilized nations hold in
common.

I hope that our great National Education As-
sociation, in its unquestioned loyalty to our na-
tional ideals, may take steps which shall promote

1 Payne, Bruce Ryburn. Public elementary school curricula.
Silver, Burdett and Company [1905], pp. 15-16.

2 Idem, p. 182. The four educational systems studied were
those of the United States, England, Germany, and France.

118 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

the good understanding now gaining ground
among the nations of the earth. Let us send our
emissaries to confer with similar bodies in other
civilized lands, as we have so often welcomed
foreign teachers in our great annual gatherings.
Let us take our part in setting up world-standards
in the domain of culture and education. Such
a movement, I believe, will make for peace;
but if so, it will accomplish that end by promot-
ing one of the best tendencies in modern educa-
tion, a humane tendency, which may be summed
up in the saying, Let us see if we cannot under-
stand one another.

VIII

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE IN
THE FIELD OF EDUCATION?

An Address before the Vassar College Chapter of Phi Beta
Kappa, June 10, 1907. Published in Science, August 9,
1907.

VIII

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE IN THE
FIELD OF EDUCATION?

EVERY invention, I suppose, is made up of
individual and social elements, and com-
bines them in a way different from that of
every other invention. There is no more inter-
esting department of literary criticism, or aesthetic
criticism generally, than that which seeks to trace
out the respective contributions of the race and
the individual in any work of art. This is illus-
trated in a recent discussion of the distinction
between the folk-epic and the art-epic, the char-
acteristic difference, for example, between the
Iliad and Paradise Lost.1 Some Homer, in
the one instance, whatever his name, gave the
final form to a poetic tale that must have been
shaping itself in the traditions of his people for
many generations. In the other instance, in
which we may distinguish the poem from the con-
temporary materials out of which it was con-
structed, the work of the poet looms large, and

1 By Professor C. B. Bradley in The University of California
Chronicle for June, 1906.

122 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

the work of the people back of him is obscured
by his personal fame. Yet, when we analyze
even Milton's art, with all of its manifestation of
a fearless and independent personality, we find it
related in the subtlest ways with the literary tra-
dition of his time.

So it is in the history of mechanical invention.
We have seen recently a running discussion of
the origin of the electric trolley car. This very
modern invention is commonly referred for its
beginnings to the electric railway first operated
at Richmond, Virginia, in 1888. But it appears
that that undertaking had a forerunner, and that
forerunner in its turn had a prototype, and the
successful American inventor is found to be only
the topmost figure of a human pyramid, made up
of no one knows how many experimenters in this
particular field. The Patent Office has difficulty
enough in distinguishing each new invention from
its patented predecessors. But when we go aside
from the series of formal patents and look to the
succession and mingling of motives and ideas,
the tangle passes our ability to unravel. We
can only see how inextricably the stroke of in-
dividual initiative is enmeshed in the movements
of a whole people, and that very complication we
find it a delight to contemplate.

Now, this social character of all invention ap-
pears in a peculiarly vital way in any original
work in education. For education in a special

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 123

sense not only springs from the people, but in
turn creates the people from which it springs.
Education is its own father. An over-emphasis
on individuality in education would quickly carry
us away from the line of direct succession. It
would give us isolation and sterility instead of re-
creating the spiritual life of the race.

One cannot add too quickly that in the nature
of things the danger of a dead lack of individual-
ity is usually a more threatening danger. But let
us at once get down to our examples. To begin
with, we may take the kindergarten. There has
hardly been a more distinct and conspicuous in-
vention in the whole history of schools. It is a
thoroughly conscious and modern work of art,
in which the personal agency of the inventor
comes to the fore. That is the very weakness of
the invention. To this day it has not been assim-
ilated. In our educational concert it is a voice
that sweetly sings in tune but that refuses to blend
with other voices of the chorus. There may be
different explanations of this lack of accord. It
may be that the individual note is permanently
at variance with anything that can be made uni-
versal. Or it may be that the kindergarten is
merely in advance of the age and will bring the
rest of education round into adjustment with it-
self. It seems pretty clear that both explanations
are in part correct. The kindergarten, with cer-
tain other forces that have worked toward sim-

124 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ilar ends, has brought our elementary education a
long way toward its type of faith and practice.
Yet the emphasis on what is distinctively Froebel-
ian still keeps it a thing apart, and seems likely to
set a permanent limit to its ascendency.

It will appear, from this reference to the work of
Froebel, that we are not now concerned simply or
chiefly with those inventions which bear the sharp
stamp of one man's individuality. It is a minor
consideration that the invention should be known
at all as the work of a single inventor. Some of
the most marked of immediate successes and ul-
timate failures have had that distinctive imprint.
Such, for example, was the monitorial system, in
the forms given to it by Joseph Lancaster and
Doctor Bell. Such a system may have a large
usefulness of its own in the course of educational
progress, but it is as scaffolding rather than as
part of the permanent structure. Its very insist-
ence upon that which is one man's makes it less
fit to serve the great needs of Everyman.

So in varying degrees the educational inven-
tions of the ages combine the distinct contribution
of this or that inventor with the broad tendencies
of an inventive people. What are some of the
other inventions which Europe has contributed
to educational history ? I mention only a few of
them and with little thought for sequence of any
sort. There is the educational system of the
Jesuits, particularly in its seventeenth and eigh-

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 125

teenth century form. There is the English uni-
versity, made up of federated colleges. There is
the seminar, which has been such an instrument
in the making of German university instruction.
There are two recent contributions of the Swedish
people, the Sloyd system of hand-work and the
Ling system of educational gymnastics. Let us
add the seminary for teachers, the school garden,
the Hilfsschule or school for backward children,
the system of higher institutions for commercial
education, the Gouin method and various other
successful methods in the teaching of modern
languages, the English system of university ex-
tension. Many others will, no doubt, occur to
you. When w^e come to think over the list, it
appears that much has been accomplished, and
that European education has not only been
greatly widened since the Middle Ages, to reach
a manifold larger constituency, but has also been
improved to a wonderful degree by the progress
of educational invention.

When we would institute a comparison be-
tween European and American contributions to
such improvement, it is well that we consider
first the wider range of invention. The world at
large gives to the Americans the credit of being a
highly inventive people as regards mechanical
devices. The attention of our people was early
turned in this direction. Certain conspicuous
successes fired the national imagination, and the

126 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

stress of economic need drove us to the same end.
The Patent Office became a centre of national
pride. To take out a patent or buy the right to
sell a patented article or at least to buy something
with the magic patent label attached thereto, be-
came a well-nigh universal ambition. And in
sober truth our record in the making of useful
inventions is really wonderful. At first thought
and without an effort you can recall the lightning
rod, the steamboat, the cotton gin, the whole
series of reaping machines down to the latest
combination harvester, the sewing machine, the
telegraph, the telephone, the arc and the incan-
descent electric light, the phonograph, and twenty
other things that are now counted among the nec-
essaries of modern life. It is a dazzling list, and
may well make us forget the things we have not
ourselves invented, but have borrowed from other
lands. On second thought, however, we recall
those notable creations, the steam engine, the
balloon, the power loom, the locomotive engine,
the daguerreotype — first-fruit of modern photog-
raphy,— the spectroscope, wireless telegraphy,
and many others that the wit of Europe has de-
vised. However much we may lead in the num-
ber and variety of our cunning contrivances, there
is enough for which we are indebted to other
lands to check our conceit and assure us that
we have competitors.

On the whole, however, in the domain of

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 127

mechanism we are undoubtedly in the lead. The
fact that the number of patents issued annually
in the United States is now only a little less than
the whole number issued in all of the rest of the
civilized world is not without significance. But
when we turn to creative literature and the other
arts the case is changed. Here the leadership
rests with Europe. We have done good work in
this field and are rapidly doing better, but not yet
with that confident leadership which we display
in mechanical invention. Many of the best short
stories are ours. We have a score and more of
writers of creditable verse — and even Europe
does not seem to be over-productive of great
poems in these days. We are producing some
virile sculpture that is not merely imitative, and
our painters can now command the respect and
admiration of the world. The superiority of our
illustration art is recognized. We are erecting
many good buildings and are producing some
good music. But, after all, the preponderance of
inventive excellence in these departments is still
conceded to Europe. Our architects study at
the Beaux Arts, our musicians at Leipsic and
Berlin, and our young painters are known to the
world when they have exhibited at the Paris
Salon.

How, then, does it stand with us in the field of
education ? I think any one who reads in the
German pedagogical literature of our day has

128 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

now and then a sense of hopelessness of any edu-
cational originality. The range of its suggestion
is in fact astounding. The new plan and con-
ception of educational procedure which is just
dawning above his horizon is very likely to appear
in some German pamphlet or even in some
"Handbuch der Padagogik" as a familiar notion,
the boundaries of which have been well marked
out and its values weighed in the balance. So any
one familiar with the stream of educational in-
fluence which has long been crossing the Atlantic
in our direction will proceed with caution in
naming our American contributions to educa-
tional invention. Yet it will be admitted that
pedagogic discussion in Germany and in other
countries of Europe often outruns by far the prac-
tical embodiment of ideas in working institutions,
and even the great reach of German educational
doctrine still leaves some things to the educa-
tional makers of other lands.

The Europeans themselves are generous in
giving us credit for the origination of a variety of
educational contrivance. Among the particulars
in this bill of credit have been mentioned the
American school of library practice, the kitchen
garden, the high school laboratory for instruc-
tion in natural science, co-education in secondary
schools and colleges, the combination school of
the Pratt and the Drexel Institute type. It is
difficult for us to form a list of our own. We are

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 129

too close to the facts to be sensible of their dis-
tinguishing characters, and besides we know that
Europe has many surprises that might trip us if
we claimed too much. But at a venture I would
suggest the following as among our original con-
tributions to education, making no claim, how-
ever, that the list is all-inclusive or even includes
all of the best that we have done.

First, the non-sectarian elementary school for
all classes of the community, answering to our
democratic social organization and our religious
liberty.

Secondly, the American high school, serving at
once as a continuation of the elementary school
and an introduction to the higher education, with
courses meeting a variety of tastes and needs.

Thirdly, the American university, with its com-
bination of instruction and research, of cultural
and technological courses, and with liberal and
professional departments often dovetailing into
each other. To this might be added that notable
invention, that new development of personal
efficiency, the American university president.

To these institutions, at the core and center of
our educational system, we might easily add a
number of minor features of that system, no one
of them insignificant in itself. The summer
school may be mentioned, with its home-study
development, as in the Chautauqua type; the
text-book in its better forms, and the better type

130 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

of instruction based on the use of the book ; the
college gymnasium, for physical education; the
consolidated country school, with provision for
the transportation of pupils ; the organization of
public libraries and museums in close connection
with the work of public schools. How many
others there are that come crowding on the atten-
tion ! One is tempted to mention Helen Keller
as one of our most admirable educational achieve-
ments. The story of her training into normal and
honored womanhood is one of the most stimulat-
ing passages in our educational history. And
Tuskegee is another. Then, too, we recall our
schools for the training of nurses, which in a very
few years have come to enroll twenty thousand
students annually. I may speak of another ex-
ample, which falls within my own sphere of labor,
for as a new invention it was the work of my
honored predecessors. I refer to that special
type of industrial training which is connected
with the introduction of domestic reindeer into
Alaska.

In that northern country the necessity of mak-
ing some better provision by which the natives
might clothe and feed themselves, was the
mother of this combined industrial and educa-
tional invention. Reindeer were imported from
Siberia. Teachers were brought from Lapland.
And the Eskimo were set to the lesson of caring
for the deer, of breaking them to the sled, of using

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 131

them in profitable service of the incoming white
population; and so of adjusting their lives to a
new industry, by which they might maintain
themselves in the face of new conditions which
threatened their very existence. Here was a truly
constructive treatment of a most difficult racial
problem. A new industry was fitted to new con-
ditions and a new education was based on that
new industry. While the arrangement has not
yet shown what its full development may be, it
has become well established in these more than
fifteen years, and already it has made its place
and proved its usefulness.

But we cannot fairly estimate the measure of
our inventiveness unless we turn to the other
side, and see what are some of the defects in our
system which we have left uncorrected. These
are the points where our educational invention
has thus far failed to do its work, and they are
neither few nor unimportant. I think it will ap-
pear that all along the line, from the bottom to
the top, our educational system, the object of so
great national pride, is still marked by serious
inadequacies.

We have not yet made any great improvement
in the nurture of children at home, up to the kin-
dergarten age or the age of the primary school.

We have not yet brought the kindergarten
into full adjustment to our educational system
nor devised any adequate substitute for the
kindergarten.

132 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

We have found ways of keeping one half of our
pupils in school up to the sixth or seventh grade,
but we have not found ways of keeping all of
them to the end of the elementary course.

We have not yet organized nature studies in the
schools into any well-knit adjustment to general
education.

We have not yet carried our instruction in
drawing up into fully effective training for the
fine arts, in secondary and higher schools.

We have not yet brought our religious educa-
tion, as carried on in Sunday-schools, into any
effective parallelism with the secular instruction
of the public schools.

We have not yet brought our normal schools
into satisfactory adjustment with our cherished
sequence of schools from the kindergarten to the
university.

We have not yet wrought out a satisfactory
arrangement for the training of teachers for
secondary and higher schools.

We have hardly as yet established a permanent
teaching profession.

We have not devised adequate means of giving
needed cultivation, aesthetic, intellectual, and
moral, to the individuals who make up the stu-
dent body of our mammoth universities.

We have yet to work our way through the gas-
eous, centrifugal atomism of our college elective
courses into an organized and unified national
culture.

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 133

We have not yet achieved a national standard
in our academic and professional education, nor
have we organized any effective and economical
co-operation among our schools of graduate in-
struction and research.

We have not yet devised ways by which pub-
lic education can be definitely and adequately
focussed upon the improvement of our national
morality.

The list, again, is by no means complete, but
it is surely long enough for the purposes of this
discussion.

I do not take a pessimistic view of the situation
in which these defects appear. In every one of
the particulars enumerated, serious efforts toward
improvement are making even now, and we can-
not doubt that full success will ultimately be
achieved. There have been devoted teachers
who have labored long for such improvement,
and in some instances their accomplishment has
been great and beneficent. But that our triumphs
in these particulars have been local and excep-
tional rather than permanent and national, will
be generally agreed, and it is well that we look
this unwelcome fact in the face.

We may now attempt a direct answer to the
question which was asked at the beginning, Are
we an inventive people in the field of education ?
We are, unmistakably, an inventive people in this
field. It can hardly be doubted by any one who

134 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

looks upon the exuberant Americanism of our
elementary schools, the great expansion and con-
tinued readjustment of our secondary education,
the growth of our universities and of univer-
sity influence in ways that catch so exactly our
national characteristics and turn them to aca-
demic ends; nor can it be doubted by any one
who watches from year to year the spread of our
education into new fields by new and untried
processes. We are inventive in our education,
but it is not yet clear that we are pre-eminent in
this regard, and our educational invention still
lags far behind our invention in the domain of
mechanism.

We may easily be misled by the flattering re-
ports of foreign visitors. With all of their frank-
ness in pointing out our defects, their general
criticism of our schools is for the most part ex-
tremely favorable. But we must not forget that
education with us is in the sweep of a strong tide
of popular sentiment. Every invention that we
have put forth is carried forward by that current
and finds opportunity to do, in full swing, its
destined work. Not that individual inventors do
their work unhampered and with no discouraging
delays. That could never be. But, by contrast
with Europe, the way of educational improve-
ment here is direct and clear. We cannot yet
fairly judge what our education would accomplish
under greater difficulties and in the face of closer

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 135

competition. It is safest for us to take the mod-
erate view, and hold that our educational suc-
cesses thus far, great and glorious as they are, are
only great enough to confirm our hope and confi-
dence, and not yet sufficiently great to insure to
us the ultimate leadership.

Our inventiveness in this field is less con-
spicuous, as has been said, our education shows
less of readiness to seize obscure suggestions and
carry them through to unlooked-for triumphs of
efficiency, than that which we have long disclosed
in our Patent Office reports. Yet this field is at
least as interesting as the other. It makes in-
tense appeal to widely differing minds, and public
attention is often drawn to new educational pro-
jects in a measure that is truly astonishing.
What is needed is that that public interest
should be more sustained and more discriminat-
ing; that the inventor in education should have
the unfailing stimulus which has goaded our
mechanical inventors to their most strenuous en-
deavors. And on the part of the inventor him-
self there is need of all the patience and resource
of the designer of new mechanism ; and of other
qualities, subtler far than these, which it may be
worth our while to consider at this point.

The inventor in education does not bring
before the people a new object which they are
to look upon and admire and use. The people
are the very stuff of his invention, public sen-

136 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

timent is his atmosphere, he is an artificer
of human society. Accordingly he must have,
many times over, the patience of the mechanical
inventor. He must be willing to merge his fame
in the larger life of the invention. For if it is a
real and living invention he will find that there
are many collaborators, and it may take genera-
tions to bring the design to its perfection. In
education it is generally true that an invention
that is only of one man size is not large enough
to last. Yet the work calls for zest and courage,
and there is ground for individual encourage-
ment. Social changes are accelerated in these
days. The single generation has, more than
ever, its chance of striking an arc of appreciable
advancement, and there was never a time when
one man in his one earthly life had a better chance
of doing some work of noble note. I believe the
spirit of educational invention can be quickened
among the men of America, to meet the larger
demands that are upon us. And if this language
seems to spread out shield and spear in the house-
hold of Lycomedes, it is not that I am seeking
Achilles at Vassar. It should be said rather that
the highly educated women of America are them-
selves to have a most important part in this
educational quickening. Indeed, it is not too
much to hope that the time is at hand when our
men and women will take share and share alike
in this work — alike but different. And we may

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 137

trust and pray that the great work that our
women are already doing in every phase of social
improvement may not cause the men of America
to dream that their responsibility can be shifted,
but may rather remind them that they must not
fail in their part.

It may be well to enter here upon some brief
discussion of three or four of the problems now
calling for constructive leadership. In the first
place, let us make note of an unfinished move-
ment, which demands our best skill and will
surely reward its exercise. It has been said that
the education of the school and education by
apprenticeship, after centuries in which they
have gone apart, are drawing near together in
these days. It seems fair to expect, in fact, that
the school of the future will be the result of their
union. The combination appears in many forms.
Most familiar of these, up to the present time,
is the school laboratory in the natural sciences.
Here instruction from the book assumes a subor-
dinate place and the pupil learns by what he
does. Already, too, the method of the scientific
laboratory is permeating other departments of
the school. It has influenced the teaching of
history and the languages, and we may even see
its influence extending to the teaching of law in
the professional school. But now the school
and the apprentice system are drawing together
in other ways. The movement is obvious in
manual training and domestic education.

138 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

The actual contact of the two systems, how-
ever, has been especially marked in the past
two years. At the Carnegie Technical Schools
in Pittsburg arrangements have been entered
into by which boys will take a part of their
training for certain trades in the ordinary
course of apprenticeship, under the control of
the trades unions, and another part of their
training for the same trades in the technical
schools. At the University of Cincinnati the
experiment is making of combining work for
wages in a regular shop with the studies of an
engineering course, two young men counting
for one in the shop by alternating on one-week
shifts, each taking his university studies in the
week that he is not at the bench. The experi-
ment is watched with the liveliest interest by
both shop men and university men and thus far
it gives promise of success. In the movement
toward the establishment of public trade schools,
now under way in Massachusetts and Connecti-
cut and in several other states, the relation of the
apprenticeship to the school is a question of the
utmost importance, both educationally and in
its connection with the problems of trades union-
ism. From a general pedagogical standpoint the
combination of the methods of the literary school
with the methods of apprenticeship seems one
of the most promising of present opportunities
for the exercise of educational invention.

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 139

May I venture, in the second place, to speak
of the present problem in the higher education
of women ? I will not say what I think about the
subject here and now, when I am so happily
indebted to your generous hospitality. I do not
think you would care to have me indulge in the
language of compliment. But before I came to
Vassar, let us say, the question of woman's
higher education in America seemed to me to
lie about as follows: That, after the great ad-
vance we have made in this field, which has com-
manded the attention of the world and the
admiration of a good part of the world, we have
come to something like a standstill, and some of
the most important steps have not been taken as
yet. It has taken a great struggle to establish
fully the higher education of woman as a simple
human need. But that battle has been won.
The integration of woman's education with the
general scheme of education has been brought
about. But the differentiation of woman's educa-
tion is yet to be accomplished. Let us admit
that the task of integration was by far the greater
task. But does it follow that the differentiation
is no task at all ? Or, to put it in other words :
The functions of men and wromen in society are
different in many ways. Do those differences lie
wholly beyond the range of education? I am
confident that they cannot permanently be left
outside of the range of education, but the task

140 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

of bringing them under educational treatment is
one of the greatest difficulty. It calls for the
highest exercise of inventive skill and patience.
In co-educational institutions, under a system of
free election, the problem tends to solve itself by
the gravitation of women toward certain courses
and of men toward certain other courses, while
still other courses are common ground. But
this solution is only partial and unsatisfactory.
Some practicable scheme of preparation for
mother- work will, we cannot doubt, be devised
in the course of time. There will be, some day,
an education for home making and for woman's
leading part in the finer forms of social inter-
course, which will do on the higher academic
plane what was done in a more petty way, gener-
ations ago, in popular finishing schools for girls.
But this, too, is only a part. There is to be,
further, a serious preparation for woman's work
in the economic, the industrial, and even the
political world. What the all-round solution of
this problem will be, I cannot tell nor even guess.
But if it meets the need, it will be an educational
invention of the highest order of excellence.

In the third place, there is the international
organization of education. Commissioner Draper
has recently called attention to the tremendous
number of men and women engaged in teach-
ing throughout the world to-day. There are
not far from three and one-half million of

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 141

them, according to his estimates. And for the
most part they are engaged in what is essentially
the same work, wherever they may be. The full
realization of the unity of this great body of
teachers, when it is attained, must have pro-
found consequences for the peace and civiliza-
tion of the world. Already we are working toward
such unity in a number of definite and special
ways. Many of these ways are already familiar
to all: The visits of teachers and other educa-
tional leaders of one country among the schools
of other peoples; systematic efforts of one
people to spread a knowledge of their culture
and ideals among other peoples, as exemplified
in the Alliance Fran9aise; the exchange of
university professors; and a variety of other
procedure.

If the diplomatic relations of nations have
passed into an economic stage, it should be
added that they are passing into an educational
stage. Mr. Barrett, the chief of the Bureau of
American Republics, urges, with good show of
reason, that if we wish better commercial relations
with the proud and sensitive peoples of South
America, we must first meet them on higher
ground, through an understanding and recogni-
tion of their culture and education. Already we
can see signs of the emergence of world-standards
in school education and university education and
particularly in professional education. It is an

GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

immediate and practical need that we put our
higher education into shape to deserve, and by
deserving to compel, recognition, the world over,
of our academic and professional degrees. All
of these things call for new procedure, new
devices, and new co-ordination of existing agen-
cies. That is, in the language of this discussion,
they call for a new exercise of educational inven-
tion in its very widest range.

Finally, the international need emphasizes
the national need. Such a thing has happened
repeatedly in the history of international rela-
tions. What we must do to take and keep our
place among the nations of the earth, reveals to
us what we must do at home. No one in his
senses, I am sure, would propose a centraliza-
tion of American educational systems. But we
need as never before an effective co-operation of
our state educational organizations, and of our
institutions of learning under more private forms
of control. And when education is spoken of
here, the meaning is education in its widest
reach, from the elementary schools through the
colleges and universities, from the most general
to the most special of its developments, through
the several forms of professional instruction,
through organized scientific research, through
our provision for libraries and museums and
those movements which promise for us the mak-
ing of a really national art. The organization

ARE WE AN INVENTIVE PEOPLE? 143

of what may be called our national education in
a manner suited to the spirit of our institutions
and in forms commensurate with our standing
among the nations — this is an undertaking
which must tax the imagination and make de-
mand for administrative originality such as the
academic world has seldom seen. But it is a work
that is to be done. And it will undoubtedly be
the work of many men and women, brought
together in intense co-operation, and be extended
far beyond the limits of a single generation. It
will be a work of national invention.

Such, as it now appears, is some small part
of the task that lies immediately before us. It
is a work that may well call for the most serious
consideration of this greatly influential society,
which aims to make its philosophy a guide into
the larger life. The plea which has been offered
amounts in sum to this : That by all means you
will give encouragement and stimulus and dis-
criminating criticism to our already awakened
spirit of educational invention; for it takes no
second sight to perceive that the times call for
the exercise of that spirit in the highest things to
which it may aspire.

IX

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES:
SOME OF THEIR NEEDS

An Address delivered before the International Congress on
the Welfare of the Child at Washington, March,
1908. Published in the National Congress of Mothers'
Magazine, June, 1908.

IX

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES: SOME
OF THEIR NEEDS

THE President of the United States, in
assigning to me the high honor of com-
ing before you as his representative,
expressed his deep and serious interest in your
undertaking. To promote the general welfare
by way of a betterment of American childhood
is, as I understand it, the main object of your ac-
tivities. It is a purpose which, in an especial
degree, commands the President's warm consid-
eration. In this solicitude all patriotic Americans
must share. And whatever wise measures you
may initiate to carry your high purpose into effect
cannot fail to find a response in all groups and
sections and parties of our American people.

In particular, as a schoolman and a member
of the National Education Association, may I
express my personal gratification that the Moth-
ers' Congress is to be one of the organizations
to be represented in the new Department of
National Organizations of Women, which was
authorized by the directors of that association at

148 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

their meeting last summer in Los Angeles. The
educational program of these several women's
organizations is so well framed, and so much
may be done by them to make that program
operative in our educational systems, that your
participation in our great National Association
brings to it a promise of heightened usefulness.
It is to be hoped that you may find your new
relations with that association altogether helpful
and congenial. May you be greatly successful
in the educational projects to which so much
of your effort has been consecrated. And may
your meetings here in Washington happily further
your plans for making a joyous childhood uni-
versal in this land, as the best introduction to an
honorable manhood and womanhood.

Your purpose is, indeed, the broad purpose of
our civilization. We are seeking to make a
childhood of wholesome play lead up to a mature
life of wholesome work from which the spirit of
play has not been altogether lost. We think it
worth while to provide for childhood with its
play. We think it worth while to provide in a
thousand ways for the work of grown-up years.
But just at this time we are chiefly interested in
the passage from the age of play to the age of
work. That is the focus of some of our most
anxious thought of to-day. The school is largely
concerned with the transformation of a playing
child into a working man with some of the play

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 149

left in him. So the question of which I speak
is the question of the fitting together of the later
years of school with the earlier years of work.
Here is one of the most penetrating questions of
our time, and one to which you may fairly de-
vote your most earnest planning and study.

It may not be necessary to show the danger
of too abrupt a change from one mode of life to
another. That danger has been often remarked.
For example, it has been noted that the German
system of higher education, under which a stu-
dent passes at one bound from the close prescrip-
tion and supervision of the gymnasium into the
unlimited freedom of the university, is a system
which subjects many a young student to an over-
whelming moral disadvantage. Many lives are
undoubtedly wrecked in that first year of unac-
customed liberty. On the other hand, the Ger-
man points to the hard lot of the American
volunteer in time of war. Without preparation of
any kind he is plunged from a life of peace into
the hardest realities of a military life. It can-
not be denied that physically and morally many
young men have gone to pieces under such a
strain. But what is to be said of a boy in his
teens or a girl of the same age who in one day
passes from a life in which there is no work to a
life that is all work ? The physical strain of
such a transition is great, but the moral strain is
worse. Yet exactly the strain of such sudden

150 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

change is what we have to guard against in the
interest of great numbers of our people.

Where our population is densely concentrated
and the struggle for a living is hard, where in-
dustry is organized in enormous units, in facto-
ries and mines, and laborers are counted by the
thousands or the tens of thousands, there the
danger rises to its highest pitch. In a more scat-
tered population and under industrial conditions
of an earlier type, the danger is less threatening.
There, in many individual instances, we may
still see the passage from school and play to
grown-up life and work accomplished in ways
that are wholesome and very good to contemplate.

It is natural for us to go back in thought to the
course of our own lives. I trust I may be par-
doned, accordingly, if I appeal for illustration to
my own personal recollections. They take me
back to a childhood on the farm and in a country
village in northern Illinois. Before I was ten
years old my village life had begun. Before I
was eleven the ambition was moving me to take
some share in the family burdens. I could see
already that those burdens were pressing heavily
on the father and mother. Our family life was an
intimate one. We were all partners in the family
fortunes. I had my regular round of small duties,
known as chores, but I was eager to earn money
and pay my part of the costs. So it came about
that it was my own desire and no urgency what-

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 151

ever on the part of my parents that made me a
wage-earner in my eleventh year. After anxious
searching and inquiry I found employment in the
village, which did not interfere with the hours of
school; in vacation time I began working on
neighboring farms ; and before the year was out
I had assumed the full responsibility of keeping
myself in clothes. By a happy provision of na-
ture, as I grew taller and it cost more to clothe
me, I grew also stronger and my earning power
increased. It was a proud moment when my
wages were advanced from fifty to seventy-five
cents a day.

At a later time the home place grew larger, and
I was needed there to do my part with other
laborers. So I ceased to earn an independent in-
come, and once more I was clothed from the
family purse. Thus, with various alternations of
work and schooling, and later with short terms
of teaching school, the time went on until I was
prepared to enter regularly upon my chosen
profession.

It was a happy life, on the whole, There was
a fair amount of play in it, and I enjoyed the play
a good deal more than the work. But there was
interest, too, and pride in the work. The rest of
the household were doing their part. There were
warm neighborhood relationships. And in the
home there was music and reading, with table-talk
of politics, history, religion, and the daily news.

152 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

It is plain to see that mine was not an isolated
case. In many parts of the country it may be
duplicated with ten thousand variations to this
day. Numerous records parallel with this, to all
intents and purposes, may be found in the Con-
gressional Directory. And if Who 's Who gave
biographical details concerning the first twenty
years in the life of each of its inmates, such in-
stances might be multiplied almost indefinitely.

Let me repeat that the point to which attention
is here particularly directed is the overlapping,
or let us say the dovetailing, of school life with the
life of a wage-earner and producer. Such over-
lapping belongs to certain years between the ages
of twelve and twenty-one. Leaving out of consid-
eration now that small percentage of our people
for whom schooling is still the main occupation
of life for some years past the age of twenty-one,
and speaking only of that greater number who
have gom over to a life of labor before they have
reached their majority, and many of them long
before, I would present for your consideration
this view : That for that larger proportion of our
number ways should be sought by which their
school life may be dovetailed into their life of
toil. For one or two years at least, and preferably
for a longer time, after the law permits them to
work for pay, some part of their time should still
be reserved for school. The ways by which this
may be accomplished will be various, and some

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 153

of them are still to be discovered. But, by what-
ever ways may yet be found available, we must
seek to prevent the sharp break from school life
to a life of hard and unremitting labor, which is
now too often the lot of boys and girls at the
fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth year of their
age.

The more gradual and irregular transition of
which my own boyhood is an ordinary example is
in some ways better than any arrangement wilich
can be deliberately provided, on a large scale, by
legislation and administrative procedure. But in
some ways it is not so good. There are surely
methods to be found by which a closer interaction
may be brought about between the schooling and
the labor. Each may be made to give support to
the other. Our national inventiveness should be
equal to the demand for educational adjustments
to meet this rising need. Already, in fact, such
devices have begun to appear. In the great agri-
cultural states of the West, many boys and young
men are dividing their time between farm work
in summer and studies in agricultural schools and
colleges in winter. In the cities there are robust
and ambitious young people who, even after full
days of labor, give their evenings to attendance
on evening schools. There are department stores
in which a part of the time of the younger em-
ployees is given to school pursuits in school rooms
provided by their employers. At the University

154 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

of Cincinnati and the Carnegie Technical Schools
in Pittsburg, young men and boys divide their
time between an apprenticeship in the shop and
theoretical study in the class room. These
varied experiments may be regarded as the skir-
mish line of an advance which is to be of great
significance for our national character and well-
being. It is not too much to hope that laws may
be devised and plans of organization carried into
effect that will make a midway period, in which
part schooling is required and part time labor is
permitted, one of the most fruitful periods in all
the educational years of youth. I do not look to
see such a movement fall short of this consum-
mation : That for all of our people there shall be
schooling of some sort and in some amount
through all the years up to the age of twenty-one ;
and that this schooling in its later years shall have
a more intimate bearing on the duties and occu-
pations of life than we have yet been able to
accomplish.

But while we hold such hopes and expectations
in all confidence, it is not to be forgotten that the
immediate task is that of securing wise laws for
compulsory education, joined with compulsory
abstinence from unsuitable wage-earning work.
There is clearly this need that the right to an
education and freedom from those industrial
conditions which would ruin the good results of
education should both be provided by law. Of

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 155

our forty-six states, thirty-five have now on their
statute books laws varying greatly in their scope,
for the accomplishment of both of these purposes ;
on the other hand, one state has no laws for
either of these purposes, and nine have either
child labor laws or laws for compulsory education
alone. The District of Columbia is not a satis-
factory model for the rest of the country, for its
improved statute for compulsory education is not
yet matched with a statute for the regulation of
child labor. This is a gap which it is hoped the
present Congress will supply.1

Now, taking account only of those states in
which there are both compulsory education laws
and child labor laws side by side, let us note the
relation between the close of the compulsory edu-
cation period and the beginning of the permissive
labor period. Some of our child labor laws assign
different ages for different occupations, and none
of them apply to all possible occupations. But
speaking broadly, the present status of the case
is about as follows: In eighteen of the states
these two points coincide, that is, full-time em-
ployment is permitted the day after full-time
compulsory education ceases. In one of the states
there is a gap of two years between the two. For
many children such a gap is a period of danger, a
much more serious danger, indeed, than that of
the sudden step from school to gainful employ-

1 Congress has passed a child labor law since this was written.

156 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ment; for children who may not take employ-
ment for wages and are not required to go to
school are subject to all of the evils of enforced
idleness at an age when impulse is strong and
control is weak and characters are ready to take
their bent for life. In seven of the states this
danger is met by a provision extending the age of
compulsory school attendance in the case of chil-
dren having no regular employment. In the re-
maining seventeen of these states there is some
form of overlapping of the compulsory schooling
age and the permissive employment age. In these
seventeen states there would seem, even at the
present time, to be a fair opportunity for judicious
experimentation with ways of making a better
transition from the school to the work of life.

More and more, however, it becomes clear that
statutory provisions in these matters are not
effective without well-developed systems of in-
spection and enforcement. And if the best things
are to be brought within reach, the enforcement
of compulsory education laws must go hand in
hand with the enforcement of compulsory non-
labor laws. Such combined efficiency is abso-
lutely essential if the ends of which I have spoken
are to be attained. With adequate guarantees on
the sanitary and the educational side, it would be
practicable, for many children in the middle of
their 'teens, to place the school alongside of the
factory or the shop, even under the same roof, and

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 157

to have the pupils divide their time between the
two. It is conceivable that such an arrangement
might be made of incalculable advantage, not
only to industry but equally to education. But
it should not be considered for a moment without
those adequate guarantees. In every way it would
appear that any great progress in these matters
is dependent upon a full and harmonious devel-
opment of our systems of enforcement. It will
be safe to make the laws flexible, to adapt them to
a great variety of conditions, in proportion as their
administration becomes exact and dependable.
To strengthen these provisions on the adminis-
trative side is accordingly one of our chief con-
cerns at this time ; and this is notably the case, I
may repeat, if any such intimate combination of
industry and education as is here proposed for a
transition period is to be made a safe and sane
and practicable undertaking.

Passing now from this more special considera-
tion of the transition period in the lives of our
future workers, permit me to remind you of the
present urgency of the whole problem of our
school attendance. After all of the efforts that
have been put forth — compulsory attendance
laws, varied attractions in the studies offered, and
public opinion pressing upon indifferent parents
- our school attendance is still far behind what
it should be. At a fair estimate every one of our
people should receive at least eight years of school-

158 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ing of approximately two hundred days to the
year. As a matter of fact, we fall far short of this
standard. In the year 1905 the average schooling
per individual of the population for the whole
country was only 5.33 years. In the North At-
lantic Division, including the New England and
Middle Atlantic states, this average went as high
as 7.09 years. In the South Central Division it
was only 3.06 years. In both cases it was far too
low, and it is evident that a great task is still
before us to bring this amount up to anything like
the point that it should reach. When we try to
realize the meaning of the figures, to understand
how many children have been kept from their
educational inheritance, we are oppressed with
the waste of warm, human life and opportunity
which such a showing signifies. Yet the figures
offer encouragement, too. While the present
averages are painfully low, they represent a long-
continued improvement. The showing of an
average of 5.33 years of schooling per individual
of the population in the year 1905 should be set
over against an average of 3.96 years in the year
1880. This advance of 35 per cent within the
term of twenty-five years is a notable gain when
we remember that the total number of persons to
be educated had increased at a rapid rate within
the same period. In the South Central Division,
which shows the lowest average at this time, the
improvement has been notably rapid, amount-

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 159

ing to 65 per cent within this twenty-five-year
period.

When we turn from the figures for broad
sections of our land to a closer examination of rep-
resentative cities, we find both stimulus and en-
couragement in another form. Here we have the
significant tables recently prepared by Professor
Thorndike to show the dwindling of public school
classes from the lower to the higher grades of the
school. The showing here is disheartening if we
consider only such facts as these : That one-half
of the pupils, generally speaking, have left school
before the eighth grade is reached, and only 40
per cent go through to the end of the elementary
school. But when, on the other hand, we see
what progress some of our cities have made, we
take new courage for the rest. While in the
mean or average the cities show over half of the
pupils dropping out before the eighth grade is
entered, twelve cities out of twenty-three already
carry more than half of their pupils through the
seventh grade, seven carry more than half of them
through the eighth grade, and two, at least, carry
a majority of their pupils through the ninth
grade and over into the high school. There is
reason, then, for solicitude, and reason as well
for hope.1

1 Since the above was written, Professor Thorndike 's re-
sults have been sharply criticised, but even the figures pre-
sented by Mr. Leonard P. Ayres, one of the keenest of the

160 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

What one city or a few cities have done
other cities may do. This is the word to be
passed on to those parents' associations in con-
nection with public schools which the Mothers'
Congress has promoted — a form of association
of the greatest promise in the way of educational
improvement. All manner of co-operation and
moral influence must be added to all manner of
legal and administrative compulsion to bring
about the desirable uplift of our schools in this
matter of attendance. But such combination of
favoring influence has even now accomplished
notable improvements, which have been seen and
measured and recorded. So much the more may
we expect that the efforts of the immediate future
will have their wished-for reward.

The point cannot be too strongly emphasized
that the importance of these various statistics lies
in the human values that they represent. We
are concerned with the difference that it makes
in a human life to have eight full years of school-
ing in a good school, as compared with three or
four fragmentary years in some half-organized
makeshift for a school, or even less than that and
with no school at all. We are concerned with
these values in individual lives, and we are look-
ing beyond to the great interests of the corn-
critics (Laggards in our schools, pp. 66-72) show only about
fifty per cent of the pupils completing the elementary school

course.

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 161

mon wealth and the nation. As regards school
attendance and child labor and all of those high
interests to which your organization has devoted
its attention, these human values, these state and
national interests, come before us with compelling
power.

These interests cannot fall short of a national
significance, for it is the oncoming citizenship
of the nation with which they have to do.
The nation cannot look with unconcern on those
things that affect its fundamental character and
endurance. It is not my purpose here to discuss
any of the ways which have been proposed to give
effect to the national concern in these matters
through governmental action. I shall do no more
than express my conviction that this national
concern is too deep and genuine to fail of finding
suitable expression. It is not to be supposed for
a moment that the nation will do aught to weaken
the hands of the states in dealing with the present
situation. But the nation has much to do that
will strengthen the hands of the states, and will
work to the betterment of that great body of
young citizens who are the hope alike of the
states and of the nation.

The great need is that the opportunity for
sound growth and education shall be equalized
for our children and our youth throughout the
land. If opportunity is the very thing that our
democracy means, then we must realize democ-

11

162 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

racy, as far as possible, by making the opportunity
of the child born in one part of the land as fair
and encouraging as that of the child born in any
other part of the land. This, in large part, must
be the responsibility of governments, both state
and national. But as preparatory to govern-
mental provisions, and as holding the ground till
governments can act with full effect, there is a
great work to be done by private and co-opera-
tive agencies. And when governments have done
their best there will still be large responsibilities
devolving on such agencies. Your influential
society and other women's societies that share in
these undertakings — they can do much to fur-
ther that equalizing of opportunity which our
America still so sorely needs.

Thus far we have considered the interests of
children in the United States with reference,
first, to the connection of school life with life in
the world of work, and in the second place to the
whole question of attendance upon the schools.
Before I close may I go back to that earlier and
still more difficult problem, which has been given
a prominent place among the aims and purposes
of this Congress, the problem of preparation for
mother- work? I would not venture to advise
you with reference to an education which should
fit women for their part as mothers in the home.
That is a high theme in which others may learn
from you. What I should like to urge upon

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 163

your consideration is a narrower and lowlier
calling, yet one which may conceivably become
of large significance in the life of our people.

Under modern conditions there is need for a
great deal of mothering by those who are not
mothers themselves, a need for foster-mothering,
if the term may be permitted. In orphanages,
in day nurseries, in social settlements, in homes
from which the mother has been taken, or in
which the living mother is unable to carry all
the burdens of her position, there is to-day a
wide demand for the services of young women
who are expert in the care of little children from
the first month of babyhood to the age for kinder-
garten or school. This demand is met for the
most part by those who have had no special
training for the task, because such special train-
ing is nowhere to be found. We have trained
kindergartners and trained hospital nurses. Some
little beginning has been made in the training of
nursery maids at babies' hospitals. In Ghent
and Paris and London there are schools for
mothers among the very poor. But none of
these exactly meet the case. What is proposed,
in effect, is this: That as in recent years the
profession of kindergartner and the profession of
hospital nurse have been created, so now an-
other new profession for women be established,
the profession of babies' nurse or nursery gov-
erness. As a profession it would require its

164 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

training schools, its professional literature, its
societies maintaining a professional spirit and
atmosphere. The training would, in part, re-
semble that of the hospital nurse, in part it
would draw near to that of the kindergartner,
in part it would be different from either, a special
training for this new profession alone. A lead-
ing place should necessarily be given to the care
of the little ones' health and particularly to the
problem of nourishment. But there should be
a place, too, for the principles of baby education,
which might consist mainly of the prevention of
too much education and the securing of a healthy
nervous system, capable of standing the strain
that school life will put upon it in after years.

There is, however, no need to elaborate de-
tails, for these in any case must be supplied for
the most part by the teaching of experience. So
far as the main contention is concerned, I am
persuaded that there is room for this new pro-
fession and that it will quickly make a place for
itself as soon as a school for such training is pro-
vided. In commending such a plan to your
consideration let me add that the largest useful-
ness of schools for foster-mothers would un-
doubtedly come in time to be their indirect
service — their returning wave of influence upon
that subtler and more difficult preparation for
real motherhood. That there should be schools
and a profession in which the varied knowledge

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES 165

needed for the care of the youngest children is
regularly assembled and communicated — such a
circumstance could not fail to have the deepest
interest for mothers everywhere, who have the
most intense and personal desire to know what
may be known for their children's good. To
give form and coherence and practical effec-
tiveness to the knowledge of baby life and the
life of the little child, even though it were done
in the first instance for the training only of nurses,
would be in the end a service rendered to all
motherhood.

It is with the greatest diffidence and deference
that I bring these few suggestions to you, upon
whom the real responsibilities and honors of
mother- work have rested. You will undoubtedly
devise wise and liberal things for the children
of our land, for no one feels their needs more
keenly than you, or seeks more earnestly to supply
those needs. Knowing the full weight of anxious
care for your own, you have learned to care for
the good of all those who are under the simple,
common, universal need of childhood through-
out the land. And we who must bear those
burdens in other ways come to you, deeply mind-
ful of all that the ministry of mother and of wife
have meant in our own homes, and look to you
with confidence for help in those large under-
takings for the welfare of all children with which
our state and national governments have to do.

X

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK

An Address delivered under the title. The Relation of the
Home to Moral and Religious Education, before the
Religious Education Association at its Meeting in
Rochester, New York, February 6, 1907. Published
under that title in the Proceedings of the Association,
and under the present title in The Independent, April
18, 1907.

X

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK

EVERY improvement in education involves
many factors, and, in the discussion of
the plan proposed in this paper, I shall
find it necessary to make occasional digressions
with a view to noting some of the attendant cir-
cumstances which seem to me to condition any
successful experiment in the field we are to
consider.

I find it necessary, in fact, to begin with a di-
gression. Attention should be called at the outset
to the extreme difficulty of making effective any
really new departure in education. Every new
educational process or institution shows in a
marked degree the same conservative tendency
which made the first railway coaches take the
form of the stage-coach, which they superseded,
until they had developed slowly and painfully
new forms of their own ; the tendency which made
some of the earlier experiments in the use of iron
and steel in architectural construction take the
form of columns and pilasters cast in the mould
of the old Greek orders. This tendency to as-

170 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

similate the new to the old, in such a way as to
delay or even defeat the purpose of the new,
takes on a special phase in the domain of edu-
cation. The success of the school depends upon
the teacher. When a new type of school is pro-
jected, there are generally at hand few teachers,
if even a single teacher, who possess the requisite
combination of training, experience, and a clear
conception of the new purpose, to do the new
work effectively. The problem of bringing a
new educational plan into full force and effect
is accordingly the problem of getting the new
purpose clearly in mind, and then of provid-
ing the requisite training and apprenticeship
for the teachers who will do the work. So far
as the teachers are concerned, the difficulty rises
even to a difficulty in the second degree; for
if the new work is to be widely extended, one
must consider not only the question of the supply
of teachers, but the question of providing teach-
ers of teachers.

For reasons which will appear later in this dis-
cussion, I should like now to limit my topic to a
very small division of the general field. For the
present, let us leave altogether out of considera-
tion the 'great majority of our American homes,
in which the burden of the earliest physical care
and moral and religious training of the children
will rest almost exclusively upon the mother of
the family, and concern ourselves simply with

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 171

those homes in which a children's nurse or gov-
erness is employed. That is, I should like to
consider the question at first merely as a question
concerning the training of nurses for very young
children. At first sight, it will seem that this is
limiting the question to one affecting the homes
of the rich. I should say rather that it is limiting
the question to one affecting the homes of the rich,
motherless homes, and the homes of the very
poor ; for with the development of a great vari-
ety of college and neighborhood "settlements"
in our large cities, and with the increasing
clearness of educational purpose in institutions
for orphans and other unfortunate children,
the range of employment for such children's
nurses as I have in mind will undoubtedly be
very greatly extended. In this we find a parallel
in the history of American kindergartens. Before
the kindergarten becomes a part of the public
school system, it exists in two forms: as an in-
stitution for the children of the rich (the "pay"
kindergarten) and an institution for the children
of the very poor (the free kindergarten). In
more ways than one, indeed, the plan which I
am venturing to propose will have somewhat
the character of a downward extension of the
kindergarten into the earliest years of the life of
the child.

But this is not all. It is to be remembered
that the moral education of very young children

172 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

is most intimately bound up with their physical
welfare. In fact, the question of survival and
of physical health must be kept at the front in
this earliest period, and the beginnings which
are made at this time in the cultivation of a gen-
erally wholesome disposition, and of those regular
habits in eating, sleeping, and related activities
which have much to do with the welfare of the
nervous system, are at the same time both physi-
cal and moral. It is accordingly desirable that
in training for this service we should break away
from the narrower traditions of the kindergarten.
Many good precedents may be drawn from the
training of nurses in hospitals and sanitariums,
but even such precedents must be used with
caution.

It is to our purpose, however, to note the en-
couragement which may be drawn for such an
undertaking as this from the history of the
education of nurses in this country. Within the
memory of those here present, the nurse called
in to help when the household had been invaded
by long-continued illness was either a neighbor
or a servant. Except in a few hospitals, the
trained nurse, as we now understand the term,
was unknown. The occupation was lacking in
definite standards. Those who followed it
lacked professional spirit or other esprit de corps.
Now these conditions are rapidly changing, and
the schools for nurses are bringing about the

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 173

change. In the year 1901 there were 448 of
these schools reporting to the Bureau of Educa-
tion, with an attendance of 11,599 students.
Five years later, these numbers had increased
to 964 schools and about 20,000 students. These
schools are rapidly advancing their standards of
admission and of scholastic and practical train-
ing. Already the best of them are worthy of
attentive study from the point of view of our
normal schools, because of their handling of the
persistent normal school problem, that of the
union of theory with practice. The nurses have
their associations, their periodical and other
publications. In ten states laws have been
passed for their registration. In the state of
New York, in particular, under the administra-
tion of the department of education, the course
of training provided in different schools has been
unified and strengthened. If nursing is not a
profession as medicine is a profession, it has
come to have something of the professional
character and spirit. And the public is greatly
the gainer by the change.

It is one great merit of a vocational school of
any kind that it stamps this professional character
upon the occupation for which it prepares. By
professional character, I mean that ingrained
regard for standards and ideas, for special knowl-
edge and special skill, which marks the profes-
sional man ; and his readiness to put the claims

174 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

of public service and of intrinsic excellence of
performance above considerations of private
gain. As compared with any kind of apprentice-
ship, a vocational school makes for such profes-
sional spirit, by combining the instruction of
specialists in different fields, by referring proces-
ses to guiding ideas and cultivating practice in
its connection with theory, by organizing a co-
herent course of training, by making a center of
information relating to recent improvements in
its particular craft.

Not only does the school prepare for the vo-
cation more quickly and more thoroughly than
any ordinary form of apprenticeship, but it
tends to improve more rapidly in its methods
and appliances. If schools for nurses of the sick
have raised an irregular occupation into some-
thing so like a profession as we have seen them
do within these few past years, it seems not
incredible that schools for the nurses of little
children may do as much within as brief a period.
It is the establishment of such schools, or of
special courses for this purpose in universities
and other institutions, that is proposed in this
discussion.

The difficulties to be met in the making of
such schools are undoubtedly very great. The
baby nurse of to-day is ordinarily a servant, and
often a foreigner chosen because her speech is
that of Paris or Hanover, It would seem ajs

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 175

if the superficial demand were for the right
accent rather than for skill in the care and nur-
ture of the little ones. The real demand is for
a variety of knowledge and of judgment. Nu-
trition, the prevention of disease, proper care in
minor ailments (for the nurse for the sick must
be the main reliance in serious illnesses), the
correction of faults of temper and disposition,
the first steps in learning, supervision of games,
the telling of stones, the first hint of the mysteries
of religion — the range of such requirements is
very great indeed. And since the service re-
quired is part physical, part educational, part
maternal and spiritual, there is no one profes-
sional superior who shall guide the practice of
the infant nurse. She is not, like the nurse of
the sick, a physician's assistant and under the
immediate guidance of the family's medical
adviser. She must take her directions and ad-
vice, first of all, from the parents, if they are at
hand to direct ; but also from the physician, the
pastor, if there be a pastor, perhaps the teacher,
if the family has taken the teacher into such
close relations with its inner life; and, most of
all, must take counsel with herself, and draw on
the resources which she has made her own.

No good movement ever had a beginning. No
matter where we may start in, we find that it is
already begun. I have been unable as yet to find
notice of any existing institution which exactly

176 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

fills the role which is suggested in this paper.
Yet the beginnings have undoubtedly been made.
Professor Charles R. Henderson has called my
attention to two institutions in Paris which are
at least closely related to such training schools
as are here contemplated. One is the ficole des
Meres, which was founded by Mme. Augusta
Moll- Weiss at Bordeaux in 1897 and removed
to Paris in 1904. This school provides a section
for professors and women of the higher classes;
a second section for women intending to enter
household service as nurses, cooks, etc. ; a third
section for women of the working classes ; and a
fourth section for instruction in domestic econ-
omy and management of the home. Its pur-
poses are extremely varied. It is intended to
prepare young women directly for duties as
heads of families, to prepare others to become
teachers of domestic economy, and to give in-
struction to working women in such economic
and ethical principles as may be of importance
for them to understand, in practical hygiene,
sanitation, etc.

Another Parisian institution is known as the
Consultations respecting Nurslings (Consulta-
tions de Nourrissons) , and is conducted by Pro-
fessor Budin of the Faculty of Medicine of the
University of Paris, in connection with the
maternity section of a Paris hospital. These
consultations are intended to give to young

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 177

mothers practical information respecting the
nourishment and care of their infants.

My attention has also been called to an ex-
tremely interesting article in the Nineteenth
Century for December, 1906, by a member of
the Women's Co-operative Guild, on the " Ghent
School for Mothers." This school, conducted by
Doctor Miele in connection with the Bureau de
Bienfaisance, was started about five years ago,
and is evidently carrying on a work of the greatest
interest. The services which it renders include
dispensaries for babies, a milk depot, health
talks to mothers, a course of training for girls,
and also some theoretical instruction in the care
of infants and practice in a number of creches.

In an open letter relating to " Unskilled
Mothers," Mrs. Florence Kelley, in the Cen-
tury Magazine for February, 1907, tells of the
Association of Practical Housekeeping Centers,
which was incorporated in the City of New York
in February, 1906, and does a valuable work in
the homes of the poor of Manhattan and Brook-
lyn. Incidentally, Mrs. Kelley tells in this letter
of the instruction provided by the County Coun-
cil of London for school children in cottages
altogether similar to those in which they live.
One of the Mosely party of teachers who recently
visited the Bureau of Education has given further
information with reference to this cottage instruc-
tion. It is carried on in the neighborhood of an

12

178 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

elementary school, and gives to young girls prac-
tical experience, under conditions much like
those found in their own homes, in the ordinary
duties of housekeeping.

The Englishwoman's Year Book and Direc-
tory for 1903, the latest issue I have at hand, con-
tains notices of the Sesame House for Home Life
Training and for the Training of Kindergarten
Mistresses and Lady Nurses, at St. John's
Wood ; and of the Norland Institute in London
and the Liverpool Ladies' Sanitary Association,
at both of which "ladies are trained as nurses for
children."

Coming nearer home, we find at the Babies'
Hospital of the City of New York a training
school for nursery maids which has been in
operation for the past sixteen years. The recently
published report of this hospital, for the year
ending September 30, 1906, contains interesting
information with reference to this course of
training. At the time of this report, there were
27 pupils in the school. The course of instruc-
tion and training covers the subjects of infant
feeding, bathing, hygiene of skin, nursery hy-
giene, training of children in proper bodily habits,
miscellaneous subjects, nursery emergencies, and
the rudiments of kindergarten work. Thirty-
four nurses were graduated from this school in
the class of 1906. The following additional in-
formation concerning the school is conveyed in

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 179

a very interesting letter recently received from
the secretary of the medical board of the Babies'
Hospital, Doctor L. Emmett Holt:

The girls received are from twenty to twenty-five years
of age. The course is eight months; six in the hospital
and two months in private families on probation after
leaving the hospital. Nurses receive $7 a month during
their training. There are trained annually about thirty-
five nurses. Nurses receive after graduation $25 a month
the first year. After this most of them receive $30. The
applications for nurses are greatly in excess of the supply
and are often as many as one thousand in a single year.

Doctor Holt adds that nurses are trained
in a somewhat similar way at the following
institutions :

Infants' Hospital in Boston;

St. Margaret's Home, Albany;

The Babies' Hospital, Newark, New Jersey;

St. Christopher's Hospital, Brooklyn;

ThePittsburg Home for Babies, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania;

and that there are other similar schools in San
Francisco and Buffalo. I have, however, no
further information with reference to these other
schools.

The New York Evening Post of December
26, 1906, contained a notice of courses which are
given by the Harlem Young Women's Christian
Association. These courses, it seems, are in-
tended for the training of "kindergarten nurses."
To be admitted to such courses the girls must

180 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

be more than eighteen years of age and must
have had a high school education or its equiva-
lent. A certificate is awarded at the end of four
months of satisfactory study, but the full course
is eight months in length.1

There are doubtless other experiments which
are in the making and have not yet come to my
knowledge. It will be found, I think, that the
ground is prepared for such an undertaking as
has been outlined above. But what has thus far
been done is in the nature of pioneering, of
scouting as it were, and the real systematic ad-
vance is yet to be made. It may well be believed
that the time for such definite advance is al-
ready at hand.

Just what is to be attempted and just how it
is to be accomplished are not altogether clear.
But these things seem clear at least, that the
training to be given should join theory with
practice, and that the work must be partly peda-
gogical and partly parallel to that of the ordinary
nurses' training school. For the purposes of

1 There has come to my notice, since the above was written,
a most interesting volume of over five hundred pages, entitled
"L'education domestique des jeunes filles," by Louis Frank
(Librairie Larousse, Paris, [1904 ?]). Chapter III, on " La science
des meres," contains interesting information concerning schools
somewhat similar in character and aim to those here proposed.
The author speaks warmly of the "kitchen gardens" devised in
this country some twenty-five or thirty years ago by Miss Emily
Huntington.

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 181

practice, it seems desirable that the student should
have access to a babies' hospital, a foundlings'
home, a day nursery, or some other institution
in which there are children to be cared for. The
theoretical instruction can probably best be
given in connection with a college or university.
The difficulty of working out any standard course
of systematic training is obvious, yet is no greater
than other difficulties which have been met and
overcome in the course of our educational devel-
opment. The problem is accordingly referred
to the departments of education and of hygiene
of our women's colleges, and of universities to
which women are admitted, in the confidence
that, like Sentimental Tommy, they will "find

a w'y"

I look to see the problem ultimately solved by
such institutions as these, in co-operation with
hospitals and other institutions for the actual
care of infants, rather than in institutions of the
latter class apart from colleges and universities;
for the training which is here proposed is edu-
cational in its relationships and purposes, and is
intended to attract young women whose pre-
liminary training fits them at least for admission
to the higher institutions. It may, indeed, be
found that the demands of practice will so far
outweigh other considerations as to make it
necessary to conduct all of the courses in con-
nection with the institutions where the babies

182 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

themselves are to be found, rather than in the
class rooms of the ordinary college. None of the
effort which may be put forth by institutions
other than colleges and hospitals to this same
end will be lost. The widest experimentation
will be needed, and the labor of the pioneer, in
this as in other fields, will be not only necessary
but also deeply interesting.

If I have said nothing as yet of the training of
mothers, on whom the care and culture of baby
children must chiefly rest, it is because such train-
ing is particularly difficult to compass by any
direct approach. However much young women
may look forward, in a wholesome way, to the
responsibilities of motherhood, I believe the most
of them would shrink from any course of training
intended expressly to prepare them for those
responsibilities. If such an attitude commonly
appears, we may declare it to be unreasonable,
but we must reckon with it as a fact. It is, indeed,
an attitude which finds some justification in sim-
ple human nature. It seems to me very doubtful
whether a course in school or college expressly
intended to fit young women to be wise mothers
of little children would have much chance of
success. But I do believe that a professional
course, intended to fit young women for the
vocation of children's nurse, would have a much
better chance of success. It is reasonable to ex-
pect that when such courses are well started they

TRAINING FOR MOTHER-WORK 183

will be largely attended, and that those who have
taken them and received certificates or diplomas
showing that they have pursued them success-
fully, will find employment in abundance await-
ing them. Still further, it is not unreasonable to
hope that when the vocation of baby nurse or
nursery matron or whatever it may be called,
shall have become a well-established profession,
its influence will spread abroad in many desirable
ways. Some of these graduates will become
teachers of classes of young mothers in college
settlements and Young Women's Christian As-
sociations. Many of them will marry and will
carry their knowledge and skill into homes of
their own. Some young women, already be-
trothed, will take the course of training with no
other thought than that of fitting themselves for
the homes that are to be theirs. And it may be
that the special course will gradually lead the
way to some more general form of education for
the life of the home, which may find its place and
do its beneficent work in all our schools and col-
leges for women.

If I have said little in this paper of the reli-
gious side of the training here proposed, it is not
that I regard the religious side as of subordinate
importance. But in these earliest years, it is
surely desirable that any over-emphasis of the re-
ligious consciousness should be carefully avoided.
The simple and sincere suggestion of religious

184 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

conceptions which may safely be attempted
should be joined with an equally wholesome
mental and physical life, and particularly a life
of wholesome companionships, which is the best
assurance of all right-mindedness in the later
years of childhood.

XI

THE WORK OF WOMEN'S ORGANIZA-
TIONS IN EDUCATION

Read cat the first Meeting of the Department of National
Organizations of Women of the National Education
Association, at Cleveland, Ohio, July 2, 1908. Pub-
lished in the Proceedings of the Association for the year
1908.

XI

THE WORK OF WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS
IN EDUCATION

FOR those who wish to see the National
Education Association represent our edu-
cational interests in the broadest way, a
peculiar significance attaches to the launching
of this new department. An educational work
of large significance and varied character, already
in full progress, is here brought into connection
with the comprehensive undertakings of this As-
sociation. While the responsibility for the estab-
lishment of the new department is widely shared,
I should like at this time to recall in particular the
part taken by Miss Mary N. Abbott, of Water-
town, Connecticut, who shortly before her death
had been laboring with great faith and devotion,
to bring about the arrangement which has here
been consummated. I saw her but once, when
she was devoting her best energies to this under-
taking, and I had never known her aside from
this enterprise; but I was much impressed with
the really religious earnestness which she brought
to her task. That spirit, I am sure, is shared by
many others, and it gives promise that this depart-

188 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ment is to be one of the most useful branches of
our general organization.

In the beginnings of modern schooling, a great
deal depended upon the labors of unpaid or-
ganizers and overseers, mostly women, whose
benevolent spirit found in the support and im-
provement of schools its best way of discharging
the responsibility of the well-to-do toward the
poor of their neighborhood. Those who have
read that interesting work, The Gurneys of
Earlham, by Augustus J. C. Hare, will recall
the conscientious devotion to the education of the
poor displayed by different members of the Gur-
ney family, and particularly by its most con-
spicuous member, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. There
is much of the same sort to be found in the per-
sonal histories of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-
century England, and the same spirit reappears
in the early education societies of our Amer-
ican cities, in New York, in Boston, and in
Philadelphia.

In both England and America the upgrowth of
well-ordered systems of public education threw
endeavors of this kind into an eclipse. In place
of schools supported, with the greatest difficulty,
by private subscription, there appeared schools
established by law and maintained by taxation.
Teaching became both a professional occupa-
tion and a branch of the civil service. The re-
sponsibility for everything educational, at least

ORGANIZATIONS IN EDUCATION 189

for everything in the nature of public and organ-
ized education, was shifted to a body of profes-
sional servants of the commonwealth. The edu-
cational societies went out of existence, as did
the American Anti-slavery Society when the
thirteenth amendment to our Constitution was
adopted. The contributions and the benevolent
activities of those who had carried the burden of
schools were transferred to other charities. Edu-
cation had simply ceased to be an eleemosynary
and missionary enterprise, and had become a part
of the ordinary administration of state and local
governments.

Now, it is plain to see that, while education
gained a great deal more than it lost by the
change, the loss was real and serious. Fortu-
nately, the professional teachers who took up the
educational burden were themselves human as
well as professional. Some of the finest devotion
to the welfare of little children and to the wider
purpose of the public weal appears to-day in
their activities. It is necessary to their best
service that as they become more professional
they should become more than professional, and
many of them have come up unfailingly to this
higher plane. But it takes large natures to carry
out so large a program, and it is not surprising
that it has been done with varying degrees of
success. The best teachers of all see most clearly
this need, that new ways shall be found of bring-

190 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ing to the support of the modern public school
some of those finer forces of our community life
that once made the school and kept it alive.

Matters which lie wholly in the field of science
- the method of constructing a bridge, of testing
our milk or water supply, of combating an epi-
demic, of determining a question of legal right —
these things are professional; and extra-profes-
sional interference in such affairs would do more
harm than good. In education, too, there is a
large field of professional knowledge, in which
interference by the general public or even by a
board of education representing the public, could
only do more harm than good. Within its limits,
the professional judgment of the trained and ex-
perienced teacher is to be more scrupulously
respected to-day than ever before. Not a book
sh'ould be placed in the school library nor a pic-
ture on the schoolroom wall, no society, no
matter how good its object, should be formed
within the school under pressure from without,
no special method nor device of teaching nor of
government should be imposed upon the school,
unless it have the approval of the teaching force
within the school.

It is when we come into the field of morals that
every man is responsible for a judgment of his
own, and cannot shift it to the shoulders of an-
other. And education in one of its main aspects
is essentially a question of morals. It is a ques-

ORGANIZATIONS IN EDUCATION 191

tion in which the professional point of view can-
not pre-empt the whole field, and in which the
non-professional citizen is morally bound to have
opinions of his own. Every public question, in
like manner, has a moral side. The building of
bridges, the conduct of dairies, the practice of the
physician and the attorney, these are questions to
which the common citizen cannot be indifferent.

We have then a large range of activities in
which the professional teacher should clearly
have the right of way, and an equally clear out-
lying territory, of great importance, in which we
are dealing, not with professional responsibility
but with moral and community responsibility.
And these two are fringed in together in an inter-
mediate shadow-land where some of the most
vital questions of to-day are found.

This new department deals with that outlying
field and with that indeterminate shadow-land.
Its relation to the schools is non-professional and
moral. It is to further a return to the side of
popular education of those benevolent and mis-
sionary endeavors which were once the main
support of popular education. But we are to
remember that in the intervening years the spirit
of the benevolent missionary has changed. The
spirit which did things for others for their good
has been transformed into the spirit which does
things with others for the common good. In this
old spirit, renewed and remade, it is to be hoped

192 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

that the department you have inaugurated may
become a rallying point for those good influ-
ences in our communities which seek to find ways
of working for and with the common schools.

It is right that women should lead in this cause.
They have shown capacity for such leadership.
But it is to be hoped that men and women alike
who desire that the non-professional responsi-
bility of our communities for public education
shall be adequately discharged — that all of those
who have a mind to make education of more
worth in their communities than it has been at
the best hitherto — shall know better what to do
and shall do it with better courage for the en-
lightenment which this department can give.

You will not expect my suggestions to take the
form of a detailed program of topics for your con-
sideration. Much of your work has already been
blocked out by the societies that are here repre-
sented. Much of it must arise to meet the special
need and occasion. The general platform on
which you had met by common agreement be-
fore this department was organized, embodies a
number of the most important proposals for edu-
cational improvement on which the friends of ed-
ucation generally are agreed. In these matters
your work is that of bringing into effective prom-
inence a number of improvements in which at
least a passive unanimity has already been
secured.

ORGANIZATIONS IN EDUCATION 193

I should like, however, to indicate a general
line of advance in the educational affairs of our
larger centers of population, a plan which is ex-
tremely simple and yet must be regarded for the
present as somewhat visionary. I should like
to see all of the teachers organized for the con-
sideration, from time to time, of definite proposals
for the improvement of the schools; and all of
the parents of school children organized, with
other interested citizens, for a similar purpose.
Without hampering our educational authorities
in any of their ordinary work, and without re-
lieving them of their ultimate responsibility for all
of the work of the schools, an informal and habit-
ual referendum might well be agreed upon, under
which all proposals for far-reaching changes in
the plan of education should be considered at
length by these two independent bodies. All
manner of conference and co-operation between
the two should take place, and certain committees
of conference and certain other organizations
should include teachers and parents on equal
terms.

Endless delays should, of course, be avoided;
but by some such arrangement as this we might
be reasonably sure that no sweeping change
should be made in our systems of education till
it should be fairly well understood by those
who, next to the pupils themselves, are most
concerned with the experiment.

13

194 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

But such an arrangement should not only pre-
vent sudden and ill-considered change. It should
prevent long-continued and equally ill-considered
lack of change. We need to keep the spirit of in-
vention alive in our school systems, for new times
call for new measures. In both of the bodies to
which I have referred the spirit of initiative
should be fostered. In education as in other fields
the great majority of new inventions fail and
ought to fail. But the hundredth one or the
thousandth, that is a thing of great price. Let
the body of non-professional friends of educa-
tion be one in which a premium is placed upon
suggestions for improvement and reform. Let
fair consideration be given to suggestions of this
kind. If they are widely approved, let them be
passed on to the body of practical teachers for a
second approval, or for modification or rejection.
Or let the procedure be turned about, as the occa-
sion may demand. But let us through this means
have, from year to year, proposals sent up to the
education authorities which shall represent not
merely the half-baked enthusiasm of some bright
leader who has won a sudden following, but the
conviction of those who have looked into the
matter with care and conscience, some of them
from the side of what the community wants, and
some from the side of what the schools can do.

My own suggestion, as you see, is none too
thoroughly wrought out as yet, and it has not yet

ORGANIZATIONS IN EDUCATION 195

run the gantlet of either a body of teachers or a
body of friendly neighbors of the school. I hope
it may have criticism, however, from both of
these sides. And I venture to put it forward here
as one of the many proposals for the good of our
education which you are to discuss to some good
purpose in this first meeting of your department.

XII

THE DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF

UNIVERSITY AND NORMAL SCHOOL

IN THE PREPARATION OF

TEACHERS

Read at the Meeting of the National Council of Education
at Cleveland, Ohio, June 30, 1908. Published in the
Proceedings of the National Education Association for
the year 1908, and in Education for September, 1908.

XII

THE DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF UNIVERSITY
AND NORMAL SCHOOL IN THE PREPARA-
TION OF TEACHERS

WHAT I have to present may be summed
up as follows: The chief difficulty of
adjustment from the side of the nor-
mal school arises from the fact that the normal
school seems to be out of the main current of
our scholastic life, which flows from the ele-
mentary school through the high school directly
into the university or, the other way round,
from the university to the secondary and ele-
mentary school.

The chief difficulty of adjustment from the
side of the university arises from the fact that
it has been found impossible as yet to organize
in the university any system of training in the
actual practice of teaching that can be com-
pared in efficiency with that to be found in our
best normal schools.

We are now well accustomed to the idea that
all grades of education in this country are to be
closely bound together, from the lowest to the

200 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

highest. Our fidelity to the spirit of democracy
requires this of us, and we are convinced that
it is best in the long run both for science and for
the national life. Continuity and coherence are
watchwords of our educational organization.

But just because the higher grades of instruc-
tion are bound fast to the lower, we see the need
of especial care that a steady progression shall
be maintained in both the method and the con-
tent of our teaching. No grade of instruction
shall be allowed to lay a detaining hand of scho-
lastic custom and inertia upon the grade above it.
At no stage of our scholastic ascent shall we
tarry for more than two years with instruction
of essentially the same type or the same grade
of difficulty.

Furthermore, we cannot be content with the
standards of the past. Not only our own na-
tional development, but, more particularly, our
closer touch with the rest of the world, has shown
us that our standards have been pitched too low.
This is true both on the side of knowledge and
on the side of skill in teaching. In our new
position in the world it is not enough that we
win patronizing approval of our science and of
our school instruction from the older culture
nations. That new position requires of us that
we do our full part in determining what the
world-standard shall be, both in pure science
and in pedagogic practice. This is particularly

UNIVERSITY AND NORMAL SCHOOL 201

difficult when half our teaching force is a rope of
sand and when the profitable pursuits of ap-
plied science are luring our scientists away from
their laboratories. But these unfavorable cir-
cumstances cannot relieve us of our responsi-
bility; and a consideration of the higher
attainments which the present times demand, as
regards both knowledge and teaching skill, has
an important bearing on the distribution of
function between normal schools and universities.
We are pretty well agreed that the knowledge
of subject-matter and skill in presentation are
both requisite in all grades of teaching, and that,
broadly speaking, the skill is of greater relative
importance in the earlier grades and the knowl-
edge in the later years of schooling. A general
recognition of this fact works automatically in
the distribution of teachers, tending to place the
graduates of colleges and universities in high
school positions and the graduates of normal
schools in elementary grades, with a fair mingling
of the two in the principal ships and teaching po-
sitions of grammar schools. Making allowance
for many exceptions, I think we should be agreed
that the public good is fairly well served by such
a distribution. We must recognize the fact that
high schools, of the type and standing now ex-
pected in our high schools, must be mainly
taught by those who have had collegiate or uni-
versity training. The same should be said of the

202 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

seventh and eighth grades of our grammar
schools when they are taught on the department
plan or offer studies of secondary grade.

We need to get special knowledge and special
skill into their right relations to each other, and a
third element must be added, namely, special
inborn fitness for teaching. The considerations
which we have before us, then, range them-
selves about as follows :

It is of first importance that we attract into the
business of teaching and into our training schools
for teachers those who have the right stuff in
them, the right kind of manhood and woman-
hood, for such work.

It is next in importance that these persons
shall be well educated, as regards both general
culture and special knowledge of some one sub-
ject or group of subjects.

Close after these requirements comes the re-
quirement of technical training for the processes
of teaching.

President Alderman remarked, in his recent
paper on The Growing South: "The ability of
this generation to recognize education as some-
thing larger than mere learning or even disci-
pline, to perceive it as a great force moulding
national character, has caused the enlistment into
this field of work of young men and young women
of creative capacity and exalted character, who,
under other conditions in Southern history,

UNIVERSITY AND NORMAL SCHOOL 203

would have instinctively turned to political and
social fields of distinction and service."

Such a condition is of the utmost importance
for the teaching profession and for teachers'
training schools of every kind. It can be brought
about only through the concurrence of the whole
set of conditions surrounding our educational
system. All that can be done, by co-operative
action of all persons concerned, will be needed
to turn toward education, in the country at large,
those who can best do the work of education.

The second requirement, that the teacher be
well educated, is emphasized here for two
reasons: First, because a teacher needs such a
grade of education as will give him an assured
place with the best educated people in his com-
munity, and so give to his influence in the school
room the added weight of the respect of the com-
munity; secondly, because the teacher needs
such a standing with his pupils that his influence
upon them will outlive their days of schooling.
There is a kind of skill in teaching, adequate
and successful according to the standard of
immediate requirements, sometimes markedly
successful, which nevertheless is without depth,
and so falls flat when it comes to the need of a
lasting influence in the grown-up lives of those
on whom it has been exercised. It is particularly
unfortunate when it happens, as sometimes it
does happen, that the most distinct and conscious

204 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

moral impression is made by a teacher whose
skill in teaching is not balanced by impressive
and substantial scholastic attainments, a teacher
who has become a pathetic memory and noth-
ing more when his pupils have reached their
maturity.

The third requirement, that the teacher shall
have mastered the art of teaching, is likewise
emphasized here for two reasons: First, that
his lack of skill may not come between him and
his pupils, or indeed come between his pupils
and their rightful education. The Apostle Paul,
you remember, boasted that he did not frustrate
the grace of God. And secondly, that the young
teacher, particularly, shall be able to go into
team-work with the rest of the teaching force.
There is something pitifully lonesome for him-
self and hampering to his fellows in the position
of a highly educated teacher who has not enough
of pedagogic interest and teacher-training to
enable him to join hands with others in making
the school a school.

Now let us come back to the actual difficulties
of present adjustment. A normal-school presi-
dent said to me not long ago, "If you want to do
anything for the normal schools, help them to
get out of the blind alley in which they find
themselves." It was only another way of stating
the difficulty which was mentioned at the outset
of this paper. Another, a teacher in a normal

UNIVERSITY AND NORMAL SCHOOL 205

school, put it in this way: "Personal relations
within the school are good, but intellectually we
are starving." I am well aware of another side
to the case. Individual presidents and teachers
of normal schools have made their institutions
fairly a-tingle with intellectual and aesthetic
interest. Strong teachers continue to go into
the normal schools, many of them bearing the
higher degrees of the most advanced universities.
But the blind-alley exists, not as a fault but as
a situation. It appears in other unattached pro-
fessional schools, in schools of medicine, of law,
and of theology. It may be doubted whether
an adequate remedy is to be found in empower-
ing normal schools to offer collegiate courses and
give collegiate degrees, though that plan may be
justified where a full course of collegiate grade
can be provided without detriment to the wider
work of the institution. The obvious remedy
is to bring the normal school into more intimate
relations with the institutions in which the high-
est scientific work is done, to give it an appro-
priate place in the university system of its state.
Just how this is to be done in any given case, I am
not prepared to say. The cases are extremely
various. The present disposition on the part
of our universities to break the undergraduate
course in two at the close of the sophomore year,
suggests that in some instances the normal
schools might profitably offer, along with their

206 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

other courses, the first two years of the college
course. One incidental adjustment which seems
worthy of consideration is a regular and syste-
matic exchange of instructors between the normal
school and a university or certain universities.
Such an exchange, when it settled into an ac-
cepted routine, would, I believe, have advantages
for both of the sides concerned.

The second difficulty of which I spoke, that
on the side of the university, is the difficulty of
providing suitable practice teaching, particularly
in schools of secondary grade. This difficulty
has been partially met, in a variety of ways, at
Harvard, Brown, Chicago, and California Uni-
versities, at Teachers College, and other institu-
tions. It does not seem to me that it has
anywhere been fully met. It is comparatively easy
to provide practice teaching of a grammar grade
or in laboratory courses in the high school, but
for high school class work outside of the lab-
oratory, it is more difficult. The normal schools,
by their successful organization of practice
teaching of an elementary grade, have set a
standard of practical training. And strong city
superintendents and high school principals are
demanding, with good show of reason, that they
shall not be required to do the breaking-in of
high school teachers, when the normal school
accomplishes the breaking-in of teachers for
elementary schools.

UNIVERSITY AND NORMAL SCHOOL 207

In the main it seems to me that university
authorities have not yet taken this problem seri-
ously. Yet it is, I am persuaded, a problem
which will have to be taken seriously. It is to
be hoped that closer relations between normal
schools and universities may lead to wider ex-
perimentation in this field. I do not look for
an altogether satisfactory outcome, however,
till the matter has been taken in hand by some
of our state legislatures. In a serious way, as
part of the educational system of the state, the
professional courses of our universities must,
it would seem, be supplemented by regular pro-
vision for special high schools organized expressly
as schools for practice teaching ; or by apprentice
teaching in designated high schools, after the
manner of the German Probe jahr; or by both
of these provisions with others added thereto.

XIII

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AS A
NATIONAL INTEREST

Read before the Department of Superintendence of the Na-
tional Education Association at its meeting in Chicago,
February 25, 1909. Published in the Proceedings of
the Department, 1909.

xm

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AS A NATIONAL
INTEREST

THERE can be no doubt that industrial
education is needed to perpetuate the
prosperity of our industries. This aspect
of the case has been widely discussed, and may
simply be taken for granted here.

The point to be chiefly emphasized at the pres-
ent time is that the great, dominant need of the
United States as regards education is the same
now that it has always been. It is the need of
a body of citizens who are free, through intelli-
gence and self-control. The main business of
American education for the future as in the past
is the training of our people to genuine freedom.
And that means a training to intelligent self-
direction in the paths of righteousness. We still
believe that such training is possible, and that it
is worthy of our best endeavors.

Does this imply that special training for the
industries is unimportant? Far from it. New
wine may not be put into old bottles, but old
wine must often be put into new bottles. The

212 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

old spirit of our education must pass over into
new forms of education to meet our present
needs. In dealing with this newer education,
we must have due regard for sameness and due
regard for difference. Let us speak of differ-
ence first. There is danger that our new, indus-
trial education will be made so like the older
education that its distinctive values will be lost.
If we are not exceedingly careful, that will be
the result where industrial courses are organ-
ized in the old schools. We may get simply the
old book-and-laboratory education masquerad-
ing as industrial education. Such a fiasco is by
all means to be avoided, even if we have to make
new schools in which the new training may fully
establish its different character.

Let us next take account of unity. If we can
fully secure the requisite difference, there is great
gain in having the new courses organized in
close connection with the old. We emphasize
thereby the unity of our people in all of their
classes and employments. But if the new train-
ing must to some extent go into separate schools,
let us by all means keep those separate schools
in the closest spiritual connection with our gen-
eral system of education. The special schools
need such connection, and the general system
needs it equally. A technical training which
produces mere manual skill is not what we
want. We want a technical training that shall

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 213

educate. If our trade schools seek only to cul-
tivate skill, they will not contribute to the im-
provement of our industries; they will simply
turn out superior machines for a stationary
industry. On the other hand, if our general
education does not eventuate in skill, it will
give us a scholastic class, who can only look
helplessly on the progress of an industrial life
in which they have no part, as Sir Galahad in
the castle gazed upon the procession of the Holy
Grail.

The bond of unity between general culture
and training for a trade is the later development
of our conception of general culture. We are
familiar with that form of culture which takes
one out of the limitations of daily life by means
of ideas and associations which are remote from
daily life. This is the liberal or classical culture
in its various forms. Such culture is everlast-
ingly justified; and a training which has no
power to lift the learner out of the pit of present
sense and experience can be only a truncated
and inorganic fragment of an education. Where
vision fails the people fail. But that higher cul-
ture, too, is only a part, and it may work a pain-
ful isolation of its possessor. Now we are finding
ways of seeking out the hidden fire — the world-
sentiments and world-ideas — forever latent in
the plainest every-day life. When we have gone
farther and have made every common environ-

214 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

ment yield up its inherent educational values,
then the connection between scholastic culture
and the trades will be confirmed and realized.

Should the state concern itself with industrial
education as herein set forth ? I think it will
be under the necessity of so doing, in some meas-
ure, both for the sake of its industries and, still
more, for the sake of its citizenship.

Should the national government have a part
in the undertaking? That is a more difficult
question, but the answer may still, I think, be
in the affirmative. The nation cannot be indif-
ferent, it cannot but have the liveliest interest,
where both its industries and its citizenship are
concerned. From the beginning it has con-
tributed to the furtherance of education in the
states, largely by grants of lands, but in the
case of the agricultural and mechanical col-
leges by annual grants in money. This policy
has been abundantly justified in its results. Its
extension to schools of a somewhat different
grade or character would be so slight a change
that it could not be called a departure from our
governmental traditions.

But any far-reaching measure in this direc-
tion should be taken with due care and foresight.
It should not be taken at all if the matter can be
adequately cared for by the several states. In
any case it should not be taken in such a way as
greatly to disturb the various state systems of

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 215

educational administration. A careful exami-
nation of those systems, as related to the pro-
posed plan for national subventions, should be
undertaken, and the federal government should
proceed in the matter only in such way or in
such ways as will strengthen the hands of the
state educational authorities.

Many interests, other than governmental, are
profoundly involved in the industrial education
movement. They must be considered in all
fairness, but from the public and national rather
than any private point of view. We cannot
direct the industrial education in rural schools
simply to the end of keeping young people on
the farm. Young people in the country should
have their fair chance for any honorable career,
in city or country. But country life, too, should
have its fair chance to make its legitimate appeal
to these young people as well as the life of the
city.

The point of view of the employers of labor
must be carefully considered, for the wisdom
which the direction of great industrial concerns
may have taught. But we must not permit in-
dustrial education to be directed solely to the
increase of production. That would be to sub-
ordinate citizens to industries. Broad-minded
employers are among the strongest opponents of
so short-sighted a policy.

The point of view of organized labor must be

216 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

carefully considered. However much objection
there may be to the methods of any particular
labor organizations, it is plain to see that organi-
zation is better than disorganization on both
sides of the industrial world. Here, again, the
public good is the supreme consideration. We
cannot willingly permit the policy of trade-
unions to keep any number of our young citizens
permanently barred from preparation for some
honorable manual occupation. On the other
hand, we cannot willingly permit industrial
schools to be directed to the disorganization of
labor. The relation of school training to ap-
prenticeship in industrial education calls most
urgently for fair and thorough investigation and
for many and varied adjustments.

And now, just here, we come to the main pur-
pose of this paper. The national problem of
industrial education must be solved by a co-
operation of industrialists, politicians, and edu-
cators. But the chief burden of the solution
will be carried by one or another of these three
classes. The men of business and the men of
politics wield tremendous forces and bear tre-
mendous responsibilities. They are entitled to
the respect which these circumstances com-
mand. But it is of the utmost importance to
our national life that our educational profession
shall be found worthy to take the lead in de-
termining the course of our industrial education.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 217

The public will be guided by our best judg-
ment in this matter, if it shall appear that the
school men and women are they who take the
broadest, fairest, most genuinely progressive
view of our position and our needs ; if they make
some approach to unanimity in their attitude
toward the newer proposals, which shall not be
simply an immovable and unintelligent conser-
vatism nor an equally ill-considered stampede in
the new direction ; if they devise wise and prac-
ticable plans for new undertakings, not asking
large outlay for hasty ventures, but standing
vigorously for well-thought-out plans of improve-
ment. If these characteristics shall be manifest
in the teaching profession of this country in the
face of the present situation, the solution of the
problem of industrial schools will be an educa-
tional solution. And that, from the point of
view of national interests, is devoutly to be
desired.

XIV
THE ART OF THE TEACHER

An Address delivered at the Graduation Exercises of the
Winthrop Normal and Industrial College, at Rock
Hill, South Carolina, June %, 1908, and before the
Department of Pedagogy of Wellesley College, October
17, 1908. An earlier draft of this Address appeared
under the title, The Fine Art of Teaching, in The Edu-
cational Review for November, 1898.

XIV

THE ART OF THE TEACHER

IT is a very simple message that I have to
bring you to-day. I wish to talk with you
about the ordinary work of teaching school.
We are spending a great deal of time and thought
and money in this country in carrying out a
large educational policy. But that large policy
and those large expenditures all come back to
this, that we are trying to put good teachers into
the schools and get the pupils there for them to
teach, and then to make sure that their teaching
shall be done under such conditions as shall
give them the fairest possible chance. What a
few of us may do as regards general policies is
a necessary circumstance. What the teachers
and their pupils shall do in the schools is the
main thing and the real thing. As soon as you
begin your chosen work of teaching, you will be
in the very thick of the conflict between light
and darkness, between Ormazd and Ahriman;
and some of us, in supervisory offices and bureaus,
must look on from a distance, with now and then
a pang of regret that we cannot share, at first
hand, in your toils and triumphs. For my own

222 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

part, I am sure that some of my most cherished
recollections are those of the school room in
which I had the daily teaching of every-day
boys and girls.

There are many sides of teaching that we
might talk about, but I shall speak of only one.
For my text I am indebted to a great Carolinian
and Georgian whom I knew as a great Cali-
fornian, that venerated teacher, Joseph LeConte.
In one of his discussions of education as a sci-
ence, Joseph LeConte gave a clew to the un-
derstanding of education as an art. It is this
education-art that we are to consider to-day. I
mean education as one of the fine arts, having
much in common with others of the fine arts.

Professor LeConte, in the paper I have men-
tioned, used these words with reference to the
methods of education: "Artificial they must
ever be ; for education is art, and art must ideal-
ize, not merely copy nature. But, like all art, it
must be strictly based on nature. It must adopt
the methods of nature and improve them."

The first thing, then, that we are to note at
this time is that the fine art of the teacher deals
with real things on their ideal side. Natural
science insists that we shall see truly, that we
shall see things as they are. But art goes further
and tells us that we shall see most truly when we
see things at their best. Mr. Barrie has put it in
one of his stories, "To see the best is to see

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 223

most clearly " ; and then he adds, "it is the lover's
privilege." But the true teacher is a lover of
children, and it is his privilege to see the best in
them, even the best that is not yet, but may be
brought into being. So a clear-eyed teacher
knows how faulty at their worst his children are,
how dirty they are and silly, how unpleasant in
habits and dispositions. But he knows it without
knowing it.

"Be to their faults a little blind,
Be to their virtues very kind."

That is his wisdom for every day. He does not
complain much of the naughtiness of his pupils.
But he has a genuine glow of appreciation for
their better qualities and for their promise of
future attainments.

"Come and let us live with our children," is
the version often given to the familiar saying of
Froebel. But one who exercises the lover's
privilege of seeing the best will be discriminat-
ing in this regard. He will draw near to his
pupils, but on the higher rather than the lower
planes of their being. This is what Froebel
himself did and what many another teacher has
done. They drew near to their pupils, not by
frivolous condescension to any mere childish-
ness, but rather by leading those children into the
uplands where they were themselves at home.

Have you never seen a teacher talking easily
and naturally with his pupils on higher themes

224 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

than those with which they had been familiar -
choosing his tune, when their disposition was
prepared for such approach, and choosing his
words, that the things spoken might not be too
easy nor yet too hard ? And have you not seen
those pupils strive and strain to reach that higher
ground, unwilling to disappoint the teacher's
confidence or lose the new sense of higher powers
which he has awakened within them ? It is a
rare sight; but it may be met with if you look
for it, in crowded primary schools of our great
cities and in out-of-the-way country districts all
over the land. There is real education in look-
ing up and in reaching after something a little
beyond our reach. We know it very well from
our own experience. You cannot guide your
pupils, to be sure, in regions where you are
yourself a stranger. But a teacher who is press-
ing forward to things barely apprehended as yet
and not yet attained, may be the most helpful
teacher of all, through a kind of comradeship
of hope and aspiration.

Even in the more external matters of good
breeding, it is well for children to make a try at
manners a little above their own. And we all
know how good and necessary it is to keep try-
ing at morals a little above our own. There is an
illustration of such teaching as this, drawn from
an old-time school in the South, which will carry
my meaning more clearly than any general re-

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 225

mark that I can make. I refer to a letter of
Alexander H. Stephens to Richard Malcolm
Johnston, in which Mr. Stephens gave an ac-
count of a country school teacher whose pupil he
had been, that teacher being Mr. Stephens' own
father: "He took great pleasure in the act of
teaching" -I quote here from the letter:

His scholars generally were much attached to him. He
was on easy and familiar terms with them without losing
their respect; and the smallest boys would approach him
with confidence, but never with familiarity. He had one
custom I never saw or heard of in any other school. About
once a month on a Friday evening, after the spelling classes
had got through their tasks, he had an exercise on cere-
mony, which the scholars called " learning manners,"
though what he called it — if I ever heard him call it
anything — I cannot remember. The exercise consisted
in going through the usual form of salutation on meeting
an acquaintance, and introducing persons to each other,
with other variations occasionally introduced. . . . These
exercises, trivial as the description may seem, were of
great use to raw country boys and girls. . . . Cheating,
lying, and everything mean and dishonest he held up to
scorn and abhorrence. He was, so far as I know, the only
old-field teacher of those days on whom the boys never
played the prank of " turning out."

The old-field teacher, I suppose, is now ex-
tinct. His work, and a great deal more, has
fallen to the young women who graduate from
our normal schools and colleges and go out to
teach in a regular system of schools. Many of

15

226 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

them will marry after a time — and the more the
better, if their hearts go with their hands. But
so long as they are in the schools, they are called
on to practise as fine an art as was exercised
by the best of their predecessors in any age;
and that art will not be lost to the world
if it be carried over into the narrower and
deeper education of the home. President Sharp-
less some years ago congratulated himself "that
whether our poor children were learning their
lessons or not, it was a good thing for them to
come into intimate relations for several hours
daily with such lady-like teachers as one often

sees."

There is one way of reaching up into a larger life
that is not always easy for our lady-like teachers
themselves to learn, but wThich they must needs
learn in order that they may teach it well in their
schools. I refer to the lesson of civic life, the
lesson of duty to the community and to the
commonwealth .

The wise woman from whom I learn much
every day has been troubled to see children
scattering papers and disfiguring trees and side-
walks on their way from school. And it has been
her dream that some day in our schools they will
really come to an understanding of their part in
the general responsibility for our community
life. It is easy to tell them not to do this or that.
May they not come to have things to do, as well

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 227

as things to leave undone? If some little part
might be given to them in making their city or
town or district a better place to live, they would
be started on one of the largest lessons that our
whole people has to learn. I recall with peculiar
pleasure the flowers planted about the public
square in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by the school
children of that city, and other striking exam-
ples might be mentioned.

The life of our neighborhood, of our state and
nation — it is a thing for which every citizen, in
his measure, is responsible: great citizens, and
little citizens, too. It is one of the things that
take us out of our selfish selves, and make us
reach up to the destined stature of our lives. It
is one of the ideas that should be at work in our
schools everywhere. Here the art of the teacher
comes to one of its finest and severest tests : To
hitch the wagon of his little school to this star of
our national life, and cause the little children of
our land to begin to live for the common good.

But now this look at some large ideals of the
teacher's art leads us to another characteristic of
all fine art, and that is its care for proportion, its
nice discrimination between things large and
small. The sense for proportion is as indispen-
sable in the school room as in the studio, for too
often we waste our time on trifles. "Good taste
rejects excessive nicety," as Fenelon said; "it
treats little things as little things." And good

228 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

taste will save a teacher from some of the com-
monest sins of the teaching craft.

A teacher cannot afford to attain perfection in
any part of his work, at the sacrifice of that which
is better than perfection. The perfection which
is attainable is too small a result for all our labor.
It is not that which is carved to a finish which will
satisfy us. We want for ourselves and for our
children some vision of majestic, dim, unsculp-
tured things. We want to find our studies
opening up here and there a vista into some
unknown country and tempting us to new ad-
venture. The finished arch is good; but we
would see through it

"That untravell'd world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever."

There are those who would say that education,
like literature, has had its "age of the carved
cherry-stones," and that our primary schools have
not* yet advanced beyond that age. And some
would charge this over-emphasis on little things
to the influence of women in the schools. But
women have no monopoly of such influence. A
petty man can nowhere be more petty than in a
school. Matthew Arnold tried to get some big-
ness into the prevalent conception of God. We
need, all of us, to get more bigness into our con-
ception of education, which is surely one of the
works of God.

Yet perfection in the smaller things has a part

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 229

and place of its own. I think we may fairly say
that all of our instruction has, of right, these two
aspects of method running through it. Here we
must have our work finished with exactness and
nicety ; there it must be sketched in alluring out-
lines. Both modes of treatment are needed, but
they are differently proportioned and combined
in different disciplines.

Our teachers require, in fact, that same mixing
of the elements in themselves that is called for in
their instruction. We can be patient with the
grand vagueness of a young teacher, full of crude
and glowing immensities, provided he show
himself able to condense some of his fire-mist
into a definite and ordered system. And we can
be patient with an old-time schoolmaster's fond-
ness for system, if his system have not absorbed
and cooled and hardened for him all of that
primal nebula with which we may suppose him
to have been once endowed. Our teacher shall
have system and fire-mist, both at once. Let
him show us a true cosmos, but if he have a
little, wholesome, unperverted chaos left in him,
we shall like him all the better for that.

You will doubtless recall this fine combination
of perfectness in little things with large sugges-
tion of the outlying, cosmic things, as you have
seen it in some of those by whom you have been
taught. The artist makes the large things and
the little things go together, as they belong to-

230 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

gether, but each in its own degree and place. At
one time it is a matter of supreme importance that
c-a-t spells cat, that two and two make four. At
another time words and facts, grammar and his-
tory, all are subordinate things, mere helps or
hindrances, while the thing of import is that a
group of young people shall become aware of
some great tidal sweep and uplift, as in the Ode
on the Intimations of Immortality.

A class may work long, weary hours for the
mastery of a lesson. Then at the end of the
task the best thing, not infrequently, is reached
in some hint from the teacher of the boundless
range of thought upon which that little mastered
lesson opens out. Yet that suggestion, too,
would not have been possible, if the class had not
first learned their plain and definite lesson and
learned it well. So the great and the small, the
definite and the vague, are intermixed, the one
supporting and seconding the other, and neither
the one nor the other is overdone ; and there we
have in the finished work a well-ordered temper-
ateness, with all the saving grace of wide variety.
Such a work is a work of art, of one of the finest
of all the arts, and such a work, I doubt not, some
of you will achieve.

There is nothing more useful to the maintain-
ing of just proportions in this life than a genial
sense of humor. A laugh is a dangerous thing in
its way. It must needs be handled with judg-

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 231

ment. But if it carry no sting and have some
genuine refinement back of it, it can do a world
of good. And its chief value is that it can save us
from exaggeration. The old builders put gar-
goyles on their cathedrals and we put cartoons
into our newspapers. Once let our young teacher
get so absorbed with his art that it runs away with
his common sense, and the comic valentine, the
ever-ready parody, or the surreptitious drawing
of the school cartoonist, is likely enough to call
him to himself. If he will not abuse it, the
teacher, too, may wisely sprinkle a little salt of
comedy upon the flat seriousness of his school.
Even the forced buffoonery of the Hoosier
Schoolmaster helped him over a hard passage in
his hard experience. I suppose the tale has been
forgotten in this present generation, and it is not
good enough to repeat. But I may repeat a bit of
college tradition, well known in some circles, but
worth the telling even if it has been heard before.
I fear it calls for scriptural knowledge which the
present generation is none too sure of acquiring.
The story as I have heard it is told of Professor
Moses Coit Tyler, and belongs to his days in the
University of Michigan. He was not always
prompt to close his lecture with the end of the
hour, and the boys of his class made known their
disapproval by vigorous scuffing with their feet.
One day the lecture was unusually prolonged and
the noise of the students was unusuallv insistent.

232 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

Taking notice at last, the professor raised his
hand in deprecation. "One moment, gentle-
men," he said, "one moment"; and then he
added, thoughtfully, "a few more pearls, a few
more pearls! "

After I have tried my best to characterize that
paragon, an artist-teacher, and find how near, at
best, my description comes to a catalogue of
"moral virtues and their contrary vices," I am
disposed to poke a bit of fun even at this frail
paper of my own. A genuine human being, though
with many imperfections, is so much better than
any paragon ! Better, even in that center of all
things good and correct which is known as a
model school. Any one who has ever loved a
living girl knows that half of her charm lies in
the fact that he could never by any possibility
have invented her himself. And no synthesis of
enumerated elements can ever construct for us a
live and quickening teacher.

But I shall have to answer my own gibe, and
protest that this is not a paragon at all that I
am setting forth and not at all a creature of my
invention. It is because I have seen some gen-
uine artists and found them teaching in real
schools, that I am moved to tell what manner of
work they were doing. They were artists in-
deed, and for that reason my account of their
performance must fall far short of its vivid
reality. The human quality of the work, after

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 233

all, is what I am seeking to bring before you,
and it is a human impulse, I am sure, that
prompts one to make such an attempt. The
hope, moreover, that the account will call up in
your thought the image of a human teacher,
depends upon the hours that you yourselves
have passed in the presence of living teachers
who taught with creative power.

Now, if a sense for proportion, as has been
said, is of the essence of an artist's work, a matter
of equal importance and still harder to attain is
the genuine artist's sense for time. If the artist
is genuine, he is willing to take time in order that
he may get the better of time, for he is endeavor-
ing to do a work that shall last, in spite of all that
time may do.

A spirit which is not the artist spirit is always
seeking after the newest things because they are
new. Maarten Maartens makes one of his
characters say, "Your taste is entirely viti-
ated, my dear, because you have no compre-
hension of the beautiful out-of-date." In the
same spirit Professor Jackman used to speak,
with mild satire, to his class in a summer
school. "You have come here," he would say,
"to learn the latest fashions in the teaching of
long division."

Be sure of this, that what is now the mode and
only the mode will after a while be out-of-date.
Whatever is new, it shall grow old. The only

234 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

things that do not grow old are the things that
never were altogether new. Whoever has the
spirit of a true artist seeks to do a work that shall
abide. Accordingly, as regards means and meth-
ods, he cares more that they shall be true and good
than that they shall be the newest of the new.
You remember the lines,

"He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide."

And Lincoln, of whom it was said, was one of the
great teachers of the American people. Other
teachers may well learn that lesson of his large
and liberal patience.

It is difficult to put this matter just right, for
there is a patience that is weakness and there is a
haste that is timely and necessary. Dawdling and
loitering never were artistic processes. In fact,
true art is scrupulous as regards waste. It exer-
cises the finest economy. But it knows, too, how
to spend without stint, how to labor on, quietly
and unhurriedly, as nature brings the blossom to
its fruit. Even the born artist must learn that
perfect way, narrower than the scimitar's edge,
between the imperfection of haste and the imper-
fection of waste.

Studies differ in this regard. Some can best be
learned under pressure, with keen questioning
that calls for quick and definite answer. In some
parts of arithmetic this is true, and in the more

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 235

mechanical parts of grammar and of history. But
history in its finer and deeper things, literature,
and the larger study of nature — these must be
lived with, till they warm the soul and tinge the
thought and take up their abode in the inner life.
Facts are to be learned, sharply and decisively,
without temporizing or dilly-dallying. But points
of view, appreciations, attitudes of mind, these
are gained slowly, and for these we must learn to
wait. You may wait, without urging the learner
at all, for a week, a month, a year, and it may be
for many years. One day you shall see a new in-
telligence flash into the eyes, the morning of a new
life has dawned, and the teacher has received his
great reward.

Not only do studies differ in this regard: in
almost any piece of teaching there is a time to
push forward and a time to wait. From experi-
ence in the class room, I am inclined to accept the
view of those psychologists who say that there are
plateaus in the process of learning any new thing.
That is, there are times when continued effort
fails to bring continued improvement, but when,
if practice be carried steadily forward, the upward
movement after a little begins again. The time
of arrest is found to be a preparation for further
gains. It requires fine insight and not a little ex-
perience to put these plateau periods to their
largest use. It may be best to turn aside to other
things, to let that part of the subject lie fallow for

236 GOVERNMENT BY INFLUENCE

a while. It may be best to go forward, and let the
upward trend of improvement set in again when
it will. When the children of Israel came to the
Red Sea, Moses said, "Stand still, and see the
salvation of God." But when he laid the case
before Jehovah, the answer came, "Why criest
thou to me ? Speak unto the children of Israel
that they go forward."

Now, there is one way that the question of time
enters into the inmost soul of teaching. For it
has to do with the personal character of the
teacher himself, and that is about the most vital
thing for any school. There are teachers, and
you have known them well, who have power to
carry their pupils with them, whatever they may
do. It is a power of strong suggestion, and it
may become even hypnotic in its degree. It can
produce quick and striking results, for it gains an
autocratic ascendancy over the pupils' minds.
We have all seen the warm enthusiasm which a
"magnetic" teacher can arouse. His personal
attractiveness lends new life to the school. WTiere
others must plod, he lends, as an old writer put it,
"not feete, but wings."

Now, one who has such power as this, has a
keen weapon which may cut for good or ill. He
may use it for immeasurable good. He may
arouse the sluggish, he may give new hope to
those who have become discouraged, he may tide
over the crisis of some lives by his inspiring influ-

THE ART OF THE TEACHER 237

ence. But, on the other hand, he may work great
harm. He may attach his pupils so closely to
himself as to make them dependent upon him for
the incentive to all endeavor.

A test of such a teacher's work may be found
in the experience of the teacher who comes after
him. Have the pupils become more self-reliant,
or is their strength and interest gone with the
leader who galvanized them into an artificial life ?
The true artist in the school may have much or
little of the power to awaken enthusiasm, but the
best of his work abides. A great teacher, indeed,
is one who leads us to think great thoughts, but
the greatest teacher is the one who helps us most
after he himself is gone. Jesus said to His disci-
ples, "It is expedient for you that I go away."

But this discussion should not be prolonged.
It is meant to do no more than make a small be-
ginning on a large subject. You will soon be
going out into your great and good work of teach-
ing school. Let me bid you God-speed. When
Dean Colet founded St. Paul's School in London,
in the days of Henry the Eighth, he wrote these
words, "I charge the maisters that they teche all-
ways that is beste." Let us take his words for the
very different work in which you are to engage —
and yet it is the same; and so I charge you,
young women, that you teach always things that
are best.

INDEX

INDEX

[NAMES OF PERSONS ARE IN ITALICS.]

Abbott, Mary N., 187.

Adams act, 52-53.

Agricultural and mechanical col-
leges, establishment, 50-53.

Agricultural education, Adams act,
52-53; and Benjamin Franklin,
49; Columbia college, 50; de-
velopment, 45-59; early interest
in, 46^-7; Hatch acts, 52; his-
tory, 49-53; Michigan, 50;
Michigan state agricultural col-
lege, 48, 50; Moor's Indian
school, 49; Merrill acts, 50-52;
Nelson amendment, 53; Penn-
sylvania, 50 ; training of experts,
54.

Agricultural societies, formation,
47.

Agriculture, first seed distribution
by Government, 47.

Alaska, introduction of reindeer,
130-131.

Alderman, E. A., on The Growing
South, 202-203.

Apprenticeship system, 48-49, 138.

Arbitration, international, and the
public schools, 99-109; day of
special observance recommended,
99-100.

Art, leadership of Europe, 127;
moral im plications, 73.

Art of the teacher, 221-238.

Association of practical housekeep-
ing centers, New York, 177-178.

Associations, educational. See Ed-
ucational associations.

Attendance, school, statistics, 157-
159.

Ayers, L. P., on dwindling of pub-
lic school classes, 159-160, foot-
note.

BACKWARD CHILDREN, school, 125.

Barrett, John, on commercial rela-
tions with South America, 141.

Bell, Andrew, monitorial system, 124.

Bureau of education. See U. S.
Bureau of education.

CARNEGIE TECHNICAL SCHOOLS,
Pittsburgh, and apprenticeship,
138.

Child-labor laws, 155-157.

Children, United States, some of
their needs, 147-165.

Children's nurses, training, 171-
172, 174-176, 178-179.

Christianity, interpretation, 91-92.

Cincinnati, University of, address
delivered at, 27-41; experiment
in engineering course, 138.

Cities, government, 30; higher life,
28-30; influence of universities
on, 36-41 ; influence on life, 35 ;
institutional life, 33; public
press, 32 ; public schools, 33-34 ;
representative men, 31-33; self-
respect of, 27-41.

16

INDEX

Cdet, Dean, on teaching, 237-238.

Columbia college, agricultural edu-
cation, 50.

Compulsory education, 154-157.

Conference of governors, states and
territories, at Washington, D. C.,
6-7.

Congress, influence of, 3.

Connecticut, agricultural societies,
47; public trade schools, 138.

Consultations de nourrissons, Paris,
176-177.

Cottage instruction, children, Lon-
don, 177-178.

Crime and education, 9.

Curriculum, elementary schools,
comparative study (Payne), 116-
117.

DEMOCRACY and education, 67-
68.

Democracy and religion, 71-72.

Department of agriculture. See
U. S. Department of agricul-
ture.

Department of superintendence.
See National education associa-
tion.

Draper, A. S., on number of teach-
ers, 140-141.

ECOLE DBS MERES, Paris, 176.

Education, allied with science, 63-
64, 67-68; ally of religion, 71;
apprenticeship system, 138; com-
pulsory, 154-157 ; curriculum,
elementary schools, comparative
study (Payne), 116-117; ele-
mentary, influence, 8-10; ele-
mentary schools, non-sectarian,
an original contribution to, 129;
emergence of world-standards in
school and university, 141-142;
and federal government, 21;
Germany, leadership, 127-128;
Germany, system of higher, effect

on student, 149 ; high schools, an
original contribution to, 129;
humanism, new, 114-116; in-
dustrial, a national interest, 211-
217; invention in field of, 121-
143; kindergarten, not assimi-
lated in educational system, 123-
124; leadership of Germany, 127-
128; manual labor schools, 49-
50; Massachusetts, 4 ; monitorial
system, 124; moral, in Japan,
80-81; New England states, 4;
normal schools and universities,
distinctive functions in prepara-
tion of teachers, 199-206; pub-
lic schools, city, 33-34; and in-
ternational arbitration, 99-109;
religious, public schools, 65;
religious and secular, 63-73;
school attendance, statistics, 157-
159; Sloyd system, 125; taxa-
tion, support of schools (Web-
ster), 4; teachers, international
comity, 140-141 ; teachers, train-
ing, 199-206; women, higher,
139-140 ; women's organiza-
tions, work of, 187-195.

Education and crime, 9.

Education and democracy, 67-68.

Education and the state, 9-10, 15-
24.

Educational associations, interna-
tional, 140-141; possible co-op-
eration between those of differ-
ent countries, 113-118; state,
co-operation, 142.

Elementary education, influence,
8-10.

Elementary schools, American, non-
sectarian, original contribution
to education, 129.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and educa-
tion, 21.

Franklin, Benjamin, and agricul-
tural education, 49.

INDEX

243

Froebel F. W. A., 124, 223.
Fry, Mrs. Elizabeth, 188.

GERMANY, leadership in educa-
tion, 127-128; system of higher
education, effect on student,
149.

Government by influence, 3-24.

Governors, conference of, state and
territorial, at Washington, D. C.,
6-7.

HAGUE, The, International peace
conference, 99.

Hare, A. J. C., 188.

Hatch acts, 52.

Henderson, C. R., 176.

High schools, American, an orig-
inal contribution to education,
129.

Higher education, German system,
effect on student, 149.

Holt, Dr. L. E., on training of chil-
dren's nurses, 179.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, a national
interest, 211-217.

International arbitration. See Ar-
bitration, international.

International congress on the wel-
fare of the child, address before,
147-165.

International peace conference, at
The Hague, 99, 100.

Interparliamentary union, 113.

Inventions, electric railway, first
operated, 122 ; field of education,
121-143; mechanical, 122.

JAPAN, Imperial rescript, 80-81.
Johnston, R. M., 225.

Keller, Helen, 130.
Kelley, Mrs. Florence, on training
for mother-work, 177-178.

Kindergarten, not assimilated in
educational system, 123-124.

Kindergarten nurses, training, 179-
180.

LABOR, organized, and industrial
education, 216.

Lake Mohonk conference on inter-
national arbitration, address be-
fore, 99-109.

Lancaster, Joseph, monitorial sys-
tem, 124.

Le Conte, Joseph, 222.

Legislation, methods discussed, 13-
17.

Lincoln, Abraham, 234; signing of
Morrill act, 51.

MANUAL LABOR SCHOOLS, agricul-
tural education, 49-50.

Massachusetts, agricultural soci-
eties, 47 ; education of youth, 4 ;
public trade schools, 138.

Michigan, agricultural education,
50.

Michigan state agricultural college,
48, 50 ; address before, 45-59.

Miele, Dr., 177.

Moll-Weiss, Mme. Augusta, 176.

Monitorial system, success and ul-
timate failure, 124.

Moral instruction, Japan, 80-81.

Morality, culture, 77-96; and re-
ligion, 69-73.

Morrill, Justin S., and endowment
of agricultural and mechanical
colleges, 50-52.

Mothers' congress, 147, 160.

Mother-work, problem of prepara-
tion, 162-165 ; training, 169-184.

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION,
addresses before, 113-118, 199-
206.

National education association, co-
operation with similar bodies in

244

INDEX

other lands, 113, 117-118; de-
partment of national organiza-
tions of women, address before,
187-195; department of super-
intendence, address before, 211-
217.

National government, agricultural
education, 50-53; industrial ed-
ucation, 214-215.

National organizations of women,
147-148.

Nelson amendment, 53.

New England states, instruction of
youth, 4.

New York, agricultural societies,
47.

Normal schools, and universities,
distinctive functions of, in prep-
aration of teachers, 199-206.

North Carolina, University of, ad-
dress delivered at, 3-24.

Nurses, children's, training, 171-
172, 174-176, 178-179; hospital,
training, 172-174; kindergarten,
training, 179-180.

PATENT OFFICE. See U. S. Patent
office.

Payne, B. R., on comparative study
of public elementary school cur-
ricula of the leading culture na-
tions, 116-117.

Peace conference, international,
The Hague, 99, 100.

Pennsylvania, agricultural educa-
tion, 50; agricultural societies,
47.

REINDEER, Alaska, introduction,

130-131.

Religion and democracy, 71-72.
Religion and morality, 69-73.
Religion and science, factors in life,

66-67.
Religious and secular education,

63-73.

Religious education, public schools,

65.
Religious education association,

address before, 63-73, 169-184.

SCHOOL GARDENS, 125.

School life, overlapping with life of
wage-earner and producer, 152-
154.

Science and education, 63-64, 67-
68.

Science and public service, 20-24.

Science and religion, 66-67.

Secondary education. See High
schools.

Secular and religious education,
63-73.

Sharpless, President, on school-
teachers, 226.

Sloyd system, 125.

Social service and science, 20-24.

South, the growing (Alderman),
202-203.

South Carolina, agricultural soci-
eties, 47.

State and education, 9-10, 15-24.

State universities, influence, 10-11;
influence on government, 19.

Stead, W. 2'., 116.

Stephens, A. H., letter to Richard
Malcolm Johnston on old-field
teachers, 225.

TEACHERS, art of, 221-238; inter-
national comity, 140-141 ; train-
ing, 199-206.

Th&rndike, E. L., on dwindling of
public school classes, 159.

Trade schools, 138.

U. S. BUREAU OF EDUCATION, 52;

and agricultural education, 58-

59.
U. S. Department of agriculture,

work, 52, 58.

INDEX

245

U. S. Patent office, 122; center of
national pride, 126.

Universities, in cities, relation to
school system, 37-38; influence,
7-8, 34-37, on cities, 36-41, on
government, 15-20; and normal
schools, distinctive functions, in
preparation of teachers, 199-206 ;
state, influence, 10-11, on gov-
ernment, 15-20.

University, American, an original
contribution to education, 129.

University extension, 125.

University of Cincinnati, address
delivered at, 27-41; experiment
in engineering course, 138.

University of North Carolina, ad-
dress delivered at, 3-24.

University of West Virginia, ad-
dress delivered at, 3-24.

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, address
delivered at, 77-96

Vassar college chapter of Phi Beta
Kappa, address before, 121-143.

Vocational schools, 173-174. See
also Trade schools.

Washington, George, on influence, 3.

Washington, George, interest in
farming, 46.

Webster, Daniel, on taxation for
support of schools, 4.

Wellesley College, address deliv-
ered at, 221-238.

West Virginia, University of, ad-
dress delivered at, 3-24.

Winthrop normal and industrial
college, Rock Hill, S. C., address
delivered at, 221-238.

Women, higher education, 139-
140 ; organizations, national,
147-148, work in education,
187-195.

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