voice has not been lost; it will be heard plainly in due time. Equal suffrage, prohibition, and taxation of income are the three great daring and constructive pieces of legislation of the recent past; each one of them depended upon the support and the vote of the farmer for its achievement. Over five millions of American farmers are members of co-operative organizations.

The farmer has been a neglected class, and it is the neglected classes which usually cause revolutions. All over the United States there is, a growing class-consciousness among farmers; they mean to speak loudly enough to be heard. The organized farmer of the future is to play a mighty part in the democratization of American economic and social life. When his growing class-consciousness is permeated with the ideals of social success, we may also witness a revival of the "culture of the soil," which always has been, in its essence, superior to that of the urban center. Healthy blood still courses through the veins of American farmers; warm and hopeful thoughts strive for expression. There shall yet come out of the countryside an expression of the highest social idealism of which the nation is capable.

DIVISION IV-PUBLIC AGENCIES AND PUBLIC WELFARE

EDUCATIONAL IDEALS AND PUBLIC WELFARE

L. D. Coffman, President, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

It is clear that there is a close connection between public education and public welfare. Each is dependent upon the other. The essence of public welfare is education; and educational ideas are without value except as they express themselves in public good. The schools cannot be disassociated from life, nor life from schools.

These principles have been clearly understood since public schools were first established in this country. The history of public education is a history of achievement. Some day someone who knows how to wield a master's pen will attempt to write the story of public education in America, and the greatest epic of civilization will be the result.

One of the earliest acts of the pioneers of this country was to establish a system of public education. Apparently they understood that the children of the next generation would need a better education than they had had. In 1840, the average citizen of this country received 208 days of schooling, not 208 days during one year, but 208 days during his entire lifetime. In 1870, he received 582 days of schooling, and today he receives a little over 1,200 days. Why this change? It is not a matter of mere accident or chance. It has come about, I believe, because the social, political, and economic problems have grown more numerous, more intricate, and more difficult of solution. The problems which the pioneer of 1840 had to face were comparatively simple and easy of solution; those of 1870 were more difficult; and those of today still more difficult.

Soon after 1840, when the present system of public education was first organized, our forefathers began to enact compulsory education laws. In most instances, they placed the upper educational limit at fourteen years. Evidently they intended that the general level of trained intelligence should be graduation from the elementary

schools. By 1870, private secondary education had begun to be superseded by public high schools. Very soon the compulsory age limit began to be raised. A few states placed it at fifteen years, others at sixteen, and still others more recently at seventeen or eighteen. During war times, England passed the Fisher Bill on education which provided that there should be compulsory continuation schooling for all English boys up to the age of eighteen. There has been a bill before the Chamber of Deputies in France for some time, providing that the upper compulsory continuation age limits for boys should be eighteen, and for girls, twenty.

The United States as a nation has taken no action with reference to this matter. Apparently this nation does not fully comprehend the fact that in the great economic and political struggles yet to come, the best-trained nation will have the best chance of success. And yet the relationship which the American people feel to exist between popular education on the one hand and democratic society on the other, is a relationship which they feel with responding devotion. Any nation that finds its expression in free political institutions is increasingly dependent upon popular education. The freer the political institution, the more widely are scattered the schools for all the people. The more controlled the political institutions, the less widely scattered are the schools for all the people. The chief means of control in a democracy has always been some form of popular education, while the chief means of control in an autocracy is always some form of militarism. It is no mere accident of time and place that Americans have been distrustful of large armies and large navies and of the exercise of coercive police power, and that they have fostered public education as the equal privilege of all, nor is it due to mere political accident that Russian despotism discouraged the schools for the people, and exercised a secret surveillance through a military police.

The intimacy of the relationship between popular education and democratic society was brought home to us during war times in a most striking fashion. Among other incidents that emphasized it, there is one that was particularly unique. The federal government, for the first time in its history, selected a school man to be a member of a commission to visit a foreign country. Usually when commissions are selected for this purpose, they are made up of the representatives of commerce, of labor, and of agriculture; but this time a schoolmaster was chosen to go with the commission to visit Siberia. He visited the schools more than four thousand miles inland. When he returned to this country, he reported that the political and economic conditions that prevailed there were due to three things-first, the starvation of the people; second, their ignorance; and third, the presence of the unscrupulous demagogue. Out of every 1,000 in Siberia, 690 persons could not read and write anything. Where awful ignorance prevails we have a fertile soil in which the unscrupulous demagogue can work.

The war revealed the startling fact that this country is not entirely free from illiteracy. Over seven hundred thousand men of draft age, between the ages of twentyone and thirty-one, were found to be unable to read and write the English language. The last census showed that there were approximately five million five hundred thousand persons in this country who could not read and write the English language. General Pershing recently declared that the illiteracy and general physical condition of the American army were matters of national disgrace, and that the great army of slackers was due to brutal ignorance. Here we have two matters of public welfare

that are essentially educational in character. Clearly, every public-spirited citizen should join hands to eliminate not merely juvenile, but adult, illiteracy.

Public welfare demands that we give attention, also, to certain other types of problems that are now imperiously crying out for solution. There never was a time in the history of American life when an intelligent study of these problems was so much needed as now. We sometimes think that the highest expression of patriotism is that of courage in time of war. We inducted four million men into arms, sent two million of them over to the fighting front overseas, gave them our money and energy, everything we possessed, that we might bring the war to a successful conclusion. We did all these things in the name of patriotism, but there is another form of patriotism quite as important. It is the duty of intelligence, with reference to the problems of peace. When these four million men returned to the pursuits of peace, what did they find? They found dissatisfaction; discontent; classmindedness; deflated currency; unsolved political, labor, and capital problems. Needless stupidity and needless ignorance with reference to the solution of these problems in the future, will be as truly a criticism upon the present generation as would have been its failure to do its duty in time of war.

One of the chief weaknesses of a democracy is the difficulty it experiences in planning for remote goals. The near-at-hand is always attractive and alluring. Democracy likes to follow the lines of least resistance, but before it can be truly efficient, it will be necessary for it to plan for the future and to organize its forces for the solution of remote problems. Not all the problems that are waiting solution are entirely remote. The whole world is crying out today for disarmament and yet many of the nations are spending millions of dollars to increase their armament for the purpose, they say, of protecting themselves and of preserving the peace of the world. The six battleships which the United States is about to construct will cost $240,000,000, which would provide enough money to establish a school for the training of teachers in every state in the Union.

Only yesterday the Chicago Tribune contained an editorial criticising the commencement address of Dr. John Greer Hibben, president of Princeton University. Dr. Hibben spoke on the subject "America First." He said, in substance, that if "America First" means my nation against all nations of the world, my nation for herself, irrespective of the needs and demands of other nations of the world, then we should not subscribe to the slogan. But if "America First" means my nation in the lead in the service of humanity, associated with the other nations of the world, then by all means-"America First."

Some day the United States may become a member of the League of Nations, or of some association of nations, but no league or association of nations will ever be able to survive through the influence of coercion. It will survive only because there has been developed an intelligent world citizenry. Clearly, we can no longer live to ourselves alone. The problems of this generation are overwhelming, far reaching, difficult, and many of them are international in character.

To solve them, more education, rather than less, must be provided. Just as the men of 1840 sacrificed for the education of the next generation, and the men of 1870 sacrificed that the men of 1920 might receive more than 1,200 days of schooling, so this generation, if it is to prepare and qualify its descendants to solve the problems of the next generation, must provide more liberally for them through its system of educa

tion. There are few who claim that this cannot be done. They are disturbed by the millions of children who are now in the public schools, and by the enormous cost of public education.

It is conceivable that the increased cost may be met by the increased wealth. There has always been a direct relation between improvement in education and increase in the wealth of the people. There are those who feel that our present system of taxation is antiquated, and that a thorough-going revision of it is imperative. The federal government has already provided forms of taxation for the purpose of uncovering sequestered properties and of raising new revenues. Taxes are now assessed on incomes, inheritances, profits, occupations, and luxuries. Commissioner Claxton recently stated that the total luxury bill of the United States last year was approximately $22,500,000,000, or nearly thirteen times as much as the total cost of all kinds of education. He declared that approximately three hundred millions of this was spent for face powder and cosmetics; that the total cigarette bill was about eight hundred millions; tobacco and snuff, eight hundred millions; and cigars, five hundred millions -a total of two billion, one hundred million for tobaccos, or about six hundred millions more than we shall spend for all kinds of education next year. In 1870 we spent approximately $201,000 for the training of our teachers; in 1920 we spent twentyseven millions. Last year we spent about fifty million dollars for chewing gum. To say that we cannot support public education liberally is ridiculous.

We can make this old world a better world to live in, but it will be expensive. The expense, however, will be insignificant in comparison to the enormous gains society will receive from it. We used to say that the common schools are the hope of the country. I would say that popular education is the hope of the world. The United States, by virtue of its position, power, and influence among the nations, has a peculiar obligation to discharge and that is the obligation of showing the world that public good rests upon general education. Our great duty is that of assisting in rebuilding the temple of civilization. No temple can be rebuilt by the uneducated and untrained. It can arise stronger and finer than it has ever been, safer and more secure in every way, only as we provide more knowledge, more art, more human contacts, higher and finer moral and spiritual relations. The price is great, but none too great.

PUBLIC WELFARE AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Professor Henry C. Morrison, School of Education, University of Chicago

We are the only great nation in the world which has committed itself to a program of free general education from kindergarten to university, inclusive. Except in very few instances, none of our educational institutions, neither public nor private, is self-supporting. Our policy has grown up out of the conviction, widely held in the early days and now, that popular education is the chief bulwark of our free institutions. Our formula has been, "You can govern an ignorant folk, but only the educated can govern themselves." And so there has come to be a well-established body of common law which holds, in effect, that taxation to an unlimited extent may be laid for the support of public education, on the ground always that public education is a part of the defences of the commonwealth. Judges have ordinarily refused to scrutinize the

actual ground of appropriation made in the name of education. So long as the legislature has held appropriations to be for the protection of the state, the courts have been indisposed to go behind the claim. Indeed in law the public school exists for the public welfare.

As we look back, particularly over the last century and a quarter of our history, we have much reason to be grateful for the beneficent results which have flowed from our traditional policy. Not until recently have our plans become sufficiently near the ideal of universal education to give us cause to take thought and call in question the possiblity of carrying out so magnificent a scheme on the lines which have been laid down. We have gone on building schoolhouses which, as a class, are more luxurious than anything the world has ever seen, providing elaborate equipment, founding institutions with little regard to the actual need, including in the curriculum the whole field of human erudition with uncritical regard to its value in the education of the young and the making of citizens.

Meantime, we are confronted with the staggering cost of the war for the preservation of our institutions, a cost so great that it is beyond our conception, and for that reason comparatively unimpressive—a cost which nevertheless must be paid.

We may well pause and ask ourselves what portion of our education, if any, actually does in fact contribute to the public welfare by making intelligent, conscientious citizens.

Meantime we have taken for granted the core of all human training, which is the teacher, and the object of all education, which is the child and the youth.

A brilliant Englishman has recently held up to our enthusiastic gaze a vision of education and conduct of schools in which all instructions shall be imparted by mechanical appliances invented and, I suppose, edited by a comparatively few very highly paid people, and operated in the schoolroom by individuals sufficiently trained to ring the bell, to keep order, and to turn on the machine. The idea is not new to Americans. For have we not been par excellence the textbook-educated people of the world, most texts being written on the actual theory that if the teacher knows enough to assign the lesson, she knows enough to teach?

Now in the common sense of mankind and in the mind of the critical student of education alike, one factor in the process of education stands out as indispensable, and only one-the teacher.

Numerous expansions of public schools and educational institutions during the last thirty years, their houses and equipment, and the neglect of the teaching force, have brought it to pass that we have by far the most elaborate program in the world, supported by a highly uneducated and untrained body of teachers. A recent report of the United States Commissioner of Education has estimated that about one-third of the teaching force of the country has a minimum of training and two-thirds no professional training at all. Careful study of the situation state by state has led competent investigators to hazard the statement that four-fifths of all the teachers in the United States have less than the minimum acceptable education and training. If then our whole educational effort is really to contribute to the public welfare, as it has been historically expected to do, it is perfectly clear that we must, as a nation, review the situation, come down out of the clouds, and erect schools which can, and which do, actually contribute to the public welfare. That means, as I see it, three major items.