creed or any political organization. It comes not thru wealth, nor is it the outcome of poverty. Truth and righteousness and the things that make up good citizenship may belong to the scholar or to the man of ignorance, but they are the common heritage of all our people, irrespective of creed, or race, or business undertaking. What the people of this country at this time need most is to learn the lesson that prejudices and indiscriminate charges and all the things that make up discord and discontent are working a greater harm to the people in all their various undertakings than can be overcome by the results which flow from such agitation.

But now to the subject. I think as I have stated, that the great advance which education has made in this country within the last decade is an advance along practical lines. An analysis of what has been accomplished by introducing into the school a knowledge of agriculture, it seems to me, will demonstrate that it has been of more benefit, especially in this great western country of ours, than any other undertaking which the educator has had in hand within a very long period of time. I was asked the other day how I accounted for the fact that in the West, and especially in the Mississippi Valley and on the Pacific Coast, there had been brought about such a marked difference in the condition of the agricultural interests. My reply was this: that, especially since the period of the last financial depression in 1893, there had been a great light seen by the farmers of this country, and that for that light the educators in our state institutions were to a very large degree responsible. That until there was taught in these institutions a scientific knowledge of farming, a knowledge of what the soil consisted of, of what the soil was best adaptable to, and the kindred things which are essential to successful farming, the farmer went at his work in a haphazard way, planting a crop here and a crop there, without any knowledge as to whether that particular crop was fitted for that particular soil, and without knowing whether there ought to be from time to time either changes in the crop planted or in the fertilizing of the soil; and that, thru this schooling, there had come, as an additional means of making the farmer more successful, the growing of a variety of crops.

I can remember, as all of you can, that in the early days, for instance in Kansas or in the Dakotas, if there was a disaster of some kind, there was absolute distress and poverty everywhere, because the farmer had not learned the wisdom of raising a variety of things instead of confining himself to a single thing.

I gave, as another reason why there was so much wealth being produced in the West, the fact that the schools had taught the science of metallurgy and had applied chemistry to the mining of the metals, so that ores which a few years ago were considered of little or no value, now, by the processes which have been applied thru a knowledge of the science of mining, gained in the schools, were made of very great value.

And so you might take up a great many other educational benefits which have come to the practical business side of life in such a way as to make a

great amount of wealth, where heretofore there had been a great amount of poverty. I cite another instance in connection with agriculture, and that is the perfecting of scientific and mechanical inventions which have made possible the bringing to the arid parts of our country the benefits of irrigation; where water, heretofore useless, has been applied to land, heretofore useless, until you have as a result very great and wonderful agricultural wealth.

Then take the question of electricity. Its application to the art of mechanics has been so very wonderful that it seems incredible to think that only as far back as 1876, when the Centennial was celebrated in Philadelphia, there was not an electric light in that great aggregation of buildings. And then there is the other and broader side, which is different from the side of mechanics, or of transportation or of agriculture, and that is that it is thru the schools that the young man and the young woman are best fitted to gain such a knowledge as is essential to the multiplicity of undertakings in the business. world.

I once heard President Wilson, of Princeton University, say that, if he were to sum up in a single sentence the great benefit of education as applied to commercial or financial undertakings, he would say that it gave the student what he termed "the traveled mind;" in other words, that it gave him a mind that enabled him to lay hold on what was being done in other parts of the world; that it gave him a mind that knew the geography of the world; that it gave him a mind that knew what was being done by peoples of other countries; that it gave him a knowledge of what India could produce; of what South America had; of what all the European countries were best fitted to do, and what, in the mechanical, the business, and the agricultural world, these people were doing; and that, as applied to the ordinary affairs of business, the affairs of the banker, the affairs of the merchant, the affairs of the manufacturer, is, to my mind (apart from the purely practical side of education) the best that it accomplishes.

For he who studies the conditions of this country and other countries today and knows the kind of competition in every line of business, whether it be banking, manufacturing, or other undertakings, must have been impressed with this one thing more than any other: that we have reached a period now where we cannot succeed unless we have the very best knowledge and the very✓ best methods to apply to the business in which we are engaged, because this is the age of competition; the age of competition upon the part of those who have brains and who, having those brains, know best how to apply them to the hand, so that the hand can accomplish the greatest results with the least physical labor. It is the age when every man must be alert both in body and in mind. It is the age when a man who is extravagant in the work which he does, falls far behind. It is the age when the profit in business is the doing of the most at the least cost, in the most scientific way. It is the age when the man who acquires a fortune, whether it be small or swollen, gets it because with the very least amount of cost he turns out the largest volume of product

and he finds his profit, not in an extravagant price charged for a single article, but in making that article so he can sell it at the lowest price, with the least profit, and sell the greatest number of articles at such a price that most people can buy them.

Now that is what makes fortunes; it is not trickery. In the great majority of instances it is the application of an acquired knowledge, coupled with thrift and industry, and the continual study of conditions here and conditions elsewhere. And, while here and there there are those who have acquired vast amounts of money thru their wits and not their brains, they are so few in number that they stand conspicuous in the world and are the objects of ridicule on the part of those who point them out and do not draw the distinction that they are the few instead of the many in this world of ours.

These people who talk so much of swollen fortunes are ignorant of this great world of business, here and elsewhere; for I tell you that were it not that honesty is the rule, that faith in our brother man prevails, that absolute confidence is everywhere shown in business, all this vast complexity of exchange of product, all this trusting one another, would go, and we would all be lost in a hopeless vortex and abyss of disaster.

I believe in the honesty of men and women. Only in such a belief apart from class prejudice and class hatred are you ever going to have a country and a government here worthy of your efforts as educators, and worthy to be given to the children that are under your charge. When you have taught a different doctrine, when you have instilled into the minds of the coming generation that the mass of men are dishonest and the mass of women encourage them in it, you have undermined the very foundations of this republic of which you boast.

What ought to be taught is to flay the dishonest man and drive him from public and private place. But, in teaching that, use the discriminating mind; know your facts, study well your case before you undertake to apply the lash, for it is better that ninety and nine guilty men should go unwhipped of justice than that a single honest man should be held up to public ridicule and scorn.

I am no pessimist, and in an optimistic view I have always believed; but I tell you that if the public mind of today, fostered by unthinking prejudice, fed upon class hatred, continues, and men do not get back to their second sober sense, this boasted prosperity which is ours and which exists, this doing of good upon the part of so many, must of necessity come to an end. We will find ourselves instead of an object of great pride and an object of great envy, a nation that will invite commiseration. There is no room in America for any class distinction or any class prejudice, and the sooner we learn it, and the sooner we practice it, and the sooner we are again true to the earlier traditions of the republic and the things that made this republic great, the sooner we will be freed from things which annoy and which fret and which destroy.

I am not here to say but that out of some of this agitation which we have seen has come much, and will come much, of public good; but I am here to say

that the agitator alone cannot make a country great, and that common-sense is never so necessary as when agitation is abroad in the land. It was once said by John Stuart Mills, who was as great a political economist as ever held a pen in hand or taught the doctrines of political economy, when to his attention was called the fact that the people of the United States were in a serious situation because of some great agitation which was going on, that he had noticed this agitation, that he had studied it, and that he had studied thruout the whole period of their national existence the people of the United States, and that, while it was disturbing, he had not lost faith in them, because as the result of that study he saw this: that many times the American people were upon the verge of doing a very foolish thing but always at the critical time the common-sense and the common honesty of the people asserted itself; the wrong thing was put down and the right thing prevailed.

And so, strong in that same belief, with full confidence in the American people's common honesty and common-sense, we can have full faith that even in the midst of great agitation, where discrimination is lacking, lacking both in respect of honesty and because of demagoguery, that in the end the thing will work itself out; the right will prevail and the wrong will be put down. But the strongest element in it all is the element controlled by the educator who in his keeping has the youth of the country, whose minds are open and receptive to the truth, whose minds, too, are alike receptive to error; who take their teaching unquestioned, almost, from you who educate them and for whose success in life, success in morals, and success in the discharge of their duties as citizens, you share the responsibility equally with the home, and if that responsibility is properly met I have no fear that in the future the history of this country will continue great and the achievements of this government glorious.

SHOULD THE SCHOOL ATTEMPT THE CIRCLE OF THE CHILD'S TRAINING OR ADDRESS ITSELF TO

THE SCHOOL SEGMENT?

LAWTON B. EVANS, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, AUGUSTA, GA.

Supposing that there is such a thing as a circle of the child's training, what are its segments? Evidently, the first and most significant is that portion of his life when, as infant or child, he is altogether under the influence of his home surroundings and of his young playmates. Unquestionably he receives impressions and directions physical, mental, and spiritual, that endure for life, some of which should endure and some of which should be modified or changed entirely.

It is safe to say that whatever influences a child is born with and lives under to the time he enters school will persist. and co-operative it will probably remain so. and antagonistic it will probably remain so.

If the home life is wholesome If the home life is unwholesome The fact that a child starts to

school when he is seven years of age does not alter or modify his home conditions. He enters the segment of another influence, but carries with him the modifying conditions that have controlled him in his primary years. Those modifying conditions continue to delight or perplex the teacher who is responsible for the next year of the child's training.

At one time in the history of education, when a child entered school, his purpose was to learn how to read, how to spell, how to write, how to calculate, and to acquire the simple facts of history and geography. It was all mechanics, withdrawn from life entirely, and his education was indeed a simple segment in his experience. When he left school he knew a good many things and was fairly capable of learning how to do a good many other things, but his school life had to be welded to his after-life by a fierce heat of adjustment, and often the welding was difficult and insecure.

Nowadays we are trying to think differently, and instead of regarding school life as a segment of life, it is rather a condition of life. It is all of life that is suited to a child of school years. At home he should have had all of life that he could understand as an infant, and now at school he undertakes all of life in the many phases that he can appreciate.

In this view there is no school segment, as separate from other segments in the circle of his years, but there is a school ingredient that enters with other ingredients to make up the man; there is a school influence which added to other influences makes up his character; there is a school element that combines with other elements to give tone and vigor to the man.

If we should adhere to the school segment, what would we do? We would teach a child to read, and then leave him to read anything or nothing. We would teach him to write a good hand, spell some long and hard words, parse or diagram intricate sentences, and leave him vacant as to how to put all these together in his own composition. We would teach him to solve puzzling problems for the sake of mental discipline, and leave him unrelated to the world of business, and he could recite many long and needless facts in history and geography. Indeed he would be a small encyclopaedia of knowledge, much of which he would forget, with the student habit so fixed upon him as to find himself out of adjustment with and rejected by the world of affairs, unless, as happens generally, his own good sense remains intact and he learns out of school the very things he needs to learn in school.

I really believe that the best thought of the profession urges the breaking away from that mechanical perfection in which pupils do startling things from memory and perform prodigies of work that the successful man complacently applauds as beyond him. Instead of this the thought of the hour is to have a child related in his work and enterprise to the affairs of the world, natural, mechanical, financial, governmental, spiritual, cultural.

This interest should be a child's interest and the problems that he solves should be a child's problem, but they sweep the whole field of life's experience, and, though the detail of a man's thought and power is impossible, yet the