The Ever-Present Interest in Geography is not confined alone to the grown-ups. Every youngster is plying questions about the peoples Frye's New Geography Book One. Just Issued. The Frye Geographies require little comment. Their reputation for authentic, vital geography The Frye New Geography is wholly new, in plan, in method, in illustrations. For the first GINN AND COMPANY EDITORIAL NOTES BY A. E. WINSHIP The permanent fund is now $200,000. JULY 7 TO 14. Portland certainly appreciated the honor and opportunity involved in having the meeting of the N. E. A. this year. In many essentials Portland made the best advance preparation that has welcomed the N. E. A. No city daily papers have ever done quite so well by the National Education Association in summer as did those of Portland. All in all, Portland has the best convention auditorium ever enjoyed by the N. E. A. Portland hotels won uniform and universal praise. No city ever entertained the National Education Association more heartily or efficiently than did Portland. The Oregonian, one of America's really great daily papers, broke all records in skilful, reliable, non-sensational, adequate attention to the Association before and during the meeting. Portland decorations were a "riot of color" even more dazzling than Salt Lake City's brilliant illumination in 1913. The Little Red Schoolhouse booths for information centres of various kinds, were highly attractive. It was a "catchy" idea, as it was unique. Advanced registrations from afar greater than ever before. were vastly Oregon and Washington enrolled nobly. Idaho had reason to be proud of the quantity and quality of her representation. Colorado educators honored themselves greatly by their attendance and by their educational devotion. Montana, Idaho and Utah enrolled a larger percentage of their teachers than any states as far removed from the place of meeting have ever done. The National Education Association owns $1500 of Liberty Loan Bonds. An unusual number of "big" men and women were in attendance tempted some of them by good fees at University Summer Schools in Oregon and Washing It was interesting to have a schoolmaster-Governor -Withycombe to welcome the teachers. Oregon has never had a more efficient or honorable governor than now. He honors his profession as well as his party. Secretary D. W. Springer was on the job with adequate office force from June 21. His convention chief assistant, J. W. Searson of Kansas Agricultural College, arrived June 26. Headquarters were admirably managed. Everything conspired to success. There were six ex-presidents of the N. E. A. at Portland; O. T. Corson, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, Carroll G. Pearse, David Starr Jordan, D. B. Johnson and J. Y. Joyner. James A. Barr was back at his old tricks of efficiency expert, socially and professionally, with the California headquarters as his throne. The appearance of Dr. David Starr Jordan upon the program was as gratifying as it was unexpected. Arthur H. Chamberlain of California played a vital part on the program and in the counsels. S. W. Straus of New York City was one of the great attractions at Portland as he was at New York a year ago. George E. Farrell of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., was one of the most popular, vital, inspirational men at Portland. The topics for the general session were very much alive when the program was made, but they were a trifle stale when delivered. The world is moving very fast in these times. It was vexatious that up to the very last minute mischief-makers started rumors that the meeting was to be called off. A surprisingly large number of officers of departments were in attendance, and department meetings were unusually successful. No man was even mentioned as president for 1918. Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, state superintendent of Colorado, was the favorite from the start. Mrs. Josephine Corliss Preston, state superintendent of Washington, was a favorite, but she persistently refused to allow her name to be used. Miss Susan M. Dorsey, assistant superintendent of Los Angeles, was persistently urged to enter the race, but she as persistently refused. Miss Charl Williams, Memphis, Tennessee, county superintendent of Shelby county, was popular in the extreme, but she would not consent to allow her friends to make a campaign in her interest. The receptions to Mrs. Ella Flagg Young were in no wise merely local. En route it was quite the thing for the women of a city to come to the train and bring flowers and greetings to the most famous woman educator in the world. Edward O. Sisson broke all records in variations. He was variously scheduled as commissioner of education, as he was when the first program was printed, as professor of Reed College, which he was when the second program was printed, as president of the University of Montana, which he was when introduced. Katherine Devereux Blake, New York principal, was never more professionally efficient or more personally attractive than at the Portland meeting, even if she did have to do a lot of explaining why she made a mistake in establishing a literary bureau to boost Miss Grace C. Strachan for the presidency some weeks after she had become Mrs. Forsythe secretly. The grade teachers of Portland are very much alive. The board of managers of the Portland Grade Teachers' Association have voted to give $200 to the Red Cross. The money is a part of the fund raised by the patriotic committee at a patriotic bargain sale. The association will undertake the equipment of one army base hospital under the direction of the Red Cross. Public school music got a big boost at Portland. No phase of education fared better. A. J. Gantvoort of Cincinnati, A. C. Barker of Oakland, Miss Kathryn E. Stone of Los Angeles, W. H. Boyer of Portland, were all ardent Miss Laura J. Soper of St. Louis, boosters for credit music fully and highly, whether achieved in school or out. One could but pity the pro-Germans whenever and wherever they tried to assert themselves. Patriotic times are not conducive to unpatriotic expressions. PLUMMER AND ALDERMAN. Of course every one knows that Portland would never have been thought of as a meeting place of the N. E. A. but for O. M. Plummer and L. R. Alderman. The association went there almost literally to please those two eminently popular educational leaders, but now that it is over we all realize that Plummer and Alderman invited us there to please the teachers of America and not to please themselves. No other man who has never been a teacher has ever had any such place in the hearts of educators as has Mr. Plummer. No other member of a city board of education, as such, has ever done as much for the N. E. A. For the first time, ever, a gift, a gift of $6,000, has come to the N. E. A. for the first great study of a vital educational problem, and this is directly due to Mr. Plummer, president of the Department of Administration, which had been little better than a joke until Mr. Plummer took hold of it with his characteristic energy, broad educational vision, and high professional devotion. For three years it has had a program that has matched any program of a general session of the N. E. A., and his annual banquet is a feature without a parallel. What Plummer has done administratively Alderman has done pedagogically. No one address in several years has excelled in popularity or in professional progress his memorable address in the Department of Superintendence at Philadelphia, which at once made him a national figure on association programs. ATTENDANCE. The enrolment was a disappointment though there had been a suspicion that it might slump because of the war. It was about the same as at Salt Lake City. But it will look larger in the report because there will be many enrolled under the Plummer Act, as it were. The feeling was intensified at Portland that the winter meeting is the real thing in the N. E. A. TREASURER'S REPORT. Thomas E. Finegan, treasurer of the N. E. A., makes an interesting report for the New York meeting. The advance enrolment for New York city was $24,736, for New York state $2,666, a total of $27,402. The enrolment at New York, mostly out of the state and city, $8,420. From enrolment at Kansas City meeting of the Department of Superintendence, $5,152. From the secretary's office for enrollment, $360: For membership dues, $11,018. From sale of back volumes and reports and magazines, $1,072.03. Interest on permanent fund, $7,756. Disbursements: The report of the committee on re-organization of the association was accepted and laid on the table for a year in accordance with the constitutional requirement. The principal changes proposed by the committee provided: For the election of delegates to the National conventions from regularly organized state associations, the number of delegates to be fixed on a population basis; for automatic membership in the N. E. A. to all members in the state associations, and for limitation to membership in the association to persons engaged in the profession of teaching, exclusively. The proposed plan would place the association on a basis similar to that of the National Bar Association, the National Medical Association and other associations composed of professional people. Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed; in it more of want supplied, more of disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest; even the dram-maker and dram-seller will have glided into other occupations and stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness.-Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1842, to which attention has been called by United States Senator Henry L. Myers of Montana, MRS. ELLA FLAGG YOUNG. By far the most important and impressive person in Portland was Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, the only woman who has ever been the superintendent of a large city, who has ever had a salary of $10,000 in edycational service, and the only woman who has ever been president of the National Education Association. At banquets, at all social functions, and on all programs Mrs. Young was honor guest and commanding mind. THE PROGRAM WEAKNESS. The echoes from the Portland meeting are not pleasant. Practically no one from Teachers College, Columbia, New York University, School of Education of Chicago University, Clark University, Harvard, University of Illinois, or any other department of education of the leading universities east of the Rocky Mountains, or from Washington, D. C., was in evidence. As compared with a winter meeting it is a startling contrast. Indeed, any big state meeting and many county meetings have more attractive programs than some of the general sessions. The men and women, with a few rare exceptions, who are in universal demand on educational platforms, were not on the Portland general program. League of Teachers' Associations, sent through Miss McGregor, president of the Portland Grade Teachers' Association, the following message to the affiliated members: "My dear Miss McGregor: The convention of the League of Teachers' Associations has been called off. One of the chief regrets in taking this action was the disappointment we knew the Portland teachers would feel. I know you have already gone to considerable trouble preparing for our reception and planning to make our visit to Portland one of pleasure and profit. But when we found so few clubs were to be repre ROBERT J. ALEY President N. E. A. 1917 The war, There were reasons for this, of course. the distance from centres and other causes handicapped the Portland meeting. The Pacific coast talent helped out, but much of the best talent of the coast was not in action. The summer program must be maintained at concert pitch. The association cannot stand any weakening of the summer program. At any cost the program must be kept up. At New York and at Asbury Park, where the programs were big anyway, the executive committees felt justified in paying a large sum for a special speaker, but at Portland where it was greatly needed it seemed unwise to make any investment. ALL-STATES RECEPTION. A feature started at Portland should be permanent. From 4 to 7 o'clock, out at Washington Park, each state had headquarters and held a reception so that friends from everywhere could meet friends from anywhere. It was a brilliant success. The efficiency of the high school boys as guides, informationists and aids without tips was uniformly appreciated. Anna Laura Force of Denver honored her name by what she said the way she said it. Miss Julia C. Lathrop of the Children's Bureau at Washington has never been as prominent as at Portland and no one was of greater service to American youth. The absence of some men and women brought other men and women into prominence. Superintendent L. H. Minkel of Fort Dodge, Iowa, stepped into prominence in the business meeting. THE NATIONAL LEAGUE. Miss Frances E. Harden, president of the National sented and also learned that the chairmen of several of the most important committees could not be present, we thought it wiser to call off the convention than to attempt to hold it and have it a failure. "We know this action will be a keen disappointment to the Portland club, which has already done so much in preparing for our reception and also to the other nearby clubs, but, all things considered, it seemed the wisest thing to do. Please tell your league committee how much we appreciate what has been done and the regret we feel in disappointing you. "Very sincerely yours, PRESIDENT VAN HISE. President Charles R. Van Hise, University of Wisconsin, was a new factor in the N. E. A. He has rarely attended either the summer or winter meeting and his decision to be at Portland was made after the program was practically complete, but even then he was in the game more than any one with the exception of Mrs. Ella Flagg Young. Sunday evening Dr. Van Hise spoke at the First Presbyterian Church on "The World Food Problem"; Monday noon at the Chamber of Commerce on "The Governmental Regulation of Industry in War Time"; Monday afternoon at the general session of the National Education Association on "Food Conservation"; Tuesday at the meeting of the Higher Education Association on "The University and the War"; and Wednesday at the Ad Club luncheon on "Food Conservation." He also made a few other unassigned addresses. This was certainly a lively beginning. THE AUDITORIUM. Dr. Carroll G. Pearse, Milwaukee, said: "Portland has the best auditorium in which the National Education Association has met for years. It is not a great, big barn in which you can hear nothing that is said as some of the auditoriums in which we have met have been. It is just the right size. You can hear every word of a good speaker. I think Portland has outdone herself in the matter of decorating the streets, hotels and business houses. Every visitor coming to the city is impressed at once with the fact that Portland is taking this convention seriously. Portland is a good city in which to hold this convention and the educators of the nation feel at home here." 50,000 PEONY BLOSSOMS. A striking feature of Educational Sunday was the pilgrimage to the famous Peony Farm of Howard Evarts Weed. Mr. Weed is by profession a landscape architect, and he has demonstrated brilliantly on the twenty-five acres on Pine Crest which crowns the lovely Canyon drive from Portland. Only those who have been there have any conception of the prismatic beauty of 50,000 blossoms on 8,500 plants of 147 varieties of peonies, most of which are delicately fragrant, all of which are artistic scientific creations of matchless hues, tints and tones. We first knew Mr. Weed when he was at the State Agricultural College of Mississippi, where he was professor of entomotomy, and he has in his den, in the most rustic of cottages, thousands of specimens of bugs of various kinds which he has toted about for the fourteen years that he divided between the Belmont place on Long Island, which he helped to create as landscape architect, and Chicago, where he was a cemeterian. He is the author of "Modern Park Cemeteries” (145 pages), the only textbook on the science and art of landscaping the green mounds, granite shafts and marble decorations of the resting-place of those who thus distribute the remnant of that which cannot be taken to the Eternal City Beautiful, where traditional golden. streets challenge even the master art of the latest architectural landscape designs of earth. In five years he has created this floral paradise where one variety of dazzling beauty succeeds another from season to season for the delight of the multitude that pilgrimages here Sunday after Sunday; but not all enjoy the strawberries and cream with which the educators regaled themselves in the shade of the towering pines which were created by an artist more than human. EXCEEDING THE SPEED LIMIT. Portland has the reputation of being the most circumspect of Pacific cities. She is the most orthodox in religion, the most strenuously moral-externally at least, the most correct as to standards of art and architecture, the most classic in her cultural ideals, with the only daily paper that is thoroughly national in tone and spirit in the Pacific Northwest. But we felt that she carried her conservatism a little beyond the limits of hospitality when she tracked us with a motorist and haled our host into court at 2 P. M. the next day for exceeding the speed limit. "Speed limit" on the Columbia River Highway would be a walk in Spokane, Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. "Safety First" we advise for educationists and others when in the City of Roses. "Speed Limit" means a low limit of speed for a car that really ached to go three times the "limit." RED CROSS BARBERS. For one day all the barber establishments in Portland contributed all receipts to the Red Cross. Landlords gave the rent for the day, all artists of shears and razors, of the massage and shampoos, of manicuring, shining and brooming turned over to the Red Cross girl guard all charges and tips. And such charges!! There was no "speed limit" for either price or tip. For once tonsorial necessity was a luxurious lark. The receipts for the day were near $1,000 for the comfort of the boys from the trenches. PORTLAND SCHOOLS. Thousands of teachers fully appreciate that Portland has many features in her schools that are the best in America., Ex-President Carroll G. Pearse was the one who rung out a clarion note when in a special message to the association, he called attention to the fact that the teachers had the opportunity of a life time in seeing and studying phases of school work that are not to be seen elsewhere in the world. We have been saying this to our readers for three years, and we have said it to a million teachers on the platform, and it was with great pride that we knew that the teachers were seeing for themselves. It is worth all that it cost Portland to entertain the N. E. A., to have her schools praised in every state in the union the coming year. "CANNING THE KAISER." BY UPTON SINCLAIR Tune: "Marching Through Georgia." [The great success of the week was the singing of Upton Sinclair's "Canning the Kaiser," under the inspirational leadership of A. J. Gandvoort of Cincinnati.] The explanatory news dispatch and the words of "Canning the Kaiser" follow: - News dispatch-London, June 30.-The newspapers declare today that the American soldiers and marines have already found a slogan, which is, "Can the Kaiser!" The British are much puzzled by the ability of the Americans to invent new slang, and the papers explain that the word 'can" is used in the sense of hermetically sealing the Kaiser to prevent his further activity. Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song, Sing it with a spirit that will move the world along, Sing it as we need to sing it, half a million strongWhile we are canning the Kaiser. |