equipment and time for this new phase of music work which has been so successful through the powerful initiative of some of the leaders amongst music supervisors.

In the high schools provide more amply for full four-year course in music, along with other vocational and cultural lines; provide for the teaching

of the orchestral instruments to the talented students; place such serious music work upon the same basis of accredited work as other subjects. Why should the high school teach millinery, bookkeeping, stenography, carpentry, prepare for business, for college, etc., etc., and yet let the musically talented boys and girls suffer so that if they pursue their music work they do so at risk of health, of graduation, and give no preparation for their life work? Why should the wonderful business of music, amounting to more than six hundred millions per year, be left to hap-hazard, while these other things, so much smaller in money content, so incomparably lower in spiritual and intellectual stimulus, be supported by public funds?

There is no reason, except that boards of education, the general public, and the ordinary educator have not seen the matter in its true aspects. Therefore, let us all plead for a very great enlargement of opportunity in the high school, for credit in music work, for at least an equal place with the common ordinary utilitarian subjects.

Finally let me say that we must achieve that great vision and breadth of view where we see that school is not apart from life, but is life itself; that the schools do not fit for life, but are the life of the children entrusted to their care. The great art of living does not only mean the securing the wherewithal to live, but finding the best way of living, of spending that greater part of time which has practically nothing to do with the getting of the wherewithal, but with spending, living, thinking, aspiring, feeling, wisely, as a citizen, a part of the community, bearing our share of the joys and burdens of the greater social and civic life, and in this greater view music will always be found to bear a large and a vital part. Therefore let us seek and obtain an enlargement along every line of musical activity, in time allotment, in equipment, in credit, and in general recognition. Let us at all times remember that the music work is a part of life, not merely a preparation for life; that our subject is as wide as the entire horizon, as from the cradle to the grave, as high as heaven itself, as deep as the greatest unsaid things in the heart of humanity, as utilitarian as any subject can be, more highly idealistic than any other, and in its relations to all other vital subjects wider in its appeal, stronger in its correlations, and far more potent in its influence. Therefore enlargement at every possible point of departure is a paramount necessity.

-Madison Cawein.

IN FRANCE

BY JOHN H. FINLEY

New York State Commissioner of Education

[From The Outlook.]

As it was a Sunday and there were no schools in session, I was driven to see, on a hill a few miles distant, a monument, the tribute of a member of Napoleon's staff to his chief. It represented the awakening of the Emperor from his long sleep, a fantastic bronze which must evoke the thought in many a visitor as to what the Emperor would say if only he could actually wake and see what is going fiercely on near his old Waterloo.

But there proved to be something on the way to the hill-top grove that was to me of greater interest than any memorial of Napoleon, and of more promise to France than his awakening. It was a village school, the nearest approach to our boasted and loved little red schoolhouse, for there are no country schools in France. At any rate, in all my travels of twenty-five hundred miles I did not see

a counterpart of our little lone open-country frame. hut for which I am always looking when I travel in my own state. The country schools in France are in hamlets or villages, huddled against a hill or by some stream, usually around a château or a towering church, where the peasants gathered for shelter and protection and sociability by night in earlier times, however far they traveled to cultivate their fields by day.

The schoolmaster was sitting in front of his schoolhouse, his wife at his side, resting in the afternoon of his holiday, for the master lives in his school, and the children are but his larger family. So far as my observation went, the school is generally the schoolmaster's home, and his busi ness is quite as seriously important to him as that of the Minister of Public Instruction or of the Prefect is to him. This one room was a microcosm of France, and here her wealth was represented in specimens and her history remembered in pictures and in legends upon the walls. What

impressed me most was the care with which the master had prepared for his next week's work. There, in a book most scrupulously kept, was the whole program, showing what he intended to cover during the next few days in morals, in civics, in history, in arithmetic, etc. There is nominally compulsory attendance up to the age of thirteen, but there is no such central insistence as here. In looking over the records I noticed that some days were clear of absent marks, while other columns were cloudy with them. I asked the reasons, and learned that the fair days in the record were rainy days outside, when all the children could be in the school, and that the cloudy days in the book were fair days outside when some had to be in the fields. Which reminds me of the observation of a Sister of Charity, who said: "We cannot pray for God's beautiful moonlight nights, since they are the best nights for the murderous air raids."

The school yard was planted in vegetables, but they had not completely crowded out the roses, some of which were paying their fragrant summer homage to the women of France. And out somewhere in the edge of the village there was a large tract which the children were cultivating as a school for the use of the community or the state in its possible hunger.

This village was not far from where grapes are grown of which the most famous wines of France

have in the past been made, but in the little school there was very conspicuous advice in posters concerning the ill effects of alcohol.

It is such a schoolmaster as this sturdy man (who had been at the front and had come back to his duties again) who becomes, especially in such times as these, a representative of the government for giving official information or making appeal to the people in matters of common concern, such as the gathering of gold, the subscriptions for such loans as our Liberty Loan, the care of fields, protection against pests, provision for orphans, and so on. And sometimes, I suspect, he is also the mayor of the community; at least I found one village school in the mairie, where I had gone to find the parish records, and the mayor-schoolmaster was teaching the little group of boys. That was several years ago, and I suppose the boys in their black smocks are all now on their way to the front, if not actually there in their uniforms.

I have been wishing that the state of New York could be redistricted so that every school might be, when it is physically possible, the natural social, industrial, and religious community centre. But happily the legislation of the last winter, known as the Rural School Bill, is a long step in the direction of giving the country children the advantages of those who live in the more populous centres, with all the advantages of the other, of nature's teaching through her curriculum, the seasons' round.

IN COLORADO

Colorado can go to greater depths and rise to greater heights in the same length of time than any other state in the union.

She can have more deathly strikes than any other state, and then claim admiration for her sublime enforcement of law and order.

In 1896 I was a member of the Republican National Convention when her United States Senator, Henry M. Teller, after one of the greatest addresses to which I have ever listened, led the delegations of Colorado, Idaho and Utah out of the Convention, and those states out of the Union. In 1898 I was publicly paid ninety-six silver dollars and a five dollar gold-piece for a mencement address, and very soon thereafter Colorado was boasting of her loyalty to the Republican party.

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Thus has it ever been. In May, 1917, the Denver Board of Education dethroned Superintendent Carlos M. Cole and elected somebody-I have forgotten the name-in his place. A few days after

wards the citizens elected to the Board of Education men to reseat Mr. Cole, and as soon as possible "recalled" to private life the men who had long been honored with the leadership of the Board.

The president of the School of Mines was retired, the man who succeeded him was soon retired, and the original retired president was royally recalled.

That is Colorado, the Colorado I have known, that has given me chills and thrills for forty-two

years.

Just now, barring Colorado College, it is all thrills. Of Gunnison we have recently written, the highest normal school in the world, and the biggest little school.

It is at Greeley that one gets the glow of hope and promise now. Everyone knows of Greeley, of the Colorado State Teachers' College, of the college made famous by Dr. Z. X. Snyder, who had the broadest vision of science and pedagogy combined that America has ever known.

"After Snyder what?" was often asked during the years of his fatal illness, and with more emphasis in the year following his death.

No man ever walked directly into greater danger than did John Grant Crabbe of Kentucky, and the first year must have had more chills than thrills, but all is well that ends well.

The legislature has never done as much for Greeley since it was really a-going as it has done this year. The summer session had no rival between the seas, in relative enrollment, and none could excel it in zeal, and to Dr. Crabbe's national acquaintance and influence in no small measure was due the great honor that came to Colorado in the election of Mrs. Bradford to the presidency of the National Education Association.

But above all else, to our thinking, is the glory of the Opportunity School which Carlos M. Cole

established in Denver a year ago, and which Miss Emily Griffith has in one year made famous.

It would be absurd to write of Colorado and of Denver and not call attention to the fact that

Judge Ben B. Lindsey, who made Denver street boys famous, and who was fought most

viciously for several years because he told the truth about Denver, is now having a perfectly peaceful reign as Juvenile Court judge. as Juvenile Court judge. He was re-elected without opposition and goes where he pleases and lectures when he pleases and pleases everyone whether he stays or goes.

The Civil War disrupted the public school system of the South, and in large territories there were no schools for years afterward. Europe poured many of her illiterates into the stream of foreign immigration to this country. The negroes were for a time denied educational advantages. Lack of child labor laws and compulsory school attendance laws contributed to the making of illiterates. Strange as it may seem, some were made in the schools, for in certain sections children who attended school learned to read and spell and "cipher" without ever being taught to write. Writing constitutes literacy, according to the government standard, being based on the assumption that none can write unless he can also read.

In various ways there were gathered into this country in 1910 five and a half million illiterates. Were these

they told of the shame and burden of illiteracy, and expressed a burning desire to read and write. Their appeal was answered by opening at night the doors of the schools all over the country, where volunteer teachers not only greeted them with welcoming smiles, but went out after them and

When the census takers were taking the list of illiterates in 1910, the "moonlight school," as a remedy for adult illiteracy, was being evolved. In 1911, the experiment was tried first in all of the schools of Rowan, one of the mountain counties of Kentucky. None is better prepared to witness the result of that experiment than the United States Bureau of Education, which heralded to the world its success in a bulletin entitled: "Illiteracy in the United States and an Experiment for its Elimination."

The "moonlight school" did not spring out of a theory, it grew out of a human need. It was established through the appeal of the illiterates themselves. When it started, it was assured of the patronage of three-the mother, whose daughter "had gone out West"; the middle-aged man, who "would give twenty years of his life if he could read and write"; and the boy, who would "forget his ballads before anybody come along to set 'em down." These spoke for the world of illiterate mothers and men and song-inspired lads, when

brought them in. A few were expected, but twelve hundred came. Not all of these were illiterates. Some were semi-illiterates and some were half-educated folk, desiring better things. They learned amazinglyfirst to write their names, of course. This was easy of accomplishment. It was usually learned the first evening. Then to write their own letters and to read the Bible and the newspaper seemed their chief aspirations.

They achieved these so quickly that it seemed almost miraculous. When a woman in Rowan County wrote me her first letter, after but two weeks' instruction and practice, I thought it remarkable; but so many have written since then, after but six or seven evenings in school, that her achievement now seems insignificant. They did not merely read, they devoured books. In three sessions, with active campaigning and lessons given at home to such as would not or could not come, eleven hundred illiterates were taught to read and write. The remaining few in the county, twentythree in number, were catalogued. When the sick, the blind, the imbeciles and epileptics were deducted, only six who had the capacity for learning were left-four who had stubbornly refused to learn and two who had moved in as the session closed. But, even this pioneer record, once so proudly told, seems inconsequential now; for another mountain county has surpassed it by teaching fourteen hundred in two sessions, and in the lowlands one teacher, single-handed, redeemed in one session seventy-five!

The Kentucky Legislature in 1914 created an Illiteracy Commission to extend the "moonlight schools" to every section of the state. It was the first commission on illiteracy in the world. "No illiteracy in Kentucky in 1920," said this Commission. One state after another quickly caught the vision. Alabama sounded a state-wide slogan: "Illiteracy in Alabama-let's remove it." Oklahoma, with the presumption of youth, said: "No illiteracy in Oklahoma in 1918"; North Carolina said: "Altogether for the elimination of illiteracy from North Carolina"; Mississippi said: "Illiteracy in Mississippi-blot it out"; New Mexico said:

"Illiteracy in New Mexico Must Go"; Iowa, with her minimum of illiteracy, began to teach Swedes in her rural districts; Maryland to teach illiterate fishermen on her coasts; California to teach illiterate immigrants; and twenty-two states to teach some, with the ultimate purpose of teaching all.

The mission of the "moonlight school" is to redeem illiterates. It receives the semi-illiterates and others more advanced, but for illiterates it reaches out. If they do not come to the "moonlight school," it goes to them, and they are taught at home by the volunteer teacher or some volunter assistant. But, usually, they come, and come in overwhelming numbers, with an eagerness in their hearts and a determination in their eyes that know no failure. Their tragic earnestness has sent many a gay and thoughtless teacher into the shadow of the schoolhouse to hide the tears that came at scenes so pathetic-gray-haired men and women flushed of face in their eagerness to spell the word and excel, shouts of exultation over the feat of writing a name, proud emphasis on every word of a sentence read.

Illiteracy in this country is more a rural than an urban problem, the proportion in rural sections being double that of the urban. How long it will be until the "moonlight school," with its force of volunteer teachers, can reach and teach the millions, and the city night schools, when provision is made for this class, can redeem the urban illiterates, none can forecast. It seems, at first thought, a stupendous task; but it is the easiest, as well as the most urgent, of the problems that this nation has to solve. Thousands of volunteers are recruiting the army of "moonlight school" teachers, and more and more schools are opening at night each year. The census of 1920 will reveal an appreciable reduction in illiteracy in these states where "moonlight schools" are operating; and the census of 1930, at least, should find that the army of illiterates in the United States had melted away. When it finds this, it will, also, find a new and powerful force promoting schools, building roads, increasing Sunday-school and church attendance, building up trade and swelling the avenues of religious, civic and commercial enterprise.

The schools need these men and women. They need them to co-operate. "Ignorance cannot cooperate," it is said, and co-operation is the life of

public education. The Sunday schools and churches need these people to attend and support them, to work and worship; the banks need the money that they have hoarded in cupboards or buried in the ground; the newspapers need them as readers, the book publishers need them as patrons and Uncle Sam needs them to patronize his stamp-stores, the post-offices.

But more by far than all the needs of school and church and trade, these men and women need and deserve, for their own sake, to be redeemed. They are barred from life's best things-good books, from letters and from intelligent voting. They are also barred from the reading of God's promises. They are enslaved in a land where Liberty is the boast and pride.

Mrs. Stewart has received many letters from those who have been benefited by the "moonlight schools." She says: "I value these letters more. than a fashionable woman would value her jewels."

One woman of Carrollton, Ky., writes thanking the founder of the "moonlight schools." "I have been going seven nights, and have learned to read and write," says her letter. "I am forty-three years old and have written my first letter to my mother, the next to you."

Another adult pupil, from Creekmore, Ky., writes: "I can do something this year I could not do last, and that is write a letter."

A resident of Rocky Hill, Ky., age fifty-three, writes: "We are having a 'moonlight school' here. school; but I have learned them all, and now I I didn't know all the alphabet when I started to

can read and write a little. I read the first book most through, and I would be glad to have the second. I didn't have a chance to go to school the grandest thing in the world! I am going to when I was a boy. I think the 'moonlight school' keep up my studies until I can read the Bible for myself, and this is my first letter that I have been able to write."

A Kentucky woman writes from Burkesville: "I am thirty-eight years old and I could neither read nor write until I went to the 'moonlight school.' I have had fourteen lessons, and can read my Bible and enjoy it."

These are samples of many others, all expressing genuine gratitude for the uplift the movement has given to them, and for the new and wider horizon it has brought into their lives.-The Christian Herald.

OSCAR H. BENSON

BY A. E. WINSHIP

It is a joy to have known Oscar H. Benson for a quarter of a century. To tell the story of Oscar H. Benson as I have known him links the notable rural leadership of Benson, Otis E. Hall, Cap E. Miller, P. G. Holden and Jessie Field.

In luxurious offices in New York City I said to an educator of my age: "It is a great thing to have known personally all the educational leaders like Henry Barnard, John D. Philbrick and Mark Hopkins, as I have known them."

"That is nothing," he replied. "I knew them, but you know the men of today."

More and more do I appreciate how much it

OSCAR H. BENSON

has meant to know the men and the women who are making educational history now.

Today Oscar H. Benson is one of the brainiest, bravest, broadest men in educational and patriotic service. He is almost the only man in educational official life who has had the country child always in mind. He has never played politics, has never flirted with opportunities for fame, has never known there were universities or normal schools, big interests or little politicians. He has fought, bled, and triumphed for country children, and is today one of the most famous and useful educators, now or ever, in the United States. Congress provides his Bureau of States Relations of the Department of Agriculture two or three times as much without a fight as it does the United States Bureau of Education.

But to the personal element. Nearly thirty years ago Cap Miller heard me lecture at Iowa Teachers College. Something then said was an inspiration to him, and when, a year later, he was superintendent of Keokuk County, he arranged for me a summer lecture tour with a lot of educational Chautauquas.

One of those appointments was in a village where and when the entire Chautauqua grounds were under four feet of water. Campers were drowned out and everything was discouraging. Although I lectured somewhere in the village I protested that I would take nothing for my ser

vices because the village teacher, a country lad, was at a great loss, but he insisted upon paying the fee. A few years later Jessie Field, then superintendent of Page County, wrote me to be sure to see the work in Wright County, the best in Iowa. I was not likely to be invited to lecture there, as I had drifted out of Iowa lecturing, but I planned to go regardless of cost.

Otis E. Hall, now the great country leader of Kansas, with national fame as a lecturer and author, was then superintendent of Crawford County, Indiana, with neither fame nor fortune. In his home one evening his bride of a few months said: "Why cannot Otis sometime be like Mr. Miller, Mr. Kern, Miss Field, of whom you say so much?"

"He can if he will pay the price."

It was then arranged that he should go with me two weeks later to Wright County and Page County, Iowa.

The minute we reached Wright County I recognized the country lad whose Chautauqua was washed out a few years before. Hall and I "did" Wright County thoroughly in two days, and few bits of publicity in "Looking About" in the Journal of Education have been as attractive or effective as the write-up of Benson's work in Wright County.

From there Otis Hall and I went to Page County, where we joined the famous educational excursion of the state superintendents of the South, and those men nationalized Hall and he became the chief demonstrator and expounder of consolidation.

At that time the educational machinery of Iowa was compactly organized against the anti-conventionals, of whom Miller, Benson, and Jessie Field were the worst examples. But they had one uncompromising champion, and my loyalty to them, which cost me the sarcastic opposition of men whose names I have altogether forgotten, gave me the ardent friendship of P. G. Holden, a nobler

man than whom I have never known.

James B. Morrow of Washington, in a copyrighted article in the New York Times, tells a chapter in Benson's life of which I had not known.

Upon the death of his father, P. C. Benson, Oscar and his mother took charge of the fruit and vegetable farm of eighty acres at Delhi. One day he shipped fifty-eight crates of blackberries to a commission merchant in Chicago. The next morning he received a telegram from the consignee: "Berries in bad condition and market glutted. Send dollar and half for charges."

Oscar's reply telegram said: "Return berries. Rush." In the early afternoon he received this telegram: "Wine maker just called. Offers forty

cents a case."

Oscar replied: "Offer rejected; ship berries by express first train."

Later consignee telegraphed: "Wine-maker raises price to seventy-five cents case."

Oscar replied: "Offer accepted," and he was $43 in instead of $1.50 out.

O. H. Benson has always dared to stand for righteousness, has always delivered good goods, has always insisted that country people be given a square deal.