many other helpful things, than just to walk a little every day, rain or shine. With proper clothing, and especially, thick and sensibly made shoes, the power to increase the stunt will speedily come. It is a calamity to be too near one's place of business to get this necessary exercise. Fortunate was Frances Willard in being forced to walk miles and miles "for lack of the prerequisite nickel," during the strenuous times in her early temperance work. Fortunate is the shop worker of today who places the nickel as of higher value than a bit of shoe leather. His philosophy may seem to the on-looker more akin to parsimony, but in the end his wisdom will be proved through a gain in health by the out-door exercise. Walking is one of the most sociable of exercises. Golf diverts attention to the game. Automobiling, skating, rowing, riding, driving, each of these has its diversions of varying de grees, its quality of exacting from its devotee a toll that robs companionship of a bit of its charm. The pedestrian is utterly oblivious to any mechanism in his art. Unlike the centipede in the story, which was undone when someone asked it which leg went first in its locomotion, the man who walks never thinks about the process; never does it surround him with a din which makes conversation almost impossible. And so, if you would see the world, the great world which lies within a limited radius, do not despise Bayard Taylor's method. If you want to study nature, no other method can compare with it. If human nature is of interest, twothirds of its most interesting phases on the street are missed by the one who does not go on foot. A brisk walk is a better tonic than any which the doctor can give; a leisurely one may bring more pleasure than a record-breaking ride across the continent. AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION Cambridge, June 29 to July 3. BY ETTA AUSTIN MCDONALD The meet The oldest body of American teachers held its eighty-fifth annual gathering this year in surroundings of peculiar distinction. ings were in the new and magnificent buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at This conCambridge, from June 29 to July 3. vention of the American Institute of Instruction was this year a joint conference of school administrators and teachers under the auspices of the Massachusetts Board of Education. The American Institute still covers New England. It draws its membership from that section, but it was not without its attendance of distinguished outsiders, among them Dr. Frank E. Spaulding, superintendent at Cleveland, and P. W. Horn, superintendent of schools Houston, Texas, the latter figuring as one of the most interesting speakers. at The five days were filled with an excellent program, carried out under the direction of President Carlos B. Ellis, principal of the The Springfield High School of Commerce. best talent in New England was on the program, and each day had a general topic which was thoroughly threshed out. The topics of Friday The topics of Friday and Tuesday, "Administration and Supervision of Schools" and "Physical Education," had less drawing power than the vital and timely subjects of Saturday and Monday. "Standard Measurements and Tests" were discussed on Saturday, the feature of the day being the thoughtful and exhaustive treatment of the subject in an address by Dr. Milo B. Hillegas, commissioner of education for Vermont. The discussion developed the fact that many of the superintendents present were not in sympathy with a too mechanical devotion to measurements and tests. The Monday topic, "Junior High Schools," was of compelling interest, the leading address being by Dr. Thomas H. Briggs of the New York Teachers College. Despite the intense heat and the absence of several speakers, the morning and afternoon sessions proved the most interesting of the week. Election on Monday resulted in the choice of the following new officers for the coming year: President, Wallace E. Mason, principal of the Keene, N. H., Normal School; Vice-President, J. Asbury Pitman, principal of the Salem Normal School; secretary, John J. Mahoney, principal of the Lowell Normal School. Charles S. Clark, superintendent of schools at Somerville, was re-elected treasurer, and W. D. Parkinson, superintendent of schools at Waltham, was reelected assistant treasurer. Agreeable features of the convention were the reception to delegates in the great court by the Corporation and Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday, and the banquet which followed, which was the occasion of some good speeches, none of which exceeded the time limit, and at which James P. Munroe, secretary of the Corporation, was the toastmaster, a BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE* This is a genuinely interesting book. There is a fascinating naturalness about it, an everyday familiarity without any lack of literary attractiveness. The aim of the book is made clear in the title, "Bill's School"-that is, the school of the boy of today-and "Mine,"-fifty years ago. The contrast is natural. The boy life of fifty years ago has all that was fascinating in it enriched, like wine, by age. My only brother left our village home in his late teens and did not come back for twenty-five years. I saw him in his western New York home often and he always talked about the village church, the village store, the village livery stable, the only things to talk about. At last he came back and I met him in Boston and we went out to our childhood home. "I wish I had not come," he said. "The church is so much smaller than it used to be, and the store! And the stable! I would have taken my oath that each of them was at least three times as large when I was a boy.". He wanted to go to the "swimming hole," but he declared that it had dried up since we swimming. went in I am entirely sure that if Big Bill Franklin could actually go back to his school of 1866-76 he would be as disappointed as was my brother Bill. It is really funny to see a man try to look at Little Bill's life in 1916, as he looks, telescopically, at the boy life of Big Bill fifty years ago. It is an interesting book. Men of sixty and seventy years of age will enjoy seeing the halo about the good days of trapping and hunting, rowing, fishing, and damming, when they cut stick horses, and kept stick-horse livery stables where grape vines hung. And these men will be happy to think that the schools now lack the glory of the good old days. But in it all and through it all there is a lot of wholesome common sense and his making over of the schools of today would not be wholly bad, but Little Bill's school will probably not "be increased to eight hours, the school week to six days, and the school year to twelve months." That vision is about as real as the one he has of the schools of GENERAL EDUCATION BOARD'S $6,000 A great innovation is the appropriation by the General Education Board of $6,000 to the National Education Association for the use of the Department of Administration, of which O. M. Plummer, of the Portland Board of Education, is president. The appropriation was secured largely by Frank Irving Cooper of Boston, of whose notable achievement as schoolhouse architect on the budget basis the Journal of Education has spoken enthusiastically. The committee to make use of this appropriation consists of Frank Irving Cooper, Boston, chairman; Leonard P. Ayres, director of education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City; Charles E. Chadsey, superin- fifty years ago. tendent, Detroit; B. A. Challman, state commissioner of school buildings, Minneapolis; Rowland Haynes, secretary to the Commission on Recreation, New York City; C. B. J. Snyder, architect for the Board of Education, New York City; Lewis M. Ferman, Leland Stanford University. Associated with the committee are William B. Ittner, architect for the Board of Education, St. Louis; John J. Donovan, city architect, Oakland, and F. A. Naramore, superintendent of properties of Portland. Rumor has it that this is but the beginning of appropriations by the General Education Board through the National Education Association. *Bill's School and Mine, and Education after the War." By W. S. Franklin, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Franklin, MacNutt and Charles. Price, $1.00. VOCATIONAL BOARD President Wilson has made choice of three admirably well qualified men for the Board of Vocational Education to represent the government's interest in the administration of the affairs of education as provided for by the bill passed by the last Congress. These are Arthur E. Holder of Iowa for three years, Charles A. Greathouse of Indiana for two years, and James Phinney Munroe of Boston for one year. WILLIAM A. MOWRY Dr. William A. Mowry was one of America's noblest types of men, every inch a man, a man for his home, his friends, his country, and for humanity. It is not easy to confine one's thoughts to his educational life and work, though that was the field in which he was distinctly eminent. He was instinctively progressive, a spirit which he kept till after four score years had passed. He was progressive in religious, political, civic, and educational thought, but with it all there was the caution of loyalty to conventionality. He was instinctively a champion. The spirit which took him into the army as a young man, which won him official honor as a soldier, never deserted him. He was always lined up for a contest, not fanatically, but with the loyalty of conviction that his services were needed. For nearly fifty years he was a leader in educational affairs of Rhode Island; for half of that time he was among the leaders of education in Massachusetts; for a few years he was with the leaders nationally, but his major for the whole fifty years was New England's educational interests. It has been my privilege to know most of the men in educational leadership for most of the half century, and of no other man can it be said with equal candor that New England was his field. He was always too big for Rhode Island or Massachusetts, and he never really tried to take a hand in education nationally, though he was for more than ten years a most acceptable lecturer at Institutes in Pennsylvania and Ohio. He was of the type of which educational statesmen are made. He was a good teacher, but he was not satisfied to be a teacher. He was eminently wise and successful as the principal of a notably important boys' school, but he was not content to be a principal. He was a good city superintendent, but he did not enter this field until after he was fifty years of age and he did not relish the detail side of that work. He was a prominent member of the Boston school committee in one of the most vexatious periods of Boston's educational life, and he probably enjoyed this as much as anytaste for thing he ever did. It required a statesmanship to deal with the problems of Boston schools a quarter of a century ago. He tried his hand at educational journalism on the Journal of Education and "Education" for a short time at the transition period of educational activities, but he preferred the writing of school books to the writing of editorials, and his success of a quarter of a century was in the writing of school books, all of which were successful. Personally I think Dr. Mowry's most distinct success was in pioneering professional summer school work. When one realizes that today nearly every university, college, and normal school has its summer school, often with a larger attendance than in the regular sessions of the institution; that in many states from fifty to seventy per cent. of all the teachers are in summer schools; that literally there are thousands of students annually in a single university summer session, and then recall that for several years Dr. William A. Mowry steered the fortunes of the first and only teachers' summer school of America, the Martha's Vineyard Summer School of Methods, we can get some appreciation of the vision of a progressive educational pioneer. HETZEL TO NEW HAMPSHIRE New Hampshire College is most fortunate in securing as its president, Ralph D. Hetzel, who comes from the directorship of extension service of the Oregon Agricultural College. We have known much of Mr. Hetzel and his work in Oregon. No man in the United States has impressed himself upon a state through extension service more completely, more wholesomely or more inspiringly than has he upon Oregon. Every nook and corner of that great state has felt his influence. There are better dairies and better beeves, better orchards and better schools in Oregon because of Hetzel's leadership. We have known him in Corvallis, where the Agricultural College is on its throne, and in central Oregon two hundred miles from any railroad, where the County Agricultural Fair was bigger and better because of him. Of all the men we know in agricultural service we know of no one who promises so much to the rich valleys and White Hills of the Granite State as does Hetzel as president at Durham. PLAYTHINGS* We have seen nothing, heard of nothing that is in the same class in importance, in suggestiveness, in inspiration for leadership in play for little children with this ten-cent booklet on "Playthings." It is science and art, philosophy and pedagogy, psychology and physiology reduced to the essence. Here are a few sample sentences: "Play has been regarded as a waste of time, but tolerated because children will be ill if kept too closely to their books." "If we really understood what play is, we would be stirred by its educational possibilities." "Play, instead of being a wasted interlude in the learning process, is the process itself." "Play is the child's method of experimenting with "Experimenting is the soul his environment." We will back this ten-cent ten-page pamphlet against any dollar-and-a-half book on pedagogy we know when it comes to the number of sentences that are vital and virile, new and needful, germinant and permanent. If the reader of these lines does not send ten cents to the Bureau of Educational Experiments, 70 Fifth avenue, New York, he will miss ten dollars' worth of inspiration. *Playthings." Bureau of Educational Experiments, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. Paper. Illustrated. Price, 10 cents. MRS. GRACE STRACHAN-FORSYTHE Few educational surprises have been greater than the announcement in the New York Sun, June 19, of the marriage at Fairhaven, Vermont, on April 6, of Miss Grace C. Strachan, district superintendent of New York City, to Timothy J. Forsythe of New York. It is wholly unlike Grace Strachan to do anything secretly, hence the sensation in educational circles. A wedding of weddings would have been expected, but the happy man is no less to be congratulated because of the way in which he captured one of the leading figures in the educational field. YALE'S WAR ACTIVITIES The entire scientific strength of Yale University, in addition to at least a quarter of its undergraduate body, is now enlisted in various government war activities. The scientists' laboratory forces of the university have been asked by the national administration to take a leading part in fitting this country for active participation in the world war. The physiological laboratory of the Yale Medical school has received from the government ample funds to develop and furnish the best sort of gas masks for the army and to deal with the whole great problem of warfare by gases in its defensive and offensive aspects. The work of the faculty has been less widely advertised than that of the students, but it has been none the less significant. The enrollment of Yale students in government military service is 706 men. In addition, 125 men are enrolled in volunteer ambulance work, besides the body of seniors and juniors in the Yale Medical school who stand ready to go whenever the French government authorizes the university to send its mobile hospital unit. REMOVAL OF BUREAU OF EDUCATION The United States Bureau of Education has been moved to the Pension Office building, the rooms formerly occupied by the Indian Bureau. The Bureau of Education has never been adequately provided for and these removals but emphasize afresh the difficulties under which it labors, has always labored. It is devoutly to be hoped that the United States government will at no distant day provide an educational building for the Bureau. Few of the large states have treated the State Department of Education as shabbily in this respect as the Bureau of Education is treated by the federal government. GLORY OF ST. PAUL St. Paul, under the leadership of Superintendent E. C. Hartwell, has put itself on the front seat of the car of progress. By a vote, 17,662 to 10,933-more than three-fifths of the total vote cast-St. Paul voted to bond the city for $3,000,000, or $600,000 a year for five years. This is by far the most progressive educational act in the history of St. Paul. It makes a national figure of Mr. Hartwell as well as of St. Paul. DEPARTURE OF BUREAU OF EDUCATION Hereafter positions in the United States. Bureau of Education will be filled from applicants who have passed the Civil Service examinations. Just now there is need of a threethousand-dollar man, a specialist in Community Organization. Applications must be filed on or before July 17. One who intends to qualify for the position should send to the Civil Service Commission, Washington, D. C., at once, for Form 2,118, stating that he intends to apply for this specialist's position. SUZZALLO'S RESPONSIBILITY President Henry Suzzallo of the State University of Washington is head of the State Council of Defence, being both chairman and director. In Washington, because of the activity of the I. W. W. this is a great responsibility, but fortunately it is responsibility for which he is especially adapted. HIGH SPEED No American airship will be sent for war service that is not capable of making 125 miles an hour, and no American aviator will be permitted to go to the front who cannot send a machine through the air at the speed of 125 miles an hour, or more than two miles a minute. Great times in which to be alive! Dean J. O. Creager of the Department of Education of the State University has been chosen as state commissioner of education for Wyoming, a selection which gives universal satisfaction and promises great professional and educational progress for the state. Summer schools have been seriously affected by the war. This has been especially true of the university summer schools, where men have been a leading feature in the past. Hon. E. O. Sisson, commissioner of education of Idaho, has accepted a professorship in Reed College, Portland, under most attractive conditions. William M. Davidson, superintendent of Pittsburgh, is again a Doctor of Laws, this time. by the University of Pittsburgh. The one-story schoolhouse is sure to dominate school architecture despite the machinations of some schoolhouse architects. Columbia drops both Greek and Latin as a college entrance requirement. THE WEEK IN REVIEW ATTACKS THAT FAILED. Official and detailed accounts have been given of attacks that were made by German submarines upon the transports which carried the contingents of General Pershing's expedition to France. The German admiralty had taken extraordinary measures to sink the transports, and had assembled a fleet of submarines for that purpose. Spies on this side had put the German government in full possession of the route to be taken by the transports, and the first attack was made on the night of June 22, at a point far on this side of the usual range of submarine activities. The second attack was made several days. later. The transports were convoyed by American war ships, which were re-enforced on the way over by the fleet of American destroyers commanded by Admiral Sims. It was a disastrous experiment for the German admiralty, for one at least, and probably more of the attacking force were sunk, and every American fighting ship and every fighting man reached France uninjured. So the first real battle of the war between American and German forces resulted in a complete American victory. There is good reason for the official note of congratulation which Secretary Daniels addressed to the American people. THE EAST ST. LOUIS RIOTS. There has been no rioting on American soil within the memory of the present generation so disgraceful as that at East St. Louis of whites. against blacks. The crime of the blacks is, first, that they are black; and second, that they have migrated from the South to Northern cities, seeking industrial employment. The trouble at St. Louis began in May, and was the result of an influx of negro labor, coupled with suspicions that the negro laborers might later be used as strike-breakers. Unprovoked attacks were made at that time upon individual negroes, and attempts were made to burn the negro quarters. Here and there a negro retorted in kind, and the race animosity became. more intense until thousands of whites, women as well as men, engaged in a promiscuous massacre of negroes, wherever found, shooting and hanging blacks who had committed no crime. It was a shocking demonstration of race hatred, the effects of which will be felt for years to come. THE COTTON CROP. The July 1st estimate of the 1917 cotton crop puts it at 11,633,000 bales, as compared with 11,449,930 bales last year, and 11,191,820 bales in 1915. The crop of 1914-16,134,930 bales-was the largest ever grown. The acreage this year. is less by about 1,500,000 acres than a year ago, and the condition is about ten per cent. less favorable than the average. The department attributes the diminished acreage in part to the heavy exodus of negro labor-the same fact which helps to explain the race rioting at East St. Louis. The department estimates that several hundred thousand negroes have left the southern cotton fields for the higher wages in the industrial centres of the eastern and northern states. But that, obviously, in a state of freedom, is their right, if they so choose. Perhaps, the too frequent lynchings have something to do with it. A NEW RUSSIAN DRIVE. Next to the arrival of the American division in France, nothing has been more cheering in recent events for the Allies than the Russian drive on the Galician front. Led by War Minister Kerensky in person, the Russian troops carried three lines of German trenches, captured more than twenty thousand prisoners and took the strongly-fortified village of Koniuchy. In some way, the lack of shells had been supplied, and the direct attack was preceded by a rain of artillery fire which according to the Berlin despatches turned the German positions into a crater field. This sharp resumption of the Russian offensive, after weeks of wasted time, goes far to show that the German intrigues and peace cajoleries have missed their mark. THE NEXT STEP IN CONSCRIPTION. President Wilson's proclamation accompanying the issue of exemption regulations marks the next step toward the carrying out of the conscription program. Under the recent registration, approximately ten million men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one are on the lists from which the men to be drawn for military service must be taken. The general classes of exemption-as of men with wives and children absolutely dependent upon them, men belonging to religious organizations pledged against war, etc.-have been established; and the application of these exemptions to individuals has been left to local exemption boards. The processes by which selection is to be applied and the men are to be designated to go into camp for the first contingent of 625,000 troops of the new national army have not yet been made public, but presumably have been worked out. CIVIL WAR IN CHINA. Events in China have taken a new and unexpected turn. Apparently, the Chinese republic, after a brief and stormy existence, is to give place to an empire of the old sort. That seems to be the meaning of the coup d'état at Pekin, engineered by General Chang Hsun, which has resulted in the re-establishment of the boy Emperor, Hsuan Tung, on the Chinese throne, with General Chang Hsun as dictator. Only a week before, it was generally believed that the internal difficulties of China were on the way to adjustment, and that the government, of which Li Ching-Hsi, son of the late Li Hung Chang, was premier, would stand. But the overturn of the republic spells civil war on a large scale, and that, in turn, presages in all probability the armed intervention of Japan, and an attempt to establish some sort of a Japanese protectorate over China. Continued on page 54. 1 |