ADDRESS TO AMERICA

BY WALT WHITMAN

[From a Commencement Poem, Dartmouth College, 1872.] As a strong bird on pinions free,

Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,

One song, America, before I go,

I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,

For thee, the Future.

Sail-sail thy best, Ship of Democracy!

Of value is thy freight-'tis not the Present only,
The Past is also stored in thee!

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone-
Not of thy western continent alone;

Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel, O Ship-
Is steadied by thy spars.

With thee Time voyages in trust,

The antecedent nations sink or swim with thee;

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics,

wars,

Thou bears't the other continents;

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant,

Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye,—

O helmsman-thou carryest great companions,
Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal, feudal Europe sails with thee.

NEEDED: A JUVENILE BRANCH IN FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

BY JANE A. STEWART

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT FORCES IN CO-OPERATION.

"Vocational guidance," "Juvenile placement." The two are practically synonymous. So agree the public employment experts of the American Association of Public Employment Offices, whose fifth anniversary was recently celebrated at the annual convention in Milwaukee.

"Vocational guidance" is the schoolman's phrase; "Juvenile placement" that of the public labor exchange. One emphasizes the educational, the other the business viewpoint. "Vocational guidance" has been well defined by a public employment expert as "putting the information about the working opportunities before the individual, collecting all the information about the individual, and with that knowledge using your judgment and the judgment of persons interested, such as parents and teachers, in helping the individual to secure an opening or decide on future training."

"Juvenile placement," declares a vocational educator, "calls for careful study of the candidates' training, education, personality, ambition and environment. It requires equally careful study of the prospective job and the employer."

Juvenile placement workers in the public employment agencies are asking the schools (who know the children) to provide this knowledge; and they stand ready with knowledge about opportunities, realizing that they must keep their infor

mation fresh and ever on tap. They serve as an admirable and dependable brake upon wrongly directed trade educational extension in their wide outlook and experience of trade changes.

"We must shape the course of trade schools," declared a public labor exchange director. "We must bring it home to the teachers that a larger and larger percentage entering high school does not mean the opening up in any community of that proportion of the 'white collar' jobs. It is up to us to let the schools know that people must do the work there is to do; to aid them in a course that makes for mental development even when doing something mechanical; that to enjoy a fuller, better working life children must be taught how to live, and that every minute of life is worth living."

It has been estimated by the United States Commission on Vocational Education that a million young workers enter the industries each year. In New York City alone there are approximately 6,000 high school graduates to be cared for annually. The Washington Irving and the Julia Richman high schools, the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, have well organized vocational guidance (or placement) bureaus which are ranked with the thirty non-commercial employment bureaus of the metropolis (including settlements, religious institutions, etc.). Most of the other high schools of New York City and a few of the elementary schools do some vocational guidance.

Co-operation between the schools and the public employment agencies in New York City had its first demonstration in the Yorkville branch of the municipal employment bureau, which (under a new vocation committee) has linked its local work to the schools, the churches, settlements, etc. The public school attendance division reports are secured of every child who gets working papers (covering home conditions, school and work records, their abilities, inclinations, ambitions, etc.); suitable places are sought (working conditions being examined); and follow-up work is done to assure the actual satisfactoriness of the position. and individual progress.

Proper distribution of responsibility and function between education and public employment authorities is thus developed. thorities is thus developed. It is found that there are many interests (other than the schools themselves) deeply concerned in the adjustment of the school product to the activities of the community; and it is fully agreed by all the experts that a juvenile branch of the Federal, state and city employment bureau (in co-operation with the public schools vocational guidance bureau) would strengthen greatly the work of both, give fuller opportunity for school children to successfully qualify in some occupation; that it would provide the framework for the future democratization of industry and stimulate the perfection of our republican school system.

-Carroll G. Pearse.

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The Truth About Milwaukee..

Hard but Inevitable.

Editor H. J. Waters..

Reward Suggestions.

The Week in Review.

Spaulding on Salaries.

Enemies of the Republic...

The Silver Jubilee of Drexel Institute, Philadelphia..
Daily Bible Readings for School and Home-(VII.).
Book Table...
Educational News..

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CHANGING FROM ATLANTA TO BOSTON

Boston had no part in suggesting the change of place for the meeting of the Department of Superintendence from Atlanta to Boston. No New Englander had the faintest suspicion that the change was to be made until it had been voted by the executive committee of the N. E. A. The reason for not going to Atlanta is adequate. After all arrangements had been made a cantonment was established at Atlanta and that always fills the hotels of any city with officers and their friends. The hotels are full now, and there is no reason to think there will be any lessening of the pressure in February. With the cantonment there, any large meeting is impossible. With Atlanta out of the question Boston, that was only five votes behind Atlanta, was in

It will need much publicity to swing the attendance from Atlanta to Boston.

IMPROVING CONDITIONS OF SERVICE

No school man or woman needs to be told that the conditions under which superintendents, for instance, are elected and re-elected, and perform their official duties, are almost as varied as the constituents they serve.

Boards of education are of all conceivable sizes, are elected in innumerable ways, have all imaginable duties, privileges and responsibilities. The whole situation would be comedy were it not tragedy.

Is the profession helpless? Some one suggested placing a "Keep to the Right" sign in the centre of the inter-section of much traveled streets in a city, and in a few months every city in the United States had such a sign in place, and all but the lovers of lawlessness heed it.

Is it not possible for the school people of the country to place a "Do it Right" sign in every city in the United States for the guidance of superintendents, boards of education, and formers of public sentiment?

It was regarded as possible by the Department of Superintendence at Kansas City, and the following committee was appointed with Charles H. Judd of Chicago University as executive secretary: J. H. Phillips of Birmingham, J. H. Francis of Columbus, Miss Edith K. O. Clark, Cheyenne; Milton C. Potter, Milwaukee; E. C. Hartwell, St. Paul; O. M. Plummer, North Portland, Oregon; Charles C. Hughes, Sacramento; A. E. Winship, Boston, and Ira I. Cammack, Kansas City, Missouri.

With the vast sum of $300 this committee proposes to provide all superintendents with the new rules of the Detroit Board of Education, and all other admirable plans; with details of all new good state laws like that of New York; with the views of all cases of reduction in size of school boards; reports from all cities on the budget plan, and of those that suffer because they have not a budget system. There should also be given the widest publicity to any action detrimental to educational

has Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska; Mr. Potter has Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana; Mr. Hartwell has Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Montana; Mr. Plummer, the Pacific Northwest; Mr. Hughes, California, Nevada and Arizona; Mr. Cammack, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, and Dr. Judd the other eight states.

Every superintendent should at once get in touch with the member of the committee for his district.

Here is an opportunity for a vast and noble service to the profession. How many will enlist for this professional service?

THE PORTLAND PROGRAM

In American School for September Editor Carroll G. Pearse compares very fully the programs of several other meetings with that of the Portland meeting. It is with his closing paragraph that we are concerned: "Such criticisms as have been heard upon President Aley's Portland program must be the result of lack of information, lack of vision, or lack of fair-mindedness."

Because the Journal of Education appears weekly our comment was the first that could be construed as a criticism. After seeing other criticisms we have regretted sincerely that we slipped into our Notes our paragraph.

Nevertheless we decline to admit "lack of information," since we have attended many more meetings than has any other man who is still in the game. We further protest "lack of fairmindedness," for no other publication gave as much attention to President Aley's meeting before or after as has the Journal of Education, and we are inclined to think that our regretted comment was due to "vision" and not "lack of vision."

We did not intend our comment as a criticism of President Aley's program, but rather as a warning that future programs should be more worthy the National Education Association.

The Asbury Park program and the New York program were positively great. It was entirely easy to make a program at either place, and yet hundreds of dollars were paid for one great national character at each of those meetings.

It would have been eminently wise to have used such money for the Portland program where it was needed.

There is no question that the Portland program was one of the most attractive to those present of any of the ordinary programs. It also received elaborate attention from the Portland press. All this can be said relatively of many state associations and county associations. This is of slight importance as relates to any national meeting. The press of the country paid no attention to the program except in the case of Mr. Straus and Mrs. Young, and in the case of a local man. For instance, the Milwaukee press magnified Dr. Pearse's activity and the Madison press that of President Van Hise. Of course the Denver press gave much attention to Mrs. Bradford.

Scarcely a paper in the United States made any reference to any feature of the program. This

has never been as noticeable before. There are a hundred conventions each year in the United States, usually with very small attendance, that receive vastly more publicity than did the Portland program.

It was not in criticism of President Aley's program that we wrote our paragraph, but as a suggestion that the National Education Association program should be, must be, one of national significance. It must be radically different from that of any local meeting.

We have never known greater enthusiasm on the part of those in attendance, resembling in this respect many state association meetings.

At the time of the Denver and Charleston meetings the National Education Association had no rivals, had no vast permanent expense. All this has changed. There are many other educational meetings of large national significance, and the National Education Association is one of the

few that has large permanent expense, which must never be forgotten in the making of a program.

President Aley did brilliantly considering the conditions. He had reason to expect Wheeler, Wilbur, Suzzallo, Jordan, Stanley Hall,-who was

on the coast at the time-and other coast men of

national interest to be present, and he played in hard luck because of conditions wholly unusual.

The handicaps were great. The decision to meet at Portland came late, and there was a mischievous persistent suggestion that the meeting would be abandoned as was that of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor. In the face of all this President Aley kept his poise and made a most interesting program.

EXCEEDINGLY FUNNY

All the leading daily papers of the United States are devoting a column, more or less, to the remarkable statement that Oberlin College is "stopping a college leak," which consists in teaching students to study.

Now that one stops to think about it this has not been a college function heretofore. It would seem as though some other college or university would have thought of "stopping that leak" before this, but it seems to have been left for Oberlin to secure national fame by teaching the students to study!

en

Even Oberlin confines her heroically new deavor to freshmen. Here is a statement of this part of Oberlin's campaign to stop a leak :

"As part of the campaign students are shown how to study and are offered the privilege of extra aid from individual instructors. The whole tendency is in the direction of the elimination of the enormous waste involved in scholastic failures."

Here is another statement :

"Students are shown how to study, are given general advice regarding the approach to different types of subject and are offered the privilege of extra special help by individual instructors. Dean Charles Nelson Cole feels that a very great advance is being made in the direction of a better scholarship and a higher scholastic ideal throughout the institution at large."

N. E. A. PROSPERITY

On November 1 there had been fewer withdrawals and more new memberships of the National Education Association than has been

common at that date. The war, the Liberty Loan, and the Red Cross campaign seem not to have been harmful, and much had been feared. The headquarters in Washington is sure to appeal to educators in a way that neither Winona nor Ann Arbor did. Washington is a national headquarters for a national organization as no other city could be, certainly as neither Winona nor Ann Arbor could be.

PITTSBURGH IN JULY

The decision that the National Education Association will meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will give as universal satisfaction as any selection that could be made away from the coast.

There has been no meeting of the National Education Association held in Pittsburgh, in the summer or winter.

Pittsburgh is admirably supplied with hotels and halls.

Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, president, will have a great program, one of surpassing interest and value.

Superintendent W. M. Davidson can be counted on to have all arrangements perfect in the large view and in every detail.

THE TRUTH ABOUT MILWAUKEE

In the issue of October 11 we said: “Milwaukee will not reduce the opportunities to learn German in the public schools." We supposed that our information was correct. We did not say it with any spirit of criticising Milwaukee. We have never written or spoken a word as to the wisdom or unwisdom of retaining or excluding German from the public schools. As news we have chronicled the fact that certain cities have eliminated

German.

Mrs. Ella Flagg Young expressed our opinion clearly when she said: "The United States is not making war on a language."

The fact is that 9,000 fewer children are studying foreign languages in Milwaukee public schools than a year ago. The vote of the Board of Education is as follows: "That beginning with the school year 1917-18 the study of a foreign language be eliminated from 1 B grade, and that with each of the following three semesters the study of a foreign language be eliminated from the next higher division up to the third grade." No foreign language is taught in 1 B, 1 A, 2 B, 2 A.

HARD BUT INEVITABLE

School makes this report of a hard case:"The State Department of Education has inflicted an additional penalty on Herman P. Levine, former teacher in P. S. 60, Manhattan, who was convicted of being a 'slacker' and sentenced to eleven months and twenty-nine days on Blackwell's Island. The Department has revoked his license. The Board of Education did not take

up his case at its meeting last week, but that was owing to the small attendance. The Board will dismiss Levine from the system when it takes up his case. He is only twenty-three years old, and although born in New York City and educated in its free schools and the City College, refused to register, claiming that he had conscientious scruples. His principal and associates, his family and Judge Chatfield all urged him to register, but he remained obstinate even in court when Judge Chatfield offered to release him if he would register."

EDITOR H. J. WATERS

Dr. Henry J. Waters, long-time president of the Kansas Agricultural College, has resigned to become editor of the Kansas City Star, weekly edition. It is not easy to know how we receive this news. Dr. Waters is one of the very eminent university and college presidents of the country, and it is a public calamity to lose him from this field.

On the other hand the Kansas City Star is one of the greatest newspapers in the United States, and naturally, we consider the influence of an editor's chair of a great publication as the highest of thrones, when it permits the development and maintenance of one's personality.

Dr. Waters will retain his personality wherever he is. If anyone can restore the weekly issue of a great daily to its old-time prestige he can do it.

At Manhattan he has been a national figure. If he can make the Kansas City Star, weekly edition, national the change will be eminently wise.

CAN ITALY RALLY? The question whether Italy can rally in the face of the powerful Austro-German invasion is a grave and pressing one. At first, the Italian armies seemed overwhelmed by it. Their lines, which were shaped by scattering actions which had Trieste as their chief objective, were not adapted to defence against a surprise attack; and the rapidity of the German movements left no time for a defensive re-formation. The Italian retreat was disorderly, and a considerable part of the second Italian army surrendered without giving battle. Later, there was a rallying of spirit, and some effective rear-guard fighting. The effect upon the Italian people has been to strengthen rather than weaken their determination. Political dissensions, turning upon the food question and other matters of public policy, have given place to concentrated effort for national defence. If England and France are able to give their promised aid promptly enough, the

Teutonic invasion may yet be checked.

THE WEAKENING OF RUSSIA.

A brief cablegram, purporting to give an interview with Premier Kerensky, and decorated with startling headlines, gave the American public the impression that Russia was about to quit fighting, and presumably seek a separate peace; but the full text of the interview removed this impression, and official statements from Petrograd and from the Russian embassy at Washington repudiated any intention of suing for peace. Forced partly by the approach of winter, and partly by the struggle to establish a stable government, Russia will have to withdraw temporarily from active military participation in the war-probably until next spring or summer-but, it is officially stated-will stand by the Allies, and will make no separate peace. But she, needs all the support, financial and other, which the Allies can give her. Mean while, she will be a factor in engaging the efforts of the Teutonic armies; for it appears that only seven Austro-German divisions have been withdrawn from the eastern front for the attack upon Italy, and there are still 147 divisions maintained against the Russian armies.

THE "LIBERTY LOAN" VICTORY. The most striking thing about the over-subscription to the second Liberty Loan was not at all the huge subscriptions of bankers and large financiers, nor the nation-wide demonstration of interest, but the vast number of small subscriptions, representing the loyalty and patriotism of wage-earners and people of the most moderate means. In New York City alone, the number of individual subscribers was in excess of 1,750,000; and in the country at large 10,000,000 persons "did their bit" and proved their desire to share in the responsibilities of the

war by subscribing to the loan. As Secretary McAdoo has suggested, this result gives the answer of the free people of America to the challenge" of the Kaiser in unmistakable terms,

EXIT MICHAELIS,

The career of Dr. Michaelis as imperial chancellor and Prussian premier and foreign minister has

GERMANY AND BRAZIL.

The latest documents made public by Secretary Lansing disclose German plans for extending Teutonic dominion in South America. They are despatches sent no longer ago than July and August of this year to the German Foreign Office by Count Luxburg, German Minister to Argentine, through the Swedish legation at Buenos Aires. In one of them, Count Luxburg describes the Brazilians as Indians "under a thin veneer," and says that the German attitude toward Brazil has created the impression that German "easy-going goodnature can be counted on." The Count urged that sending of a submarine squadron with full powers to himself might "save the situation." In a later despatch, the Count expressed the conviction that the principal political acts of Germany in South America-in particular the maintenance of an open market in Argentina, and "the reorganization of South Brazil" might be carried through whether with or against Argentina, and he again urged the sending of a submarine squadron which might exercise "decisive influence on the situation." He also urged that efforts be made to cultivate friendship with Chile-this, of course, in order that Germany might profit by past differences between Chile and Brazil.

BRAZIL ENTERS THE WAR.

These intrigues had no effect, so far as Brazil is concerned. Brazil has declared war upon Germany; and, in anticipation of this action, the crew of the German gunboat Eber, which was lying in the Brazilian harbor of Bahia, set the ship on fire and sank her, to prevent her seizure by the Brazilian government. Brazil is a factor not to be despised in the war, for she has an army with a peace strength of 25,000, and a reserve force constituted of every Brazilian from twenty-one to forty-five years of age, all of whom have received military training; and in her navy there are four dread noughts, two battleships of an earlier type, half a dozen protected cruisers, and a considerable number of torpedo gunboats, destroyers, torpedo boats, and submarines. What Luxburg meant by "the re-organization of South Brazil" may be guessed from the fact that there are nearly 600,000 German colonists in the southern provinces of Brazil,

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