I did intend to brag a little about Minneapolis, but after I heard these two politicians and this real-estate man speak of it I simply hung my head. There is not a school-teacher, not one, who can boom things as they can, and yet I must say that we are proud of Minneapolis even now. The great glory of a city, as cities go now, is to clear out rottenness wherever it is found.

There are those here in this hall today who were in Minneapolis twenty-seven years ago when this Association held its meeting here. They know what Minneapolis was at that time, a little struggling hamlet. Now we have a splendid city, and yet the first little house that was built on this side of the river is standing now in one of our public parks as a memorial of our wonderful growth. But Minneapolis, you know, is not only a place, but Minneapolis, like Boston, is a state of mind. Minneapolis is made up of men and women who earn their own living, own their own homes, take care of their children, and gladly and heartily entertain their guests. It is a pleasure to me to welcome you here with us. When it was decided that this convention was to come here every teacher in the Minneapolis schools but fifteen indicated within one week a desire to become members of this body, and before the week was over the other fifteen had come forward and paid their dues. St. Paul gave us its hearty support, the cities and towns surrounding us were all loyal, and we secured 125 more memberships than were asked for by the committee which came here to select the place for holding the convention. And so you can see that while your entertainment may not be what you expected or wished, it is all we know how to give. If there are mistakes they have been mistakes of the head and not of the heart.

Again I welcome you, and again I express the hope that, when you leave us, you will have the opinion which all Minneapolis people have, and which all sensible people in this part of the country have, that Minneapolis is the best city on earth.

DR. CYRUS NORTHROP, PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS Ladies and Gentlemen:

I was very much comforted by one of the petitions embraced in the prayer of my brother Hallock; he prayed for those who were to speak this afternoon "from the governor down," and you will readily see where my interest in that prayer came in. If the man who rises on a hot afternoon to make the fifth speech of welcome is not "down," I don't know when he will be. I have always felt that this welcoming business was overdone, and I am quite as much impressed with this feeling this afternoon as ever before. I sweltered thru a hot afternoon in Detroit last year listening to addresses of welcome, and I proposed before another meeting to have a revision of the custom. Here it is again, and what is

worse in my part of it, I don't know, ladies and gentlemen, of anything to welcome you to in particular, because there is nothing left. Everybody has said all that human eloquence, human intellect, and human imagination can suggest; but, as I am a man of veracity, I shall not try to imitate those who have preceded me. But I want to tell you in confidence-and I think I have secured your confidence now, so you will accept what I may say without a grain of allowance — we have here a most delightful climate; the skies are never bluer anywhere within the limits of this great republic than they are in Minnesota-when you can see them. I do not know what the matter is with the earth in general at the present time, in this country in particular, but I suspect the trouble may all be laid to the act of Congress in providing for irrigation. There was a distinguished gentleman who used to live in New York (he died a few weeks ago) who wielded a very sharp pen, and he had that most undesirable faculty, an ability to pile up a series of indictments against this country because things were as they are, and he would close his indictment by saying that these things were all due to the tariff; and so I think this excessive amount of irrigation that is going on from east to west must be due to the act of the late Congress, for I have just come from New England, and it was worse there than here. They had not only the rain, but they had that peculiar New England temperature we never have; our climate is so remarkably dry. As you go west the climate is a great deal drier; the Minneapolis people have the loveliest climate, and the rich spend the summer at Lake Minnetonka to avoid the heat of the city, and in the winter they go to California or Florida to avoid the cold, and those of us who remain here are the vigorous ones. A great climate Minnesota has! We should like to have this beautiful assembly stay with us always.

I want to leave one idea with you before I close. We have a large country, this United States of America, and, as I mention it, I am sure there is not one in this great assembly who is not thrilled with a new sense of the glory of our country at the present moment. I think we have never been so proud of it as we are today. What we have done for Cuba stands before the world as the one great example of national altruistic self-abnegation and love of humanity. No act in all the history of the world stands beside it, and no act that any nation has ever performed is so well fitted to bring honor to the nation that did it as this act; for he who takes to himself everything does it in selfishness, and the nation which takes everything to herself does it in selfishness. "He who loses his life shall save it," and the nation which gives up life and treasure for others is the nation that shall go down the ages marked in the brightest colors of history and an example to the whole world.

Now such is our nation today, glorious, and yet here in this country are millions of people who have come to us in the maturity of their years, with their habits fixed, with their own associations and tastes; they are

scattered all over the country, they are here in hundreds and thousands, they are in every part of the country except the South-there they are not found to such a great degree, but the South has its own problem. The great problem for us everywhere is the assimilation of these people: not that we should be all alike, but that we should know one another, that we should understand each other's peculiarities, that we should be acquainted with each other's good qualities, that we should comprehend one another's ideas, and tho the nation be so large that a dozen or twenty countries might be carved out of it, and each one should have its own peculiar characteristics and customs, apart and in many respects distinct nations, yet we should all know each other; we should all understand each other; in the great central aspirations of the heart we should be one. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing tends to this so much as the annual meeting of this great Association, gathering together in one place the teachers of the children, the educators of the country, the leaders of thought in every part of our land, and causing them to become acquainted one with the other, and more than that, with the teaching and customs of the various parts of our country.

Who is there that can go to the South, to that beautiful city of New Orleans, and see Tulane University and live there and stay with the people, and not feel a love for the South?

Who is there that can go to the Pacific, to the University of California, and look out on the Pacific, and not feel that California is no longer what it was in 1849, a questionable factor, but is one of the great elements of this great republic.

Who can go to New England and visit Harvard and Yale and not feel that the cradle of liberty of this great country is still being rocked and rocked successfully?

Who can go to the great center of this country and see the vast industries, producing millions upon millions of dollars, making this nation the base of supply for the whole world, without feeling that we are united — one and inseparable in our interests, purposes, and aspirations-and that there is in the future of this great republic something beyond all we have seen or imagined or conceived, the high position of leader in thought, leader in education, leader in production, leader in policy, leader in the dominion of the world, leader of nations.

This is what I feel in an assembly like this. The value of the occasion is not in the words I can utter to you, it is not in the learned papers that will be read to you, it is not in the lessons in pedagogy that someone will teach to you, it is in the coming together of the North and the South, the East and the West, the clasping of hands, the feeling that we are one in this great republic.

RESPONSES

JAMES A. FOSHAY, SUPERINTENDENT OF CITY SCHOOLS, LOS ANGELES, CAL.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

To you, sirs, who have so eloquently given us cordial welcome to your state, your city, and your homes, it gives me great pleasure to express our thanks. I am proud to respond to these words of welcome in the name of the great western division of our National Educational Association. Of the divisions of this Association, ours covers by far the greatest area; but no one depends upon us to furnish educators in proportion to our area. You may be surprised, however, when I tell you that the western division now furnishes 23 per cent. of your members, exclusive of those in Alaska and the Philippines.

As an index of the educational interest of California, one state of the western division, I would have you note that, while her population is less than the city of Chicago, yet, since the great meeting of this wonderful Association at Madison, in 1884, California has furnished more memberships than any other state or territory, except the state of Illinois.

Your beautiful city lies in the heart of the golden grain country. It delights our eyes to ride thru its opulent acres, and our ears to hear the tales you can tell us about it. It would not be well for me to quote the statistics that I am longing to fling forth. You know that in 1871 you received only two carloads of wheat here, and in 1901 you handled — but I dare not mention the number of millions of bushels. I am a Californian; I have had practice in believing things- we have statistics ourselves in California-but you know what these down-easters will say if I merely tell them the bald truth about your millions. And of what use is it to attempt to tell the truth—a truth that will not stand still long enough to be caught? You have contracted such a habit of racing away from figures, even while one tells them, with the unlimited resources of this rich country that lies all about you, that the unbelievable wealth will soon be trebled and quadrupled; I will not commit myself to figures that you may already have discounted while they are forming on my lips.

For your eastern visitors and your western alike, there is a pleasure and a brotherly pride in the contemplation of this golden flow of riches. Another source of your wealth, however, gives a Californian great anxiety. In our land, we worship trees. It used to be said of us that we bought water and a tree, and then had a few acres of land thrown in for good measure. You have cut into your forests with the lavish hand of one who rejoices in his abundance and need not be niggardly, and we look

with admiration on your plethoric resources; and yet, with a fear engendered in the unbroken sunshine of our own landscapes, we hope that you will not fail to enforce adequate laws to keep your land of primeval for ests forever from becoming a shadowless country.

Your grain, your lumber, and your many factories would seem to make of you a wholly practical, money-making people; but, on the other hand, your homes, your parks, and the beautiful lakes that grace your neighborhood, mark you as a home-loving, beauty-loving people. Over all is thrown the glamour of your Indian legends, which captivate the Californian's heart. To bind us to you irrevocably, we read in your history that you, too, are '49-ers. The same year sent your forefathers and ours pioneering into a new land. One half century has witnessed

our growing up and yours, pace for pace.

That you, and we, and all our common country, while we have been growing in wealth and material comforts and influence among the nations of the world, have also been ever watchful of another and most important phase of our growth, this assemblage is the proof. To the problems of education our whole country is anxious to give its best thoughts and efforts. What great promise of uplift for us all is in this spectacle — earnest men and women from all the states of the Union, representative of the best thought and ripest experience of every section, coming here to counsel together for a few fruitful days upon this vitally important theme.

In the cities, towns, villages, in every condition of our country's varied life, these teachers have been doing noble work, day by day. Now, the year lying behind us, we have brought our experiences and the fruits of them together from all directions for our great annual conference. Here we are, to discuss the needs of the new century. How shall we make our youths ready to take up and carry on the work of solving the strange, new problems of science? How give them the taste for scholarly things? How interest them in the great economic questions that are being thrust upon us by the rapid growth of our own country and the struggle between labor and capital in the old country? How cause them to see that they should understand the underlying principles of political economy and sound finance without learning them thru the bitter school of experience?

All of these things are important, and each has its time of seeming more important than all the others. But since our last meeting the vital importance of one subject has crowded out all the others, or is it that this old, but now startlingly new, subject is only the crystallized, embodied form of all the others? The terrible tragedy that took from us a beloved president has impressed upon us that we must try to make good citizensthat is, men and women who will know the laws of their country, and will have the courage to work against the passage of unjust laws, and the