1. The relation of the city to the Commonwealth.

2. The functions of the city as a business corporation and as an agent of the State.

3. The classification of cities in States whose constitution forbids special legislation.

4. The policy of issuing bonds for indebtedness incurred in municipal improvements. In so far as the city is a business corporation, its organization should be determined and its management should be conducted on business principles. Mr. Matthews says: Municipal corporations are organized not to make money but to spend it. Their object is government, not profit." Others claim that the valuable franchises which cities give to trolley lines should redound to the profit of the cities and reduce the taxation.

Is the city a State agent? The average American legislature has, as a matter of fact, treated the city as a mere agent of government, whose institutions it is not merely free to organize as it sees fit, but whose policy it may itself properly determine (Goodnow's Municipal Problems, page 23).

The fact that a city has charge of the schools and the police neither takes away from the State as a whole its vital interest in the police and the schools, nor causes such matters as street cleaning and water supply to be matters of general State concern. In the one case the city is acting as the agent of the State; in the other it is ministering to local needs.

The constitutional provision against special legislation for cities has been defeated in Ohio by the classification of cities with classes and sub-classes. How it has worked and will work in our State is, or should be, of special interest in view of the Luzerne county decision, that cities of the third class are to have but six directors.

Of primary importance is the question of loans for public improvements. Our policy of mortgaging future generations for public improvements will sooner or later involve an enormous increase in taxation. It is true that France has far outstripped us in this policy, and the confidence of her people in the solvency of the nation which has always assumed the debt of every government that has fallen, has led the multitudes to loan to the State their savings in astonishing amounts. But in 1950 France will own all the railroads, and then her treasury will profit as ours did by the recent sale of the Union Pacific. Few of the pupils in our public schools realize that every municipal loan means greater burdens of taxation for them when they reach manhood. It may be justifiable to make loans for the purpose of erecting sanitary and comfortable school buildings, because the chief benefits accrue to those who will be compelled to pay the greater part of the obligation. Our school law provides for the redemption of outstanding obligations by annual taxes within a period of thirty years. It is at all times a

question how far the policy of "mortgaging future generations" should be carried in making loans for public improvements. Surely there should be a limit to this policy when its chief aim is to furnish luxurious quarters for public officials and to provide contracts by which councilmen and contractors can amass enormous fortunes.

The whole doctrine of governmental reform needs careful study. Every man is more or less of a reformer, but he always wants to reform the other fellow. As a people we are always willing to reform Spain and Cuba, and Turkey and Armenia, or the government at Washington, or even the government at Harrisburg. But when it comes to a reformation of township government, of the school board administration, of the things at home, we take a very different view of the matter. We have been spending on an average of $48 per mile upon the public roads without material improvement. Similar extravagance at Harrisburg or Washington would long ago have caused a revolution. School directors in certain well-known rural districts have been wasting the school funds upon relief maps and mathematical blocks in amounts that would have lengthened the school term from six to seven, eight and nine months without the addition of a cent of taxation; but how few voters care to reform these abuses at their own doors!

In one of the vacation schools of Chicago they called the attention of the pupils to the work upon the streets, pointed out the interest of everybody in the cleaning of the streets and in the faithful fulfilment of other public contracts. Under the influence of this teaching a new interest sprang up among the pupils; they began to discuss public virtue and civic honesty; and the sentiment of patriotism took a new direction, causing an unprecedented interest in municipal government.

The merits and dangers of universal suffrage constitute another phase which is entirely neglected in our teaching of civil government. The following topics might receive consideration:

1. The Belgian system of compulsory voting.

2. The Swiss referendum, by which important legal enactments must be ratified by the people in order to become law.

3. Woman suffrage in England, where an election for members of Parliament is, perhaps, the only case in which no woman has a right to vote.

4. Woman suffrage as it has been tried in Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho.

5. The recent narrowing of the suffrage by intelligence and property qualifications in some of the southern States.

6. The experiment in the District of Columbia.

It is very helpful to see ourselves as others see us. An occasional quotation from foreign writers, showing how they regard our

social and civil life, is deserving of attention. Take the following as a thoughtprovoking instance:

"There is one thing," says Lecky, "which is worse than corruption. It is acquiescence in corruption. No feature of American life strikes a stranger so powerfully as the extraordinary indifference, partly cynicism and partly good nature, with which notorious frauds and notorious corruption in the sphere of politics are viewed by American public opinion. There is nothing, I think, altogether like this to be found in any other great country. It is something wholly different from the political torpor which is common in half developed nations and corrupt despotisms, and it is curiously unlike the state of feeling which exists in the French Republic. Flagrant instances of corruption have been disclosed in France since 1870, but French public opinion never fails promptly to resent and punish them. In America notorious profligacy in public life and in the administration of public funds seems to excite little more than a disdainful smile. It is treated as very natural-as the normal result of the existing form of government." (Lecky's Democracy and Liberty, Vol. 1, page 113.

Further, the doctrine of taxation and the ways of raising revenue should be studied. How our school money is raised and how it is raised in other States deserves the careful study of superintendents, directors and teachers. Some phases, as for instance the different methods of taxing railroads which prevail in different States, may be made plain to the average pupil who takes up the study of civil government. A prominent educator is authority for the statement that when as a member of the legislature he voted to increase the school appropriation from one and a half to two millions, he found on his return home that every farmer in his native township was arrayed against his renomination. On inquiry as to the cause of their enmity he was told that he had voted to increase the school appropriation, and that the farmer's taxes are high enough now. Not one of them was aware of the fact that farms and real estate are exempt from State taxes, and that money out of the State revenues which is set apart for school purposes tends, if wisely expended, either to diminish local taxation or to improve the schools.

Finally, the benefits which every citizen derives from good government should receive attention, e. g..

1. Protection from violence against life and property.

2. Enjoyment of common benefits in postoffice, education, water supply, paved streets, public roads, hospitals and public charities.

3. Liberty of conscience and freedom from religious persecution.

4. Factory laws which protect women and children from the barbarities incident to

competition, as it existed in the early part of this century. Lest you think me guilty of exaggeration, I quote statements which are simply transcripts from the English government reports, and Washington Gladden says that they are but part of a leaf out of volumes of horrors.

Thorold Rogers: "Children and women were worked for long hours in the mill, and the Arkwrights and Peels and a multitude more built up colossal fortunes on the misery of labor. *** High profits were extracted from the labor of little children, and the race was stunted and starved, while mill-owners, land-owners and stock-jobbers collected their millions from the toil of those whose wages they regulated and whose strength they exhausted." (Work and Wages, page 438.) Men, working sixteen or eighteen hours a day, earned in those desperate times from a dollar and a quarter to a dollar and three-quarters a week; and the benumbing toil of little children brought their parents the merest pittance. About 1883, Mr. Hyndman tells us, “in good, wellmanaged factories around Manchester the labor of children had been reduced to eleven hours a day, but in return the period for meals had been shortened; whilst in Scotland and the north of England, twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours were still the rule for children. The ordinary age for children to go to factories was now nine years, but there were still many of five, six, seven years old working in all parts of England. Nor was this unmeasured abuse of child labor confined to the cotton, silk or wool industries. It spread in every direction. The profit was so great that nothing could stop its development. The report of 1842 is crammed with statements of the fearful overwork of boys and girls in iron and coal mines, which doubtless had been going on from the end of the eighteenth century. Children being small and handy, were peculiarly convenient for small veins of coal and pits where no great amount of capital was embarked; they could get along where horses and mules could not. Little girls were forced to carry heavy baskets of coal up high ladders, and little boys and girls dragged the coal bunkers along, instead of animals. Women were commonly employed underground at the filthiest tasks. In the iron mines, children of four to nine years old were dragged out of bed at four or five o'clock in the morning to undergo sixteen hours work in the shafts, and if they faltered during their fearful labor, were mercilessly flogged with leathern straps by the overseer.' (Gladden's Tools and the Man, pages 149–150.)

Modern legislation has secured to the child the right to grow and to know. It has given every child advantages and blessings that were not dreamt of in the palmiest days of Greece and Rome. A knowledge of these will beget patriotism of the best type.

Dr. Schaeffer was followed by School

Commissioner O. T. Corson, of Ohio, who made an address on "The Superintendent's Relation to the Teacher." The great moral forces of society, the home, the school and the church, were briefly considered, and the success of the school was shown to be largely dependent on the confidence and sympathy in the relation between superintendent and teacher. The address was brief, and we hope many of our readers may hear Mr. Corson at length in the several institutes.

The abridgment of the formal exercises was due to an innovation upon the program by the principals of the Pittsburg schools, in the shape of

A BANQUET

to the Association and invited guests, to the number of 80 in all, at the Hotel Victoria, where after an hour's feasting there was a lively fire of toasts and responses. Among these were Dr. Schaeffer on "The Pennsylvania Dutch;" Supt. Missimer, of Erie, The City by the Unsalted Sea;" School Commissioner Corson, 'Our Modest Neighbor, Ohio, the Mother of Presidents,' County Superintendent Hamilton, of Allegheny, "Where are we at?" and Dr. A. L. Reinecke, of the Pittsburg Central Board of Education, on "The Kindergarten."

Μ'

THURSDAY MORNING.

USIC by High School pupils acceptably opened the second day's session. The paper postponed from yesterday was read by Supt. W. W. Rupert of Pottstown, on

SOME NEW LINES OF CO-OPERATION AMONG SUPERINTENDENTS. Pennsylvania's area repeated four and twofifths times is, to use a significant comparison just now, equal to the area of the kingdom of Spain. The population of the Keystone State repeated three and four-tenths times is equal to the population of this proud kingdom.

A little comparison like this is helpful even to those of us who think we know something about this planet. It helps us to form a clearer conception of the extent and importance of our own State. The writer believes, indeed, that Pennsylvania is so large, her resources so great, her industries so varied, her history so rich, and the time given for the consideration of these matters in the schools so limited, that a very large proportion of the children of the State, and of the adult population as well, have a very inadequate and unsatisfactory idea of the greatness of this Commonwealth.

But what, you say, has all this to do with

"New Lines of Co-operation among Superintendents?" Without further preliminaries, let us come directly to the point. I wish as briefly as possible to outline a scheme by which we as superintendents may co-operate to make the study of the history, the industries, the climate, and the productions of Pennsylvania more interesting and more fruitful. In this scheme will also be included an effort to make it plain to the boys and girls of this State that it is not absolutely necessary to go to the Adirondacks, to Italy, or to Switzerland, in order to get within sight of scenery that is worthy of the attention of human beings.

Let us in the first place consider some historical lines along which we may co-operate. In our end of the State we have some names that are centres of great historic interest-Valley Forge, Philadelphia, Chadd's Ford, Birmingham Meeting House, Germantown, Bayard Taylor, Robert Fulton, David Rittenhouse, Thaddeus Stevens, and many others. All over the State may be found names around which cluster these historic associations. Wyoming Valley, Gettysburg, Pittsburg, Johnstown, Andrew Gregg Curtin, John Priestley, will serve as illustrations.

Information, it is true, concerning all the men and deeds suggested by the names just given can be found in books. But there is a kind of information-and inspiration, too-respecting these historic characters and places that cannot be found in books; and it is to this that I wish to direct attention.

Let us take a few concrete cases. My friend Superintendent Jones, of West Chester, is most favorably located for making a study of the boyhood days, surroundings and associations of that delightful poet and beguiling travelerBayard Taylor. The writer does not wish to suggest that Mr. Jones is actually to do all the work I have in mind. I mean that he is in just the position to control, guide, direct and inspire his teachers and pupils to make a study of this famous man; and this study will be of great value not only to those who make it, but it can be made highly serviceable to teachers and pupils throughout the State. Let ns suppose that Mr. Jones has selected a few of his teachers and high school pupils who are interested in photography. On a bright pleasant morning in May they hire a good team and drive over to Cedarcroft. Here they take a number of views, interior and exterior, of the beautiful home which the poet loved so well and where he entertained in a most delightful manner many of the great and good. They will also want to take a few views of the beautiful grounds surrounding Cedarcroft.

A mile away is the little town of Kennett Square, known around the world as the birthplace of Bayard Taylor. The house in which the poet was born, a two-story stone-and-mortar structure, such as is yet very common in the farming regions of Pennsylvania, was most unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1876. Our amateur photographers under the leadership of Mr. Jones cannot, therefore, take a photograph of the Taylor homestead; but in the Taylor Memorial Library, recently built in Kennett, they will doubtless find cuts of this interesting building, from which they may obtain photographs. At all events our company of literary

and historical students will take a photograph of the Taylor Memorial Library.

While in the famous little town our friends will of course embrace the opportunity to talk with some of the older residents who can give them much interesting information about the poet and his family. They will thus gather some very valuable and interesting material that neither they nor we can find in books.

Our friends are now ready to drive over to beautiful Longwood Cemetery, where the poet lies sleeping, with his first wife, the beautiful and lovely Mary Agnew; with his brother Fred, who was killed at Gettysburg while leading the famous Bucktails; and with other members of his family. Having seen that good photographs of the church and the Taylor burial lot have been secured, Superintendent Jones gives the word and he and his party roll off home, well pleased with the day's work.

These pupils who have visited Cedarcroft, Kennett Square and Longwood, are eager to learn more about Bayard Taylor. They read his books and the story of the poet's biograph

ers.

Then they write a sketch of his life and work which their photographs will illustrate. Now Superintendent Jones is ready to exchange his illustrated sketch of Bayard Taylor for similar illustrated historical productions prepared under the guidance of other superintendents throughout the State. Perhaps Superintendent Brooks of Philadelphia has some illustrated historical sketches upon some of the many intensely interesting subjects found in his city. Superintendents Gotwals of Norristown, Leister of Phoenixville, and Rupert of Pottstown, will doubtless be glad to do their best for Valley Forge and other places of historic interest in their vicinity. Superintendent Buehrle of Lancaster may, I am sure, be depended upon for something good on Fulton and Stevens. The superintendents in the valley of the Susquehanna will take good care of that historic stream. And last, but not by any means least, we all know full well that Superintendent Luckey will secure to Pittsburg, so rich in historical material, her full share of glory.

At this point we beg to suggest that the different historical societies throughout the State can render us most valuable aid in this work. Co-operation between the schools and these historical societies must result in mutual benefit. I am certain, too, that the societies will meet us fully half way.

Of the educational and pedagogical value of such work I need not say one word. That is apparent to every one.

But there are other lines of co-operation among superintendents that I wish to note. Why may we not have an exchange of the best work of pupils? For instance, the pupils of one of our schools recently prepared an article on one of the important industries of our townthe nail industry. The following skeleton of their production will show the character of the work done:

(1) Manufacturing the material for nails. (2) This material cut into strips by slitter. (3) The difference between cutting hot iron and cold.

(4) Grinding the knives.

(5) New grindstone seven feet in diameter. Cost of such a stone. How long it will last. (6) Number of men and boys employed. (7) Wages received.

(8) Number of kegs cut in twenty-four hours. (9) Cost of running plant twenty-four hours -- $4000.

(10) Many of the nails made are now sold in Africa and Central America.

I may add that this article is illustrated by six good photographs. One photograph shows the rolls used in rolling the iron; one a group of nail machines; one the huge grindstones; and there are two views of the stock-house. There are also twelve labeled specimens of nails ranging from a three-penny to an eight-inch spike. Our boys and girls are ready to exchange this article for a similar one on any industry in the State. They have also prepared an article upon the bicycling industry, which is in a flourishing condition in our town.

The study of elementary meteorology could be made more interesting and valuable by a little co operation among those engaged in this work in the schools. If the observers, for example, in the northern tier of counties should make out their records in duplicate, and exchange them with the observers in the southern tier of counties, a most valuable and interesting lesson would be taught regarding the effects of latitude upon climate. Differences in rainfall, snowfall, and temperature would be made very plain. These records might also very profitably be extended to include such questions as the following: When do wheat, oats and corn ripen along the boundary between New York and Pennsylvania? When do these grains ripen along Mason and Dixon's Line? When do the harbingers of spring appear along these lines? What is the altitude of the sun at noon on any given day along the northern border? What is the altitude of the sun at noon on the same day along the southern border? What does this difference in altitude prove? These questions are simply suggestive, and might be extended indefinitely. It is also plain that in work of this kind co-operation beyond state limits would be very helpful.

Those of us who are interested in geology and mineralogy, either as separate subjects or as aids to the study of geography, keenly feel the need of co-operation. We who live south of the terminal moraine are, among other things, sighing for some of the boulders and scratched pebbles brought down by the giant ice-sheet from the far north. Our friends who live along the great terminal moraine, or back of it, are perhaps equally distressed because they have no fine specimens of chrome, or nickel, or phosphate of lead. Peacock coal and petroleum and oil sands command a premium in the east. Our marble, tourmaline and rutile command an equal premium in the west. What is the remedy? Co operation. Establish a medium of exchange, and thus shall we all be prosperous and happy.

But there is one more important link in the chain of co-operation. Should not the superintendents of this State work as one man, and with that enthusiasm which is born of a love for the beautiful, to bring into the lives of our children the soothing and uplifting influences

that lie in the scenic beauties of the grand old Keystone State? Would that every child in the State could hear Dr. Rothrock's lecture on Beautiful Pennsylvania!" Would that they could see, if not in the field on the screen at least, the beautiful trees and the charming waterfalls the Doctor takes such delight in showing to his audiences. You will remember that Dr. Rothrock throws a few bewitching views of waterfalls upon the screen and then tells you he has the slides of two hundred others just as good. He tells you too, that these waterfalls are all within our own State. There are, we doubt not, thousands of educated persons in Pennsylvania who have no knowledge of the existence of these waterfalls, to say nothing of a conception of their beauty.

But what can we do in a matter of this kind? Is there not a superintendent living within a few miles of each one of these two hundred cascades? And can he not, either in person or through his teachers and pupils, photograph those that are in his vicinity? Having done this, slides can be prepared and we are ready for a series of exchanges similar to those already suggested.

Just a word now in conclusion respecting a scheme by which the suggestions of this paper may be realized. It appears to the writer that exchanges, such as those which we have indicated, might be made through an association of superintendents. This organization might be called the "Literary, Geographical and Historical Exchange Association." Supposing now that such an organization has been established, the exchanges might readily be made through the secretary. Each member might send the secretary periodically a list of what he can furnish from his vicinity, and a list of what he would like to receive. The secretary then sends to each member duplicates of these lists, thus making direct excharges possible.

Such an exchange association, confining itself, however, to geographical material, is already in existence in New England; but I have not been able to learn anything of its practical workings.

The writer will be much pleased if a little time can be found for a discussion of this paper. At all events, he hopes that before the adjournment of this convention an exchange association of some character may be formed.

The time being limited, no discussion took place on the paper, and the next was read by Supt. John A. Gibson, of Butler, on

SOME ERRORS OF PUPILS.

It has often been declaimed with much show of pride for our profession that teaching was characteristically constructive work. Other professions have to do with man when conditions are abnormal, when for some reason there is lack of adjustment of vital forces and mechanisms. The teacher, on the contrary, is concerned with growth, with the orderly evolutions of forces. We are not summoned at the command of dire exigency to call forth harmony and order from the chaos of impending discord and ruin, but our labors move in unison with cosmic forces. Education is the handmaid of life, hers is the guardianship of growth. She carries no

pills nor surgeon's knife; she issues no injunctions, needs no prisons; she asks no cataclysmic upheaval to blot out original depravity. Hers is cosmic thinkable growth. This is beautiful, but even that most daring aeronaut Andreé teaches us that it is well to let out a heavy drag-rope to the windward when ballooning. When we get down from empty space and commence to work our passage on foot and to strike our not overly well flesh-padded shins against the real things as we find them (ice hummocks of the polar seas, ice floes), these emotions of the beautiful largely evaporate in the presence of our shattered ideal.

When the pupil has been subjected to the bungling experimentation of inexperienced instructors for several years, and we have succeeded in producing a psychological chaos compared with which the original "darkness upon the face of the deep" would be but a circumstance, it may become necessary to resort to a diagnosis, get out the box of pills, revise our ideas on original depravity, long for jail walls high enough to shut out about a million iniquitous influences of a vicious environment, or with saw and scalpel hold a post-mortem examination over the corpse of interest. Child study may in the main have to do with normal conditions, and in large measure teaching is simply creative, but we must also recognize that instruction has to do with abnormal conditions, produced by ourselves, by heredity, or by faulty environment, and is consequently largely corrective. It is from this second point of view that the errors of pupils in their school work furnish abundant material for careful consideration on the part of the instructor and supervisor, who must be conceived as emphasizing merely different phases in the same process.

This paper makes no attempt at an exhaustive treatment of the subject. There is no endeavor to cover the field, nor to offer any classification of errors The accomplishment of these ends would be far beyond the writer's power. The purpose is merely to call attention to some illustrative facts, and to emphasize their importance as a means of revealing the hidden processes of mind.

Take the following: A pupil was asked to describe the form and outline of South America. The answer was as follows:

"The outline of South America is, on the top side it has a east slant, and on the east it runs down to the south on a west slant, and on the west it runs up purty near straight for about half way, then turns out a little and up to where it started."

When Paul penned those famous words, "Now I see through a glass darkly" (then face to face), I presume he had general reference to the inability of ordinary mankind to look through the shell of the material and see beyond the inscriptions of God writ in the alphabet of spiritual things. Presumably, at least, he did not possess an apocalyptic vision whereby he could foresee some modern use of symbols. If such be the case, it only shows how in the great unity of all things a truth may have far deeper, farther-reaching significance than he who utters it knows. "Now I see through a glass darkly." Yea, verily. That map through which the pupil was to see South America was as opaque as the