suitable conveyances for protection from cold and wet and fatigue. Further, it is in the air that the new consolidated country school must adapt its methods of instruction to the real conditions of life. It must be a social and intellectual center for grown-up people as well as for the children of the region. It must have an ample piece of ground, and this must be kept in the most perfect order, as one of the primary interests and duties of the school. Nature-study Nature-study must enter largely into school life and work, and a positive taste for rural pursuits and for the elements of the natural sciences must be inculcated. The school grounds must furnish object lessons in the planting and maintenance of trees and flowers, and, in so far as possible, may well be utilized to teach practical gardening. A certain amount of manual training for both girls and boys should enter into the work of the school, and every neighborhood should strive to surpass all others in its zeal to secure good teachers by offering proper inducements.

New

Instances of precisely this sort of Educational school development are fortunately Enthusiasm. no longer isolated. Great educational leaders and official heads of school systems, including some of the foremost State superintendents of education, are making themselves the zealous and eloquent apostles of this new movement for the regeneration of country schools. The Southern Education Board, under the presidency of Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York,with its, membership largely made up of Southern professional educators,-backed financially in its work by the General Education Board of New York, is making this movement for the improvement of rural schools the object of its chief solicitude. It has been going about

its work in various ways. First, it has been leading a propaganda for local taxation for school purposes; second, it has stimulated in many ways the work of institutions which are training teachers; and, third, it has in various instances directly promoted district-school consolidation. These objects were held constantly before the attention of the great summer school for teachers held in June and July at Knoxville, Tenn., where it enjoyed the hospitality of the State University. It was organized by President Charles W. Dabney of that institution, in association with Professor Claxton, recently

More than two Knoxville and Other Sum- thousand teach

mer Schools. ers came together at this great summer school at Knoxville, and a great num. ber of able instructors were assembled. The General Ed. ucation Board has been so impressed with the extraor dinary value of this work that it has promised a generous contribution toward its enlargement next year. As we have already remarked, manual training, consolidation of country schools, and the

thorough adaptation of school work to actual problems and conditions were constantly emphasized at Knoxville, and President Dabney is one of the foremost exponents of these modern views to be found in the entire country. While this summer school at Knoxville was undoubtedly the center for the country, this summer, of enthusiasm for rural civilization and progress in the half of the country that most needs school reform, it should not be forgotten that an admirable summer school for Virginia teachers was carried on at the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, with nearly a thousand members enrolled; that South Carolina had an excellent summer school for teachers at Rock Hill, with leadership of great earnestness, and that sev eral more strictly local assemblages of teachers were in session for a period of several weeks in North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and other Southern States. The great summer schools of the North,-as, for example, those held by Columbia University, Harvard, and the University of Chicago, -have had prosperous seasons, and these, together with the Chautauqua assemblies and other conferences and gatherings of an educational nature, have added something to the training and much to the ideals and inspiration of many thousands of Northern and Western teachers. But, generally speaking, it is the wellpaid teacher of the towns and more prosperous villages who can afford to attend these fine sumFor New York, Pennsylvania. mer schools.

New England, and the North in general, the problem of the country school must be faced, as unquestionably it will be, with ever-increasing comprehension of its importance. Meanwhile, in the Northern cities the vacation schools have made much progress in this past summer.

The great yearly convention of the Platforms of the Teaching National Educational Association, Profession. which was held at Minneapolis in July, seemed to us to touch high-water mark in its appreciation of the vital needs of our schools, and in its consciousness of the duty and opportunity of the teaching profession. In its series of general resolutions it declared that the common schools of this country are the one great agency upon which the nation is to rely for a barrier against the setting up of class distinctions which have no place on American soil.'" Having expressed its ideal of the complete education of the child," it declared as follows concerning the country schools:

66

We believe that it is both just and possible to keep the country schools in the foregoing, and all respects, up to the highest standard of excellence and efficiency. The movement to consolidate the weaker districts in the country, and to provide public and free transportation for the pupils to and from the schools, tends to that end.

It made other declarations in consonance with the new movement for vitalizing school life and work, and bringing it all into direct relation with

the moral and material welfare of the community. The Summer School of the South at Knox. ville, to which we have referred, in its declaration of principles included the following sentences, which seem to us to sound the keynote of the new school movement not merely for the South, but for the whole country:

If an increased expenditure of money is to be of lasting value, a more intelligent public interest must be brought to bear upon our schools. But even greater than the need of money and interest is the need of intelligent direction.

A mere extension of the present school term with the present course of study will not meet the needs of the children. The lines of development in the South must be both agricultural and mechanical. Our people must bring a trained brain and a trained hand to the daily labor. Education should be a means not of escaping labor, but of making it more effective.

The school should be the social center of the community, and should actively and sympathetically touch all the social and economic interests of the people. In addition to the usual academic studies, therefore, our courses should include manual training, nature study, and agriculture.

To secure more efficient supervision, to encourage grading, and to broaden the social life of the children, we favor the consolidation of weak schools into strong central schools. It is better in every way to carry the child to the school than to carry the school to the child. We endorse the movements recently made by the women of the South for model schools, built with due regard to sanitation, ventilation, and beauty.

Teaching should be a profession, and not a stepping-stone to something else. We therefore stand for the highest training of teachers, and urge the school authorities of every State to encourage those who wish to make the educating of children a life profession. We call upon the people to banish forever politics and nepotism from the public schools, and to establish a system in which, from the humblest teacher to the office of the State superintendent, merit shall be the touch

self chiefly in the gratification of physical wants and material aims, is as untrue to the facts as could well be. Mr. Michael Sadler, who is director in the British Education Department, has recently spent several months in study. ing educational work in this country, and he repeatedly expressed his admiration and astonishment at the comparative devotion of the United States to intellectual and inoral objects, and especially at the unprecedented development of educational work of all grades. An occasional visitor of great insight, like Mr. Sadler or Mr. Bryce, discovers the paradox of American life, which is that the abounding material prosperity of this country has grown out of its idealism, -its search for things not material. Russia has a vast population and a tremendous agricultural area, but its people lack the intelligence needed to develop their resources. American devotion to the principles of equality and democracy, and to the policy of the universal training of the young, have given us our pros perity. We must, in turn, make it more than ever our business to utilize our abounding mate. rial resources for the more perfect and more complete work of adapting school training to the needs of every child.

Partisanship.

Communities, whether rural or urban, Decline of that are engaged in advancing these local measures for the common good, may well be a trifle reluctant to drop it all at the beck and call of the politicians, and to separate for the electoral season into rival camps under the standards "Republican" and "Democrat. Efficiency, rather than partisanship, seems to be the demand of the day. Thus, Massachusetts approves of Governor Crane and his administration as thoroughly as possible,—not so much because he happens to be a Republican as because he has shown himself a thoroughly upright, businesslike, and capable governor of Massachusetts, in whose hands the executive affairs of the commonwealth are so honorably and so ably conducted that everybody admires and nobody finds fault. In New York, Governor Odell has so carried on his administration that many of his strongest supporters belong to the class of independent voters. He has been business-like, and, so far as we know, the Democrats are not really finding any serious fault with him. They are trying to harmonize their factions and find a candidate upon whom all can unite, chiefly because it is their business as politicians to hold the party together for the sake of the future. They will, nevertheless, undoubtedly recognize the spirit of the period by selecting a candidate who, like Mr. Odell, will commend himself to the judgment of the community as an efficient man, and who, if elected, would carry on State affairs in a business-like rather than a partisan manner.

Local issues of various sorts are quite sure, under these circumstances, to Issues? play a larger part than usual in the political campaigns of the present season through out the country. It is not very easy to find an intelligent man who, in friendly, private conversation, can at present show any great zeal of partisanship. The war with Spain was as much the work of one party as of the other, and the ratification of the treaty by which we acquired the Philippines was not wholly a Republican act. Whatever distinctions certain learned individuals may make, the country as a whole will not now find it easy to make any sharp issue between the parties out of existing differences of opinion as to our present Philippine policy. Some of the Dem. ocrats say that we ought to declare to the Filipinos that we intend in the future to give them self-government; but the Republicans reply that we are actually giving them self-government just as fast as it can be forced upon them, and that when you are doing your best to teach a child to walk, there is no particular use in proclaiming to him daily that he shall some time be permitted to

What are the Party

run.

Nor will the country be likely to find any radical difference between the parties as respects such a question as how to deal with trusts and great combinations. Experience and study, observation and discussion, are giving us a clearer understanding of these problems every day. Meanwhile, there is no great divergence in the avowals of the two parties on the trust question, and certainly President Roosevelt and the Attorney-General have not hesitated to attempt the enforcement of existing laws. Nor, finally, is there much use in trying any longer to make the tariff question the football of politics. Business men of all parties and all sections arise in their might and demand that the tariff issue serve no longer as a mere party convenience. When the Democratic politicians had their opportunity to reform the tariff a decade ago, they modified it a little here and a little there, but they left it in general what it was before,-namely, a characteristic American high protective tariff. If they were given the opportunity again in the near future, they would mutilate the Dingley schedules a good deal, no doubt; but when they got through, there would remain an American protective tariff. Meanwhile, however, there would have been agitation and uncertainty, with the consequence that various important industries would curtail operations, and with harmful indirect effects extending throughout the business life of the country.

Yet the present tariff is by no means the best that could be devised. The principal thing in its favor is the fact. that business conditions have adjusted themselves to it, that the Treasury Department understands its qualities as a producer of revenue, and that the reasons for disturbing it are of a general. nature rather than practical, specific, and immediately urgent. On the other hand, it is a simple fact that American industrial development has reached that condition of maturity to promote which the protective system was originally devised. We are becoming a great exporting nation, and foreign countries are growing more and more uneasy and disturbed over the invasion of their markets by American goods, while this country keeps up its high barriers against foreign commodities. Furthermore, some at least of our protected industries, like tin plate, for example, have passed under the control of a partial or almost complete monopoly; and in these cases, it is urged, tariff protection should be considerably reduced, if not altogether withdrawn. The fact is, that the American wage system is no longer dependent chiefly upon the tariff, but upon the efficiency of labor in actual

Should the Tariff be Revised ?

production. President McKinley, the great apostle of protection, had arrived at the opinion that the time had fully come for a modification of our policy. His last speech at Buffalo was a plea for enlarged commercial relations through a system of reciprocity treaties. Free trade with Cuba and the Philippines would be a good starting point, and reciprocity amounting practically to a zollverein, or commercial union, between the United States and Canada might prove to be an act of the most far-reaching statesmanship. A revision of the iron and steel schedules would not hurt this highly developed American industry, and the same thing might be said of several other schedules. Republican business men in almost every community of the country would like to see some conservative modification of the tariff, provided it could be done without political agitation and clamor, and provided certain members of the United States Senate would not take advantage of the rules of that body to prevent conclusions by interminable debate.

the other hand, supported by local opinion from almost every part of the State, held tenaciously to the view that if the tariff is not soon revised by Republicans in a cautious and friendly way, it will be revised by anti-protectionists in a hostile and radical way. Governor Cummins believes that, although it is only five years since the Dingley tariff was adopted, our industrial conditions have made greater changes in this period than in a preceding term of twenty years. The Iowa platform stands by "the historic policy of the Republican party in giving protection to home industries;" but it favors such changes in the tariff from time to time as become advisable through the progress of our industries and their changing relations to the commerce of the world." The platform endorses the policy of reciprocity, and favors "any modification of the tariff schedules that may be required to prevent their affording shelter to monopoly." The Iowa Republicans do not mention any particular sched