or $30 per month for a few months of the year. If we hope to secure good teachers, we must build good schools. The teacher does not rise above the requirements of the school. The better the pay, the better the service. The better the position, the greater the inducement on the part of the teacher to prepare thoroughly for it. By building up strong graded schools in rural communities we create a condition which will require those who expect to teach to make thorough preparation in the way of high school, normal, and university training. I have such an abiding confidence in the consolidation movement that I believe it will do more than any other one thing to make teaching a profes

proved. The city high school gives the child an opportunity to secure a good education right at home. Why should not the boys and girls upon the farm enjoy the same privileges? The consolidation of schools will equalize educational conditions. It will bring high-school privileges to the rural communities. It will bring to the farm what the boy goes to the city to get. It will bring the best blessing of the city to the country school, thus making it possible for the children to stay at home until they have attained that age when the fibers of character are strong, convictions mature, and habits firmly fixed. Under such conditions parents will not hesitate to send them out into the world. These young people from the rural communities, with a good education and good habits, will not be so easily tempted by the glitter and glamour and hollowness of city life.

With high ideals, and a body clean and strong from nature's choicest influences, they will take their places as conservative and useful members in the honorable pursuits of active life. If the consolidation of schools will bring these larger opportunities to the farm, thus enabling us to rear a generation of men and women free from the enticing and degrading influences of the large cities, it seems to me it is worthy of our earnest support and coöperation.

AN INCENTIVE TO TEACHERS.

Consolidation of schools will give us better prepared and better paid teachers. Under present conditions there is no inducement to prepare thoroughly for teaching in the rural communities with only the prospect of being able to earn $25

sion.

AN OBJECT-LESSON IN KANSAS.

The consolidated school at Lorraine, in Ellsworth County, Kan., was organized in the fall of 1896. It is composed of the territory of what was formerly four country school districts. They now have a graded and high school employing four teachers. The school started with three teachers, but last year a two-year high-school course was added, thus making an additional teacher necessary. As in every other place where the plan has been tried, the enrollment and attendance is much larger than before, being almost one-half greater than under the old plan. This increased attendance in school and greater length of term are of great value to the community and to the pupils attending school.

A very positive endorsement of this movement in Kansas is found in the fact that in Ellsworth County the adjoining districts are anxious to join the Lorraine district, and some of the patrons are sending their children to the consolidated school, paying their own transportation charges and tuition. The people of Lorraine are more than satisfied, and would not think of going back to the old plan.

ENRICHMENT OF SOCIAL LIFE.

It is evident that with the consolidation of schools will come a larger social life for the people of rural communities. A higher standard of intelligence and culture will also be developed. The graded school will bring to the community

libraries, lecture courses, and entertainments of high character. The neighborhood feuds will be broken down, and a feeling of helpfulness and good-will will be created instead. This enrichment and preservation of our rural life is one of the important problems of our time. In the degree in which we enlarge the opportuni

ties for education among the great masses of the people, in the same degree do we add to the interest of higher education and to the permanency of our social institutions. By this union of educational forces we also raise the standard of scholarship and give encouragement to culture and learning along broad lines of usefulness.

THE

HE advantages of the consolidation plan as applied to rural schools are clearly set forth in the preceding article by Superintendent Nelson, of Kansas. From the educationist's point of view, there can be no doubt that, in many instances, the consolidation of country school districts has resulted in a marked improvement of conditions; it has made pos sible the employment of better teachers, has stimulated school attendance, has secured more thorough superintendence, has enabled teachers to classify their pupils more satisfactorily, and has led to the providing of advanced courses and lengthened terms of instruction. The testimony of educational experts is well-nigh unanimous on these points; and at teachers' conferences, where the matter is discussed, it is said that objections to the plan are seldom raised. State and county superintendents of schools, from Maine to Florida, have long been convinced that the consolidation of small and weak districts must, in nine cases out of ten, be the first step in the actual strengthening of the school systems of State or county. Not, per. haps, in every State, but, certainly, in most of the older commonwealths, it is at last realized that there are too many poorly-attended, inefficient schools in the country districts.

The school superintendents, State and county, were the first to grasp the essential facts of this situation. In the performance of their duties they were brought face to face with conditions that could not be ignored. They saw, better than the taxpayers themselves, how poor a return the rural taxpayers were getting for school taxes which, in the aggregate, mounted up to vast sums of money-expenditures that have long been the boast of this land of the free school and the envy of less progressive peoples.

THE ECONOMIC WASTE OF THE "LITTLE RED
SCHOOLHOUSE."

That these great public funds have suffered grievously from waste and misapplication may

easily be shown. Go to the middle West, and single out the prosperous, well-peopled State of Wisconsin. The story told by the school statistics of that thriving State almost passes belief316,833 pupils enrolled in the rural and village schools, and an average daily attendance of only 179,913, or 56.7 per cent. ! Now, how does this concern the taxpayer? It means that, while the people of Wisconsin paid out for the maintenance of these schools during the year 1901 the sum of $3,669,088.77, only 56.7 per cent. of this expenditure was utilized, simply because 43.3 per cent. of the school children failed to avail themselves of the school privileges that were provided. As Superintendent Harvey points out in a bulletin recently issued from his office, there was an actual loss to the taxpayers of Wisconsin from this cause, in 1901, of $1,588,715.41, this being the amount paid out for teachers' wages, fuel, and supplies to provide school facilities for pupils who were not at school. From other States come similar reports. In North Dakota, on an enrollment of 77,686, there was an average daily attendance last year of 43,560. The year's expenditures for common-school purposes exceeded $1,500,000, and the superintendent of public instruction estimates the waste from non-attendance at over $600,000—no small item compared with the annual budget of a small and sparsely-settled State like North Dakota.

In the presence of such facts as these, the tax-paying citizen must be made to see that there is a certain failure of adjustment between the common-school administrative system, as it has come down to us from a former generation, and the conditions of modern life. At any rate, this is obviously true: To an increasing extent the money that is spent for public schools, outside the cities and larger towns and villages, is ineffectively spent, if not actually misapplied. Under the present system, the State of Wisconsin has to maintain nearly a thousand district schools having an average attendance of less than ten pupils each. Leaving out of consideration, for

the time being, the enormous waste of pedagogical effort that this state of affairs involves, we are led to ask whether ten thousand pupils might not be more economically cared for in five hundred or in four hundred schools than in a thousand, and whether the better wages that could then be paid to the smaller number of teachers would not, presumably, yield immediate returns in the form of better teaching. The maintenance funds of our school systems are large in the aggregate. The educational experts tell us that enough money is spent each year to provide every boy and girl, in city and country, with good school advantages; but it is a fact that thousands of boys and girls are still without such advantages. The ten-pupil district school, taught by an inexperienced girl who receives, on an average, a monthly stipend of from $20 to $25, is not an institution fitted to start the American youth on the road to successful achievement, much less to inspire a love of learning. It does not and can not do for its constituency what Horace Mann and a long line of apostles of the American free school have proclaimed as its function in our social order.

HOW WISCONSIN IS SOLVING THE PROBLEM.

When any State makes the unpleasant discovery that it has a thousand such schools within its borders, it cannot begin too soon to plan for the reduction of the number and for the substitution of something better. The school officials and people of Wisconsin are taking this course. The superintendent of public instruction has issued a special bulletin on the subject of consolidation of districts, and is doing everything in his power to bring the matter to the attention of the local authorities. In several counties districts have already been consolidated, and provision made for the transportation of pupils at public expense. In every case an actual money saving has been effected, while the character of the schools has been changed decidedly for the better. In the village of Cedar Falls, Dunn County, a three-department school has been maintained for some years; three and onehalf miles away there was ancther school, maintained by the same district, and accommodating about eighteen pupils,-at a cost of $350 a year; these pupils are now transported to the village school at a cost of $200 a year, and the increased attendance admits the village school to the list of graded schools of the first class (heretofore it has been but a second-class school). It is estimated that the new arrangement saves about $150 a year to the district, in addition to $300 of State aid. The wagon used for transporting the children costs the district $22 2-9 a month.

In this instance both schools were maintained by the same district before consolidation, but the laws of Wisconsin now permit the uniting of two or more districts in three different ways: (1) By the suspension of school in one or more districts and the payment of pupils' tuition in another school; (2) By consolidation through the action of the town board of supervisors = and (3-under the township system) By action of the town board of school directors. Both district and town boards are authorized to provide for the transportation of pupils at public expense. In the northern and newer counties, where schools have been organized under the township system, the union of sub-districts in several instances has resulted in large, wellattended, and well-graded schools.

THE OHIO PLAN OF CENTRALIZATION.

In Ohio, the schools of thirty-three townships are now fully centralized, and there is a partial centralization in 150 others, under a general law which permits the people of any township at the annual town election to vote on the proposition to abandon the small district schools and transport the children at public expense to a central school. This township centralization of schools began at Kingsville, Ashtabula County, in 1894. Five teachers are employed in the Kingsville school, and to it are brought all the children of the township (an area of twenty-five square miles), with the exception of two districts. Four wagons are required, at a total cost of $97 a month, for the nine months of the school year. There is an actual saving to the township under this plan, and, at the same time, a marked gain in attendance and in school efficiency. In Madison Township, Lake County, the superintendent reports the cost of tuition per pupilon the basis of total enrollment,- -as reduced from $16 to $10.48; and—on the basis of daily attendance, from $26.66 to $16.07. The total expense, however, is about the same as under the old plan, and this is explained by the fact that the school attendance has been increased from 217 to 300 pupils since consolidation was effected.

The experience of two Ohio townships, in particular, has attracted the attention of school officers in other States, chiefly because both townships afford first-class examples of school centralization in a purely rural environment. Gustavus Township, Trumbull County, maintains a four-room school, with a principal and three assistants. Nine wagons are employed, which call at every farmhouse in the township where there are children. The drivers are required to have the children on the school grounds at 8:45

The

A.M., and to leave for home at 3:45 P.M.
cost of this transportation averages $1.25 a day
for each wagon, the longest route traversed be-
ing four and three-fourths miles in length. In
the adjacent township of Greene the same policy
of centralization was adopted, and bonds were
voted for a $6,000 eight-room brick school
building, heated by steam and provided with
every modern convenience-this in the center of
twenty-five square miles of farming country, re-
mote from village or railroad. This township,
like its neighbor, reports signal gains in attend-
ance under the new plan.

WHAT OTHER STATES IN THE
MIDDLE WEST ARE DOING.

The Ohio township plan has not been adopted to any considerable extent in other States, in its complete form, but in Indiana the idea of collecting country school pupils in larger groups has taken a firm lodgment; many districts have been consolidated, and the State superintendent reports that 2,599 children are now transported regularly to and from school in 181 wagons. linois is still without a law permitting the transportation of pupils; but Superintendent Bayliss strongly advocates the union of weak districts to make strong ones, wherever practicable. In Michigan legislation, as yet,

goes no farther than to permit the organization of central high schools in townships in which there are not already existing village or graded schools; but no provision is made for the transportation of pupils to the schools. In the Upper Peninsula, however, some school districts have taken up the matter of transportation, without any special sanction of State law, and are well satisfied with the results of the experiment. In Iowa, the Buffalo Center plan of centralization has been in operation for the past five years; this is essentially the Ohio system. The attitude of Kansas on this subject is well set forth in Superintendent Nelson's article; Nebraska also is alive to the importance of consolidation as a first step toward the betterment of her country schools. The same thing is true of Minnesota and the two Dakotas.

THE MOVEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND.

The older States of the East, whose rural population has been drained by the Western migration, have found it necessary to attempt some sort of reconstruction of the district-school system of half a century ago. Massachusetts enacted a law providing for the conveyance of pupils at public expense as early as 1869. In 1874, the town of Quincy took action under this law, closing two schools and transporting the children to other schools. Since that time the consolidation of rural schools, especially in the "abandoned-farm" regions of the State, has

been introduced, the wagons are owned by the counties. Drivers and teams are hired by contract let to the lowest bidder.

gone on apace, and in 1901 the sum of $151,773 was expended for transportation. Of nearly two hundred towns which recently answered inquiries made by the State Board of Education, 60 per cent. reported the cost, under consolidation, as less than before, but the results as better; 15 per cent., the cost as the same, but results better; 8 per cent., cost more, but results better; 8 per cent., cost more, but results not stated; and 8 per cent., cost less, but results not stated. The other New England States are working along the same lines, with satisfactory results.

ENCOURAGING PROGRESS IN THE SOUTH.

A conference of the county school commissioners of Georgia, held at Athens in September last, devoted much attention to the subject of school consolidation and transportation of pupils. In the course of this discussion Superintendent Smith, of Greene County, stated that, in his county, three schools had been consolidated with great success. Wagon frames and horses were purchased by the county, and a contract was made for the transportation of children to school at five cents per head per day. Previous to consolidation the cost of maintaining the schools was 17 cents per pupil per day; the cost now, including that of carrying the children, is 12 cents per day. This testimony was followed by a statement of Superintendent Rogers, of Washington County, giving the history of a school which four years ago had twenty pupils and paid the teacher a salary of $30 a month, and to-day has one hundred pupils, with one teacher at $90 a month, a second at $70, and a third at $30, the school being carefully graded. Twenty-six of these pupils are transported, at a cost to the county of $5 per term for each pupil. All this was brought about by abolishing two little schools and transporting the pupils who could not, otherwise, reach the

Some of the most interesting experiments in rural school consolidation and improvement have been in progress for several years past in the part of the country that has heretofore been regarded as the least progressive in educational matters. In the States of North Carolina and Georgia the conditions are quite different in every way from those prevailing in New England and the Middle West, where the schoolconsolidation movement has attained its greatest impetus. Yet it has been fully demonstrated in each of these States that it is cheaper and better to transport a dozen children four or five miles to a central school than to employ a teacher and provide a schoolhouse for these children near their own homes. The State school commissioner of Georgia has asked the Legislature to confer upon the county boards of education the authority to consolidate the weak and inefficient schools of a number of sparsely settled. communities into one strong central school whenever, in their judgment, such consolidation is deemed wise and proper. In North Carolina the number of school dis

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tricts was reduced last year more than a thousand; the patrons of the schools in that State continue to ask for consolidation and centralization. Farther south, in Florida, one countyDuval-has concentrated schools over an area of about one hundred square miles. Here, as in other Southern States, where the transportation system has

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