The fourth point is that the talk of a "book trust" is sheer nonsense. The School Journal knows the facts; and desires its readers to know them.

The American textbook market absorbs annually about $15,000,000 worth of books, not

more. These books are nearly all published by about one hundred different houses. A dozen large houses make and sell probably ninety per cent of all textbooks. No one house does onehalf or anything like one-half of the business. In such a situation there can be no monopoly. But it is replied that through community of interest and interlocking directorates one house controls nearly all the business. This simply is not so. The School Journal is familiar with the alliances of the various leading houses; the family relationships and the banking connections.

Three Sets of Competitors

The fact seems to be that there are two sets of alliances and a great field of independents. One leading house is very friendly with several smaller houses; another leading concern is on most friendly terms with another house of fair size. These two sets of alliances compete strongly with each other; neither controls so much as one-half of the total business.

We

do not mean that the large house owns the smaller houses, but simply that there are personal friendships and intimate relations involved. Fighting against these two sets of opponents are the many other houses. One of these general publishing houses does a total business of considerable magnitude, of which about one-half is done on textbooks. Another

is a large publishing concern in which textbooks are but a minor department. These two general publishing houses, with their textbook departments, lack, to some extent, the intimate knowledge of textbook conditions and the intimate connections with educational affairs which characterize the strictly textbook house.

Unquestionably the independents do nearly one-half of the total book business. They are all free and active rivals.

No Pool for Prices

and the social order. Men who make them do not know their political economy well; or else are revolutionists.

Name the great fortunes, and their amounts. If there is any man who by the textbook business has made in the last twenty years ten million dollars, The School Journal does not know him. We believe that we have a fair knowledge of the fortunes of the important men in the textbook field. It is true that there are a few millionaires; but the possession of two or three million dollars is not a great fortune as American business goes. In fact, we do not know of any textbook stockholder, officer or partner who in the last ten years has made through the textbook business so much as one million dollars. The total invested capital of all the textbook makers in America surely does not exceed forty million dollars and is probably not thirty millions. We doubt whether the total net profits equal so much as six per cent upon the investment. State printing plants should earn at least five per cent.

Kinds of Houses

The hundred textbook publishers of this country may be divided into four groups, viz.: 1. Those who make their first interest the paying of dividends to their stockholders.

2. Those who make their first interest the paying of high salaries to their officers and salesmen.

3. Those who make their first interest the paying of good royalties to their authors and consequently are furnishing the best books to their trade.

4. Those who keep the above three interests at a fairly just balance.

We believe that we understand pretty well into which class each of the publishing houses falls. Most of the attacks made on private book publishing enterprises have been due to the practices of houses in the first group; others have been due to the practices of houses in the second group; while nearly all the true glory is due to the practices and policies of houses in the third and fourth groups.

Our own opinion is that the recent marvelous improvement in textbook authorship and manufacture is largely due to the very system which is now under attack all along the line.

Graft and Conscience

It is said that certain textbook houses "own" certain cities and even entire states. Sometimes men particularize. They say that this house "owns" this state and that another house "owns" the other state. They say that these houses move certain superintendents from city to city as they choose. They are shrewd judges of men and they back the men who are able to turn great quantities of business in their direction. But who can stop men from praising or condemning others? This, in truth, is the extent of most of this alleged ownership by publishing houses.

By what method can this be avoided? Since human nature is a fact, what will prevent exactly similar conditions under state publication? If book houses can do these things, how about state printers?

A. B. prepares a manuscript which he proposes to sell for five thousand dollars to the state textbook commission. What can prevent his influencing the leaders of that commission to accept his manuscript? Only conscience.

A reasonable acquaintance with American politics warns the editors of The School Journal of just two courses-one is to avoid credulity in the presence of such charges, and the second is to avoid assuming that a change of system will change men's hearts.

It is a counsel of perfection to expect state publication to convert sinners into saints. The occasional scoundrel and the habitual scoundrel will neither be made righteous by law. Nor will the false calumniator be silent under state publication. Between the grafter and the false calumniator, let Heaven judge which is the

worse.

This is an affair for priests and ministers of religion, not for lawmakers. We are credibly informed that in New York state strong forces are being lined up in favor of state uniformity, and we also understand that certain leaders are favoring the idea of state or city publication.

Let us hear from both sides. The School Journal will gladly print candid arguments based on facts. We reserve the right to withhold from publication evasive communications and arguments based on fiction or emotions. No more important question has presented itself to the educational world in many years. Those having the best interest of the American youth at heart should study the question and those having strong convictions should not hesitate to express them.

EUGENICS FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF EDUCATION

Perhaps, no other topic of a scientific and ethical nature involving mankind is attracting so much attention as is the subject of eugenics, which means good birth. In a sense, to rely In a sense, to rely upon eugenics as the main means of improving the race is the contrary of relying upon education. Eugenics asserts that we should fix our attention mainly upon good heredity for the improvement of the race while education asserts that nurture is more important than nature, especially in view of the fact that once born a man cannot change his heredity.

It is a popular impression that the individual is the product of his multiplied parents, though nearly all persons well understand that in a family one child "takes after" one parent, another "after" the other parent, and that often a child resembles an uncle or a grandfather or even a second cousin far more than either father or mother. The general public and even educated men until recently have allowed this

conflicting situation to continue, failing to note that both opinions cannot be true.

But now arises a new science with a new art to tell us what are the facts of heredity and how we may take advantage of them for the improvement of the race. The individual is not the product of his multiplied parents. Nor is he a repetition of some previous ancestors. He is the compound of certain selected traits of certain selected ancestors.

Let us assume a case.

The mother of a family is a fairly skillful musician, the father is not musical at all. But both the maternal grandparents were highly musical, and the father's mother was a good musician, though the father's father was not musical. In three out of four grandparents, the musical gift was a "dominant trait." There are five children in the family, of whom four have distinct musical ability, but the fifth cares nothing for music. Of all these children, by reason of cross-heredity of sex, a boy has the largest musical ability, and a girl has none.

Dominant traits displayed by two or more recent ancestors are likely to be transmitted; and similarly, serious deficiencies displayed by two or more recent ancestors are likely to reappear in the children.

The sole important difficulty confronting eugenicists in the progress of their science is how to determine what is a unit trait and what is a complex and easily broken down trait. Musical ability appears to be a unit trait transmissible in whole or not at all. It displays itself early as auditory-mindedness with a "musical ear."

In the case just cited, the boy has the gift of absolute pitch; so had his maternal grandfather; and so has his mother's sister. Absolute pitch is nothing but perfect tone-memory, which means perfect audition and perfect recall.

The determination of unit traits is a problem in physiopsychology, and lies outside of the science of eugenics. Only a few unit traits have been isolated. The complex traits cannot be relied upon for transmission. Honesty is a complex trait, dependent upon several factors. The so-called "family tendency to be consumptive" or "hereditary tuberculosis" is a complex trait.

Strong external muscles as a system constitute a transmissible unit trait; likewise, a good alimentary tract or "a strong digestion" is

transmissible.

The art of eugenics consists in wise marriage. Of course, the race has known this always; but what is wise marriage has only recently been known. A man or woman with undesirable qualities should avoid a mate with the same qualities. We have an instinctive feeling accordingly that causes us to dislike persons of the opposite sex, but with similar disagreeable or unfortunate qualities or deficiencies. On the other side, a man or a woman with desirable qualities should seek a mate with the same qual

ities. We have an instinctive feeling accordingly that causes us to like persons of the opposite sex with similar agreeable or fortunate qualities or deficiencies. But-and here comes the rub instinctively the individual with a disagreeable quality or an unfortunate deficiency desires a mate exactly the opposite in this respect. This is a very large part of that beautiful experience known as "romantic love."

Eugenics asserts that a competent heredity makes a deal of educational effort unnecessary. An eight-year-old child with the musical gift easily surpasses a non-musical person though taught by good masters daily for a decade.

Where heredity fails, there education may step in to make as much as possible out of what is naturally a bad matter.

In the future with the light of eugenics upon the situation, education will consider more and more the individual, his possibilities and his impossibilities, and will save its endeavors for practical undertakings.

"The History of Thomas Hickathrift" was in great demand in the eighteenth century. The story goes that a giant who lived in Norfolk, called Hicafine, in the time of William the Conqueror, had more strength than six horses and twenty men; he became a brewer's servant, killed a giant, took possession of his cave and riches, and lived happy ever after. Thackeray thought he detected the style of Henry Fielding in its composition.

One of the strongest, perhaps the strongest, of all the city educational societies in America is that of Baltimore, Maryland, which has the pleasant custom annually of inviting to a banquet one new speaker and all of its former banquet speakers, thus adding one a year to its list of honorary members and guests. Upon March 1 the society had as its new honorary member Professor Charles H. Judd, director of the School of Education, University of Chicago, who spoke for an hour or so upon the course of study from the points of view of modern psy

TALES

We are indebted to the Parents' Review, London, for these facts concerning the ancientness of the songs and stories of our childhood. "Sing a Song of Sixpence" is mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher.

"To Market, to Market to buy a Plum Bun" is quoted in Floro's "New World of Words," in 1611.

"Three Blind Mice" is found in a "Nurse's Book," in 1609.

"Girls and Boys come out to Play" is as old as the reign of Charles II.

"Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, where have you been" is of the time of Elizabeth.

"The Old Woman tossed in a Blanket" is of the reign of James II, supposed to allude to that monarch.

"Here we go round the Bramble Bush" as it used to be, changed into "Mulberry Bush" in King James's reign when mulberries were plentiful.

Perhaps it is not generally known that many cf our favorite fairy tales are of French origin. "Puss in Boots," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Sleeping Beauty," "Cinderella," "Blue Beard" come to us through Charles Perrault, the philosopher, who wrote these stories to amuse a little son born to him late in life. Perrault's date is 1638 to 1703. Some say an English translation appeared in 1720, but the edition is not forthcoming. The stories appear in popular form in England in 1744.

He founded the famous "Bluebeard" on the

iniquities of a Breton Lord, Gallis de Laval,

whose crimes had horrified France.

That funny Henny Penny and Cocky Locky in "Mother Goose" owes its origin to Perrault. "Jack and the Bean Stalk," which was not printed till 1711, originates in a Saxon hero. Tom Thumb is alluded to in "King Lear," Act III, Scene 4.

other guests were John M. Gwinn, superintendent of schools, New Orleans; John H. Phillips, superintendent of schools, Birmingham; Robert H. Wright, president East Carolina Teachers' Training School, and W. E. Chancellor, editor of The School Journal.

The Baltimore Educational Society has a home of its own with library, reading-room, etc., holds regular monthly meetings, and maintains standing committees. tains standing committees. It is a good working model for other cities.

The

Congress has recently voted to give to the white pupils of the city of Washington a new central high school building. Washington already has seven high schools, five for white and two for colored. The district superintendent, William M. Davidson, has appeared before congress and urged that the new high school shall offer business, technical and classical training, upon the plan that prevails in St. Louis. statements of Superintendent Davidson were considered as being particularly just, but have caused considerable sensation in Washington against the board of education. The fashionable people of the city desire to be strictly residential, and fear that the extension of educational development, due to the McKinley high school (white) and the Armstrong high school (colored), shall turn the youth of the city to real work.

Washington has an extraordinarily large high school attendance, for it has no manufacturing institutions or large stores to employ youth under eighteen years of age.

Too many psychologists are but petal counters and classifiers by stamens and pistils; and that is why the most learned psychologists are apt to have the least knowledge of human nature-The Valiant Woman.

THE MARCH MAGAZINES

The One Thing Lacking

The Atlantic treats, in a light vein, under The Confessions of One Behind the Times, of the fads of modern college faculties.

But one cloud, the size of a man's hand, has lately appeared upon the horizon. A visitant has lately come to our shores from no less a center of light than Berlin (a name not lightly to be taken upon any lips), with the pronouncement that one thing is still lacking in our educational fabric; namely, that quality in the German professor known as Persönlichkeit. How sudden, Friend Stubbs, may be the reversal of your most prized scholarly habits and ideals if the aroma of Persönlichkeit must be made to exhale both from your presence and from your carefully desiccated and depersonalized volumes! And is young Whitaker, our efficiency expert, suddenly to pause in his productive processes and clothe himself with Persönlichkeit as with a garment?

College Virtues

In contrast with the many articles in criticism of the colleges, Harper's has an appreciation of The Undergraduate.

On the one hand, there is sentimental fiction, which has cast a delusive glamor upon him. On the other there is the business man who says he is untrained, the literary man who calls him illiterate, and the educator who asserts that he is unwilling. There is his own personality, which is in a transition stage, and so doubly hard to comprehend. And there are his poses, many and various, which must be discounted before we can begin. Nevertheless, it is a dull observer who cannot be certain that three estimable virtues-courtesy, energy, and loyalty-flourish in the colleges.

One Subject Not Well Taught in Germany Price Collier continues his series of articles in Scribner's on Germany and the Germans and comments as follows:

In no other country in the cultured group of nations is the animal man so naïvely vain, so deliciously selfconscious, so untrained in the ways of the polite world, so serenely oblivious, not merely of the rights of women, but of the simple courtesy of the strong to the weak. It is the only country I have visited where the hands of the men are better cared for than the hands of the women, and this is not a pleasant commentary upon the question of who does the rough work and who has leisure for a meticulous toilet.

In the streets and public conveyances of the cities, in the beer-gardens and restaurants in the country, in the summer and winter resorts from the Baltic to the Black Forest, from the Rhine to Bohemia, it is ever the same. They seat themselves at table first and have their nap

kins hanging below their Adam's apples before their women are in their chairs; hundreds of times I have seen their women arrive at table after they were seated, not a dozen times have I seen their masters rise to receive them; their preference for the inside of the sidewalk is practically universal.

Dangers in Industrial Education

Professor John Dewey, in The Child Labor Bulletin, deplores the tendency to segregate industrial education:

The question of industrial education is fraught with consequences for the future of democracy. Its right development will do more to make public education truly democratic than any other one agency now under consideration. Its wrong treatment will as surely accentuate all undemocratic tendencies in our present situation, by fostering and strengthening class divisions in school and out.

The old-time general, academic education is beginning to be vitalized by the introduction of manual, industrial and social activities; it is beginning to recognize its responsibility to train all the youth for useful citizenship, including a calling in which each may render useful service to society and make an honest and decent living. Everywhere the existing school system is beginning to be alive to the need of supplementary agencies to help it fulfill this purpose, and is taking tentative but positive and continuous steps toward it.

A Need of Industrial Education

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler writes in the Educational Review of Vocational Preparation as a Social Problem. He regards this as one of the most far-reaching questions in modern life, for whose solution it is necessary

to bring in close touch with this great movement, during its early and experimental stages, two great bodies of opinion, without whose support it cannot possibly succeed; the opinion of the great employing class in this country, and the opinion of the great class of skilled employees. Unless these two classes see and understand that this is an attempt to strengthen both of them, to give them new economic advantage and new economic importance, and through them to strengthen and build up an independent, self-supporting citizenship, the movement is bound to fail.

The Laboratory Method and High School Efficiency, Popular Science Monthly, calling attention to the fact that for twenty years there has been no increase in the percentage of pupils who complete a high school course, advocates periods of supervised study in school and more careful assignments of lessons. "Almost all high-school work should be done at school in school hours under guidance of teachers."

Certified Boys and Certified Milk in the Craftsman describes an interesting school in the vicinity of New York City which prepares city boys for farm life.

Vocations for Girls. By Mary A. Laselle and Katherine Wiley, with an introduction by Meyer Bloomfield. 139 pages. Price 85c. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

After getting through a preface, introduction and foreword the reader comes to some things worth while. The girl who would be a cook, nurse, stenographer or teacher will find here some helpful hints and advice. For instance, the trials and requirements of a telephone operator, hard and exacting as they are, are plainly presented. The chapter on teaching is the least practical in the book, although the authors are teachers. Parents and teach

ers, weighed with the responsibility of giving advice, will find suggestions of value in this little volume.

The S. W. F. Club. By Emilia Elliott, author of "Joan of Juniper Inn," "Patricia," etc. 12mo. Cloth. Five illustrations in color by Elizabeth Otis. Color insert on cover. Price $1.00 net.

A bright, cheery, wholesome story, telling of the doings of three attractive young sisters who, not being able to afford to go away for their summer vacation, form the S. W. F. Club -"Seeing Winton First Club." With their friends they manage to have the finest time around their home town, which they find is not so poky as they had at first supposed. The book's charm is in the natural and delightful way in which their jolly doings are described.

The Kipling Reader: For Upper Grades. 196 pages. Price 40c. net. D. Appleton Company, New York.

In this book a lover of engines may read how young Ottley, son of a fireman, learned Olaf Swanson's book about engines by heart; how it served him when Rustomjee's engine, Number 40, went wrong; and how young Ottley thereafter got an engine of his own to run.

Other tales also he may read, of a similar kind; for example, how another Anglo-Indian boy became a pilot in the port of Calcutta, how Dan and Una, in England, met an old Roman centurion and learned from him how the world wagged in Britain two thousand years ago. There's a story of the Philadelphia of a hundred years ago; the story of .007, an eightwheeled American locomotive; a tale of a drive. in the Yellowstone; the cross-continent race of Harvey Cheyne and his wife, from California to Boston, to meet a son that they had believed lost forever-and many more. Besides this there are some ballads and other poems of Kipling's, among them "If You're Off to Philadelphia in the Morning."

The reading isn't easy, but it is crammed full

of ideas that ought to interest boys and some girls in the last school year.

Mewanee: The Little Indian Boy. By Belle Wiley, Critic and Teacher of Methods, Training School for Teachers, Rochester, N. Y. Illustrated by Charles D. Hubbard. 101 pages. Price 30c. Silver, Burdett &

Co., New York.

The book is a supplementary reader, giving in narrative form, for primary grades, some knowledge of Indian life in the past. It tells about Mewanee's home, the family occupations, their relations with other tribes, about an Indian council, about their travel to a new home. There are pictures of war clubs, of fire drills, of galloping Indians, canoes, a swimming-pool, basket-makers and other things. The vocabulary of the book is less primitive than the paragraph structure.

Word Mastery: A Course in Phonics for the First Three Grades. By Florence Akin, Teacher in Primary Grades, Pasadena, Cal. 124 pages. 25c. net postpaid. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

"Word Mastery" is a drill book in ear-training, pronunciation, word-recognition, and spelling. There are directions for teachers at the end of the book, and a complete list of phonograms. No diacritic marks are used. The sounds are taught by analysis. Attention is directed to all words the spelling of which departs at all from phonetic regularity.

Selected Stories from The Arabian Nights. Edited by Samuel Eliot. Illustrated. 210 pages. Price 50c. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

The collection includes the stories of "The Three Sisters," "Prince Ahmed," "Aladdin," "Ali Baba" and "Sindbad.” These are carefully edited by Mr. Eliot. There are pictures of genii, of the magic carpet, of Sindbad's ship, of asses loaded with merchandise, etc. It makes a good supplementary reader for the grammar grades.

Review Questions and Problems in Chemistry. By M. S. H. Unger, Head Master, St. John's School, Manlius, N. Y. 106 pages. Price 50c. Ginn & Co., Boston.

This is an excellent compendium for secondary schools, made up of questions for drill and review in chemistry. The questions, selected from college entrance examinations and from similar sources, are classified in an intelligent manner that makes the book an effective aid in the work of high schools and academies.

The Night Riders: A Romance of Early Montana. By Ridgwell Cullum. Price $1.25 net. Geo. W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia.