dairying. The teachers in the rural districts of Macon County take pride in their school farms, which are usually found adjoining the schoolhouse and serve to furnish part of the money for the support of the teacher. Where such conditions as I have described exist, the whole life of the community centres in and around the school, and the work of the school touches and changes every part of the life of the people surrounding it.

If it were possible to get sufficient means for the purpose, it would be possible to multiply these thrifty, little farming communities all over the South, and the whole Southern country would prosper as a result. The colored people of Macon County have learned, as a result of the efforts that have been made to articulate the work of the school with the life of the farm and the community, that education actually means something; that education does not make a fool of an individual, but makes him a sensible, sober, useful person.

The white people in Macon County see the benefit of this kind of education. They have long since learned that it pays to have a good Negro schoolhouse, to have a good teacher, and a school session lasting from eight to nine months- because the people of the county pay less money in punishing

criminals, because the land is more valuable, because farm laborers are contented and permanent, and because more friendly relations exist between the races.

Whatever is done in the way of helping Negro rural education, let me add, should be done in connection with the public school. The public school system is permanent, and whatever is contributed ought to be done with the knowledge and coöperation of public-school authorities.

The money spent in this way is used not merely to improve present conditions but to build up a permanent system. Faster than anyone realizes, the masses of the colored people can be taught to help themselves in these matters. selves in these matters. In Macon County in one year, the colored people have raised in extra taxation more than $3,800 to be used in building school-houses and extending the school term.

It is a disgrace to our Christian civilization for the outside world to know that, with all of our wealth and intelligence in this country, we are permitting between six and seven millions of children in the rural districts of the South to grow up in almost total ignorance. Here is a rare opportunity, in my opinion, for a large sum of money to accomplish the greatest good in this generation.

IT

T IS plainly evident that the annual expenditure for the relief of human suffering and in saving what is best out of the débris of modern civilization serves only a temporary purpose. It deals only with the boils and carbuncles which appear constantly on our economic system, but does not even seek either to diagnose or to cure the disease that produces them. In this sense, therefore, it is largely wasted.

If I were to diagnose the disease I should say that it is a lack of proper education physical, intellectual, moral. Therefore, the way in which large sums of money can be best devoted to the public welfare and the

advancement of civilization is by aiding to this broad education those who desire it and will help themselves.

This may be the education of the poor white or the poor black in planting, sowing, reaping, or earning his living from his own farm. It may be in adding to the endowment of the small colleges in the land, provided they teach the children of the farm. the elements of agriculture and of domestic economy, and how to teach others. It may be by aiding in the endowment of schools of technology in the manufacturing districts, in which the boy and the girl after reaching the age of fourteen may be taught

the handicrafts peculiar to the locality. Larger endowments for the great universities are not desirable for the reason that these involve a standard of admission and a scale of living which exclude all but the children of the rich and well-to-do, and prevent the students from coming into that touch with the common people that is essentially necessary for good citizenship and for the successful practice of any profession or business. I fear that some of these vast sums are worse than wasted. It is the child of the farm and the factory that needs help, not the child of the rich.

Most of the evils of which we complain and the sufferings which cry out for relief are due to a lack of a morality sufficiently robust to handle properly the big business of this era of great industrials and corporations. Why not, then, spend a few of the millions which their owners think they ought to use for some great purpose in giving to the citizen, rich and poor, that training in essential morality that lies at the foundation of both individual well-being and national prosperity? Do not the rules of the game of business as it is now being

played need a radical revision, which can be accomplished only by a campaign of education in morals, that can be conducted only by men of great wealth?

Much of the present suffering and want of the world is due to preparations for war, when no one wants to fight and there is nothing to fight about. To such an extent have these preparations gone on, that a foolish act of some subordinate may any day begin a war that would put back progress a hundred years.

It is easily within the power of men of millions to induce any three of the great sea-powers to form an alliance for the sole purpose of keeping the peace of the world — an alliance always kept open to any other nation that desires admission. In other words, courts and cabinets need education in the simplest elements of morality and sound business. A dozen of our rich men could finance a world-wide campaign of education that would force kings and cabinets to submit their disputes to arbitration, and render the building of another battleship or the construction of another fortification entirely unnecessary.

A

CITIZEN of Kalamazoo, Mich., threw a banana-skin upon the pavement. Immediately a small boy thrust into his hand this printed slip: "Please! The Women's Civic Improvement League has undertaken to keep Main Street clean. We ask you to help us. Please do not throw anything into the street; put it in the can at the corner."

"Humph!" grunted the citizen, and started on.

"No you don't," chuckled a friend. "I just picked up my envelope and carried it to the can. I know you're stout to stoop,

but

The can received the banana-skin. So began the putting-in-order of one American city by one American woman for at the bottom of all the League's work was Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane.

She it was who, as pastor of the People's Church, discovered that there was more to be done on six days of the week than she could preach about on the seventh. She gave up her pastorate and started the League. Kalamazoo needed clean streets; she not only discovered the fact, but she induced the city council to give her charge of six blocks for three months. On these blocks she installed the Waring system of hand-sweeping, which proved vastly cleaner than the one previously in use, and she returned to the city $3.39 from each $8.39 appropriated. School children were enlisted to induce citizens to use the waste-cans. Kalamazoo installed the system permanently, and she became the housekeeper of her city.

She went to work at its backyards, schoolgardens, window - gardens. The League

these.

offered prizes for the best of these. Flower seeds were given away that everybody might compete. Kalamazoo blossomed. But all this was merely putting the city's parlor in order. There was its kitchen to attend to. Where did the food supplies come from?

Seven slaughter-houses were situated within a mile of the city-limits. These she visited; and her report threatened to turn the town vegetarian. A battle ensued and her bill providing for the municipal inspection of slaughter-houses was at first voted down; finally it was passed.

She then investigated the dairies, and Kalamazoo now has a properly inspected milk supply. Then followed her "visiting housekeepers," who went to the homes of the poor and tactfully suggested improved methods of housework and economy.

Asylums and almshouses also drew Mrs. Crane's attention, with the result that she gave over her entire efforts for a while to those whom she called "the forgotten people." In an almshouse she found a woman of ninety dying, with no care except that given by another inmate who stole her food; a young man, sick, and in need of an operation, yet utterly neglected. These and similar cases roused Mrs. Crane to make appeals which in turn roused the public; Michigan's indigent are no longer "forgotten people."

Twelve cities in Kentucky, three in Pennsylvania, and others in Michigan and Tennessee invited Mrs. Crane to make sanitary inspections. As a result, parks and playgrounds have been opened; hospitals, almshouses, workhouses have been improved; meat and milk inspection has been installed; water supplies have been purified; streets have been cleaned and paved. As a Board of Health officer in Kentucky said, "She came to make us put our house in order and she did it."

the art of being in delightful personal relation to every child in the rural schools; who has the responsive loyalty of every teacher and through them has developed in all pupils a genuine love of farm life, appreciation of the country home, and ambition to initiate something in agricultural activity; and at the same time she has brought out mental power and alertness through the regular exercises in school.

The pupils have unusual skill in fundamental processes. They learn to use tools skilfully and to do needle-work artistically; they can raise crops profitably; they know well-bred grains and blooded stock; they can judge corn and cattle scientifically. All this has been attained without new laws or large appropriations in the school-houses in which the earlier generations had their monotonous grind in the "Three R's."

In order to have her boys and girls. measure up to specific standards, Miss Field decided to match them and their work against the world. From August 15th to January 15th, five months, she let them enter scholastic competitions of various kinds in the county, at the Chautauquas, at the State Agricultural College, at the State Fair, and at the National Corn. Show. They took first prizes everywhere - in arithmetic, in composition writing, in geography, in drawing, in manual training, in needlework, in raising and judging corn. In cash premiums these schoolboys and girls received $1,857.50, and Miss Field was awarded $550 by the National Corn Show for the purchase of an automobile, because her rural schools led the world.

This is merely the material side that can be tangibly presented, but the real achievement in these 128 country schools is their influence upon the rural life, upon improved farm conditions, upon social situations, upon the relations of the boys and girls, and upon their conduct and character. The best of it all is that nothing has been done in Page County that may not be done in any rural community. Here is an actual demonstration that is worth a thousand times as much as any Utopian theory.