J. T. Ewing moved that the report of Treasurer Bemis be accepted and adopted. Carried.

Moved by Supt. Arbury that the thanks of the Association be extended to Treasurer Bemis for the careful financiering by which $12 interest had been added to the fund. Carried.

On motion, the place for the next meeting was again brought to the attention of the association. After a lively discussion, it was decided to refer the matter to the executive committee.

After thanking the Association for their courtesy, President Schurtz declared the forty-first annual session of the Michigan State Teachers' Association adjourned.

W. W. CHALMERS,

Secretary.

ORR SCHURTZ,

President.

PAPERS, ADDRESSES AND DISCUSSIONS.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

REV. J. T. HUSTED, GRAND RAPIDS.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the State Teachers' Association: It is a great pleasure for me, in behalf of the Board of Education, to extend to you our hearty welcome. I esteem it an honor to perform this pleasant duty.

We welcome you because of the work in which you are engaged. One of the greatest blessings for man is an education. The cultivation of the human mind is a work of supreme importance and those who are engaged in that work should be highly esteemed for their work's sake, and the preparation for such work is well worth all the time, all the money and all the efforts you have given. The day is fast approaching, if it has not already dawned, when teaching shall be something more than a stepping stone to some other calling or profession; when it shall rank first and highest among the professions, and when it shall be so well paid and so well supported that the best minds and best talents shall be consecrated to it as a life work.

I welcome you because you are doing for our homes, our country and our race a work that no other profession can do, the moulding and training the minds and characters of our children and thus best fitting them for life's duties and life's cares. I trust that you are so in love with your work, that you think more of your work, than of your wages; more of how that work is to be done, than how much you are to get for doing it. For if the only motto in your school room is the ($) dollar mark, I fear that you have mistaken your calling, and you will never be true teachers in the highest sense of that word.

I welcome you because you are cultured ladies and gentlemen, who are in touch with the dearest interests of humanity and in touch with God; as those who come to give as well as receive; as those whose lives are ever reaching outward and upward to that which is brighter and better, catching the first beams of increasing knowledge and reflecting the same on the minds you have under your care. May I not hope therefore, that your coming will be an inspiration to the homes and schools of our city?

But if you come as critics, I welcome you. I know that you will be very busy; for we are quite imperfect. But I want to whisper to you that you are doubtless in as perfect a city, as you have ever been. And one of the most perfect organizations in our city is the Board of Education. Although the newspapers often remind us that we too are human and

STATE TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

"To err is human, to forgive divine," and I can assure you that we have very much more humanity than divinity in our city.

I welcome you because you are representatives of the educational interests and work of Michigan. And when I say this, I am conferring on you no small honor. For Michigan has as good, if not the best, educational system of any state in the Union. A few years ago the International Educational Association held its meeting in Australia, and their committee gave to Michigan the prize for the best educational system represented at that meeting. You are thus representatives of schools and colleges whose good reputation is world wide. It remains for you to preserve the reputation we have so worthily won. I welcome you, whether you come from "The wilderness wild or cities full;" from the thinly settled districts or from the growing towns and villages of our State; from the plain school houses or from the palatial school buildings, one and all I bid you welcome. In the name of our superintendent and school officers, in the name of the three hundred teachers in our city schools, and in the name of the Board of Education, I give hearty welcome. And in the language of a motto I once saw in a hotel I close, "Come pleasantly, attend to business promptly, depart peacefully, and come again."

1

RESPONSE TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

H. R. PATTENGILL, EDITOR OF MICHIGAN. SCHOOL MODERATOR.

In behalf of the teachers of this fair peninsular State, I thank you heartily for your cheering words of welcome. I speak for representatives of the teaching profession from Keweenaw to Monroe; district school teachers, city teachers, college presidents and professors, and county commissioners all expect me to voice their feelings of pleasure at being here, and their obligation to the city of Grand Rapids for the heartiness and size of the welcome extended. We know that it is a hearty welcome. It does not flavor at all of the old lady's sigh in the good old days of "boardin' round," when she said: "Well, we've got our soap made and butchering done, and when we get the teacher boarded we'll have all our dirty work done."

We like your thriving, pretty city, with its busy marts and mills, its hillside homes, its beautiful streets and efficient transit. Notwithstanding the hum of industry which everywhere greets us, we feel that anything looking towards the betterment of schools und the uplifting of educational We rejoice that the second sentiment is made especially welcome here. city of our State takes a foremost rank in furnishing to her children the immeasurable advantages of a broad and liberal education.

We appreciate your many courtesies, and if I fail to voice this sentiment please understand that it is owing to the grip and constitutional lack of skill on the part of the speaker.

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

ORR SCHURTZ, GRAND RAPIDS.

In casting about to find something to say upon this occasion I fancy I find myself in very much the same difficulty as many of my honored and much wiser predecessors upon similar occasions. in a happy manner is not given to all who essay to speak, and, least of all, To say the happy thing I sometimes think, to the average school man. ing routine of school duties, the little kingdom whose sovereignty none Shut up in the never endare so bold as to dispute, whence we look out and quietly claim all we may survey, as a class we fail to get enough of the jostle and frictional contact, the hard knocks of the stirring, grasping, practical business world to make us glib of tongue and effective from the rostrum. I do not pride myself on being any exception to the general rule. To escape the infliction upon you of a dry and lengthy discourse will therefore, I am sure, be as gratifying to you as it has been to me to avoid its preparation. For myself, I have no desire to enter upon the discussion of some general topic outside of the business that has brought us together at this time, nor do I believe you would enjoy listening to it. Yet I would not care to set the example of dispensing entirely with anything like an address from the president of this Association, because I believe there spring up every year questions of great moment to the educational interest of our beloved State, questions that need to be met courageously, discussed intelligently, and whose answers should be largely dictated by those best able to answer them properly and advantageously to the interests of all the people of the State, viz.: the men and women whose daily workshops are the public school-room, the college and university halls. It may seem a large contract to assign to the teachers of the State the task of rightly settling all these questions that are constantly coming to the surface, but I believe that upon us, and upon us alone, rests largely the responsibility of shaping the school policy of Michigan, and that if this policy is not properly shaped we ourselves are mainly to blame for it. Notwithstanding the occasional growl and threat that crops out here and there, you and I, my friends, know that the people of the State have an abiding faith in the public school, that they stand behind it its advocates and defenders, that you could no more overturn the general school system of the State than you could pull down the fundamental law itself, and all this means that they have an abiding faith and confidence in the men and women who in years past have shaped and directed our educational affairs, and who still shape and direct them.

Because, then, of these new questions that come up from year to year, in which teachers and the people have a common interest, and to the proper settlement of which the teacher should see, and see faithfully, I am convineed that the president's annual address may be made the medium through which the educational thought of the State may be directed in the proper channels and crystallized into settled aims and policies whereby ultimate good may result, and the school interests of the State be best conserved. I do not mean by this that your presidents of past years, the present incumbent, or those to come are necessarily sages and competent to be leaders. What I do mean to say is, if the president be a man of close observation, a student of educational tendencies and movements, in touch with the great body of teachers throughout the State, a man of

settled convictions and good judgment he may be able to voice the prevailing opinion upon important questions and thus direct it in the proper channel for effective results, or, it may be, save us from real calamities by focusing the attention of the whole body of teachers upon some meditated step based upon a wrong notion of existing circumstances.

I believe the time has come for the teachers of Michigan to use the power they possess and demand that hereafter they shall have something to say regarding the school laws that go upon the statute books of the State. It is just and right and for the highest good of our school system. I believe the teachers are as competent to say what should and should not constitute the school legislation of this State as any other class of men and women within her borders, and obviously so. Is it not true as a rule throughout Michigan, that the superintendent or principal of every city and village school holds the destiny of that school in the hollow of his hands, as it were? In other words, is it not generally conceded by school boards and patrons that the man who has made special preparation for this work, who makes a daily study of it, who follows it as a business, knows more about it than they? Is he not consulted in the slightest details, and in matters of vital importance to the welfare of the school is not his judgment taken without murmur or protest? Has not the present graded school system of Michigan, the pride of her people, the envy of neighboring States, grown up under these very conditions, and under these same conditions are not these schools growing better every year? Was it not the teachers who built up this system in the face of violent opposition and predicted failure? Shall educators be accorded the strongest confidence, and almost unrestricted liberty in shaping the policy of individual schools of the State, and yet be completely ignored when it comes to matters of school legislation? If they are worthy of unlimited confidence in the former case they are worthy of it in the latter.

And yet there is a reason for all this. If we as teachers were as cowardly in our individual fields of work as we are when it comes to facing a legislature that threatens to inflict serious injury upon the schools, our schools would be a disgrace rather than a thing of pride to us. But, be it said to their lasting honor, educators in their individual schools are given to yielding unswerving allegiance to what they know to be for the best interest of these schools, at the risk of personal unpopularity and even dismissal. In our individual schools we are not slow to follow the best methods known to us, though opposition may be met in so doing. We do not hesitate to argue the case with those who criticise unjustly, who oppose progress, who are ever on the alert to cripple the efficiency of the school. We are brave enough here, but when measures affecting school interests come up in the State Legislature too many of us appear to become suddenly paralyzed with fear. We caution one another not to say too much, not to be too aggressive, not to ask what could and should be reasonably granted lest we lose even that which we have. Let me say that we never need expect broad, statesmanlike legislation in school matters until the teachers of this State stand together as one man and firmly, courageously, patriotically demand that school matters shall receive at the hands of legislators that fair, honest and conscientious consideration that their importance calls for. Let the politician who is so ready to pledge himself to care for the interests of the capitalist and the laborer, the banker and farmer in return for their votes, understand that we have an interest that needs taking care of, an interest of great importance to