The technical difficulties of transportation are being met in a number of ways. Wagon builders in various parts of the country are devoting themselves to the designing and building of wagons which will be cheap and effective. State and local authorities are actively engaged in the improvement of roads. The near future promises a standard of transportation facilities that will far surpass any that the consolidation movement has thus far enjoyed. The details of transportation administration are being worked out variously in different communities, and always with a view to the particular needs of the community involved.

While the disadvantages of consolidation lie mainly in the overcoming of prejudice and the solution of administrative problems, the advantages of consolidation seem to be primarily educational and social. The consolidated school is the only method thus far devised for giving graded school and high school privileges under adequately paid teachers to the inhabitants of rural communities. Again the consolidated school is the only method of securing a school attendance sufficiently large to provide the incentive arising from competition and emulation for pupils of each grade or age. Furthermore, the consolidated school, standing out as the most distinctive feature of a rural landscape, is readily converted into a center of rural life and activity where young folks and old folks alike find a common ground for social interests.

The advantages of the rural school are thus summed up by Mabel Carney,[23]—"For the complete and satisfying solution of the problem of rural education and for the general reconstruction and redirection of country life, the consolidated country school is the best agency thus far devised." The reasons for this statement are summed up under seven heads. In the first place, the consolidated school is a democratic, public school, directly in the hands of the people who support it. Secondly, it is at the door of farm houses and is wholly available, even more available, when public transportation is provided, than the present one-teacher school. Third, every child in the farm community is reached by it. All children may attend because of the transportation facilities afforded. Fourth, the cost of the school is reasonable. Fifth, it accommodates all grades, including the high school. The country high school, by excluding the younger children, denies modern educational facilities to any except pupils of high school grade. Sixth, it preserves a balanced course of study. While educating in terms of farm-life experience, it does not force children prematurely into any vocation, although it prepares them generally for all vocations. Lastly, the consolidated school is the best social and educational center for the rural community that has been thus far organized.

However just may be the judging of a tree by its fruit, the fruit of the consolidation movement seems uniformly good. First, because the children get to school; and second, because after they get there they are taught something worth while.

When the schools of a district are consolidated, transportation must be furnished for the students. Union Township, Montgomery County, Indiana, covering one hundred and six square miles, has replaced thirty-seven district schools with six consolidated schools. Some of the children are brought as far as five miles in wagons, or on the interurban electric cars. The wagon calls at stated hours, and the children must be ready. Tardiness is therefore reduced, until one county reports ten hundred and ninety-one cases of tardiness in its district schools (for 1910-11) and ninety-two cases in consolidated schools, although in this county there are more children in the consolidated than in the district schools.

Then, too, the children stay later in the consolidated schools. In Montgomery County, Indiana, the children who have not finished the eighth grade and who are staying away from school constitute twenty-nine per cent. of the population in the consolidated schools, as against sixty-three per cent. in the district schools. The Vernon consolidated school in Trumbull County, Ohio, has enrolled nearly nine-tenths of the children of school age. Before the consolidation only three-fifths were in school.

Theoretically, the introduction of agriculture, manual training, and other applied courses which are found in most consolidated schools, should have some effect on the lives of the children. In order to show its extent Superintendent Hall, of Montgomery County, Indiana, asked one thousand children (five hundred in district schools and five hundred in consolidated schools) what they proposed to do after they left school. Arranged according to the kind of school in which the children were, the answers showed as follows:

District Consolidated Chosen Profession Schools Schools

Teaching 151 122 Business 123 73 Farming 92 129 Law 55 21 Mechanics 48 86 Medicine 13 9 Ministry 12 4 Stock-breeding 3 41 Miscellaneous 3 15 —- —- Total 500 500

Agricultural studies—stock-breeding and farming—and mechanics show up strongly in the consolidated schools, at the expense of teaching, business and law in the district schools. While such figures do not prove anything, they indicate the direction in which the minds of consolidated school children are moving.

Eli M. Rapp, of Berks County, Pennsylvania, voices the spirit of the consolidation movement when he says:

"The consolidated school furnishes the framework for a well-organized, rural education. Its course of study is broader, its appeal is stronger, its service to the community more pronounced, and, best of all, it holds the children. Progressive rural communities have wakened up to the fact that unless their children are educated together there is a strong probability that they will be ignorant separately."

III Making the One-Room Country School Worth While

The brilliant success of the consolidated schools reveals the possibilities of team-work in rural education, but it cannot detract from the wonderful work which has been done, and is still being done, by the one-room rural school. Always there will be districts so sparsely settled that the consolidated school is not feasible. In such localities the one-room school, transformed as it may be by enlightened effort, must still be relied upon to provide education. Nor is this outcome undesirable. The one-room country school bristles with educational possibilities. Under intelligent direction, even its cumbersome organization may yield a plenteous harvest of useful knowledge and awakened interest.

The droning reading lesson and the sing-song multiplication table are heard no more in the progressive country school. In their place are English work, which reflects the spirit of rural things, and the arithmetic of the farm. Here is a boy of thirteen, in a one-room country school, writing an essay on "Selecting, Sowing and Testing Seed Corn," an essay amply illustrated by pen and ink drawings of growing corn, corn in the ear and individual corn kernels. Mabel Gorman asks, "Does it pay the farmer to protect the birds?" After describing the services of birds in destroying weed seeds and dangerous insects and emphasizing their beauty and cheerfulness, she concludes: "The question is, does it pay the farmer to protect the birds?" The only answer is that anything that adds to the attractiveness of the farm is worthy of cultivation. Happily a farmer who protects the birds secures a double return—increased profit from his crop and increased pleasure of living. Viola Lawson, writing on the subject, "How to Dust and Sweep," makes some pertinent comments. "I think if a house is very dirty, a carpet sweeper is not a very good thing. A broom is best, because you can't get around the corners with a sweeper." Note this hint to the school board: "We spend about one-third of our time in the school house, so it is very important to keep the dust down. The directors ought to let the school have dustless chalk. If they did there wouldn't be so much throat trouble among teachers and children. Then so many children are so careless about cleaning their feet, boys especially. They go out and curry the horses, and clean out the stables, and get their feet all nasty. Then they come to school and bring that dust into the schoolroom. Isn't that awful?" Viola is thirteen.

Over in eastern Wisconsin Miss Ellen B. McDonald, County Superintendent of Oconto County, has her children engaged in contests all the year round—growing corn, sugar beets, Alaska peas and potatoes; the boys making axe handles and the girls weaving rag carpet. During the summer Miss McDonald writes to the children who are taking part in the contests suggesting methods and urging good work. One of the letters began with the well-known lines:

Say, how do you hoe your row, young man, Say, how do you hoe your row, Do you hoe it fair, do you hoe it square, Do you hoe it the best you know?

"How are you getting along with the contests?" continues the letter. "Are you taking good care of your beets, peas, corn or garden? Remember that it will pay you well for all the work you do upon it." In reply one girl writes: "My corn is a little over five feet high. My tomatoes have little tomatoes on, but mamma's are just beginning to blossom. My beets are growing fine. I planted them very late. My lettuce is much better than mamma's. We have been eating it right along." Mark the note of exultation over the fact that her crop is ahead of her mother's.

Sometimes the school child brings from school knowledge which materially helps his father. Here is a Wisconsin English lesson, and a proof of the saying, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," all in one.

These country boys and girls take an interest in English work, because it deals with the things they know. Miss Ellen B. McDonald, County Superintendent of Schools in Oconto County, Wisconsin, publishes a column of school news in each of the three county newspapers. Here is one of her contributions, in the form of an English lesson and a counting lesson combined: (A "rag-baby tester" is a device for determining the fertility of seed corn before it is planted.)

"My dear Miss McDonald:

"The rag-baby tester is causing a whole lot of excitement. We have tested one lot and this morning started another. We notice one thing in particular, the corn which was dried by stove heat sprouts perfectly, while that dried in granaries, etc., is not sprouting at all. Last fall papa saved his seed corn, selecting it very carefully, and hung it up in the granary to dry. I selected several ears from the same field and at the same time, and dried them on the corn tree at school. Upon testing them this spring papa's corn does not sprout at all, while mine is sprouting just exactly as good as the Golden Glow sent out to the school children. This morning I am testing some more of papa's, and if that fails he will have to buy his seed, a thing he has never had to do before. We tested the corn secured from four of our interested farmers last week and one lot germinated; the other three did not. This morning pupils from seven different homes brought seed to be tested. We had a package of last year's seed left and tested several kernels of that, as well as some sent out this year, and we think last year's seed is testing a little the better."

The new arithmetic, like the new English, deals with the country. It seems a little odd, just at first, to see boys and girls standing at the board computing potato yields, milk yields, the contents of granaries, the price of bags and the cost of barns and chicken houses; yet what more natural than that the country child should figure out his and perhaps his father's problems in the arithmetic class at school?

The geography is no less pertinent. Soil formation, drainage, the location and grouping of farm buildings, the physical characteristics of the township and of the county are matters of universal interest and concern. Every school in Berks County, Pennsylvania, is provided with a fine soil survey map of the county, made by the United States Geological Survey. What more ideal basis for rural geography?

Here and there a country school is waking up to the physical needs of country children. "Country boys are not symmetrically developed," asserts Superintendent Rapp, of Berks County. "They are flat-chested and round-shouldered." That is interesting, indeed. Mr. Rapp explains: "It is because of the character of their work, nearly all of which tends to flatten the chest. Whether or not that is the explanation, the fact remains, and with it the no less evident fact that it is the business of the school to correct the defects. In an effort to do this we have worked out a series of fifty games which the children are taught in the schools." In May a great "Field Day and Play Festival" is held, to which the entire county is invited. Each school trains and sends in its teams. Trolleys, buggies, autos and hay wagons contribute their quota, until five thousand people have gathered in an out-of-the-way spot to help the children enjoy themselves.

Mr. Rapp is a great believer in activity. Tireless himself, he has fifty teacher-farmers—men who teach in the winter and farm in the summer—an excellent setting for country boys and girls. He believes in activity for children, too. "If the school appealed as it ought to the motor energies of children, instead of having to drive them in, you would have to drive them out." To prove his point Mr. Rapp cites the instance of one man teacher, who, before the days of manual training in the schools, decided to have manual training in his one-room Berks County school.

"He did the work himself," Mr. Rapp says, "dug out the cellar and set up a shop in it. The only help he had was the help of the pupils, and the work was done in recess time and after school. They made their own tools, cabinets, book-cases, picture-frames, clock-frames, and anything else they wanted. And do you know, when it got dark, that man would send the children home from the school in order to be rid of them."

Consolidated schools help. They make rural education broader and easier, but the one-room country school, presided over by a live teacher, may be made worth while. Social events, sports, contests in farm work and domestic work, studies couched in terms of the country, may all prove potent factors in shaping the child and the community.

IV Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse

Without, as well as within, the little red school-house may be transformed. The course of study may establish a standard in rural thought. The rural school-house may set a standard of rural architecture and landscape gardening.

How typical of old-time country schools are the lines:

Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sunning. Around it still the sumacs grow, And blackberry vines are running.

The unpainted, rough exterior of the little school vied with the unkempt school grounds. Both supplied subjects for artistic treatment. To the consternation of the poet and the romancer, the modern one-room school is painted, and the school yard, instead of being filled with a thicket of blackberry and sumac, is laid out for playground, flower-beds and gardens. The up-to-date country school, while far less picturesque, is much more architectural and more useful.

The State Superintendent of Education in Wisconsin furnishes free to local school boards plans of modern one-room schools. With a hall at each end for wraps, an improved heating and ventilating device, and all of the light coming from the north side, where there is one big window from near the floor to the ceiling, these buildings, costing from two thousand dollars up, provide in every way for the health and comfort of the children. The superintendent may go farther than to suggest in Wisconsin, however, for if a school building becomes dilapidated he may condemn it, and then state aid to local education is refused until suitable buildings are provided. The law has proved an excellent deterrent to educational parsimony.

Superintendent Kern, of Rockford, Illinois, has done particularly effective work in beautifying his schools. Within the schools are tastefully painted and decorated. Outside there are flower-beds, hedges, individual garden plots, neatly-cut grass, and all of the other necessaries for a well-kept yard. No longer crude and unsightly, the Rockford school yards are models which any one in the neighborhood may copy with infinite advantage. As the school becomes the center of community life local pride makes more and more demands. Could you visit some of the finer school buildings in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois you would be better able to understand why men boast of "Our School" in the same tone that they use when boasting of their corn yields.

V A Fairyland of Rural Education

You will perhaps be somewhat skeptical—you big folks who have ceased to believe in little people—when you hear that out in western Iowa there is a county which is an educational fairyland. Yet if you had traveled up and down the country, gone into the wretched country school buildings, seen the lack-luster teaching and the indifferent scholars, which are so appallingly numerous; if you had read in the report of the investigating committee which has just completed its survey of Wisconsin rural schools the statement that in many districts the hog pens were on a better plane of efficiency than the school houses; if you had seen the miserable inadequacy of country schools North, East, South and West, and had then been transported into the midst of the school system of Page County, Iowa, you would have been sure that you had passed through the looking-glass into the queer world beyond. Yet Page County is there—a fairyland presided over by a really, truly fairy.

The schools in Page County, Iowa, which, by the way, is one of the best corn counties in Iowa, are little republics in which the children have the fun, do the work and grow up strong and kind. Each school has its song, its social gatherings, its clubs, and its teams. How you would have pricked up your ears if you had driven past the Hawley School and heard a score of lusty voices shouting the school song to the tune of "Everybody's Doing It!"

December was the time of the Page County contests, when each school sent its exhibits of dressmaking, cooking, rope-splicing, barn-planning, essay-writing and its corn-judging teams to the county seat, where they were displayed and judged very much as they would be at a county fair. Further, it was the time when the prizes were to be awarded to the boy having the best acre of alfalfa, of corn and of potatoes. (Queer, isn't it, but last year a girl got the first prize for the best crop of potatoes.) December is a great month in Page County. This year more than three thousand exhibits were sent into Clarinda, the county seat. Every boy and girl is on tip-toe with expectancy, and after the awards the successful schools are as proud as turkey cocks.

"We have never taken the thing seriously here before," explained a farmer who had left his work in mid-afternoon and come in to teach the boys of a school how to judge seed corn. "This year we're going down there to Clarinda for all that's in it." If he hadn't meant what he said he would scarcely have been spending his hours in the school-room. If the Hawleyville boys had not been thoroughly in earnest they would not have been there, after school, learning how to judge corn.

The community around each school is agog with excitement while preparations are being made for the county contest. The men folk advise the boys regarding their corn-judging and their models of farm implements and farm buildings, while the women give lessons galore in the mysteries of country cooking, for it is no small matter to be hailed and crowned as the best fourteen-year-old cook in Page County, Iowa.

One Page County teacher conducts her domestic science work in the evening at the homes of the girls. On a given day of each week the entire class visits the home of one of the girls, prepares, cooks and eats a meal. What an opportunity to inculcate lessons in domestic economy at first hand! What a chance to show the behind-the-time housekeeper (for there are such even in Page County) how things are being done!

Because Page County is a great corn county much school time is devoted to corn. In every school hangs a string of seed corn which is brought in by the boys in the fall, dried during the winter, and in the spring tested for fertility. A Babcock milk-tester, owned by the county, circulates from school to school, enabling the children to test the productivity of their cows. Teams of boys, under the direction of the school, make their own road drags, and care for stretches of road—from one to five miles. The boys doing the best work are rewarded with substantial prizes. Do you begin to suspect the reason for the interest which the big folks take in the doings of Page County's little folks? It is because the little folks go to schools which are a vital part of the community.

Three times a year there is, in each school, a gathering of the friends and parents of the children. Sometimes they celebrate Thanksgiving, sometimes they have a "Parents' Day." Anyway, the boys decorate the school, the girls cook cake and candy, and the parents come and have a good evening. The children begin with their school song, sung, perhaps, like this Kile School song, to the tune of "Home, Sweet Home":

1. What school is the dearest, The neatest and best, What school is more pleasant, More dear than the rest, Whose highways and byways Have charms from each day, Whose roads and alfalfa, They have come to stay.

Chorus. Kile, Kile, our own Kile, We love her, we'll praise her, We'll all work for Kile.

2. Whose corn is so mellow, Whose cane is so sweet, Whose taters are so mellow, Whose coal's hard to beat, Whose Ma's and whose Grandpa's Are brave, grand and true, Their love for their children They never do rue.

There follows a program like the program of any other social evening, except that very often the parents take part as well as the children. The things are interesting, too, like this little duet, sung at the Thanksgiving entertainment by two of the Kile girls:

1. If a body pays the taxes, Surely you'll agree, That a body earns a franchise, Whether he or she.

Chorus. Every man now has the ballot, None, you know, have we, But we have brains and we can use them, Just as well as he.

2. If a city's just a household, As it is, they say, Then every city needs housecleaning, Needs it right away.

3. Every city has its fathers, Honors them, I we'en, But every city must have mothers, That the house be clean.

4. Man now makes the laws for women, Kindly, too, at that, But they often seem as funny As a man-made hat.

The grand event of this fairyland comes in the summer, when the boys and girls from all of the schools go to the county seat for a summer camp, where, between attending classes and lectures, playing games and reveling in the joys of camp life, they come to have a very much broader view of the world and a more intense interest in one another.

They are only one-room schools out there in Page County, but they have adapted themselves to the needs of the community, focusing the attention of parents and children alike on the bigger things in rural life, and the ways in which a school may help a countryside to appreciate and enjoy them. So the boys and girls of Page County have their fairyland, and are devoted to the good fairy, who, in the shape of a generous, kindly county superintendent, helps them to enjoy it.

VI The Task of the Country School

The teacher of a one-room school in Berks County was quizzing a class about Columbus.

"Where was he born?" she queried.

"In Genoa."

"And where is Genoa, Ella?"

"On the Mediterranean Sea," replied Ella promptly.

"What was his business?" was her next question.

"He was a sailor," ventured a bright boy. "A sailor," chorused the class.

"Why was he a sailor, Edith?" Edith shook her head.

"Yes, George."

"Why, because he lived on the sea."

"Of course. Now think a minute. Do many of the boys from this country become sailors?"

"No'm," from the class.

"What do they become?"

"Farmers," cried the class, hissing the "f" and flattening the "a."

Certainly, the boys in a farming community, brought up on the farm, naturally become farmers, yet in the interim, between babyhood and farmer life, they go to school. How absurdly easy the task of the school—to determine that they shall be intelligent, progressive, enthusiastic, up-to-date farmers. The girls, too, marry farmers, keep farmers' homes and raise farmers' sons. How simple is the duty of seeing that they are prepared to do these things well!

The task of the city school is complex because of the vast number of businesses, professions, industrial occupations and trades which children enter. In comparison the country school has the plainest of plain sailing. What are the ingredients of successful farmers and farmers' wives? What proportion of physical education, of mental training, of technical instruction in agriculture, of suggestions for practical farm work, of dressmaking, sewing and cooking, enter into the making of farmers' boys and farmers' girls who will live up to the traditions of the American farm? To what extent must the school be a center for social activity and social enthusiasm? How shall the school make the farm and the small country town better living places for the men and women of to-morrow?

The duty of the country school is simple and clear. It must fit country children for country life. First it must know what are the needs of the country; then, manned by teachers whose training has prepared them to appreciate country problems, it will become the power that a country school ought to be in directing the thoughts and lives of the community.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: An extensive reference to this school will be found in "Country Life and the Country School," Mabel Carney, Row, Peterson & Company, Chicago, 1912.]

[Footnote 23: Supra, pp. 180-181.]



CHAPTER X

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND SUCKLINGS

I Miss Belle

The sun shone mildly, though it was still late January, while the wind, which occasionally rustled the dry leaves about the fence corners, had scarcely a suggestion of winter in its soft touch. Across the white pike, and away on either side over the rolling blue grass meadows, the Kentucky landscape unfolded itself, lined with brown and white fences, and dotted with venerable trees. A buggy, drawn by a carefully-stepping bay horse, came over the knoll ahead, framing itself naturally into the beautiful landscape. Surely, that must be Joe and Miss Belle; it was so like her, since she always seemed at home everywhere, making herself a natural part of her surroundings. Another moment and there was no longer any doubt. It was Miss Belle with three youngsters crowded into her lap and beside her in the narrow buggy seat, while a dangling leg in the rear suggested an occupant of the axle.

"Well, well," cried Miss Belle, cordially, as Joe stopped, glad of any excuse not to go, "where are you bound for? You didn't come all the way over to ride back with me?"

"No, indeed, Miss Belle," I laughed back, "no one ever expects to ride with you so near the school-house. I'll walk along ahead until you begin to unload."

"Go along, now you're casting reflections on Joe's speed. Come, Joe, we'll show him." Joe, who did not leave his accustomed walk at once, finally yielded to the suggestion of a gentle blow from the whip and broke into a trot.

"Lem'me walk with you," cried the rider on the springs, slipping from her perch and stepping out beside the buggy. So we journeyed for half a mile. The horse, under constant urging, jogged along, while the spring rider and I trotted side by side over the well-made pike. Then Miss Belle drew rein in front of a small, yellow house.

"Now, out you go," she exclaimed to her young companions. "All out here but one. Goodbye, dearies. All right, up you get," and in a moment we were snugly fixed in the buggy for a half hour's ride behind Joe.

"You see those two little girls who got off there," said Miss Belle, pointing to the house we had just left, "well, they are two of a family of six—two younger than those. Their mother died last winter, so naturally I take an interest in them. Their father does his best with them, but it is a big task for a man to handle alone."

The last child was unloaded by this time, and Miss Belle, settling herself back comfortably, chatted about her work in a one-room country school in the Blue Grass belt of Kentucky.

II Going to Work Through the Children

"Maybe there are thirty-five families that my school ought to draw from," she began. "Six years ago when I took this school some of them surely did need help. Dearie me! The things they didn't know about comfort and decency would fix up a whole neighborhood for life. They wore stockings till they dropped off. Some of the girls put on sweaters in October, wore them till Christmas, washed them, and then wore them till spring. You never saw such utterly wretched homes. There was hardly a window shade in the neighborhood, nor a curtain either. It wasn't that the women didn't care—they simply didn't know.

"I saw it all," said Miss Belle, nodding her head thoughtfully, "and it worried me a great deal at first. I just had to get hold of those people and help them—I had made up my mind to that. Impatience wouldn't do, though, so I said to myself, 'Now, my dear, don't you be in any hurry. You can't do anything with the old folks, they're too proud. If you succeed at all it's got to be through the children.' So I just waited, keeping my eyes open, and teaching school all of the while, until, the first thing I knew, the way opened up—you never would guess how—it was through biscuits.["]

III Beginning on Muffins

"The folks around here never had seen anything except white bread. There wasn't a piece of cornbread or of graham anywhere. You know what their white bread is, too—heavy, sour, badly made and only half cooked. The old folks were satisfied, though, and there didn't seem to be any way to go at it except through the youngsters. Day after day I saw them take raw white biscuits and sandwiches made of salt-rising white bread out of their baskets, wondering how they could eat them. Still I didn't say anything, but every lunch time I ate corn muffins or graham wafers, with all of the gusto I could master. One day a little girl up and asked me:

"'Say, Miss Belle, what may you all be eatin'?'

"'Corn muffins,' said I. 'Ever taste them?'

"'Nope.'

"'Well, wouldn't you like a taste?'

"'Sure I would.'

"She took it, and a great big one, too. 'Um,' says she, smacking her lips, 'Um.'

"'Like it?' I asked.

"'Um,' says she again, like a baby with a full stomach.

"'Oh, Miss Belle,' piped up Annie, 'how do you make 'em?'

"That was the chance I had been waiting for.

"'Would you like to know?' I asked, and to a chorus of 'Sure,' ''Deed we would,' 'Oh, yes,' I put the recipe on the board, and it wasn't two days before those girls brought in as good corn muffins as I ever tasted. Little Annie is a good cook—never saw a better—and before the week was out she says to me:

"'Miss Belle, ma's mad with you.'

"'What all's the matter?' I asked.

"'She says since you taught us to make those corn muffins she'll be eaten out of house and home. The first night I made 'em pa ate eleven. He hasn't slackened off a bit since. He must have 'em every day.'

"That made the going pretty easy," Miss Belle went on. "The muffins were mighty good, they were new, and, by comparison, the white biscuits didn't have a show. It wasn't long before I had the whole neighborhood making corn muffins, graham wafers, black bread, graham bread and whole-wheat bread. They sure did catch on to the idea quickly. Every Monday I put a recipe on the board. These women knew how to cook the fancy things. It was the plain, simple, wholesome things that they needed to know about, so my recipes were always for them. During the week each of the children cooks the thing and brings it to me, and the one who gets the best result puts a recipe on the board Friday.

"You see, after I once got started it wasn't hard to follow up any line I liked. By the time I was putting a recipe a week on the board the mothers got naturally interested and would come to school to ask about this recipe and that. They wouldn't take any advice, you understand, not they! They knew all about cooking, so they thought, but they were mighty proud of the things their daughters did, particularly when they took the prizes at the county fair. Besides that, it made a whole lot of difference at home, because the things they made helped out a lot and tasted mighty good on the table."

Miss Belle's next move was against the cake—soggy, sticky stuff, full of butter, that was very generally eaten by all of the families that could afford it. Expensive and fearfully indigestible it made up, together with bread, almost the entire contents of most lunch baskets.

"I couldn't see quite how to go about the cake business," Miss Belle commented, "because they were particularly proud of it. Finally, though, I hit on an idea. One of the women in the neighborhood was sick. She was a good cook and knew good cooking when she saw it, so I got my sister to make an angel cake, which I took around to her. I do believe it was the first light cake she had ever tasted—anyway, she was tickled to death. It wasn't long after that before every one who could afford to do it was making angel food. Of course it's expensive, but since they were bound to make cake, that was a lot better than the other."

Similar tactics gradually replaced the fried meats by roasts and stews. When Miss Belle came, meat swam in fat while it cooked and came from the stove loaded with grease. Everybody fried meat, and when by chance they bought a roast they began by boiling all of the juice out of it before they put it in the oven. Miss Belle's stews and roasts made better eating, though. The men-folks liked them hugely and the old frying process was doomed.

"No," concluded Miss Belle, laughingly, "you can't do a thing with the old folks. Why if I was to go into a kitchen belonging to one of those women and tell her how to sift flour she would run me out quick, but when Annie comes home and makes such muffins that the man of the family eats eleven the first time, there is no way to answer back. The muffins speak for themselves."

IV Taking the Boys in Hand

While the girls were making over the diet of the neighborhood Miss Belle was working through the boys to improve the strains of corn used by the farmers, the methods of fertilizing and the quality of the truck patches. A few years ago when the farmer scorned newfangled ideas it was the boys that took home methods for numbering and testing each ear of corn to determine whether or not the kernels on it would sprout when they were planted. The farmer who turns a deaf ear to argument can offer no effective reply to a corn-tester in which only one kernel in three has sprouted. The ears are infertile, from one cause or another, and the sooner he replaces them by fertile seed the better for his corn crop.

Out beside a white limestone pike stands the school in which Miss Belle has done her work. One would hardly stop to look at it, because it differs in no way from thousands of similar country school-houses. Modest and unassuming, like Miss Belle, it holds only one feature of real interest—the faces of the children. Bright, eager, enthusiastic, they labor earnestly over their lessons in order that they may get at their "busy work," and linger over their "busy work" during recess and after school, because it glides so swiftly from their deft fingers. In this, as in everything else which she does, Miss Belle has a system. The child whose lessons are not done, and done up to a certain grade, is not taught new stitches or new designs. Even the youngest responds to the stimulus, and the little girl in a pink frock, with pink ribbons on her brown pig-tails, lays aside the mat she is making to write "Annie Belle Lewis" on the board, and to tell you that she is seven; while John Murphy, of the mature age of eleven, stops crocheting ear-mufflers for a moment to tell you what he is doing and why he does it.

V "Busy Work" as an Asset

"You never would guess what a help the 'busy work' is," smiled Miss Belle. "You see, they never can do it until their lessons are finished, so they are as good at arithmetic as they are at patching. Then I always teach the little ones patterns and stitches where they have to count, 'One, two, three, four, five, and drop one,' you know, and in the shortest time they learn their number work. It seems to go so much more quickly when they do it in connection with some pieces that they can see. But you never would guess the best thing the sewing has done—it has stopped gossiping. It's hard to believe, I know, but it's true. There used to be a lot of trouble in this neighborhood. People told tales, there was ill feeling, and folks quarreled a great deal of the time. It wasn't long before I found out that it was the girls who did most of the tale-bearing. No wonder, either! They weren't very busy in school, and they had nothing much to do at home except to listen and talk. Really, they hadn't any decent interest in life. Of course there was no use in saying anything, but I felt that if I could get them busy at something they liked they would stop talking. It wasn't enough to start them at dressmaking, either, but when I started in on hard, fancy work designs I had them. They made pretty clothes, embroidered them; made lace and doilies. Most of the girls can pick up a new Irish-lace pattern from a fashion-book as easily as I can, and they are rabid for new patterns. The same girls who did most of the tale-bearing are busy at work, and I find them swapping patterns and recipes instead of stories."

While the girls patch, darn, crochet, hem, knit, weave baskets, make garments and do the various kinds of "busy work," the boys clean the school yard, plant walnut trees—Mrs. Faulconer, the County Superintendent, is having the school children plant nut trees along all the pikes—and do anything else which is not beneath their dignity. "They have no work benches," lamented Miss Belle, "I hope they will get them soon, although there is really no place to put them." Indeed, in a little building packed with fifty children and the school-room furniture the space is narrow.

Yet this little one-room building at Locust Grove has left such a mark on the community that when the County School Board recently decided to transfer Miss Belle to a larger school the member from her district promptly resigned, and refused to be placated until every other member of the board had apologized to him and promised to leave Miss Belle in his school.

"We never saw the old gentleman mad before," said a neighbor. "But he certainly was mad then. He had watched Miss Belle's work grow, and knew what it had meant to the children; so when they proposed to take her away he went right up in the air."

VI Marguerite

What wonder? He had seen the magic workings of a hand that felt the pulse, judged the symptoms, and prescribed a sure-to-cure remedy for a countryside full of ignorance, drunkenness, bitter hatreds and never-ending quarrels. Within a stone's throw of his house he had seen the transformation in the life of a little girl named Marguerite. Since her birth she had lived in darkness, but into her desolate home Miss Belle had sent light.

"You never saw a worse home," says Miss Belle. "Her mother was woefully ignorant of everything in the way of home-making. The children were wretchedly dressed. The house was barrenness itself—no shades, no curtains, no decorations of any kind. It was pathetic. When she came to school neither she nor her mother could sew a stitch."

Marguerite, an apt girl with her fingers, eagerly learned the needlework lessons of the school. She taught her mother to sew, while she herself made portieres and curtains, lightening up the old home with a rare new beauty.

Here again is Lillie, who is very slow at needlework and arithmetic, but who has put the family diet on a wholesome basis by learning to cook some of the most delicious, nourishing dishes. Her bread—the best in Fayette County—is light as a feather. Hannah comes back after leaving school to learn how to ply her needle. Until a year ago Christmas she could not sew a stitch; now her stitches are so neat as to be almost invisible. Mrs. Hawly, aroused to enthusiasm by her thirteen-year-old daughter, has come to school, learned plain and fancy sewing, and started to make her own and her daughter's clothes. Everywhere are the marks of a teacher's handiwork stamped indelibly on the lives of her scholars and their families. Small wonder that the old gentleman on the board was loath to part with Miss Belle!

VII Winning Over the Families

With supreme joy Miss Belle tells of her conquest of the fathers of her boys and girls—her family, as she calls it. "The children were very poorly cared for," she says. "The fathers spent the money for whiskey, and the mothers lacked the means and the knowledge to clothe the children better. Sometimes they were pitiful in their poor shoes and thin clothes. Well, sir, we got up a Christmas entertainment, and, except for one or two, the children wore the same clothes they had been coming to school in all winter—shabby, patched and dirty as some of them were. They stood up there, though, one and all, to do their turns and speak their pieces, and their fathers were ashamed. They saw their children in old clothes, and the children of some of the neighbors all fixed up, and they just couldn't stand it.

"It surely did make a difference the next year." Miss Belle's cheery face broadened with a satisfied smile. "The men didn't say a word—you know our men aren't in the habit of saying very much—but they went to town themselves the day before the entertainment and came back with new dresses for the girls and new clothes for the boys. Of course some of them were so small they would scarcely go on, while others were miles big; but every one had something new and no one felt badly.

"This Christmas," concluded Miss Belle, "our entertainment packed the school-house, and some were turned away. Just to show you how crowded it was—there were twenty-four babies there. I was ready for them, though, with two pounds of stick candy; so whenever a baby squalled he got a stick of candy quick."

Strange, good things have followed the visits of the mothers to the schools. They would never have come had it not been for the wonderful things which their children were learning with such untoward enthusiasm. One girl, who had been particularly successful with her needlework, brought her mother to school—a hard woman who had a standing quarrel with seven of her neighbors at that particular time. It took a little tact, but when the right moment arrived Miss Belle suggested that she pay a visit to a sick neighbor and offer to help. The woman went at last, found that it was a very pleasant thing on the whole to be friendly, and carried the glad tidings into her life, substituting kindness for her previous rule of incivility. To her surprise her enemies have all disappeared.

The mothers, coming to school to talk over the work of their children, have for the first time seen one another at their best. Sitting over a friendly cup of tea, chatting about Jane's dress or Willie's lessons, they have learned the art of social intercourse. Slowly the lesson has come to them, until to-day there is not a woman in the neighborhood who is not on speaking terms with every one else, a situation undreamed of five years ago.

Nine months in each year Miss Belle McCubbing holds her classes in the Locust Grove School, which stands on the Military Pike, seven miles outside of Lexington, Kentucky. "Angels watch over that school," says Mrs. Faulconer. Doubtless these angels are the good angels of the community, for in six years the bitterness of neighborhood gossip and controversy has been replaced by a spirit of neighborly helpfulness. Boys and girls, doing Miss Belle's "busy work," fathers and mothers learning from their children, have heaped upon Miss Belle's deserving head the peerless praise of a community come to itself—regenerated in thought and act, turned from the wretchedness and desolation of the past to the light and civilization of the future, saved and blessed by the lives of a teacher and her children.



CHAPTER XI

WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE

I Fitting Schools to Needs

This is the story of a school that was built to fit a town, and it begins with a hypothetical case. Suppose that there was a town—a prosperous town of some 2,247 souls, set down in the middle of a well-to-do farming district. As for business, the town has a few industries and some stores; the countryside is engaged in general farming. Suppose that the school board of such a town should come to you and say: "We are looking for a school superintendent. Are you the one?" Suppose you said, "Yes." How would you prove your point?

Out in Minnesota there is a town named Sleepy Eye, set down in a well-to-do farming district. At the head of the Sleepy Eye schools there is J. A. Cederstrom. Mr. Cederstrom has proved by a very practical demonstration that he is "the one."

When Mr. Cederstrom took charge of the Sleepy Eye schools he found an excellent school plant, an intelligent community and a school system that was like the school system of every other up-to-date two-thousand-inhabitant town in the Middle West. Before Mr. Cederstrom there lay a choice. He could continue the work exactly as it had always been carried on, improve the school machinery, and make a creditable showing at examination time. That path looked like the path of least resistance. Mr. Cederstrom did not take it, however. Instead he made up his mind that after measuring the community and the children he would, to use his own words, "fit the work to their respective needs."

"The work offered has been somewhat varied," Mr. Cederstrom explains. "I have not attempted to follow any set course or outline of work made out by some one else who is not familiar with our conditions and needs."

Where does there exist a more admirable statement of the principle underlying the new education? This man, when given charge of a school plant, deliberately chose to make the school fit the needs of the community upon which the school was dependent for support. Oblivious of tradition he set about remodeling the school in the interest of its constituency.

Sleepy Eye is located in a farming district. Many of the boys who come to the Sleepy Eye School will manage farms when they are grown men, and many of the Sleepy Eye girls will marry farmers and manage them. Here were farmer men and farmer women in the making. What more natural than to organize a Department of Agriculture?

A Department of Agriculture in a school? Yes, truly; and a short winter course for farm boys and girls who could not come the year round, and a school experiment station with school farms for the children, and a live farmers' institute that met in the school and was fed and cared for by the Department of Domestic Science, and all sorts of courses built up around the needs of the children and of the community.

II Getting the Janitor in Line

As a result of this method of course-making the school janitor found himself on the instruction staff of the school. One day a couple of the short course boys were in the engine-room while the janitor was repairing a defective pipe in the heating plant. The boys lent a hand in the work; and one of them, having a practical turn of mind, suggested that he would like to learn more about pipe-fitting in order to install a water system on the farm at home. The janitor repeated the remark to Mr. Cederstrom, who called the boys out and had a talk with them regarding the possibilities of the plan.

The outlook for the course was not bright. Every instructor in the mechanical department was working on full time. Only one way out remained and that way led to the janitor.

The janitor was a busy man during the day, but his evenings were comparatively free. After some parleying he agreed to give a course in elementary plumbing and steam-fitting on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at seven-thirty. So the boys came to school in the evening, and under the direction of the school janitor learned how to install a water system in their homes. Their work for the year consisted in making a model water system for a house, a barn and the other farm buildings. The materials for this course were picked up from the school's scrap-heap.

Perhaps some people will not understand the spirit of it—getting the janitor in line to give a course in steam-fitting from the odds and ends that are found on the scrap-heap. Such a proceeding is unconventional in the extreme. But, on the other hand, here were boys who wished to know how they might go back and improve their homes. Who shall say that the imparting of such knowledge is not the business of a real school?

III The Department of Agriculture

Let us go back for a moment to the organization of the Department of Agriculture. The school at Sleepy Eye have available what every other school should have—five acres of tillable ground. This tract at Sleepy Eye is devoted to tests and experimental work, to flower gardens and to individual school gardens—one for each child who applies.

The experimental work and tests are carried on exactly as they would be at a state experiment station. In the section of Minnesota surrounding Sleepy Eye, corn is the great staple crop. Therefore on the demonstration grounds of the Department of Agriculture, Independent School District No. 24, Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, they are growing a number of plots of corn, each plot variously planted, fertilized, cultivated, and cared for, so that the children may learn at first-hand scientific methods of discovering the best kinds of crop, and the best ways of handling a crop in their own locality.

The allotment of the school gardens carried with it instruction in engineering and in civics at the same time that the bonds between home and school were cemented. The part of the school land that was to be devoted to school gardens was turned over to the older boys, who surveyed it in exactly the same way that the United States government surveyed the homestead tracts. The plot was laid out in towns and ranges. The sections were staked and numbered. Then the children who wished to take up plots went into the newly surveyed territory, picked their plots, and filed an application with the land commissioner for a plot, stating the section, town and range. After that a line formed and the plots (20x20 feet) were allotted. No child was permitted to take up an allotment unless he had the endorsement of a parent or guardian. The form on which this endorsement was secured was as follows:

Name Grade Sec Town Range

APPLICATION FOR LAND IN PUBLIC SCHOOL GARDEN, DEPT. OF AGR., SLEEPY EYE HIGH SCHOOL

"It is assumed that the parent or guardian who endorses this application will co-operate with the school authorities and have the applicant care for and weed said land during the growing season, and devote at least two and a half hours each week this summer to the agricultural work as may be directed or required by the Director of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Haw.

"I hereby apply for...... Sec...... Town....... Range...... in the Public School Garden of Sleepy Eye High School, and will cultivate and care for same as may be directed by the proper authorities, and will keep a careful record of the returns therefrom and report same on or before Oct. 20, 1911. I will do the additional agricultural work that may be directed as indicated above.

................................. Applicant.

Endorsed by ........................ Parent or Guardian."

The form carried on its opposite side statements showing the character of crop and its value, the amount paid for seeds and an itemized statement of the returns. The school gardens proved an admirable success. The children had learned the details of a great historical event in their own state—the giving out of free land; the boys had conducted a miniature survey; rivalry had been developed in the competition over plots; the gardens, laid out side by side, served as a splendid object lesson in quality of work; no boy or girl could allege a teacher's unfairness from an untilled, weedy plot; the parents were made to feel that the school was doing something practical for their children; the children were taught a simple form of accounting and cost-keeping; and, best of all, they were made to feel their citizenship in the school.

The Department of Agriculture has, in addition to its experimental farm, a well-equipped laboratory, in which tests and experiments are carried on. Sleepy Eye is located in a dairy section; therefore one of the chief functions of this laboratory has been the testing of milk. Any farmer may bring milk samples and have the Babcock test applied to determine the percentage of butter fat which an individual cow is yielding.

IV A Short Course for Busy People

In the neighborhood of Sleepy Eye, as in many other places, there are many boys and girls who cannot attend school throughout the year, but who would welcome a chance to go to school in the winter months. Agricultural colleges have recognized this need by the organization of "short courses" during the winter months. Only a few children can go to college, however. Lack of preparation and lack of funds compel them to remain at home. It was for them that the school at Sleepy Eye organized a short course like that given in the agricultural colleges, extending from the end of November to the middle of March. Of the pupils attending this course, some of the boys are as old as thirty-seven, and some of the girls as young as fifteen; yet all come, eager to find out some of the things which the school has to teach them.

The agricultural work of the short course centered around the agricultural problems of the Brown County Farm. Planting, milk and cream testing, work in seed testing and germination, and treatment of seeds for fungus growths, corn judging, and similar topics covered the work of the term. The short course boys had already learned many lessons in the practical school of farm work. The school at Sleepy Eye offered them in addition the knowledge which science has recently accumulated regarding the work of the farm.

As the successful farmer must be a trained mechanic, the short course laid great stress on manual training. The boys were taught how to handle and care for tools, how to frame a building, how to make eveners, hayracks, watering troughs, wagon boxes, and similar useful farm articles. In the blacksmith shop the simpler problems in forging were covered, including the making of hooks, clevises, cold chisels and other small tools.

While the boys were engaged in agricultural and mechanical work the girls took domestic science. In addition to the elementary work in cooking and sewing there were advanced courses in dress designing, so planned as to prepare a girl to work out her own patterns and make up her own materials.

Let no one suppose that the short course neglected academic work. Indeed, it was originally intended to enable boys and girls who felt too big for the local school, or who had no time to take the entire term there, to review common school subjects. The courses in industrial work, in agriculture and in domestic science were offered in addition to these regular school studies.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The boys and girls who take the short course for the first year come back in considerable numbers to take a second and a third year of work during the winter months. The short course is a success, because it gives the boys and girls who take it training and knowledge which they would not otherwise acquire.

V Letting the Boys Do It

The school at Sleepy Eye needed a farm building on the school farm. The short course boys and some of the older boys in the school were anxious to learn. What more natural procedure than for the school to buy the lumber and have the boys do the work? Exactly this proceeding was followed, and the pupils erected the building which they needed to carry on the applied work of the school.

The mechanical work of the school is splendidly organized. First of all, the pupils built a large part of the equipment themselves. Five simple forges, made by the students of pineboards and concrete, form an excellent shop equipment, besides giving the boys who did the work an inkling of the ease with which a forge can be erected in connection with the tool-house on the farm. The boys built a turning lathe, on which the wood turning of the school is done. Besides the shop-work there is a well-organized course in mechanical drawing. The whole department is prepared to teach boys, particularly farm boys, some of the things which they will most need in the mechanical work on the farms.

The mechanical courses are open to the boys in the grades, as well as to the high school and the short course pupils. The work is graded, and may be followed through the high school course.

VI A Look at the Domestic Science

While the boys are in the shops the girls are occupied with domestic science. A well-equipped laboratory and sewing-room furnish the basis for some thorough work. The Domestic Science Department is one to which Mr. Cederstrom points with justifiable pride. "Of all my constructive work since coming here," he says, "I probably take my greatest pride in our Domestic Science Department, where elementary and advanced work is offered in cooking and in household economy."

Because the space in the school was small, and the demand for instruction large, Mr. Cederstrom planned the domestic science tables himself, and superintended their building. Again the effectiveness of the school's work is shown by its results. With the modest equipment which the funds and space available provided, the girls in the Domestic Science Department each year serve a dinner to the farmers and farmers' wives attending the annual farmers' institute held in the school in February. On one occasion the department baked almost half a cord of bread, roasted one hundred and forty pounds of beef, and fed five hundred and seventeen persons at one dinner.

The sewing work includes a complete course in dressmaking. Students are required to make patterns from pictures selected in fashion magazines. These patterns are then used in cutting out the garments, which the girls themselves make up.

Each girl in the High School is required to take at least one year each of cooking and of sewing. These courses occupy five periods a week. An additional year in each course is optional. Most of the girls eagerly elect it. Mr. Cederstrom takes a very practical view of such educational matters. "Our girls like the domestic science work," he says. "They take as much pride in bringing to my office a good loaf of bread, or a well-prepared dish of vegetables or meat as they do in being able to give a perfect demonstration of a theorem in geometry, or a perfect conjugation or declension of a Latin word. Possibly ten years from now they may have more demand upon their ability to prepare a square meal for a hungry life companion, or to cut out a dress or apron for a younger member of the family than they will have need of doing some of the other things which I have just mentioned."

They do not teach domestic science for its own sake out in Sleepy Eye; they see farther ahead than that. Mr. Cederstrom is making his work practical, because, as he says, "We are anxious to do what little we can toward making our girls more efficient and capable as housekeepers, wives, and possibly as mothers."

VII How It Works Out

There are two questions that naturally arise: First, what is the effect of this work on the children? Second, what is its effect on the farmers? Both questions must be answered briefly, though the answers to both might be followed out through pages of illustrative detail.

The children like the school at Sleepy Eye. The boys and girls come early and stay late. The school doors open at eight o'clock and are not closed until dark. There are always pupils there from the beginning to the end of that period. The children are not interested in the applied work alone. Their interest in that has led them very often to an interest in some of the academic studies toward which they had no particular inclination.

The homes in Sleepy Eye are also interested in the school. As one woman remarked: "My girls like to do work about the house now; they never did before." School work which gives girls a new desire and a new viewpoint on the work in the home is a step, and a long one, toward building sounder homes and stronger family ties. There are some Sleepy Eye homes in which the interest of the boys in the school shops has led their parents to buy benches and tools which the children may use at home.

The school at Sleepy Eye has interested the farmers. It has persuaded them that high grade seed is better than mongrel seed. Consequently the farmers are shelling more bushels of corn to the acre planted. The school has persuaded the farmers that well-bred cattle are more profitable than mongrel cattle. Consequently the farmers are raising the standard of their herds. When the farmers come into Sleepy Eye they go to the school. Perhaps they have milk to be tested; perhaps they are looking for suggestions regarding soil or blight; perhaps they want to know the latest facts about the scale or rust; perhaps they want some advice about farm implements. In any case they go to the school.

The farmers have been led to the school through the children. The boys have gone home to their fathers with suggestions and improvements of inestimable value in the management of the farm. The girls have gone home to their mothers with practical ideas on the running of the household. These demonstrations of school efficiency have done more than argument or persuasion ever could hope to do in convincing the fathers and mothers of the usefulness of the school.

VIII Theoretical and Practical

The work in mechanics seems to interfere in no essential particular with the regular academic work of the school. The boys and girls are interested and enthusiastic. That counts for a great deal. Then, too, boys and girls come to school for the mechanical work who would not come at all if the mechanical work were not there. The academic work which such boys take is clear gain. Through the mechanical work many pupils become interested in the school, and the school means, for all pupils, academic as well as applied work.

"We do not discount those parts of an education that were once the sum total of the work in every high school," Mr. Cederstrom says. "They are all offered and taken by the students. We are trying to give in addition to these academic branches the kind of education which will appeal to the children as being of a common-sense order." There is in the high school a Latin Course, a Scientific Course, beside the Agricultural Course and the Industrial Course. All of the students are required to take this academic work. Many, in addition, take the industrial and agricultural work, even when they do not receive credit in their academic course. Each high school student is allowed two periods a day in laboratory work, shop-work, or some other form of applied education. In addition to those periods, the students may work in the shops or laboratory after school, if they please. Many of them get their applied education in that way.

How great is the fire that a little spark kindles! It was more than a thousand miles away that I first heard of the school at Sleepy Eye. It happened in this way. The clock had scarcely announced that it was high noon when a group of men drew their chairs up to a dinner table generously loaded with country hotel fare. There were two school directors in this happen-so party, a carter, a salesman, a lawyer, a farmer and two teachers, who talked with a professional twang. The salesman listened impatiently to the educational clap-trap, watching for an opening between phrases. When at last the loophole appeared:

"Gentlemen," said he, "you're interested in schools? Then you ought to see some real schools. Did you ever go to a school to listen to a phonograph?" Then, turning to the farmers: "Did you ever go to school to get your horses shod? You go to school for both in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. They're the greatest schools I have ever seen. They run from seven in the morning till eight at night, and accommodate every kid that wants an education. Gentlemen, if you want to see real schools go to Sleepy Eye."



CHAPTER XII

THE SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION

I A Dream of Empire

A keen Atlanta business man leaned forward on his chair and spoke eagerly. "Yes, sir," he exclaimed, "the world is ours. We have the biggest, finest batch of undeveloped resources in the country—perhaps on the planet. Iron, coal, stone, timber, power—our hills are full of them, so full that we have never even inventoried our treasure-house. Our possibilities are beyond the power of words, and we've got to live up to them."

This man knew Georgia and the South. He had helped, and still is helping to convert the iron, coal, timber, and water-power into Southern prosperity. He was still unsatisfied.

"The trouble with us is, we can't go fast enough," he admitted. "Do you know why? Do you know the biggest burden we have to carry—the most determined enemy we have to fight? Well, sir, it's ignorance—the ignorance of the common man about his farm or his trade; the ignorance of the business man about outside things; the ignorance of the teachers who are supposed to enlighten us." He leaned forward again. "That sounds strong, doesn't it? But it's gospel."

I reminded him of the rapidity with which the South was forging ahead in its educational activities. He threw his head back proudly. "Of course," he cried, "the experiment stations, the colleges, the high schools, the club movement, and all that—of course we're going ahead. I'm not speaking of that. My point is that we must wake up to two things. First of all, we must never make the mistakes that you did in the North when you built up your educational system. That means no pedantry, or classical snobbery. We mustn't go that way. Our way is plain though. I see it more clearly every time I think the matter over—we must train the intelligence of the Southern people."

He continued, in his enthusiastic mood. "Yes, there is a great future for the South. Its resources make a future possible; but unless those resources are intelligently used, our prosperity will not go very deep, or reach very far. We must take the people with us."

This man's view typifies the educational vision that is sweeping over the South. "We must take the people with us," he said. There is nothing novel in the idea; but coming as it did from a representative business man, it carried weight and conviction.

Another thing he said in the same connection enforced his argument. "They talk about the race problem in the South," he said. "That is, the old generation does. We younger men are not so much concerned about the race problem as we are concerned about efficiency in industry and in agriculture. The races are here to stay; we cannot change that if we would. Meanwhile, all of us, whites as well as blacks, are slovenly in our farming, indifferent in our business transactions, and hopelessly behind in our methods of conducting affairs. From top to bottom we need trained intelligence. That, more than anything else, will solve the South's problems."

II Finding the Way

The step is a short one from a vision of trained intelligence to a demand for effective education. Throughout the South, the will to progress is everywhere in evidence, and with unerring accuracy, one community after another is turning to this as the way.

There is no Southern city in which the agitation for increased educational activity is not being pushed with vigor and intensity. On all hands there appears the result of a conviction that the only means by which the effectiveness of the South can be maintained and increased, lie along the path of increased educational opportunities. The South, if it is to fulfill the greatness of its promise, must remodel its educational system in the interests of a larger South, as the West has remodeled its educational system in the interest of a larger West. The notable State universities of the Middle and Far West, the Normal Schools, the prevalent system of education, have been felt, and are now being felt, in the progressive, efficient, Western population. Nothing less than a generally educated public could have made the West in the brief years that have elapsed since it was a wilderness. Nothing save general education can make the resources of the South yield up their greatest advantage to the Southern people.

The time for traditional formalism has passed in the South, as it has passed in every other progressive community. Whatever the needs of the community may be, those needs must be met through some form of public education. In the South the most pressing need appears in the demand for intelligent farming. For decades the tenant farmers, largely negroes, cultivated their farms as their fathers had cultivated. They raised cotton because the raising of cotton offered the path of least resistance. Farm animals were scarce, because the farm animals only came with surplus cash, and surplus cash was scarce indeed in districts where the tenant farmers lived through the year on the credit obtained from the prospective cotton crops. There was little corn raised, because the people did not understand the need for raising corn, nor did they realize the financial possibilities of the Southern corn crop. In a word, the agricultural South lacked the knowledge which modern scientific agriculture has brought.

The past generation has seen a revolution in Southern agriculture, because of the revolution which has occurred in Southern agricultural education. Led by the experiment stations and universities, the South has undertaken to reorganize its system of living from the land.

The Atlanta banker fully realized the need for culture. He was himself a cultured gentleman; but he also saw that before the people of the South could have culture, they must have an economic system directed with sufficient intelligence to supply the necessaries of life, which must always be taken for granted before the possibilities of culture are realized. Cultural education comes after, and not before, education for intelligent and direct vocational activity.

During the educational revolution of the past twenty-five years, no section of the country has thrown itself into the foreground of educational progress with more vigor and with greater earnestness and zeal than that displayed in the South. In certain directions the South has proved a leader in the inauguration and administration of new activities. In other directions the Southern States have followed actively and energetically.

A traveler through the New South stumbles unavoidably upon countless illustrations of the part which modern education is playing in Southern life. Individuals, families, communities, are being re-made by the new education.

III Jem's Father

Jem wasn't a good boy, but he was interested in his school. He was one of those fortunate boys who lived in a county that had been possessed by the corn club idea, and the corn club was the thing which had given Jem his school interest.

Jem never took to studies. Each year he had told his mother that "there weren't no use in goin' back to that there school again." Persistently she had sent him back, until one year when Jem found a reason for going.

A new teacher came to Jem's school—a young man fresh from normal school, full of enthusiasm, energy, and new ideas. The boys felt from the start that he was their friend, and before many weeks had elapsed, the community began to feel his presence. This new teacher was particularly enthusiastic over the "club idea." "We must get the boys and girls doing something together" he kept saying to his classes.

The year wore on, but interest in the school did not flag, because all through the winter months there were entertainments, parents' meetings, literary meetings, spelling bees, reading hours, and other evening activities. In fact, the time came when there was a light in the school-house three or four nights in each week.

Toward spring the new teacher began to push the "club idea." He started with the boys, and, as luck would have it, picked out Jem. "Jem," he said one day, "I want you to stay after school, I want to speak to you a minute." Jem stayed, not knowing exactly what was coming. When the rest of the pupils had tumbled out of the school door, and disappeared along the muddy road, the teacher and Jem sat down together.

"Jem," said the teacher, "we ought to have a corn club in this school."

Jem looked up doggedly, but gave no sign of interest or enthusiasm.

"You see," the teacher said, "it's this way. Farming isn't all that it might be around here. People raise things the way they have always been raised. Our county superintendent has an idea. He proposes to teach the farmers in this county how to raise corn."

Jem looked skeptical. "Are you to do the teaching?" he asked.

"No," was the answer, "you are."

"I?" said Jem.

"Yes," said the teacher, "you and the other boys in the school."

Jem scratched his head. "I ain't never taught no one nothing in my life," he commented.

"It's this way," the teacher went on. "Up at Washington and out at the State College they have been doing a lot of thinking and working with corn. They found, for instance, that if you pick seed corn carefully, you get a better crop than if you are careless in seed selection. They have also found that if you follow certain rules about planting and cultivation you get a better crop. For years the men at the Experiment Station and at Washington talked about these things in Farmers' Bulletins. They established experiment farms, and demonstration farms, too. Lately they have been doing something more, and something which I think is better than anything so far—they have decided to have the boys teach their fathers how to raise corn."

"Do you mean to say," asked Jem, "that I could teach Dad anything about corn-raisin'?"

"Yes," said the teacher, "you can, and, what is more, you will, won't you?"

"Well," said Jem, "I dunno."

"Here is what we have to do," said the teacher. "This year the county superintendent is going to offer prizes for the boy with the best acre of corn. He sends out rules. You have to plough a certain way, plant a certain way, and cultivate a certain way. If you do not follow the rules you are not allowed to stay in the contest. Now I'll tell you what I want to do. The boys in this school are as smart, if not smarter, than the boys in any other school in the country; so I guess it is up to us to get some of those prizes right here at home."

Jem was visibly interested. "Money prizes?" he asked.

"Yes, money prizes," said the teacher. "The first prize will be fifty dollars."

Jem's eyes opened wide. "I'm in for that," he said with conviction.

That night, when Jem sat down to supper, he broached the corn proposition to his father.

"Shucks," his father exclaimed. "You raise an acre of corn? Why you wouldn't get twenty-five bushels!"

"Twenty-five," said Jem, contemptuously. "I'd get a hundred."

"A hundred," said his father. "Here, look here, boy, I have been farming this land for thirty odd years, and the best I ever done on an acre of corn was seventy bushels. I'll tell you what, though," he added conclusively, "this here talk about corn clubs makes me tired. You and your hundred bushels! I was looking over the paper when it came in this noon, and I saw a piece about a chap over by Southport with over a hundred bushels to the acre. Do you know what I'm goin' to do tonight? I'm goin' to write that editor a letter, and tell him that any paper that publishes lies like that ain't fit for my family to see. This year's subscription ain't run out, but they don't need to send me the rest. I'll get a paper somewhere else."

Despite home opposition, Jem persisted and prevailed. His father gave him an acre grudgingly, but it was a good acre. And when, following the rules which he and the other boys who had agreed to enter the contest read over with the teacher, he disked his land and ploughed his narrow, deep furrows, he listened, not without misgivings, to the remarks which his elder brother passed at his expense.

"Say, Jem," this brother remarked, "you have spent three times as much time on that acre as any acre of corn raised in this county was ever worth. Are you diggin' graves for 'possums?"

When, later in the season, Jem cultivated with persistent regularity, he was forced to listen to similar comments. Jem wasn't good at repartee; so he said nothing; but, sustained by the encouragement of the new teacher, who came to see his acre every week, Jem followed the rules to the letter.

He had his reward at harvest time. When the ears first set it became apparent that Jem had a good crop. As they developed, the goodness of the crop became more manifest; but when the acre had been harvested, put through the sheller and bagged, and Jem had stowed in his pocket a certificate of "ninety-six bushels on one acre," it was time for some explanations.

"Jem," said his father at the supper table on the evening of that memorable day when Jem's corn went through the sheller, and his certificate showed ninety-six bushels, "I wrote a letter to that editor, and sent him next year's subscription in advance."

IV Club Life Militant

The experience of Jem's father has been duplicated many times by parents and communities during the past ten years of club growth in the South. The school, working through the children, has educated fathers, mothers, villages, and whole counties.

All of the agencies of government,—local, State, and national,—have cooperated to make the children's clubs one of the leading agencies in developing that trained intelligence which is so great an asset in the prosperity of any community. Thanks to the tireless efforts of men like William H. Smith, the children's clubs have become one of the most aggressive factors in educating rural communities to higher standards of efficiency. There are many kinds of clubs—corn clubs, potato clubs, tomato clubs, pig clubs. Anything which the children can raise is a legitimate object of club activity. The work in the South started with corn clubs.

The corn-club idea in Mississippi grew out of an educational experience of Professor William H. Smith.[24] For years Professor Smith had taught, in a mildly progressive way, the time-honored subjects which were included in the study-course of the rural school. Two of Professor Smith's students, a boy of twenty and a girl of seventeen, left school; and they left, as the boy told Professor Smith very frankly, because the school taught them very little that would be of use later on in the work which they would be called upon to do. This boy expected to grow cotton; the girl expected to marry the boy, manage his domestic affairs and attend to the many duties which fall to the lot of women on a farm.

When he left school, the boy put it to Professor Smith in this way: "I am goin' to be a farmer. I ain't fitted to be nothing else, and book learnin' ain't helpin' me none. It's just a waste of time. I've got to clear land and work it into a farm. If I was goin' to be a bookkeeper or an engineer, or somethin', what you are teachin' me here might help; but I can't remember that I have ever learned a thing since I got the hang how to figure the interest on a mortgage, that will be of any account to me on a farm. Almost all the boys has got to be a farmer like me. You know, professor, it appears to me like these schools for the people ought to be teachin' the children of the people how to make a livin' on the farm—how to make life better and easier, instead of just makin' us plum disgusted with ourselves."

This experience, standing out among a multitude of similar experiences, led Professor Smith to an interest in some form of educational work that would help boys and girls in their lives on the farm. The outcome of his thinking and experimenting, combined with the thinking and experimenting of many another capable educational leader, is the club idea for boys and girls alike.

There was a real need for the corn club. For the year 1899 the total corn area in Alabama was 2,743,060 acres. On these acres the farmers secured an average of 12.7 bushels per acre. Ten years later, in 1909, the total acreage had decreased to 2,572,092, and the per acre yield had decreased to 11.9 bushels per acre. Here was a decrease of 170,968 acres in corn; of 4,367,310 bushels in the corn crop; and of .8 of a bushel in the average yield per acre. The boys' corn club movement was started in Alabama in 1909. That year two hundred and sixty-five boys were enrolled. The average per acre yield of corn in the State was 11.9 bushels. The next year the enrollment of boys reached twenty-one hundred; the total yield increased more than sixty per cent.; and the average number of bushels per acre rose to eighteen. The figures for 1911 and 1912 show an increase, though less extensive, in the total acreage and the total yield of corn for each year.

Southern land will grow corn. Properly treated, it will better a yield of twelve bushels per acre, five, ten, and even fifteen-fold. The leaders of Southern agricultural education knew this. They knew, furthermore, that the betterment could never be brought about until the farmers were convinced that it was possible. How could they be shown? The Farmers' Bulletin had a place; the experiment farm had a place; but if it were only possible to make every farm an experiment farm!

The way lay through the boys. They could be induced to organize miniature experiments in scores of farms in every county, and then the farmers would see!

Backed by a carefully worked out organization, the authorities set out with the deliberate purpose of educating the farmer through his son. If his corn yield was low, he would learn how to get a larger yield. If he raised no corn, he would learn of the spot-cash value of corn. Boys were organized into clubs; directions were given; prizes were offered, and the boys went to work with a will. For the most part they took one acre.

When compared to the yield on surrounding acres, the corn crops secured by the boys are little short of phenomenal. In Pike County, Alabama, where the number of boys engaging in corn club contests increased from one in 1910 to two hundred and seventy in 1912, the average number of bushels per acre grown by the boys rose from 50.5 to 85.3. In the entire State there were one hundred and thirty-seven boys who made over a hundred bushels per acre each in 1911. The average per acre for each of these boys was one hundred and twenty-seven bushels, and the total profit on their corn crop was $12,500.

Records made by individual boys through the Southern States run very high. Claude McDonald, of Hamer, S. C., raised 210-4/7 bushels at a cost of 33.3c a bushel. Junius Hill, of Attalla, Ala., raised 212-1/2 bushels. Ben Leath, of Kensington, Ga., raised 214-5/7 bushels. John Bowen, of Grenada, Miss., raised 221-1/5 bushels. Eber A. Kimbrough, Alexander City, Ala., raised 224-3/4 bushels; and Bebbie Beeson, Monticello, Miss., raised 227-1/16 bushels.[25] These boys were all State prize winners.

There are several things worthy of note about these record yields. Practically all of the high yields were made on deeply ploughed, widely separated rows. The record made by Bennie Beeson (227-1/16 bushels, at a cost of fourteen cents per bushel) was secured on dark, upland soil, with a clay sub-soil, ploughing to a depth of ten inches, rows three feet apart, hills six inches apart, with ten cultivations. Beeson used 5-1/2 tons of manure and eight dollars' worth of other fertilizer on his acre. The seed corn was New Era. Barnie Thomas, who grew 225 bushels on rich, sandy loam, ploughed nine inches, planted his rows three and one-half feet apart, and kept the hills ten inches apart. He cultivated six times, and selected his own seed from the field. Many of the boys making the fine records developed and selected their own seed. One boy, with an acre yield of 124.9 bushels, cleared six hundred and ninety-five dollars, counting prizes. Another boy, with a yield of 97-4/5 bushels, reports that his father's yield was thirty bushels. John Bowen, with a yield of 221-1/5 bushels, reports the yield on nearby acres as forty bushels. Arthur Hill, with 180-3/5 bushels, reports the nearby yields as twenty bushels.

Such figures, uncertified, would challenge the credulity of the uninitiated. The land on which these record yields were secured had been raising twenty, forty, and fifty bushels of corn to the acre. Over great sections, the per acre average was well under twenty. Into this desolation of agricultural inefficiency, a few thousand school boys entered. Under careful supervision and proper guidance, with little additional expenditure of money or of time, they produced results wholly unbelievable to the old-time farmer. Yet he saw the crop, husked, and watched it through the sheller. There was no magic and no chicanery. He had learned a lesson.

The records cited above are exceptionally high. There were hundreds of others almost equally good. "Twenty-one Georgia club members from the seventh congressional district alone grew 2,641 bushels at an average cost of 23 cents per bushel; 19 boys in Gordon County, Georgia, average 90 bushels, 10 of them making 1,058 bushels. The 10 boys who stood highest in Georgia averaged 169.9 bushels and made a net profit of more than $100 each, besides prizes won. In Alabama 100 boys average 97 bushels at an average cost of 27 cents. In Monroe County, Alabama, 25 boys averaged 78 bushels. In Yazoo County, Mississippi, 21 boys averaged 111.6 bushels at an average cost of 19.7 cents. In Lee County, Mississippi, 17 boys averaged 82 bushels at an average cost of 21 cents. Sixty-five boys in Mississippi averaged 109.9 bushels at an average cost of 25 cents. Twenty Mississippi boys averaged 140.6 bushels at an average cost of 23 cents. Ninety-two boys in Louisiana grew 5,791 bushels on 92 acres; 10 of these boys had above 100 bushels each, although the weather conditions were very unfavorable in that State. In North Carolina 100 boys averaged 99 bushels. In the same State 432 boys averaged 63 bushels. In Buncombe County, North Carolina, 10 boys averaged 88 bushels. In Sussex County, Virginia, 16 boys averaged 82 bushels. Fifteen boys in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., where the business men contributed about $3,000 to aid the work, averaged 127.4 bushels at an average cost of 28 cents per bushel. Many other records in other States were equally good in view of the fact that a drought prevailed very generally throughout the South in 1911.["][26]

Such returns challenge the attention of the most hidebound. These boys got results that exceeded anything that had ever been heard of in their communities. The old folks who had scoffed; the wise-acres whose advice was not taken; and the "I told you so" farmers who had uttered their predictions, all stood aside, while the boys, pointer in hand, taught their respective communities one of the best lessons they had ever learned.

V Canning Clubs

Parallel with the boys' corn clubs are the girls' canning clubs. If the boys could grow corn (in a number of cases the corn contests were won by girls), why might it not be possible to have the girls do something along parallel lines? The idea found expression in the girls' tomato clubs and similar organizations. During 1910, three hundred and twenty-five girls were enrolled in such clubs in Virginia and South Carolina. Dr. Knapp and his fellow workers decided that one-tenth of an acre would be enough for a good garden. Each girl was urged to plant some other kind of vegetable in addition to her tomatoes, and to can surplus fruit. In 1911, more than three thousand girls, in eight different States, had joined clubs and planted their gardens. By 1912 the number had grown to twenty-three thousand girls in twelve States. Many of the girls put up more than five hundred quart cans of tomatoes from their plots, besides ketchup, pickles, chow-chow, preserves, and other products. Quite a number of girls put up more than a thousand quart cans, and one girl put up fifteen hundred quart cans. Some of the girls, in addition to the prizes, had a net profit of as much as a hundred dollars on their gardens.

The United States Bureau of Plant Industry sets forth the object of the girls' demonstration work as follows:

"(1) To encourage rural families to provide purer and better food at a lower cost, and utilize the surplus and otherwise waste products of the orchard and garden, and make the poultry yard an effective part of the farm economy.

(2) To stimulate interest and wholesome cooperation among members of the family in the home.

(3) To provide some means by which girls may earn money at home, and, at the same time, get the education and viewpoint necessary for the ideal farm life.

(4) To open the way for practical demonstrations in home economics.

(5) To furnish earnest teachers a plan for aiding their pupils and helping their communities."[27]

VI Recognition Day for Boys and Girls

The most astonishing thing about the club activity is the recognition which it has won wherever it has been worked out on an extensive basis. The reason for this general recognition is quite obvious, and its effect is no less stimulating.

Public officials and business men have vied with one another in their efforts to reward the winners of county and State club contests. The same bulletin which records the astonishing figures on corn yields, tells about the things that were done for the 56,840 boys who were members of corn clubs. Fifty-two Georgia boys received diplomas signed by the governor of the State and other officials, for producing more than a hundred bushels per acre each, at an average cost of less than thirty cents per bushel. Business men and citizens generally subscribed liberally money, free railroad transportation, and trips to State capitals. In 1911 the total value of the prizes offered in the South to the boys' corn clubs approximated fifty thousand dollars. In Oklahoma, one thousand dollars in gold was offered to the one hundred and twenty boys making the best record in that State. The State prize winners were sent to Washington for a week, where they were received at the White House by the President, and at the Capitol by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. They were presented with special cards of admission to the Senate and House of Representatives, and, when visiting Congress, they were presented to their Senators and Congressmen. By special invitation these distinguished visitors appeared before the Committee on Agriculture at the House of Representatives. They also visited the office of the Secretary of Agriculture. They were photographed, and large diplomas bearing the seal of the Department and the signature of the Secretary were awarded to them.

One does not wonder at the widespread recognition accorded these boys, in view of the fact that their efforts have been responsible for an immense increase in the business prosperity of their respective States. Once more have educators demonstrated the possibilities of teaching parents through the education of children.

VII Teaching Grown-Ups to Read

The educational work which is being done in the uplands of the South has already received widespread recognition. The slogan, "Down with the moonshine still and up with the moonlight school," typifies the spirit of the upland community.

One might journey far before discovering a more enthusiastic people than the teachers and the scholars of the Southern uplands. The appalling extent of illiteracy among the descendants of Marion's men finds a parallel in their pathetic desire for some form of education.

The Southern hill whites love the old and fear the new. Traditionally, they belong to a past generation; actually, they are reaching out for the better things which the new generation can offer. The moonlight schools are attended by old people and young alike. The struggling colleges, the industrial and technical schools, with their record of privation and hardship, bear eloquent testimony to the genuine efforts which the upland population is making in these early years of its educational awakening.

Every sincere effort among the hill whites meets with instant response. For the most part, they deprive themselves of the necessaries of life in order that they may send their children to school. Boys skimp and save; girls walk for miles along mountain trails and paths; communities give of the scanty means of their effort for the building and maintenance of schools. Everywhere the spirit of the new education is permeating the Southern upland communities.

VIII George Washington, Junior

One teacher, whose years of effort in the Piedmont have brought her the confidence and co-operation of the community, tells of the success of one of her earliest ventures with a boy of thirteen.

The boy's father was bad; his mother slovenly and indifferent. The boy himself was bright and active.

When the time came for him to enter the cotton mill, the teacher protested to his family, but without success. Still there was something that she could do for him, still she saw an opportunity of serving him, and she asked him to come to her home with a number of other boys, for a couple of nights a week, when they sat together, reading, or playing games.

The boy had appeared sullen at first, but toward the end of his school term he showed an active interest. It became apparent that he was particularly clever at languages. None of his lessons troubled him, and, with the assistance of the teacher, he learned Italian readily, and during the evenings, when the other boys played games or talked, he worked over his Italian sentences with vital interest.

Just before Christmas, during the first year that this boy had spent in the mill, a friend visited his teacher, became interested in her work, and asked if there was any way in which she could help.

"You may," said the teacher. "You may buy Andy an outfit."

The friend went to the city with the order in her pocket,—a hat, a suit, and a complete outfit, new, as a Christmas present for Andy.

On Christmas eve, Andy alone came to the teacher's house. She had not asked the other boys,—partly because most of them preferred to stay at home, partly because she had no such fine present for them as she had for Andy.

"Never in my life," the teacher said, "had I seen Andy clean. I made up my mind that for once he should have a clean body as well as clean clothes."

When Andy came that Christmas eve, the teacher took him into a room where there were towels, soap, a basin, and a new outfit of clothes.

"Andy," she said, "this is your Christmas present from my friend, and now you are going to give me a Christmas present, too. You are going to wash up and dress up."

Andy followed directions, and when he emerged from the room in his spick and span outfit, his hat set side-wise on his wet, newly combed hair, he stood up very straight, surveying himself as best he could from head to foot, and exclaimed,—"Gee! I feel just like George Washington." The bath and the new suit were a realization of his highest ideal.