such professors said, "better a dinner of herbs in Cambridge than a stalled ox from Mr. Armour's shambles in the new Chicago institution that has not our historic background; better a few years in the strenuous environment of New England than a cycle under the soft skies of California." But money made it possible for Chicago and Stanford to secure men of great potentialities, at least, even if they had not always reached their climax of achievement, and great achievement has followed endowment and wise management. Some of our agencies have grown up, as one of your leading Chicago managers expressed it, from a postage stamp, and have developed strength and efficiency and won patronage and approval in the face of innumerable obstacles, and such hardy experience will be of marked advantage to them in competing with federal and other agencies who may start off with assured economic support but not with an assured clientele. Many of our recent teachers' agencies are managed with commendable intelligence, judgment and efficiency, but we have this remarkable record, that while the number of agencies has increased fivefold in the last generation, the older agencies, like the historic universities, have gained fivefold in their patrons, and there is no business or profession in America in which there is greater harmony and friendliness and less of jealousy and unseemly rivalry. This is largely due to the nature of our business, in which no man markedly deficient in moral sense, scholastic training, administrative ability, personality, power to attract friends, and having the spirit of "give and take" with his fellows would find the work congenial or profitable. The spirit of harmony and helpfulness that has characterized our managers throughout the country is the best promise possible that we shall meet new conditions in the right spirit. The prayer imputed to the Harvard president for the divine blessing on inferior institutions has been so far answered that there are a hundred universities in America today that far outrank Harvard of fifty years ago in scholastic range, number of students and productive endowment, while at the same time Harvard has continued "to lengthen her cords and strengthen her stakes" and has maintained her historic leadership. It surely will be no disadvantage or disparagement to our well established agencies to wish well to new managers of quality who promise to maintain a high standard of service, but no one should enter this field of activity who has not high educational ideals and wide educational affiliations, who will not be satisfied with the moderate emolument he is likely to derive from the business, and who will not be more careful in the performance of his duties than in the assertion of his rights. We may properly be gratified that there are many schools which have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, indeed more than a million as a highwater mark, to teachers employed through an agency, but the economic consideration to the agency seems small when it is considered that a teacher placed by an agency who holds a position for ten years and has received any increment in his salary pays the agency less than one-half of one per cent of his receipts, and a teacher who holds a position for only a single year pays but five per cent. Nothing but extreme prejudice can blind any one to the fact that trained workers who have given years of attention to this business contribute much to educational progress and in the selection of teachers have immense advantage over educators whose judgment and experience in placing teachers is confined to representing graduates of the institution with which they are connected or friends in educational work whom they have chanced to meet. The cumulative and convincing record of the past "graven in the rock forever" is the best promise of future security and success. As it becomes known that offices in our large cities impartially collect and intelligently record information useful to candidates and employers, the result is as sure as the law of gravitation. Like Lord Bacon, we should endeavor to see our problem in a "dry light," to remember that great interests pivot not on money but on men, and that we should be earnest to make our business honorable and our service indispensable. The true idealist, though he may never reach his ideal, like Cavour is never discouraged but has a kindling enthusiasm for the possible and recognizes with Theodore Roosevelt that individual initiative in the last analysis is the divinely ordained momentum of human advance, but that this individual initiative can achieve great results only by proper organization and the wise use of environment. Columbus, Copernicus, Luther and Michael Angelo made the sixteenth century marvelous in human progress, but not less significant have been Lincoln, Gladstone, Grant and Cavour in the past century. The very thought of these amazing periods is dynamic in all human life. It is said of Li Hung Chang that he injected a nervous system into China, and some life-long republicans like myself are willing to cast aside partisan prejudice, if we have any left, and believe that our great president will inject a nervous system into the world, that he will in the order of providence usher in the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy that swords shall be turned into ploughshares, the happy conditions that Longfellow saw dimly "down the dark future through long generations," and Tennyson's "Parliament of man, the federation of the world." What marvel is this we see: the "celestial empire" become a "terrestrial republic," "a nation born in a day" and its government promptly and solely on the request of Mr. Wilson, declaring war on Germany and militarism; and all nations, including Germany, are looking to Wilson more than to their own premiers as the leader of human thought and the herald of a new order. Our statesmen and our missionaries recognize education as vital to any civilization worthy the name, and the hundreds of schools established by American initiative in China and India and Africa will soon become thousands and our agencies must rise to the new world demand and bear our share of the necessary impedimenta in the advance thereto. Meanwhile the logic of events is compelling teachers and school officers everywhere to use the teachers' agency, and is stimulating the managers of agencies to make themselves thoroughly masters of their profession and to render the cut between the right teacher and the right place just as short, safe and sure as possible. Any road longer than the shortest will not be used, any more than the old wagon trains will be again used for crossing the continent when lightning expresses, automobiles and aeroplanes are available. American educators, like American travelers and business men, are not looking for long routes but for short cuts; and the quickest and safest way conceivable for a school officer to find a good teacher is to go to the man best informed about teachers, and the length of this way will grow less and less as the managers of agencies put brains and conscience into their work and make it their specialty. In the apt language of Thomas Curtis Clark, "Of all difficult tasks there is none more difficult than to make an American take the longest way round when he can cut across." In Her Garden. (A Villanelle.) A whisper among the roses astir Where lingers the sacred Presence of her! For here in her garden two worlds confer: Enfolded in sweetness of days that were, It moves not the dew on the gossamer Here love waits, the world's one interpreter; Oh, the message that passes the barrier, Where lingers the sacred Presence of her! STOKELY S. FISHER. American Notes-Editorial One of the most promising educational movements of the present time is the rapidly developing interest in the establishment of Community Centers, where the entire population, young and old, natives and foreigners, can periodically meet on a broad platform of common interest, for mutual acquaintance, conference, co-operation and entertainment. These community centers fill a felt need of nearly every community for an organization of the common people's life that shall be absolutely outside of any religious, in the sense of denominational, interests; that shall be entirely free from any legislative obligations or functions; that shall be above and outside of all social distinctions created by financial standing; and which shall know no differences or preferences as to nationality; an organization, in short, which shall be primarily and absolutely democratic and whose function it shall be to make every individual, young or old, rich or poor, white or black, native or foreign-born, to find his own place in the community and function his own individual life to the best advantage for his own good and for the good of the whole. This is a distinctively American idea and it is spreading rapidly throughout the land. It will prove, we venture to prophesy, one of the greatest factors in the much talked of process of "Americanization." This alone fully justifies the movement. We note that a national incorporation of the plan has been effected, in the formation of an organization which has taken as its corporate name "The Community Service, Inc." It is calling for $2,000,000, of which Massachusetts alone is to furnish $200,000. The Boston Herald editorially says of it: "So Community Service comes forward and asks for help to carry on this brightening and sweetening of social life for the benefit of the nation. With its New England headquarters at 60 State street, Boston, in charge of H. C. Whitehill as regional director, it will begin in Massachusetts and the sister states the development of neighborhood playgrounds, neighborhood clubs, and the like, as means of overcoming sectionalism in communities, uniting even diverse racial groups, and thus promoting the neighborhood spirit. This commendable enterprise should not be allowed to languish for lack of support." The Public School and Parents' Associations have been the pioneers in this movement. The Jonas Perkins School Association in Braintree, Mass., was among the first, if not actually the first, of such associations. The editor of Education was invited to make the |