training adequate to the demands of well-rendered service. If I understand our splendid boys and girls, that will appeal to them as no short cut to mediocre work will. This instinct to construct is also to be appealed to if we wish to enlist our young men and women in the various special lines of teaching, where great problems await their solution, such as re-adapting rural schools to rural needs of today, and the conduct of the several lines of educational effort to improve the quality of our citizenship.

Most mortals have a certain amount of acquisitiveness, a manifestation of the instinct to own something. This should receive our recognition. Salaries must be raised much higher, very much higher than at present; not merely in order to meet the increased cost of living, but in order that the teacher may acquire the numberless things that delight the soul and incidentally make a better teacher. The teacher cannot be expected to spend all of her time out of school sleeping and eating. It is essential that the teacher be able to secure extras, not only in the way of possessions, but also such as satisfy the closely allied instinct to appear well. This last is so essential a part of the good teacher's equipment that in all my experience I have seen but two teachers who succeeded without it. (And they were favored by peculiar conditions.) Let us be sure that we let no teacher leave the profession because we have unjustly appealed to this instinct and then failed to satisfy it.

In every normal young person there is something which is called, for lack of a better name, the instinct for mastery. It is manifested in the form of a desire to "stand well," or to attain some kind of power among one's fellows. In a study of certain aspects of the teaching profession in this state, which I made in 1914, I found that a frequent reason for entering the profession was the improved standing secured by the teacher in the eyes of friends and relatives. When making an attempt to secure teachers or to increase the number of candidates for teaching, this should be kept in mind, for while this instinct seems to be univer

sal, it is likely to help us especially in securing the more capable individuals from some of our newer racial stocks. An appeal to this instinct would not only help secure an increased supply of teachers, but would bring us a type of teacher that would be a good type for several reasons.

Finally, in this merely suggestive and incomplete catalogue, I would include our instinctive desire to secure control over the conditions of our existence. I do not believe teaching as a profession will be as attractive as it should be to the best until it is more autonomous. The day must come soon when the teachers as a whole will have more of a voice in the general conduct of the schools. Let us speed that day in the interest of the Republic of the future.*

*Another fine Address by Deputy-Commissioner M. S. Brooks, of New Hampshire, on "Our Personal Responsibility for the Present Condition of the Teaching Profession" will appear in the June number of Education. The Editor

American Notes-Editorial

Our editorial about the ownership and management of teachers' agencies, in a former number of this magazine (see page 445 of March EDUCATION), elicited a number of replies, both favorable and unfavorable to the position we had taken. The interest shown leads us to add a word more to the discussion, that we may, if possible, still more plainly define the reasons upon which we base our opinion. We prefer the plan upon which most of the existing agencies are proceeding for the very same reason that we prefer private to public ownership and management of the railroads, for example. Teacher-placing is an expert job, which needs to be conducted on strictly business principles. We believe that our leading teachers' agencies are well manned and that the character, experience and impartiality of the managers are important elements of success in bringing demand and supply together and so efficiently accomplishing the end in view. We sometimes have under the auspices of a State Board of Education or other "official" body, a registration bureau at the State capitol or other public center. Someone is placed in charge, perhaps at the State's expense,-being thus paid out of money raised by taxation. This means that the public is taxed for the supposed benefit of a class, viz., the score or hundred, as the case may be, of teachers and schools that may, by chance, be aided in a given year by such a bureau. The manager's salary is fixed and constant. He has not the incentive of having to "earn it or starve.” He need not be an experienced expert. He need do but little save to sit at his desk and let teachers come and register and superintendents come and look over the lists and make appointments for interviews. Furthermore, the State is likely to tie him up by various rules and restrictions which curtail and handicap him in various ways. Sometimes about all that is done in such State bureaus is to prepare and make available to superintendents lists of those teachers who desire to make a change, said teachers themselves furnishing most or all of the information. Superintendents or other member or members of the School Board come in and look over the lists and make appointments, with little regard to anything but what the candidates themselves have thus recorded at the bureau.

The point is that such handling of this delicate and important matter cannot compare in efficiency, apparently, with the expert service of a good, well-manned, private teachers' agency, which has

got to produce the goods or go to the wall. The established agencies are manned for the most part by men of experience in educational conditions and work, men of wide acquaintance with schools and teachers, and these men study both the needs of their patrons and the qualifications of their registrants, and bring the two together, not in a haphazard way, but by the law of fitness. Therefore, personally, we should go to a well-established agency for this sort of service, if we had need of it, on exactly the same principle that we should consult our own paid physician, who knows us intimately in our own individual make-up and physical peculiarities and at the same time is known by us as a well-trained and experienced diagnostician, instead of either trying to discover for ourselves what was the matter and the best remedy, or going to a public dispensary for a remedy.

We consider the following item,-clipped from one of our exchanges (which is published by parties who also conduct a teachers' agency), as distinctly immoral.

"One way, and a good way, to open the eyes of school boards, is to quit and take a better job. Recently five high school teachers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, did this; the new jobs are better by $500 each than were the old."

The motive at the source of this statement is too apparent to be overlooked, even by the casual reader. It is time to call a halt in this teacher shortage agitation and to get busy doing something worth while. Our readers will not, we are sure, misunderstand our attitude in the matter. We are now, always have been, and always shall be whole-heartedly in favor of advancing teachers' salaries reasonably and improving their lot and conditions in other respects; and we fully believe in treating the profession of teaching as one of the most honored and useful of all human occupations. But we think that the agitation has become too narrow and mercenary and is in danger of defeating its own ends by seeming to place the chief emphasis on the material side and to measure the worth of teaching in dollars and cents exclusively. This spirit has been excited and stimulated in the minds of teachers-to the danger point. A teacher who is thinking constantly about the money value of his or her services will very soon cease to give service that is of much value in money or anything else. People will not long continue to pay for

what has ceased to be of real value. Dissatisfaction and discontent do not command high wages in any market,-whatever the trade or profession. In the midst of all this agitation we cordially advise

town and city officials to do their utmost to meet existing conditions produced by the high cost of living, in their appropriations for teachers' salaries. And we counsel every teacher to put new interest, enthusiasm and consecration into the splendid work of teaching. In your attitude toward the profession, looking upon the bright side and seeing the opportunities, its appeal to that which is human and great and noble, give yourself whole-heartedly to the work of being the very best teacher that you possibly can be. We are positive that such an attitude on your part will win, in the long run. The agitator will gradually fall to the rear and drop out into work that may be in some cases temporarily more remunerative. But, in the end, the satisfactions will balance largely on the side of the patient, faithful, consecrated ones who say little, but do much. Let us change the emphasis for a time and try to produce the goods that will command the market.

That was a splendid word which Mrs. Catt, leader of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, said directly after the disappointing vote of Delaware on this question. "Suffragists," she said, "long ago eliminated the word 'defeat' from their vocabulary." Here is a saying that may well be adopted as a motto for everyone, in a multitude of situations in life. It is the expression of a splendid courage and determination to win, which will "carry on" to victory against tremendous odds, and which will sustain, encourage, direct and dominate effort and make the human spirit ultimately triumphant over all kinds of obstacles. It is the spirit which "won the war." It is the spirit which builds character. It lies at the basis of scholarship in school and college. Upon it business success is founded. It expresses the essence of true womanhood and manhood. It is the combination of courage and faith. It is the spirit which has won the great victories of the ages and always will win them. Without something of this spirit the individual is nerveless, inefficient and weak. With it he aspires, achieves and conquers. A college class, or a village school might well choose for its motto, to be hung upon the wall, to ring in the ears, to impress upon the mind, to enshrine within the heart of each and every pupil, the phrase "We have eliminated the word 'defeat' from our vocabulary." Such a motto, would stimulate ambition, make for success, and preach a splendid sermon to every visitor as well as to every pupil and send them forth to fight for that which is worth while and to stand unflinchingly for truth and right. God knows the world needs this message. Let us who are teachers do our part to impress it upon the minds of the children and the youth of our land.