Enrollment by grades or years, elementary and secondary (46 cities of 8,000 and over).

The summary below exhibits the present status of schools in cities of 8,000 inhabitants and upward as compared with their condition for 1902-3.

Summary of statistics of cities containing over 8,000 inhabitants, showing increase from pre

vious year.

Normal schools (Chapter XXVIII, pp. 1667–1725).—The statistics of the present year embodied in this chapter show in all the schools. devoted partially or wholly to the professional training of teachers an enrollment of 87,239. These students are distributed among the several classes of institutions as follows: In public normal schools, 59.2 per cent; in private normal schools, 13.7 per cent; in universities and colleges, 11.6 per cent; in public high schools, 8.6 per cent; in private high schools, 6.9 per cent. There were reported as engaged in this work 1,220 institutions. Of this number, 449 are public and 272 private high schools, 230 universities and colleges, 178 public and 91 private normal schools. These, in the main, constitute the sources of supply from which all classes of schools recruit their required quotas of teachers. The ratio of women students to the whole number of students is found to be 65.8 per cent, a figure somewhat less than the ratio which women teachers bear to

all teachers as determined on the basis of last year's statistics. This latter ratio, including universities and colleges, was 71.5 per cent.

The two summaries below present, respectively, the status of public and of private normal schools for 1889-90 and 1903-4, and public appropriations to public normal schools for each of the last fifteen years.

1889-90.

1890-91.

1891-92.

1892-93.

1893-94.

1894-95.

1895-96.

1896-97.

Year.

178 1,456 34,814

Public appropriations to public normal schools för fifteen years.

Length of service of teachers. Chapter XXIII (pp. 1227-1302) contains tables giving the results of an inquiry into the length of service of teachers in the common schools of 379 cities and towns of 8,000 inhabitants or over. These tables show the number of teachers having taught from one to forty years and over. It appears that 30.75 per cent of the total number of teachers have taught less than five years; 25.48 per cent have taught from 5 to 10 years; 17.31 per cent have taught from 10 to 15 years; 11.21 per cent have taught from 15 to 20 years; 6.68 per cent have taught from 20 to 25 years; 4.29 per cent have taught from 25 to 30 years; 2.44 per cent have taught from 30 to 35 years, the period which in continental Europe usually entitles to retirement at four-fifths of the last year's salary; 1.82 per cent have taught from 35 years to 40 years and over, a period which in Europe entitles to retirement at full salary. The number of teachers of long service, say 20 years and over, is over 15 per cent of the total number reported.

The average length of service, regardless of where performed, proves to be 14.7 years for men and 11.1 years for women. Cincinnati has the highest average-namely, 16.8 years for both sexes. Boston follows with 15.3 years, while St. Joseph, Mo., records the lowest average, to wit, 9.2 years.

The following table gives the summarized percentages of the tables of Chapter XXIII. To facilitate calculations the percentages are also grouped in five-year periods.

Pensions for university professors.-Chapter III (pp. 133-247) contains a compilation of rules and regulations relating to pensions and annuities paid to professors of German universities. The question of providing pensions for teachers has of late years assumed an importance in this country not anticipated twenty years ago. The munificent gift of $10,000,000 for the establishment of a pension fund for college professors by Mr. Andrew Carnegie attracts public attention as this report goes to press. In large cities private initiative among teachers has done much in securing small annuities to superannuated or disabled teachers, and city authorities have lent their official aid to these efforts. In some States the legislatures have readily responded to the request of teachers and framed laws for the

establishment of pension funds, the distinctive feature of which, however, is that no teacher shall be obliged to contribute to the pension fund, voluntary membership being a requisite of any pensionfund society. This is quite in harmony with our democratic form of government, while in Germany membership is compulsory; i. e., membership in any teaching body means, nolens volens, the payment of regular contributions to the pension fund of that body except in elementary schools, where the State assumes the entire burden of pension payment.

In the United States only three States have provisions for teachers' pensions paid by the State, to wit, Maryland, Ohio, and New Jersey (see pp. 2449-2451 of Annual Report of 1903), while Germany has been for generations in a preeminent degree the country of civilservice pensions. The timely gift by Dr. Theodore Marburg, of Johns Hopkins University, of a manuscript to this Office makes possible an exhibit of the regulations in force in the twenty-one German universities with reference to pensions for professors and provision for their widows and orphans. The author of this compilation starts with the provisions for support of professors and their families in the ten Prussian universities; then follow those of Alsace, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg in the order named. Many points usually overlooked in establishing new pension funds are found here well met by provisions which are evidently the result of long and vexatious experience. The sums granted to retired professors, to widows of professors, and to their orphans may not seem large for America, but they may be weighty considerations for a professor in deliberating upon a call to another institution of learning. It may be stated that in all the many years of administration of these pension funds in Germany no case of default has occurred.

Teachers' salaries.-The first question of interest to the teacher inquiring about salaries is: Are the positions of teachers, in a State, annual positions, or merely temporary occupations lasting only for a small fraction of the year? The annual position means a teacher employed by the year, who takes up teaching as a vocation, and does not have to shift to other occupations to eke out his salary received from his vocation as teacher.

In most rural districts that are sparsely settled the taxable wealth is small, and the State does not make an apportionment of its annual funds sufficient, when divided pro rata for each person of school age, to provide for a full school year's instruction; instead of nine or ten months, instruction for only three or four, or five months possibly, is provided. Consequently the individual teacher has to find his main vocation in some other occupation than teaching-generally that of a farmer. The ungraded rural school can not afford to employ pro

fessional teachers, because it can pay only a fragment of an annual salary.

Villages and cities can depend upon a school appropriation for the year, and an annual session of from eight to ten months, or even longer, is kept up. Professional teachers are employed at living wages; that is to say, the wages paid teachers are in advance of the average rates for laborers who work the same length of time.

The second important question is: How many well-paying positions are there-how many positions are there in the teachers' ranks which promise the individual, successful in his profession of teacher, an increase above the position he at present occupies, say to a salary one-fourth larger, or one-half larger; how many positions will become open to him that pay twice or three times or four times what he receives now when he first enters the profession? The ambitious teacher wishes to have a career before him. Just as he objects to enter the work of teaching when teaching is a makeshift, lasting only three or four months each year, so it is objectionable, though not to such a degree, to enter a profession which has in it no future for him. Pretty much all the interest in statistics of salaries in the United States therefore relates, not to the salaries of rural schools, but to those paid in village or city schools, which are sufficient to support a professional teacher, and to the question whether there are a sufficient number of higher positions to hold out a promise of promotion from time to time in accordance with the increase of his professional skill. He is glad to learn, therefore, that the average annual increase in higher education throws open nearly one thousand new places a year in colleges and universities for teachers promoted from the secondary schools on being found to have the requisite skill and scholarship. There were, in 1890, 7,918 professors and instructors in the colleges and universities of the United States, not counting the professional schools. In 1903 the number had risen to 20,887. It started with less than 8,000, and had an increase of new places in thirteen years almost equal to 1,000 a year (12,969). The secondary schools of the United States were taught by 16,329 teachers in 1890, and in 1903 by 33,795. This increase gave 17,466 new positions in thirteen years for teachers in public and private high schools.

The recent canvass of teachers' salaries by the special committee of the National Educational Association, of which Dr. Carroll D. Wright, formerly the United States Commissioner of Labor, was the chairman, gives us data from which we may complete our list of better-salaried positions, besides those in colleges already named, counting in superintendents, assistant superintendents, high school principals, high school teachers (not principals), elementary school teachers-six classes of positions reported in 467 cities of over 8,000 inhabitants. This list aggregates 53,554 positions with annual sal