one is aware of these educational activities and all are proud of them. We are spending money most generously for the city grade schools, for the high schools, for the colleges and the universities.

But, good friends, now I come to the essential thing I wish to present to your attention. Of the twenty-five million boys and girls in the United States today of school age a majority receive their foundation. training in the rural schools, or in an environment that is characteristically rural. And what of these types of schools? Do we find the same advancement? Do we find the same public concern? Do we find the same skill and organization and supervision? Do we get such results as are being secured by city schools? They do not measure up in the character of teaching, friends, in the kind of courses of study, in the length of the term, in the results obtained and this is perfectly obvious to the student of rural schools. There has been no such progress. What we have too often is the untrained teacher in the rural schools; terms ranging from three months up to six and seven; buildings that lack in every modern application of light, heat, ventilation and sanitation and all attractiveness; ground that too often is the sore spot of the community; houses that too often represent or suggest the pest house rather than a place of learning; inadequate support financially and inefficient supervision.

I want to speak briefly, then, to you in the few minutes that I have left as to four vital defects, as I view them, that it seems to me are the defects that we, as a nation, ought to undertake to remedy.

First, we have too many untrained, inexperienced teachers in these schools. In saying this, my good friends, I am not unmindful of the fact that in thousands of communities in this country of ours are to be found rural conditions that are most pleasant, that there are thousands of teachers in rural schools consecrated to their work, performing a daily service for those boys of inestimable value; but listen, in one of the largest cities of this Union the superintendent of public instruction in a report said of 10,500 rural school teachers 9,400 are themselves but eighth grade graduates. I want to avoid being too explicit in pointing to the places, but I personally know of a State, a State that stands well above the average, I think, educationally in the United States, in which of the 8.000 rural school teachers 4,400 in 1910 had only such training as is found in the country school and not beyond the eighth grade. In too many places this condition prevails. I believe I am well within the truth when I say that of the teachers of the fourteen million boys and girls in the rural districts of America today who are being taught, more than fifty per cent. of those teachers have themselves an academic training that does not extend beyond the grades.

But, to return to the subject of the high schools, that I spoke of a moment ago. See how conditions have changed as to the training and

kind and character of the teachers that must be placed therein. It is rare that you see a teacher of a high school who is not a graduate of a high school and in many cases of a normal school. In the rural school, the first defect is that we have too many poorly trained teachers.

The next thing I wish to speak of as a great defect in our present system is our manner of raising and distributing tax. You are aware that the prevailing unit of school organization in America is the district. In my own State we have 13,400 teachers; to boss, guide and direct those 13,400 teachers is an army of 30,000 school officers. By the way, he is the most numerous officer in this country. Within a radius of three miles you will run across a school officer in most of the States of the Union, a condition that makes for lack of uniformity, lack of singleness of purpose, the most wasteful, the most extravagant system that could be devised. But I want to speak a word in regard to taxation. The trouble is, good friends, that our system of distribution of taxes is utterly unfair and utterly prejudicial to the best interests of the child. On the one side of the road is a district having a splendid valuation with a low tax that may maintain eight months of school with a splendid teacher, a good building, and on the other side of the road, the maximum reached by law or gone beyond it, they are only able to supply the most inferior facilities for the boys and girls. The day must come when we shall have a prevailing system at least with the county as a unit for the taxes to be raised and distributed, so that the boy or girl who lives in some poor part of that county or State shall have the same opportunity as far as money will bring it to have a good teacher. The fact is that poor communities are the ones that ought to have the best teachers in all this land (applause), and that the contrary is too often true I am sure you will all

agree.

Let me say as to the courses of study now a word or two. I have, good friends, said to you that there are twenty-five million boys and girls of school age in America, fourteen million of these in rural schools. Now, listen, of these fourteen million less than twenty-five per cent. are so much as completing the work of the grades in this, the morning of the twentieth century. If this does not spell tragedy then I have no means of interpreting these facts. Less than twenty-five per cent. To assign the reasons for this is difficult, but because of the kind and character of these schools, because they are lacking, because they are not making the progress, because they have not he attractiveness that our city systems have, is a reason why these boys and girls do not stay. But there is another and further reason. The course of study too often lacks vitality; somehow and someway we have not grasped the thought that the school has a larger and wider duty than consuming all its time and energy in text book knowledge. Somehow and someway we have failed to see there, as we are coming to see in our more highly organized system, that to

interest that boy and girl, to send them out capable, self-sustaining citizens, we must do more than consume our time and energies on the text book knowledge. I should like to see a reasonably but not rigidly classified course of study with adequate attention to fundamentals, to large opportunity for hand work and with every possible connection between the experience of the school and the actualities of life. We must vitalize these schools. Another important thing in connection with our rural schools is this: the great majority of these boys and girls are denied high school privileges. Here in the city of Indianapolis with the splendid system of high schools that they have small wonder is it that the boy and girl in the grades if possible persevere in the work, looking forward always to the opportunity to get this liberal education afforded in the high school. Often this is not true in the country. As I said a moment ago, the great majority of these boys and girls are denied such opportunities, denied for geographical reasons, for financial reasons. If every township there could be created a rural high school, in its course of study emphasizing the things that are most needed in the lives of the boys and girls in that township, preparing them by a well developed and organized course of study for the great and important and practical business of life-if such an institution could be put within the reach of those fourteen million boys and girls don't you agree with me that many more than twenty-five per cent. would finish the work of the grades in the hope that they, too, might enter these schools and enjoy their advantages. And so I say, there is another great defect that some way ought to be

overcome.

Now, just a word or two further. The last defect that I will mention is the question of supervision. In my judgment the commanding reason. for the development and growth of our city schools is the skilled supervision supplied by the city superintendent. If we could have like supervision in these schools in the country the development would be marvelous and it would be rapid and vital. We have county superintendents. They have them here in Indiana. We have them in our State, but in no single instance so far as I am aware, is this supervision adequate. First of all, to remedy the question of the supervision of our schools, the question of the superintendency should be taken absolutely out of polities. (Applause.) It is a crime against the children of this nation to select either a city superintendent or a county superintendent upon any other basis than educational qualifications. (Applause.) The children of Indiana, the children of every other State of this Union will never come into their own, good friends, until the supervising element is selected because of their being experts in the job they are looking for.

Now, just one other thing on that. It is perfectly preposterous to expect a superintendent in a county such as there are in my State, for illustration, to visit one hundred and fifty or more schools, going over

roads in all times of year, in all conditions, to make his visits worth while. He may get there once a year. We ought to imitate Oregon in this respect. In Oregon they have subordinate superintendents, one for every twenty schools. There they can accomplish something.

My time is more than taken. You have been patient, as has your President. I thank you most sincerely. I only regret that I can only touch the edges of this problem.

In conclusion, you representatives of this National Conservation Congress, here is the problem. The great thing we need to do, first of all, is to make public everywhere the actual condition of the rural schools. Publicity is the first step; organization is the second; organization of national scope and of State scope. Give me twenty common people in any State in this Union and I will guarantee to see that the rural schools make more real genuine advance in the next five years than under ordinary circumstances they would do in ten years.

The country is the Nation's great recruiting ground. Here we look for the best men and women of to-morrow who are to take leadership, who are to represent in their actions and in their lives the good red blood that characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. Are we doing our duty when but a paltry three million five hundred thousand out. of a total of fourteen million are not so much as accomplishing the work of the grades? (Applause.)

President WHITE Louisiana has been first and foremost in several phases of Conservation. Louisiana stands first in making forestry possible by wise and beneficial laws that encourage forestry, and I think Louisiana stands among the first in its State Board of Health, doing something worth while in every parish. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr. Oscar Dowling, of New Orleans, Louisiana, President of the Louisiana State Board of Health, who will speak on "Hygiene in Relation to Public Health."

Dr. DOWLING-Mr. Chairman, Members of the National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are very glad to have this opportunity to appear before this great Congress. In the beginning I want to say that we owe much of our enthusiasm to the good work of the Indiana State Board under Dr. Hurty, and to your pure food department, under Dr. Barnard; also to Dr. Evans, of Chicago, and Dr. Wiley, of Washington. We have endeavored to imitate them in some ways, but nevertheless, in some ways we have fallen short.

Hygiene, the science of preservation and promotion of health, in some form, has been recognized by every nation since the dawn of civilization. Among the people of antiquity, conquest and domination were directly dependent on physical vigor, hence their laws regulating this feature of national life. Among the Greeks, the health idea was embodied in the

cult of Hygeia which arose hundreds of years before the Christian era, consequent probably to a devastating plague. In the early period of Rome, when courage and patriotism were cardinal virtues, physical development was provided for and emphasized. Social and political fluidity in the middle ages precluded the evolution of organized thought or systems in sanitary science.

Individuals set aside conventional thought and method and strove with Nature that they might learn her secrets; their work was not in vain, but with few exceptions their discoveries were unimportant.

The experimental method popularized in Baconian philosophy gave an impetus to the study of the physical sciences, but many decades passed before notable deeds were recorded. It was the nineteenth century, scientific in spirit and achievement, that made vital the long result of time and opened a perspective before undreamed of. The awakened health conscience of today is the crystallized result.

In scientific annals, the discoveries of the bacteriologist rank among the first. Perhaps, in the evolution of knowledge no truths are more potential. Within a generation the influence is marked, not only in relation to the individual and community, but in effect on the civilized world. The sanitarian with this knowledge was enabled to demonstrate control of environment. The success of the experiment has opened a new world just as surely as did the discovery of October, 1492.

The changed viewpoint of the relative value of hygiene in its application to life is due not wholly to the discoveries in medical science. It is one phase of the general awakening to the defects of the present social order; a manifestation of the modern attitude toward "waste." Efficiency implies economy, not alone of expenditure, but of material resource and vital force.

Conservation and preservation of the material wealth of the country is dominant in the intellectual activity of all enlightened people. But it becomes increasingly apparent that the Nation which conserves its mines, forests, soil and sources of power is poor indeed if its men lack virility and mental initiative. This thought is back of the public health movement. The impulse is in part commercial, in part scientific. It grows out of recognition of the futility of remedial and philanthropic measures and the conviction of the potentialities of science for human betterment. In import the movement is ethical and spiritual; it is beyond question the greatest of modern times.

This meeting is significant of the changed attitude toward the Nation's greatest natural resource-its people. The Congress is national, its purpose conservation, its main topic-to quote from the invitation— the conservation of vital resources. There is significance also in the topics selected for discussion in the health section. They relate to the larger aims of sanitary science. In the popular mind health work has