T

HE SALT LAKE meeting of the National Education Association will go down in our history for one outstanding feature. The Association adopted a plan for conducting its business through a representative assembly. The plan is in its essential feature, identical with that presented by the Committee on Organization at Milwaukee the previous year. The question of the legality of the provision for doing the business of the Association through delegates was raised at Milwaukee, and the advocates and opponents of the proposal agreed to go to Congress for a revision of the charter of the Association that should explicity authorize such a representative assembly. Congress amended the charter as requested by the Association. The by-laws adopted at Salt Lake will be published in an early number of the Chicago Schools Journal. It now remains to be seen how effective the officers of the Association will be in getting the new plan of organization before the teachers of the country and how the teachers will respond. If the teachers of America will put the good-will and unselfish effort into the N. E. A. that the teachers of Illinois have shown in the upbuilding of our great state association, the National Association can become one of the great constructive influences in our national life. But there will need to be a change in the personnel and the character of the leadership of the Association, if the desired result is to be realized.

Perhaps the Salt Lake meeting is to be regarded as an exception. If the procedure adopted there is to be interpreted as the expression of those in political control as to what they consider fair and likely to build up the Association, then no reorganization plan will effect the changes we have all been looking for.

There can be no objection to the directors and trustees meeting before the annual meeting of the Association to transact the legitimate business that devolves upon them. But it ought to be considered unethical for these officers of the Association to live at the best hotels for four or five days at the expense of the Association and through this advantage plan political preferment for their own friends and supporters. This was done at Salt Lake. The Illinois members of the Association could have no voice in what was done in the way of electing officers or in deliberating on policies. The Salt Lake teachers had been drilled by paid officers of the Association to vote like marionettes. When the representative assembly comes into action next year it should at once assume control of the Association and break up once and for all the political clique formed at Salt Lake. There are several definite things to be done. In the first place, the budget of the Association must be a budget scrutinized and understood by the representative assembly. Salaries that are paid must go only to those who treat impartially all members of the Association and who keep out of Association politics. In the second place, the representative assembly should elect the field secretaries. The field secretary is not technically an officer of the Association. He draws a large salary, travels about the country at the expense of the Association, and thereby has a fine opportunity to build up a political and personal machine. The representative assembly has the power through the budget and directly by its own vote to say who shall hold this most important office. It can at least insure that the field secretary shall serve the whole Association and not any clique or faction. Third, and chiefly, the representative assembly should assume