lar schools or in special day or evening schools; and three states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Wisconsin) require supplementary school attendance of all illiterate minors. Mississippi has no provisions for compulsory school attend

ance.

In seventeen states the length of the school year required by law is less than six months; in sixteen states it is 7 months (140 days) or more. In seven states (not counting Mississippi) the law is satisfied if children of school age attend from thirty to eighty days a year.

Elimination of Children from School.

In a study made by Dr. Leonard P. Ayres of the Russell Sage Foundation, it was found that in the 78 cities investigated half the children leave school before they are fourteen years old, and half leave before completing the sixth school grade. Many cities and many rural communities make a better record, of course, but if these figures are true for the country as a whole, the rising generation is not receiving adequate preparation either for citizenship or for effective economic service. It is the poorly educated who furnish the most easily exploited workers, and the most easily controlled voters. Moreover, these children are not properly prepared for healthy living or for the suitable use of such leisure as they may manage to get.

The conditions in the most prosperous cities are none too good. The following table shows the number of children who left school on employment certificate during the year 1914-15, in New York.

Distribution of Children Who Received Employment Certificates, New York City, Year Ending June 30, 1915.

Total Certificates Issued

Public School children
Private and Parochial

Boys Girls Total 20,207 14,773 34,980 17,317 12,874 30,191 2,890

1,899 4,789

Of these 34,980 children 15,423 or 44.85% had not com

pleted the seventh school grade.

as follows:

Boys

Public School children 7,334 : 42.35%
Private and Parochial 1,600 55.36%

This group was distributed

Of the 34,980 children, 20,695 or 59.2% were under fifteen years old. This group was distributed as follows:

Total

Boys Public School children 10,120 58.4 % 7,402 57.5 % 17,522 : 58. % Private and Parochial 2,061 71.3 %

Girls

1,113: 55.7 %

3,174 66.3 %

Unsatisfactory as are the public schools in many respects, data from all parts of the country indicate that they are for the most part superior to the parochial schools, and that they are excelled by very few of the private schools. From the figures in the foregoing table, which are in harmony with data from other cities, it will be seen that in general the children in the private and parochial schools do not average as much preparation as do those in the public schools.

MORTALITY IN SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.

(From Bulletin No. 1, U. S. Bureau of Education, 1916.)

One of the most alarming features in our schools is the great mortality in school attendance as shown by a table in the Bulletin of the Bureau of Education. The bulletin quotes from a device shown at the San Francisco Exhibition, that for every

60 pupils entering school in 1897-98,

53 were in the fourth grade in 1900-1901,

25 were in the eighth grade in 1904-5,

15 entered high school in 1905-6,

5+ completed high school in 1909-10,
3 were in college in 1910-11,

1 graduated from college in 1915.

ATTENDANCE AND EXPENDITURE (1912-13). (From Report of Commissioner of Education, 1914, Pt. II, pp. 11, 14, 18, 19.)

The city of New York spends per capita $40 annually on educating its children in elementary schools, and 44 cents on medical attention for these children.

The professional staff employed to supervise the health of school children in Greater New York includes exclusive of miscellaneous help, 100 doctors, 200 nurses, and 9 dentists.

There are approximately one million children enrolled in the free schools of the city.

The staff of doctors and nurses is so inadequate that it is only possible to examine a child for physical defects once in three years.

A doctor has approximately 10,000 and a nurse 5,000 children to care for.

Studies have shown that the best work can be done when a doctor has 1,500 and a nurse 1,500 children.

The physical defects found in an examination of onethird of the school enrollment follow:

Thus 71% of those examined are in need of medical treat

ment.

Of those found defective physically, 81,569, or approximately 23%, are reported to have had the needed attention. The reason for this small percentage securing treatment may be said to be poverty, ignorance, indifference. These are most frequently interrelated.

For those too poor to go to a private doctor or dentist, there are 9 dentists and 6 eye specialists employed. Naturally these meagre facilities are always overcrowded.

On exactly the same basis that education is free-and attendance at school compulsory-so must health be made free-and its acquisition compulsory, up to the limit of each individual's capacity.

Medical inspection of school children is provided by law in 22 states. In addition, 9 others provide some form of health protection, chiefly in the form of exclusion for contagious disease.

In thirty states instruction in health is required in all public schools; but in 17 of these, the "physiology and hygiene" required is qualified by the clause "in relation to the effects of alcohol and narcotics," etc. While this aspect of health should be properly presented, experience shows that where this is made the main object, the health instruction is likely to be of very little value. Two states require health instruction only in relation to alcohol and narcotics; and in 16 states no requirements whatever are made. Physical training was prescribed by state law in only four states before this year.

No man can ever gain an understanding of the labor movement as long as he harbors the fallacy that the strike or boycott is a creation of the "labor leader."

The only entirely reliable "Friend of Labor" is labor itself.

FEDERAL AID FOR THE COMMON SCHOOLS.
BY WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING.

By whatever standard we may judge, the American public schools fall scandalously short of what they should be. Our national educational expenditures,- public and private, from kindergarten to university are only about $800,000,000 a year-a sum that will soon be exceeded by our military budget. The public primary and secondary schools take about $550,000,000. The nation spends $1,200,000,000 on tobacco and nearly $2,000,000,000 on alcohol.

A modern primary and secondary education of the best existing type gives a training in which mere literacy, the ability to read and write, plays a very small part.

Illiteracy.

The portion of our population (continental United States) 10 years of age and over unable to read and write, has steadily declined since 1870, as shown in this table:

The composition of the illiterate group is shown in the following table, for the census-year 1910:

The illiterates were chiefly divided between the Negroes, and the "poor whites" of undeveloped districts of the South. In 1910 New York City had 406,000 such persons, 362,000 of these being foreign-born.

The Cost of Schooling.

The average amount expended per public school child in the United States in 1914 was $27 a year. The conservative educational authority, Ex-President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, calculated ten years ago that it ought to be from $60 to $100. (See his book, "More Money for the Public Schools.")

Allowing for the increased cost of living, the expenditure should now be from $100 to $125 a year—the last men