must be a place where the young people can meet and dance. From my very slight experience, I believe that modern dancing is improving. It think it will last, and I think it will improve more. It will last with us, because it is our way of dancing; it is not a stereotyped form. The folk-dance is repeated in the same form. Many folk-dances, at least, do not allow room for improvisation. I think some of the social dances will last.

And the mothers must come and must learn to dance. The right age to learn to dance (I have figured it out carefully) is the age that you happen to be at the time. If the mothers would take. a hand (and foot!) there would be quite an improvement in our standards. This segregation of the ages-thinking that the boy or girl cannot dance with anybody half a year older, and that parents do not know anything-must be abolished. The mothers should butt in-have more part and interest in what their children are doing. Make your school building a social center where human beings of all ages may come together and dance, and wind up with a good song. Let them have games, charades, costume parties and theatricals. The drama is just beginning to be what

it might be with us.

I believe, with all you educators, that the thing to do is not merely to teach people how to make a living. There is such a strong need to earn a living that they will learn that anyway. I believe in vocational training. It is good largely because it makes the vocation mean more after you have the job,-largely because it adds a slight cultural element to the vocation. It is possible to apply a large amount of science to the vocation of farming. It takes a scientific spirit and a nurturing spirit. The trouble with that vocation is that the hours are too long and there is too much of it. We say, "How beautiful it all is." But it is not quite so beautiful at 2.30 in the morning, when you have to get up to milk the cows. There should be vocational training, for the reason that it makes the vocation, when the opportunity comes, more of an expression of what is in you.

In a good many vocations in modern life, however, there is

nothing to be trained for. Mr. Ford says that he can teach a person to be a perfect expert in his factory in two weeks. Apprenticeship used to last seven years. That is what it used to take. It was a seven-year proposition-and now it takes two weeks! And very characteristic is the name of the machine that they work at-a "fool-proof" machine-and some of us measure up to that standard, and some of us measure down to it. No particular training is necessary for such a job as that. I read the other day a report of a meeting of alienists, at which the head of a big institution in West Virginia said: "We used to try to get the morons segregated and shut up, so that they would not have children. Now it is the kind of type the factory calls for-they need more of them." It is not best for our country to turn out morons. It is best for America to bring up human beings for a human life, and if machinery does not give them a chance, I believe we can change our machinery. In the meantime, we can do a lot by making the factory co-operative, so that the man or woman who works in the factory may feel that he or she is a member of the team, and that the trade-mark of the factory means his or her personality, wherever it goes.

But for a long time industry will not be very expressive, and if a man is going to live and develop these strands which are humanity, he must find opportunity for such development outside of industry. A man who is not a creator, a poet, a scientist, or a thinker of some sort, is not a human being. He is not a man. Those strands of life are left out of him, and he has never lived. They must be developed outside the job, or we have not yet the chance to live in this country.

I think the school comes in here. Booker Washington made a very interesting statement once, when he said: "I say to my people, when I speak about farming, 'Every one of you can double the size of your farm.' They ask me how they can do that, and I say, 'You can do that without buying another foot of land. The farm has three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. If you plow twice as deep you double the size of your farm.'" That is

something that the school can do. We have only so many resources in our cities, towns and villages, but how big the resource is depends upon the recipient of it, the depth to which it can sink in. One man sees the sunset. It is a thing of beauty to him. His heart leaps at the sight of it. Another man plods along and sees only the bricks of the sidewalks and the walls. One man sees the stars at night. We all can see the stars. He gets joy out of the song of the birds, out of studying birds and animals. He gets joy out of books. He really feels the rhythm of good literaturethe music of Shakespeare. All those resources are there for all of us, if the school will only open them to us. Too often the school kills the love of literature-makes the book a horrible thing. I do not know that we ought to teach grammar. I do not suppose the great writers knew it. I will not, however, trench upon that subject, because I am not competent to discuss it. In the teaching of music we teach too much of the notes. They are not the music -it is the beautiful song that is the music. We must learn to love the beautiful song. Some day we may be a singing nation. Our school singing is almost as bad as our literature. I think our teaching of drawing is a little better, for there, better than anywhere else, we are beginning to develop a love for the beautiful. I say all this about the school and the great human resources, because I want to give my testimony to what I know you already think.

The school, then, is to teach the humanities, those things that belong to the human being as such,-which constitute, which are, what he is. I believe that the school is for the teaching of the humanities—not for making complements to fool-proof machines, but for making men and women.

Helping Young People to Help Themselves— The Grange Method and its Results *

I

CHARLES M. GARDNER,

EDITOR THE NATIONAL GRANGE MONTHLY.

♣T is always a pleasure to be a part of a good pro

gram and to look into the faces of good people. In that relation I stand this afternoon. In the eastern part of the state I spoke recently on an occasion where there were many delightful features, musical and otherwise. The local paper said the next day—and it always tells the truth-describing the occasion, that "Mr. Gardner, of Springfield, gave an address, but that the remainder of the program was exceedingly interesting!" I suppose that was as truthful a notice as I ever had in my life, and I appreciated it from the heart.

It is also a pleasure for me to speak to you this afternoon, both as the student body of this institution, and those who represent the rural thoughts and interests and desires of the Commonwealth, because my subject, assigned by the Principal of the Normal School, permits me to say straight from the heart to you the thing that I want to say about a rural institution in Massachusetts and New England about which not all of you are well informed, but about which you should be well informed. It is one of the unfortunate things about some movements in rural affairs that they have failed, in many instances utterly, to recognize local institutions already in existence and have come into the rural field with a propaganda and purpose based upon the assumption that there is already there nothing that will serve the rural people. I suggest for your earnest thought that any rural undertaking is coming in the wrong spirit and will fail of its largest purpose that comes in that manner.

Stenographically reported.

I want to suggest, first of all, that the Grange is peculiarly fitted to serve the rural needs, for the reason that it has the equipment to do it with and the people within its own ranks with whom to do it. In this respect it differs from a great many organizations and movements of the present time. In other words, if you are going to talk about doing for young people, the Grange is in a position to talk with you, because it not only has the disposition and equipment, but it has the young folks to do for, both in Massachusetts and in New England.

This organization, from its very foundation, has opened its doors to all people within its reach above the age of fourteen years, and many times has stretched things a little to bring them in a little younger, in some cases, to make the family circle complete in that organization. Out of 3,500 new members initiated in Massachusetts the past year, more than 70% were under the agǝ of twenty-five. Out of our total membership of 40,000, three years ago, when the United States entered the war, 2,400 young men of our membership in this state were accepted for the draft and entered their country's service. When you take a membership of 40,000 in the state, of whom more than one-half are women, and out of the balance find 2,400 who were admitted, through examination, into the military service, you get a glimpse of the fact that our boys are strong young fellows and that the Grange has a membership to do things of interest to young people. Therefore it has the field and it has the duty, and if it is to maintain its place, it must do for those young people.

What are its policies? The Grange policy is this (the rural leaders should catch this): To provide community leadership for improvement where leadership is needed; to support and assist other leadership where support and assistance is the greater need. In that co-operative spirit we are trying to do our Grange work in Massachusetts. The principle of the Grange is this: To train people to do for themselves; to develop the principle of self-help, of self-achievement, of self-advancement, and of self-improvement. I would like to talk to you for a long while on this point, because