above the clamor of the demagogue and the greed of the spoilsman, he bears in his hand a ballot which, gratia Dei, is to summon to victory the far reaching struggles of a nation, and establish happiness and peace in the homes of a law-abiding and free people.

For all this the schools aim to develop a taste for reading, a taste that will prompt the citizen to read what concerns his own destiny and that of his country, and a taste for writing and speaking that he may be able to contribute in some way, however meager, to the grand consummations of our civilization.

The next speaker was the Hon. GEORGE G. LUCKEY, of Pittsburgh, Pa., who said:

Ladies and Gentlemen: Out of this discussion I have obtained a great deal of encouragement. My friend from New Jersey (Mr. Barringer) thinks that civil service is not necessary; if New Jersey can do without it the rest of us can too. The discussion this evening has opened up one point that perhaps is not generally understood, namely, what is civil-service reform? Nearly every speaker has taken a different view of it. We ought to have this matter defined before discussing it, and we ought to know what we are talking about.

One gentleman states that all the troubles that we have, come because the people cannot be trusted with the appointing power, and yet many newspapers at the present time are saying that the United States Senate cannot be trusted because the people do not elect it, and that in order to have a pure Senate and a pure Government United States Senators must be elected by the people or else the Government cannot stand.

What is the result of taking this power from the people? There is corruption in the administration of State and national and municipal governments. I know that this cannot be corrected by taking the power from the people and giving it to individuals. That is what is the trouble now. In the end, power confided to an individual becomes the object of desire by those combinations of people which are called, in the parlance of the day, " rings," and too often they seize the substance of such power. Something must be done to get this power back again into the hands of the people, for wherever they can exercise it there is purity. My friend from Cincinnati knows that in his State, of which we are so proud, and which furnishes so many precedents, if the people of Cincinnati could only get a fair vote in their municipal affairs all would be well. It is because this power has gone out of the hands of the people that we have this corruption. Let us see about the appointment of school directors. I know of one State where the Legislature took the local school offices from the hands of the people and put them into the hands of the courts; then the judges exercised their prerogatives and appointed the school boards, and the schools got so bad that the Legislature had to take the duty from the judges and give it back to the people again. The courts appointed retired la wyers and retired merchants, and they met in their little board room and they discussed education,

and in one case where a proposition was made to build a school house one man said in all earnestness and candor, "Let us build a log school house. I know how good the schools were when we held them in a log cabin. We have no such schools nowadays; and see the money we can save; see how we can reduce taxes; let us build log school houses."

This whole subject of civil-service reform should be agitated and discussed; but after all, the whole discussion should turn on this question: How shall we educate the people so that they can govern them. selves?

Dr. HENRY RANDALL WAITE, president of the American Institute of Civics, then spoke as follows:

Ladies and Gentlemen: I shall not undertake to throw light on the definition of the term "civil-service reform" more than to say this, that whether we interpret it as meaning one thing or another, we ar rive finally at this simple and essential fact, that civil-service reform as a thing realized must have its foundation laid in the popular will, and in order that we may have a popular will that shall be a power from which shall grow this civil-service reform, we must make that will what it should be; and this brings us back to the recollection of the earnest words spoken by my friend from New Jersey. And this leads us to the consideration of what is the function of the public school. It is not, I may be permitted to say, merely to make men intelligent. It is not to establish a difference between men as respects literacy and illiteracy. It goes beyond that, or it has no right to draw its life-blood from the people. The public schools of the United States must be based, as a system, upon the necessity for a republican form of government, of mak ing true men and women of the youth who are to be the people of a republic. And that you may so make them, the education of our youth must be founded in the teaching of those ethical principles which lie at the basis of right conduct in social, political, and national life. Are we teaching to-day those ethical principles in the schools of the land? I am not here to find fault with teachers, nor to criticise them adversely on the assumption that they are not doing their duty in this respect. It is not the purpose of the institute which I have the honor to repre sent to raise any questions of this sort in the work which it is doing to-day. It is simply to bring to the minds of the great army of men and women, who are laying their hands upon the rulers of the future either with bane or blessing, to bring to their minds this question: Am I, as a teacher, doing what I am called upon to do as a servant of this nation in the upraising of men and women who shall do their whole duty when life's burdens rest upon them and when they are called upon to assume their part among men and women true and pure? I ask you as superintendents to carry this question before the teachers who are under your direction. I ask you as earnest men, who have at heart the best interests of the future of this country, who have power and influence, to say whether it is not within your power in the

exercise of this influence, to inspire the teachers of the land with a more earnest purpose in regard to this question of training up American citizens. If we would have civil-service reform, we must begin where those influences lie which make civil-service reform a possibility. If the spring is impure we cannot expect the streams that flow from it to be pure. If we do not make the boys and girls feel that the highest aims in life are those which have in them manliness and womanliness, that are based on high ideals and high aspirations, we cannot expect them when they come to the exercise of power and privilege, as men and women, to be what they should be if the fabric of this nation is to be strong.

"Civics!" I hope when the term comes to be distinctly interpreted as a word in the language that it will throw light upon many questions which have been in the dark hitherto. We have treated these problems from one or another point of view, leaving out that knowledge that we ought to place before the youth of the nation in order that they might see their duties from all of the stand-points of life. We have taught in our colleges political economy, we have given an education which is selfish, we have not taught our young men enough of the principles of law, and more than all, we have sent them forth into the world with too little regard for the principles which underlie good character in life.

These are the great questions which lie interwoven in the new and comprehensive science of civics. It is not the purpose of the Institute of Civics to formulate methods, to present text-books, or to come before the schools and the people of this country with certain ideas already in form which they ask them to accept. We ask you to solve these problems, or at least to give them your most earnest attention. One of the speakers to-night has referred to that army of 320,000 teachers in our land, that great force for the building up of society. May I not remind you that in addition to the numbers that are represented in the teaching service of the country there are others, officers, superintendents, supervisors, trustees of schools, in sufficient number to swell the number in the service of the public schools to 500,000.

The civil service connected with the machinery of government in all the States of the Union scarcely equals or exceeds the number of those who are acting as the agents of our civil service in connection with our system of public schools, a grand and noble power, a mighty force. Let us take care to direct it so that it shall be what it ought to be.

Superintendent W. H. ANDERSON, of Wheeling, W. Va., spoke briefly in favor of a tenure of office for teachers.

Mr. J.D. HAILE, of Grundy Center, Iowa, approved of a tenure of office that should depend upon the will of an intelligent community. People in his part of the country sometimes wanted to have school officers appointed instead of being elected. For his part he was willing to trust the people, not only with the civil service of the Government, but espe cially with the training of the youth, and he uttered his protest against

any effort to teach the youth that they should prepare in the public schools for anything else than the exercise of the rights and duties of intelligent citizenship.

Dr. MARBLE had no sympathy with those people, whether they are eminent school superintendents or others, who are so ready to decry our political and educational systems.

Some months ago in Boston, one of the most moral places on the earth, a very prominent official, a trusted member of the church, a superintendent of a Sunday school, perhaps even a member of the board of educa tion, ran away with a large sum of money belonging to various widows and orphans. The newspapers began to talk about the horrible corruption in the community; here was an eminent and trusted man who had gone astray, and everything and everybody was going to the dogs. A minister preached on that subject the next Sunday and said that he had known more than five hundred officials who had been trusted and who had not gone astray, from which he drew the conclusion that after all there were some pretty good men left in spite of the recent defaulter. Now and then a franchise for a railway is said to be sold improperly, and the officers "bag the boodle," and are afterwards themselves "bagged" by an outraged community. That does not happen all the time or everywhere. There are hundreds of cities where nothing of the kind has ever taken place. Corrupt "rings" and some corrupt men exist in a few places, but they are exceptions; he believed there were in the audience before him a good many men with whom it would be perfectly safe to leave his pocket-book. Now the schools-what a horrible state of things there is in the schools-and yet parents send their children to these schools, and we do not hear them in large numbers crying out against them. When the question is discussed as it has been here, the impression goes all over the country that the system of schools is the most faulty that has ever been devised; its defects are often obvious enough; but after all the public system is a good system. He disliked this everlasting outcry against evils, this constant overlooking the vastly preponderating amount of good.

At the conclusion of Mr. Marble's remarks, at 9.45 o'clock p. m., the convention adjourned.

FOURTH SESSION.

The convention re-assembled at half past 9 o'clock, Wednesday, March 16, 1887.

Dr. A. P. MARBLE, superintendent of schools in Worcester, Mass., opened the day with the following paper:

POWERS AND DUTIES OF SCHOOL OFFICERS AND TEACHERS, ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE.

School officers are the agents or representatives of the public, who constitute the proprietors in the organization and control of public schools. They are of various grades, with duties more or less extensive,

as district, township, borough, or city, county, and State; and they are variously named, as boards of directors, boards of control, trustees, school committee, board of education. They sometimes act as a body, and sometimes through an agent, who is their executive officer, and an educational expert as the superintendent. These school officers exercise the functions of the trustees of an incorporated school or the proprietors of the private school.

Teachers are those who administer the school; they have the immedi ate control of the pupils, and attend to their instruction and discipline. Teachers are also classified as principal and subordinate. In such cases the general duties of the teacher are distributed, and some of the powers and duties of the subordinate teacher are exercised under the direction of the principal. Certain of the duties which in a general way belong to the office of teacher are, under the public school system, assigned to the school officer. The superintendent, for example, may be authorized to direct, in a general way, the methods of teaching, and he may, in borough or city schools, assist in the discipline. The principal teacher, on the other hand, may be intrusted with certain powers of the school officer, acting as the agent of the committee, directors, or trustees; for example, he may select and appoint his subordinate teachers; but the twofold character in which individuals in certain phases of the school system may act need not confuse the function of the teacher with them belonging partly to the school officer; and this discussion will proceed as if these functions are always exercised by different individuals.

In order to a clear understanding of the powers and duties belonging under any system to school officers and teachers, respectively, it is necessary to examine the question historically.

Schools are very ancient institutions. The teacher has come down to us from very early times. Public schools on the other hand are a modern invention, comparatively, and the school officer is a new creation, made necessary by the new relation of the public to the schools and to education generally. In considering the powers and duties of the teacher, therefore, we must find from tradition what the status of the teacher is. The powers and duties of the school officer are defined in specific terms in the statutes. There is the same distinction between the two as between the common law and the code as I understand it; the same as between the constitution of England, which is known through a body of precedents, and the Constitution of this country, which is a written document; the same distinction which is found between the officers of an ancient monarchy, who find their powers in long established usage, and the officers of a new republic, where the duty of each officer is specifically defined by law. My idea of the rela tion between the teacher and the school officer may be still further illustrated by the authority of the State as compared with the National Government. The State is a sovereignty; but in entering the Federal 3536-No. 3——6