CELIBATE EDUCATION TO-DAY 427 



she ought to be adequately compensated. Salaries now paid should in 

 most cases be increased 50 to 100 per cent. Such a rate in every locality 

 would command the service of the brightest and most attractive women, 

 who are usually the most intelligent and the healthiest. There would 

 thus be a union of the highest qualities of character, intellect and 

 physique. The objection of cost comes to nothing when the sacredest 

 and most important concerns of life are involved. Of course, the 

 women now in the service should be retained unless they would volun- 

 tarily take the higher rate for the limited time. The vext question 

 of age can be easily avoided by placing the limit eight years after high 

 school graduation and five or six after collegiate. There would at the 

 same time be a splendid example to the girls as most of these teachers 

 would marry before the term expired or shortly afterwards. The girls 

 would thus be learning something about the highest duty of life, a kind 

 of inspiration that is given nowhere in our schools now except by fitful 

 instances. It must be remembered that there is a more solemn obliga- 

 tion of marriage than ever before if racial suicide is to be stayed. 

 Fashion and the social system are insistent upon small families, and it 

 is only by universal marriage that the native stock will reproduce itself. 

 It does not do so already in some sections, and it is significant that in 

 those places the spinsters flourish. Our highest institutions, the state 

 and the school, should not encourage the increase of old maids, as their 

 multiplication spells death to mankind. Vestal virgins are a luxury 

 that prosaic America can not afford. 



As a corollary with the limitation upon the age of women teachers 

 there would need to be a certain number of men, not over one fourth 

 of the total, to serve as permanent directing heads. This ratio of the 

 sexes is entirely in keeping with the teachings of evolution. Two 

 principles of sex relations seem to be established in these cycles of 

 experience : ( 1 ) That both boys and girls are almost wholly controlled 

 by the mother up to the age of twelve or fourteen, with the father's 

 influence becoming more pointed after that on the boys and the 

 mother's continuing over the girls; (2) that all pioneering initiative 

 work, executive management, should be by men. With the men as 

 principals and assistant principals in every schoolhouse, with them as 

 directors of special studies and heads of departments in the higher 

 grades, there would be a solid core for the flitting women teachers to 

 group around and get inspiration from. 



These men could be employed on a scale suitable for attracting 

 native strength and ability. They would be sure of a life career in 

 this calling after once having proved their fitness. In order that they 

 should be examples for the youth it should be stipulated that when 

 their usefulness ended their connection with the system would also 

 cease. Without any pension or dole of charity they would be a stand- 



