VOCATIONAL AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 15 



one-half the cost of maintenance, on condition that the new schools 

 must first be approved as to courses, location, and methods of 

 teaching by the Commission. 



An Army out of School. 



Almost immediately the new Commission found that to the 

 twenty -five thousand out of school reported by the Douglas 

 Commission, at least fifteen thousand more must be added. The 

 following brief statement regarding the situation has been made by 

 Mr. C. A. Prosser, Deputy Commissioner of Education for Massa- 

 chusetts : 



"A conservative estimate would be that every year in the State 

 of Massachusetts from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand 

 boys and girls, on reaching the age of fourteen, leave the schools 

 to go to work. This army is four times as large as the group which 

 at approximately the same age enters the high school. Only one 

 out of six of these children of tender years taking up some wage 

 earning occupation has reached the eighth year or grade of the 

 elementary schools ; only . one out of every four has attained 

 the seventh year; only one out of every two, the sixth year." 

 In Two States, January, 1912, a magazine published by the Young 

 Men's Christian Associations of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 

 Mr. William Chandler Smith, Educational Secretary, has graph- 

 ically shown the trend away from school by means of photographs. 

 Beginning with a group of one hundred pupils entering the public 

 school, he shows less than fifty at the fifth grade, thirty-five at 

 the sixth grade, twenty-three entering the seventh grade, fifteen 

 eighth grade graduates, and three graduates from high school. 

 These photographs exactly represented the history of a certain city 

 in the holding or losing of its pupils. 



A Problem of Conservation. 



We talk about the conservation of natural resources. Here is 

 a grave problem ; for what can compare in importance, to the nation 

 or to any Commomwealth, with the proper conservation of two or 



