August 16, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



203 



from another point of view and should be 

 recognized as such in the organization of 

 our government. The advantages given 

 by elementary and secondary and higher 

 schools are not limited to the communities 

 which support them. A little red school 

 house upon a lonely hillside of a New 

 England state may train the man who will 

 head a great movement for reform and 

 progress in a distant state beyond the 

 Eocky Mountains. The people of the latter 

 state profit by the education which that 

 man obtained at the expense of that New 

 England district, and they should, by all 

 standards of fairness, contribute their part 

 toward the support of the school which 

 produced him. In fact, I think it is not 

 too much to say that, taken broadly, the 

 history of this country during the last 

 two generations demonstrates that in many 

 eases the chief advantage of the school 

 system of a community has redounded to 

 the benefit of other communities in which 

 the particular boys and girls educated in 

 these community schools have subsequently 

 spent their lives and done their work as 

 members of society. Now if all sections of 

 the country profit by the existence of edu- 

 cational advantages in any one community, 

 so the country and the nation, as a whole, 

 should be expected to do its part in de- 

 veloping and supporting these local facili- 

 ties for education. 



There is another reason why education 

 is in its nature a national and not a local 

 or state function, and that is that the dis- 

 advantages of the lack of facilities and the 

 lack of schools a,re not limited to the com- 

 munities which suffer such lack of school fa- 

 cilities to exist. You hear a man say some- 

 times that it is up to the community to 

 keep its school, and if it doesn't wish to 

 keep one, let it suffer the consequences. 

 But the same thing is true here as in the 

 case just mentioned, the evil results of 



inadequate school facilities do not accrue 

 alone to the communities which neglect 

 such matters, but are liable to be of the 

 most serious consequence to other and dis- 

 tant communities; because under our 

 scheme of life, the ebb and flow of our 

 population is so continuous and so exten- 

 sive that the boys and girls who have 

 missed the opportunity for the highest de- 

 velopment, owing to the lack of these local 

 facilities, become members of other com- 

 munities and go into them and into their 

 work weighted down with all the ignorance 

 and apathy and indifference to higher 

 things which is characteristic of an igno- 

 rant population as a whole. So that alike 

 by the distrilration of its advantages and 

 the distribution of its disadvantages, pop- 

 ular education is in its nature a national 

 function and not merely a state and local 

 function, and consequently, unless the lo- 

 cality and the state can and will perform 

 this function satisfactorily, the nation 

 must come in as a unit and through its or- 

 ganized representative, the federal govern- 

 ment, contribute its share in this way to 

 the support of this common institution. 



We must not lose sight of the fact that 

 it is, after all, the American people, as a 

 whole, that pays the bills. It is not the 

 nation distinct from the state or the state 

 distinct from the locality; but it is the lo- 

 cality and the state taken in their totality 

 which make up the nation; and it is there- 

 fore a mere question of expediency through 

 what organ and to what extent the people 

 will exercise their power for the purpose 

 of promoting tjie public welfare. 



Now there is another important reason 

 why the people of the United States should 

 aid the cause of education through their 

 federal government as well as through 

 their state and local government, and that 

 is that the people, as a whole, can do cer- 

 tain things through the cooperation of 



