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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 99© 



mobiles or moving-picture shows cost each 

 year more tlian the support of the teachers 

 in all our schools. The national wealth is 

 ample to double the salary of every teacher, 

 from the negress in Georgia who receives 

 $100 a year to the professor at Harvard 

 who receives $5,000. The qualifications of 

 the teacher should be as much above those 

 of the lawyer and physician as they are 

 now below them. The dentist who mends 

 my children's teeth earns over $20,000 a 

 year; the professors and instructors who 

 teach them at the university receive salaries 

 averaging about $2,000. Teaching can not 

 be made the most honorable of professions 

 by increasing salaries, but this is the easiest 

 way to raise its standards. If we can bring 

 into the work men of ability, they ^vill pro- 

 mote the reforms that are needed. Teach- 

 ers have inherited the status of domestic 

 servants, and like domestic servants they 

 should free themselves from personal sub- 

 jugation. It may be that a hundred years 

 hence the English suffragettes and the lead- 

 ers of the I. W. W. will be counted among 

 the world 's reformers. But we can scarcely 

 imagine that it will ever be looked back on 

 as creditable that the salary and even the 

 chair of a university professor should be 

 dependent on the favor of a superior offl- 

 eial, or that the educational authorities of 

 our largest city should forbid the employ- 

 ment of married women as teachers ; should 

 permit a woman teacher to marry, but 

 should discharge her if she bears a child. 



Both the diiSculties of state and endowed 

 education and the possibilities of education 

 in a democracy are exhibited by the per- 

 formance of institutions such as the Scran- 

 ton International School of Correspondence 

 and Valparaiso University, which by the 

 initiative of single individuals can compete 

 successfully with all the resources of state 

 support and private philanthropy. It is a 

 triumph of democracy that such institu- 



tions are possible ; it is a scandal of democ- 

 racy that they exist. The same observation 

 may be made in regard to our private uni- 

 versities and the corporations for research 

 established by Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rocke- 

 feller. It is a fine thing that private means 

 should be so used ; it is humiliating that the 

 taxation of steel and kerosene and the use 

 of the proceeds should be left to individual 

 caprice instead of being attended to by the 

 state. Monopolies by which it is possible 

 to charge more for a service than it costs 

 must be controlled or conducted by the 

 state. In like manner services rendered 

 not to an individual but to society must be 

 paid for by society. The most important 

 of these services are creation in science and 

 the bearing and rearing of children. Their 

 performance is dependent on fundamental 

 instincts implanted for their use to the race 

 rather than to the individual and liable to 

 atrophy or perversion under the artificial 

 conditions of contemporary rationalism. 



Under oligarchic institutions scientific 

 research may be a by-product of the leisure 

 classes and may be rewarded by patronage 

 and honors ; the bearing of children may be 

 encouraged by non-rational patriotic and 

 religious sanctions. In a democratic so- 

 ciety research should be paid for by the 

 state and the cost of bearing, rearing and 

 educating children should be shared equally 

 by all. Apart from the individual joy and 

 profit in living — whatever that may be — 

 each youth twenty years of age not below 

 the average in endowment is economically 

 worth to the state at least $10,000 in that 

 he will produce so much wealth in excess of 

 what he will consume. The exceptional in- 

 dividual may be worth a hundred million 

 dollars. It is the business of the state — its 

 principal business — with one hand to pro- 

 vide for the advancement of the material 

 sciences and the sciences concerned with 

 human conduct, with the other hand to care 



