November 21, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



733 



teachers' salaries and the high cost of liv- 

 ing. Taking it as the basis of authority we 

 may note that 



The United States Bureau of Labor found that 

 in 1911 wholesale prices were 44.1 per cent, 

 higher than in 1897. Measured by wholesale 

 prices a teacher whose salary had remained fixed 

 at $1,000 since 1897 would have no greater pur- 

 chasing power in 1911 than $693 possessed in 

 the earlier year. 



The increase of wholesale prices has, of course, 

 been reflected to a greater or less degree in retail 

 prices generally. ... In June, 1912, retail food 

 prices were 61.7 per cent, higher than the average 

 for 1896. 



In any college or university, therefore, 

 where the salaries of professors have re- 

 mained at from $2,000 to $2,500 the 

 teacher has found a tremendous decrease in 

 the actual value of what he received. The 

 result has been, as the Carnegie Founda- 

 tion reports so ably show, a drawing off 

 from the teaching profession on the part of 

 many able men and women who for the 

 good of our education ought to have re- 

 mained. A further continuance of this 

 condition will draw off a still greater 

 number and make it more and more diffi- 

 cult to persuade men especially to enter 

 the teaching profession. 



5. One of the great problems confronting 

 education in Kansas as elsewhere is still 

 the moral and religious problem. If any 

 were misled years ago into the belief that 

 intellectual training provided sufficient 

 safeguards and moral standards, certainly 

 our experience in the last decade must 

 have disillusioned him. There is nothing 

 so futile as the attempt to make intellec- 

 tual training take the place of moral and 

 religious training and no man is so dan- 

 gerous as the educated man gone wrong. 

 In my judgment the grave point of danger 

 in our schools is not the college or univer- 

 sity. Long experience leads to this conclu- 

 sion and statistics and general observation 



point inevitably to the same conclusion. 

 The grave point of danger is the home and 

 high school and here must the great work 

 be done, for after all ours with all its de- 

 fects is a Christian civilization. Historical 

 Christianity is the basis of our whole life 

 and we, as a nation, shall stand or fall 

 with it. 



6. One of the problems confronting all 

 states having several institutions of higher 

 education is their proper correlation. The 

 demand for such correlation in Kansas has 

 come about to some extent from the belief 

 that large duplication exists which might 

 easily be eliminated by an arbitrary decree 

 fixing the field of each institution. It has 

 been thought by some that it would be 

 feasible to define precise and narrow limits 

 for the institutions and to confine them 

 strictly within such limits. As soon as 

 one considers this problem carefully with 

 a full understanding of practical condi- 

 tions it becomes evident that such a nar- 

 row delimitation is impossible and if it 

 should be undertaken upon any precise 

 theory it might result in disastrous dis- 

 memberment of our institutions and great 

 harm to our education. No one, so far as I 

 know, would undertake to defend duplica- 

 tion which is artificial and gratuitous, 

 which has no substantial basis and is not 

 a necessary concomitant of the genius of 

 the institution itself. But every institu- 

 tion must round out its life and do what 

 necessarily arises in its field of operation. 



The demand for correlation has arisen 

 in the second place from a belief that 

 large duplication exists, necessarily giving 

 rise to an unusual and useless cost of edu- 

 cation. The total cost of higher education 

 in Kansas is large and at this point it is 

 commonly assumed that the cost per insti- 

 tution and per student must be excessive 

 and that duplication must be the cause of 

 it. This belief is unwarranted. Now, there 



