1880. | Editors Table. IQI 
injury to useful pursuits and amusements is great. All such 
objects should be allowed to enter the country free of duty. 
It has again become the unpleasant duty of the Phila- 
delphia Board of Education to report where and how another 
reduction of the salaries of the teachers shall be made. We had 
hoped that they would have reported that no reduction was prac- 
ticable. Philadelphia has long enjoyed the unenviable preëmi- 
nence of paying its teachers less than any city of importance in 
the country. It is true that owing to the exigencies of the times 
two or three years ago, the salaries were lowered in several of our 
cities, but now that times have changed, the original rates should 
be restored. Instead of this our city governors wish to reduce the 
figures still lower. If the former situation was discreditable, what 
shall we say of the present movement? Councilmen perhaps do 
not know that teachers have a market value like any other kind 
of skilled labor, and that the city will get exactly what it pays 
for; also that they can in consequence produce such a community 
as they pay for. If they will only employ poor workmen, or a large 
percentage of such, they will turn out a community which will be- 
come the ready victims of all the evils that mental development 
and training is able to prevent, and which will not produce those 
intellectual fruits and flowers which so sustain and beautify human 
ife. Not but that we have many excellent workmen in our corps 
of teachers to-day, but how long can we expect them to remain in 
a locality or even a profession where they are subjected to such 
: or to be dropped altogether. Their efforts have not been appre- 
