274 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
bodies as we are spending on instruction for our minds. 
The argument is not for less food but for more education. 
If it is important to provide food adequate in quantity 
and quality to keep the body lit, why should we not be 
equally ready to spend money for instruction of adequate 
quantity and quality to guarantee to every American girl 
and boy the kind of education he or she needs to become 
a self-respecting, self-reliant, intelligent citizen? Im¬ 
proved methods and machinery are rapidly reducing the 
time and labor necessary to provide our food supply, so 
that whereas it formerly took a farmer three hours to 
raise a bushel of wheat, it is estimated it now takes but 
fifteen minutes. But not so with education. Whereas in 
the early days of our national life the educational process 
was a relatively simple affair owing to the relatively 
simple kind of life our forefathers lived; now education 
of every type, elementary, secondary, collegiate and pro¬ 
fessional, has necessarily become vastly more complex 
owing to the relatively more complex life we are called 
upon perforce to live in these modern days. 
* “There were but six cities of 8000 inhabitants or over 
in the country as late as 1810, and even in these, life was 
far simpler than in a small Western village today. There 
was little need for book learning among the masses of 
the people of that day to enable them to transact the 
ordinary business of life. A person who could read and 
write and cipher in that time was an educated man, 
while the absence of these arts was not by any means a 
matter of reproach.” 
With the increased complexity, however, of modern 
life has come, necessarily, a corresponding increase in 
the complexity of our educational system and in the ex¬ 
penditures for its maintenance and growth. 
Let us also consider briefly in this connection our na¬ 
tional expenditures along another line. 
Milady’s annual bill for cosmetics and perfumes is ap¬ 
proximately three-fourths and the men’s annual smoke 
bill is over twice as much as our total national expendi¬ 
tures for education of every type and grade; and the fig¬ 
ures of the United States Internal Revenue office for a 
recent year show that we are spending annually for lux¬ 
uries an amount more than twenty times in excess of our 
total annual expenditures for education of every type and 
grade. Is it fair or reasonable, in the light of such fact, 
to say in response to the demand for increased expendi¬ 
tures for education, “Where is the money to come from?” 
Large expenditures for education do not necessarily bring 
correspondingly large educational returns; but educa¬ 
tion has at last been put upon an approximately scien¬ 
tific and measurable basis, so that every administrative 
school unit, whether local or state may successfully in¬ 
sist upon a dollar’s return in educational service for every 
dollar invested in the schools. The whole question of 
the adequate financial support of our schools resolves 
itself in the last analysis to one of relative values: Which 
do we prefer to spend our money on as an index of our 
sense of relative values? 
PERFUMES OR PUPILS, SMOKES OR SCHOOLS? 
Note what a dollar will do: 
$1.00—Spent for a meal will last five hours. 
$1.00—Spent for cigars will last a week. 
$1.00—Spent for perfumery will last thirty days. 
$1.00—Spent for a cap will last six months. 
$1.00—Spent for an automobile will last five years. 
$1.00—Spent for the education of a child will last 
through all eternity. 
Inevitably pupils and schools will win out against all 
competitors, for our American children constitute collect¬ 
ively the most precious resources of our nation. To give 
them less educational training than they require to play 
each one his best part in the life of our democracy is a 
species of national suicide which no loyal American may 
calmly contemplate. 
The aim of our Pennsylvania Educational Program is 
to give each child in the state whatever educational train¬ 
ing he needs to play his best part in the life of our great 
Commonwealth. It will be quite impossible to present in 
the time allotted the details of the entire program, but 
you will be interested. I am sure, in our plans for diffus¬ 
ing generally among the population of our state a wider 
knowledge and appreciation of the uses of science in 
everyday life and particularly of nature study, biology 
and horticulture—those branches of science which teach 
children how to know and use plants. 
TWELVE YEARS OF INSTRUCTIONAL CONTINUITY IN SCIENCE 
PLANNED FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF PENNSYLVANIA 
The past century has been called the Age of Science. 
Due to the discoveries and inventions of science in this 
period, man’s progress in the field of the practical arts, 
industry, agriculture and in every line of human endeav¬ 
or has been greater and more rapid than in any other 
one hundred years in the world’s history. This progress 
in the field of scientific research has resulted in an ac¬ 
cumulation of knowledge greater in the aggregate prob¬ 
ably than the entire previous sum total of human knowl¬ 
edge. The advances in scientific knowledge and achieve¬ 
ment have, however, been far more rapid than has been 
their application to the problems of human society. Sci¬ 
entists have advanced deep into the region of the un¬ 
known, but the great mass of the people have not yet 
progressed in their mode of living and thinking to posi¬ 
tions even approximately in line with the advanced out¬ 
posts of human knowledge now held by our great scien¬ 
tists. 
If the recent advances in the science of agriculture 
were to be generally effective throughout our land, pro¬ 
duction would be increased many fold, our pre-eminence 
as an agricultural nation made secure, and the general 
level of comfort greatly raised for the people; granting, 
of course, than an efficient system of distribution shall 
have been developed. If the knowledge of the principles 
of public sanitation and personal health now in the pos¬ 
session of our scientific workers could be effectively 
translated on a national scale into habits and ideals of 
personal and public cleanliness, the increase in happi¬ 
ness and well being that would accrue to us as a nation 
and as individuals is beyond anyone’s ability to compute 
or estimate. 
The diffusion of science, in order that its obligations 
and its blessings may become the common possession of 
all. must be the dominant note of our science teaching. 
NEED OF AN ENLARGED PROGRAM OF SCIENCE INSTRUCTION 
The process of diffusing the results of scientific re- 
