A^*ctober,Ii9oa7!m'}    American  Pharmaceutical  Association.  485 
to  permit  the  issuing  of  licenses  to  minors  and  persons  without 
definitely  prescribed  educational  qualifications  to  open  or  conduct 
drug  stores,  to  have  charge  of  the  dispensing  of  medicines,  and  to 
sell  habit-producing  drugs,  cast  unmerited  reproach  upon  our  occu- 
pation and  should  be  amended. 
This  resolution  was  adopted. 
Jacob  Diner  considered  the  two  following  queries : 
Are  the  conditions  in  the  drug  stores  of  to-day  such  as  to  warrant 
the  assumption  that  those  admitted  to  apprenticeship  can  there 
acquire  the  education  requisite  to  make  them  competent  pharma- 
cists ? 
What  instruction  do  the  apprentices  and  clerks  receive  in  the 
average  drug  store  ? 
Mr.  Diner  said  that  in  the  olden  time  the  apprentice  was  required 
to  have  a  common  school  education,  and  was  taken  into  training  by 
the  pharmacist  to  whom  he  was  bound.  Now,  Mr.  Diner  said,  no 
questions  are  asked  as  to  the  apprentice's  education  and  no  training 
is  given  by  the  proprietor.  He  claimed  that  a  professional  phar- 
macist cannot  be  built  up  without  a  good  foundation. 
Otto  A.  Wall,  of  St.  Louis,  read  a  paper  entitled,  "  Why  We 
Should  Not  Demand  a  High-School  Education  as  a  Prerequisite." 
The  writer  pointed  out  a  number  of  the  defects  of  our  educational 
system,  and  substantiated  his  claims  by  numerous  quotations  from 
prominent  educators.  He  said  that  we  should  begin  to  improve 
this  system  from  the  foundation  upward  and  not  from  the  top  down- 
ward. He  then  cited  statistics  to  show  that  only  a  very  small 
percentage  of  the  pupils,  even  in  the  large  cities,  pass  the  high 
school,  and  that  improvements  should  be  made  in  the  grammar 
schools  so  as  to  fit  the  pupils  to  engage  in  the  general  pursuits  of 
life.  He  thought  that  in  the  common  schools  the  useful  should 
be  kept  more  prominently  in  mind  and  that  in  the  graded  schools 
less  attention  should  be  paid  to  those  studies  required  for  entrance 
to  the  universities. 
The  author  furthermore  claimed  that  the  universities  are  monopo- 
listic in  their  tendencies  ;  that  they  demand  such  large  sums  from 
the  public  funds  that  there  is  not  sufficient  for  general  educational 
purposes. 
He  placed  colleges  of  pharmacy,  manual  training  schools  and 
other  technical  schools  on  the  same  plane,  and  said  that  whatever 
