More than $14,000,000 was spent for public recreation last year by cities in the United States and Canada, according to the Playground and Recreation Association of America. This sum is more than twice

the amount spent for the same purpose ten years ago. In a total of 680 cities reporting community recreation leadership, 660 conduct 6,591 playgrounds and recreation centers under paid leaders. In 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt and others organized the Association, only 41 cities had playgrounds and recreation centers with paid leaders. Approximately 1,200,000 was the reported daily average of children and adults at the summer playgrounds of the country in 1923. This figure is four times greater than the 1913 attendance. The reason for the steadily increasing expenditure for recreation at a time when municipalities are bent on economy, the Association states, is that playgrounds and recreation are recognized as a good investment. pays to play.

It

The executive board of the American Library Association has announced the appointment of a Commission on The Library and Adult Education, consisting of the following: Chairman, Judson T. Jennings, Seattle Public Library, president of the American Library Association, 1923-24; Charles F. D. Belden, Boston Public Library; William W. Bishop, University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor; Matthew S. Dudgeon, Milwaukee Public Library; Miss Linda A. Eastman, Cleveland Public Library; W. O. Carson, Inspector of Public Libraries, Ontario Department of Eucation, Toronto; and Charles E. Rush, Indianapolis Public Library. This marks the beginning of a new kind of educational library service. Libraries have developed excellent lending departments for the reader of popular books and splendid reference service for the person seeking definite facts or desiring to undertake research. The object now is to develop special departments for the aid of ambitious adults and boys and girls out of school who want to study independently. Thousands of older boys and girls and men and women could and probably would continue their education voluntarily if they could get at the library, the time, attention and encouragement of competent educational assistants, and if the library could provide an adequate supply of books to meet their needs promptly.

An investigation is to be made of the more important adult educational activities in this country and abroad, including university extension and correspondence courses, and an intensive first-hand study of the adult educational service of university, public and special libraries. The study will be made by L. L. Dickerson, until recently the advisory librarian in the U. S. Army. Funds for the study have been provided

by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, including an appropriation for the publishing of reading courses. This project, which may lead

to entirely new methods of self-education, was discussed at a special session of the annual conference of the American Library Association at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., on July 4th, at which addresses were made by the president, Judson T. Jennings, and others.

One of the speakers at the Saratoga meeting of the American Library Association was Walter Prichard Eaton, of Sheffield, Mass., who, in an address on "The Boy and the Book," discussed the psychology of reading and the value of the book in training and stimulating the minds and imagination of the young, a value which he reckoned much higher than that of pictures, because in reading the boy creates his own world from the hint, he does most of the work for himself. "The normal child," said Mr. Eaton, "revels in the imaginative world opened by books, and when schoolmasters tell me, as they do over and over again, that preparatory schoolboys nowadays 'never read,' I do not accept their view that something is the matter with the boys (or else the whole business of reading), but that something has been the matter with the boys parents and teachers and their methods of bringing up children. To look upon reading as a mere refuge for the physically inferior is not natural to boys who have not been taught by example to over-glorify the physical and material things of life. To look upon reading as a depressing and tiresome and unexciting form of mental concentration is not natural, except to those who have been over-stimulated and under-nourished by too many movies. The real glory of reading, of course, is not that it creates a new world for you, but that it enables you to create one for yourself. It frees the imagination. To me, the greatest evil of the motion pictureaside from the fact that most of the stories told are silly and false, which, of course, is not inevitable in the medium-is the fact that by telling everything pictorially, they prevent the imagination from creating in brighter, more beautiful terms than the suburbs of Los Angeles and the face of Norma Talmadge, while the mind, having nothing to follow but physical action-things, that is, which can be expressed in pantomime-is never working with the imagination to give it significance and sinew and self-control. These faults are inevitable in the movies, and nothing now known to science or art can correct them. Because of them, the motion pictures will remain-be they censor-pure as Royal Baking Powder-forever vastly inferior to books, for the young especially, or to the speaking stage, and, indeed, if too much indulged in, a positive menace to mental development."

Book Reviews

INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Edward S. Cowdrick. The Ronald Press, New York, N. Y. Price $2.75.

A thorough review of industrial and economic developments in the United States from the earliest beginnings of the nation to the present time. Of interest to every person who wishes to be a thoroughly educated American.

A HISTORY OF RUTGERS COLLEGE. 1766-1924. By William H. S. Demarest, the President of the College. New Brunswick, N. J., published by the College.

This College celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1916. It owes its origin to people of Dutch birth or descent, believers in the religion of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, who were early settlers in New York and New Jersey. They were an intelligent and industrious class of people possessed of sterling qualities fitting them for leadership in those earlier days and in later times. They felt the need of higher institutions for the education of their children, and their thrift and natural progressiveness made possible the endowment of their young College and ensured its growth and permanent usefulness. This volume, while presenting the interesting story of the College, sheds light also on early and later American history and ideals. It will be read by many scholarly people, whether graduates of Rutgers or otherwise interested in the history of American civilization and education.

SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES, and THE COURSE IN HISTORY; Francis W. Parker School Studies in Education. Published at 45 cents, by the Francis W. Parker School, Chicago.

From Teachers College, Columbia University, we have received the following monographs: An Inventory of the Minds of Individuals of Six and Seven Years Mental Age, by Grace A. Taylor, Ph.D. The Interests, Abilities and Achievements of a Special Class for Gifted Children, by Genevieve Lenore Coy, Ph.D. Tests for Vocational Guidance of Children Thirteen to Sixteen, by Herbert A. Toops, and the Prognostic Value of a Primary Group Test, a Study of Intelligence and Relative Achievement in the First Grade, by Bess V. Cunningham, Ph.D.

From the United States Department of Commerce: Special Agents Series No. 220, Mexican West Coast and Lower California, A Commercial and Industrial Survey. By P. L. Bell and H. Bentley Mackenzie.

THESE EVENTFUL YEARS. The Twentieth Century in the Making. As Told by Many of its Makers. Being the dramatic story of all that has happened throughout the world during the most momentous period in its history. 160 full-page illustrations and numerous maps. In two volumes. London, The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company, Ltd.; New York, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Reader! What do you know about the real causes of the World War? Would you like to see the matter as it now appears to Professor C. J. H. Hayes, of Columbia University, Captain U. S. A., Military Intelligence Division, General Staff, 1918-1919; Author of Political and Social History of Modern Europe; Brief History of the Great War; Co-Author of The League of Nations? Are you thoroughly posted on the League of Nations? If not, why not get the opinion and viewpoint of Leon Bourgeois, member of the Council of the League and the one chiefly responsible for the drafting of the Covenant of the League? What was the largest bill ever presented for payment in the whole history of mankind? John Foster Dulles, Counsel to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, and Member of the Reparations Commission and Supreme Council, 1919, can tell you its amount and justification. What about the Balkans, today and tomorrow? Medieval Persia in a Modern World? The Dark Continent as it is today? Twentieth Century Literature? The Antiquity of Man in Middle America? The Harvest Time in Medicine and Surgery? Psychical Research and the Invisible World? The Political Awakening of Woman? Main Currents in Twentieth Century Music? Democratic Tendencies in Education? The Eighteenth Amendment as "The Greatest Social Experiment of Modern Times"?

You can get authoritative information on these and practically all other great human subjects that have come under discussion in these stirring times, if you have these two remarkable volumes at your desk. There are nearly 700 pages in each. The very greatest authorities upon each subject have contributed the articles. You get both sides and all the evidence. You are able to form your own opinions. The work has been characterized as "A brilliant, challenging book." It is indeed that. It is one, however, which is formative and constructive. It is an indispensable aid to the person who is ambitious to be up-to-date and posted upon current topics. It is a mine of knowledge and truthful information about the trends of history, human progress, aspiration, and probable destiny. Whether you have or have not a voluminous and expensive Encyclopaedia you will find this work exceedingly serviceable, interesting and satisfactory.

We acknowledge the receipt of the following books for review in EDUCATION:

From THE MACMILLAN COMPANY:

BOOKKEEPING AND ACCOUNTING. By Harlan Eugene Read and Charles J. Harvey. Script illustrations by E. C. Mills. Also Blank Books “A," "B" and "C," accompanying the same, being Journal, Ledger, Trial Balance, etc., books.

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS. By Charles A. Beard. Fourth Edition, thoroughly revised; 820 pages. A comprehensive volume suitable for college classes and for the average adult who desires to become "posted” upon public questions and the political and economic history and sentiments of his country.

POEMS, OLD AND NEW. Selected for boys and girls. By Sara Teasdale. Illustrations by Dugald Walker. An admirable book for the school library or for the home.

THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS and THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS. By John G. Neihardt. With Notes by Julius T. House. This is an addition to "The Modern Reader's Series." It is the first part in a series of poems relating to the fur trade period of the trans-Missouri region.

FUNDAMENTALS OF VOCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. By Charles H. Griffitts, Associate Professor of Psychology in the University of Michigan While intended primarily as a text-book for classes in vocational psychology, this volume will serve as a valuable and reliable guide to individuals who are trying to discover their "calling" and the way to fit themselves for it. The book places emphasis on general principles.

IVANHOE. By Sir Walter Scott. Abridged for Junior High School grades by Elizabeth Hope Gordon, M.A., and Hattie L. Hawley, B.A. A very attractive and practical abridgement, with helps that are adequate, giving this long novel in a single volume for school use.

LONGMANS' ABBREVIATED FRENCH TEXTS, JUNIOR. La Comte Pourquoi Hunebourg ne fut pas Rendu, by Erckmann-Chatrain; and L'Aventure de Jacques Gerard, by M. Stephane. Same Series: L'Eclusier, by E. Souvestre, and La Montre du Doyon le Vieux Tailleur, by ErckmannChatrain. Same Series: Ursule Mirouet, by H. de Balzac, and Le Comte Kostia, by Victor Cherbuliez. All are edited by T. H. Bertenshaw. First two, 15 cents each; second two 25 cents each; third two, 30 cents each. Longmans, Green & Company.