also constitute a body corporate under the name of the "Board of Trustees of the Stout Institute," and shall possess all powers necessary or convenient to accomplish the objects and perform the duties prescribed by law. In such capacity, such board shall also employ such clerks and assistants as may be necessary to properly conduct its affairs. The state treasurer shall be ex-officio treasurer of the board, but the board may appoint a suitable person to receive fees or other moneys that may be due such board, to disburse any part thereof, to account therefor, and to pay the balance to the state treasurer.

SECTION 553p-11. Such board is authorized to accept free of cost to the state and to hold as a trustee for the state, the property of the Stout Institute located at Menomonie, Wisconsin, and to maintain such institute under the name of "The Stout Institute." Provided, that the trustees of said Stout Institute turn over to the state, within two months after the passage and publication of this act, said property free and clear of all incumbrances and debt, released from all claims or interest which the city of Menomonie or the heirs of James H. Stout may have had in said property and having put the building in good condition, and having made such repairs as may be necessary before turning over said property. The board is also authorized to accept such other property or moneys as it may deem advisable to be accepted which can profitably be used by it in promoting the interests entrusted to it. Such board may purchase, have, hold, control, possess and enjoy, in trust, for the state, for educational purposes, any lands, tenements, hereditaments, goods and chattels, of any nature, which may be necessary and required to accomplish the purposes and objects of the board, and may sell or dispose of any personal property when in its judgment it shall be for the interests of the

state.

SECTION 553p-12. The purposes and objects of the institute shall be to instruct young persons in industrial arts and occupations and the theory and art of teaching such, and to give such instruction as will lead to a fair knowledge of the liberal arts, a just and seemly appreciation of the nobility and dignity of labor, and in general to promote diligence, economy, efficiency, honor and good citizenship. SECTION 553p-13. 1. The said board shall have power: . .

SECTION 2. There is hereby appropriated out of any money in the state treasury not otherwise appropriated, a sum sufficient to carry into effect the provisions of this act. However in no case shall the sum appropriated for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of

this act exceed the sum of thirty thousand dollars during the fiscal year ending July 1, 1912, nor more than fifty-five thousand dollars per annum thereafter. Twenty thousand dollars of the above moneys shall be set aside annually, beginning July 1, 1911, for the purpose of maintaining the Stout Institute as provided in this act.1

SECTION 3. All acts and parts of acts conflicting with any provisions of this act are repealed in so far as they are inconsistent therewith. Provided, however, nothing in this act shall be construed to interfere in any manner with trade schools established under chapter 122, laws of 1907, and amendments thereof, unless the school board of any such city or school district shall by a majority vote adopt the provisions of this act and shall proceed in the manner provided for, for every town, village or city of over five thousand inhabitants as provided in this act.

1 (SECTION 172-49). 1. There is annually appropriated on July first, to the state board of industrial education out of any money in the general fund not otherwise appropriated, a sum not to exceed one hundred fifty thousand dollars, to carry into effect the provisions of sections 553p-1 and 553p-3 to 553p-9, inclusive, and section 553p-15. No part of this appropriation shall be available as state aid to continuation schools for the school year ending June 30, 1913. (1913 c. 677.)

CHAPTER XV

SUPPLEMENTAL EDUCATION

The New Public Education. Time was when education had a meaning practically synonymous with school. This meant a narrowing of the conception of education, and a restriction of the activities of the school. As the state school system has been expanded and has assumed new duties, gradually the real meaning of public education has become more apparent. Public education might properly comprehend any socially organized project which had for its justification the communizing of intelligence, -the essential prerequisite for the attainment of popular culture; whether that culture be expressed in terms of a bettered physical condition of life, a higher standard of social conduct, an enlarged sphere of common appreciation and sympathy, or an improved economic productivity. The school as a social center, the library, the farmers' institute and university extension are typical representatives of the expanding dominion of public education. The modern board of health, as it has gained in efficiency and importance, has become less of a police agency and more of an instrument for popular education.

I. THE SOCIAL CENTER

A Means of Common Understanding

[From an address delivered by Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, before the First National Conference on Civic and Social Center Development, at Madison, Wis., October 25, 1911.]

I do not feel that I have deserved the honor of standing here upon this occasion to make what has been courteously called the

principal address, because five months ago I did not know anything about this movement. I have taken no active part in it, and I am not going to assume, as those who have preceded me have assumed, that you know what the movement is. I want, if for no other purpose than to clarify my own thinking, to state as briefly as possible, what the movement is.

The object of the movement is to make the schoolhouse the civic center of the community, at any rate in such communities as are supplied with no other place of common resort.

READY FOR USE THE MEANS OF CONCERTING COMMON LIFE

It is obvious that the schoolhouse is in most communities used only during certain hours of the day, those hours when the rest of the community is busily engaged in bread-winning work. It occurred to the gentlemen who started this movement that inasmuch as the schoolhouses belonged to the community it was perfectly legitimate that the community should use them for its own entertainment and schooling when the young people were not occupying them. And that, therefore, it would be a good idea to have there all sorts of gatherings, for social purposes, for purposes of entertainment, for purposes of conference, for any legitimate thing that might bring neighbors and friends together in the schoolhouses. That, I understand it, in its simplest terms is the civic center movement that the schoolhouses might be made a place of meeting-in short, where by meeting each other the people of a community might know each other, and by knowing each other might concert a common life, a common action.

SPONTANEOUS DEVELOPMENT

The study of the civic center is the study of the spontaneous life of communities. What you do is to open the schoolhouse and light it in the evening and say: "Here is a place where you are welcome to come and do anything that it occurs to you to do."

And the interesting thing about this movement is that a great many things have occurred to people to do in the schoolhouse, things social, things educational, things political, for one of the reasons why politics took on a new complexion in the city in which this movement originated was that the people who could go into the schoolhouses at night knew what was going on in that city and insisted upon talking about it, and the minute they began talking about it, many things became impossible, for there are scores of things that must be put a stop to in our politics that will stop the

moment they are talked of where men will listen. The treatment for bad politics is exactly the modern treatment for tuberculosis it is exposure to the open air.

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Now you have to begin at the root of the matter in order to understand what it is you intend to serve by this movement. You intend to serve the life of communities, the life that is there, the life that you cannot create, the life to which you can only give release and opportunity; and wherein does that life consist? That is the question that interests me. There can be no life in a community so long as its parts are segregated and separated. It is just as if you separated the organs of the human body and then expected them to produce life. You must open wide the channels of sympathy and communication between them, you must make channels for the tides of life; if you clog them anywhere, if you stop them anywhere, why then the processes of disease set in, which are the processes of misunderstanding, which are the disconnections between the spiritual impulses of different sections of

men.

COMMON CENTER ESSENTIAL TO COMMUNITY LIFE

The very definition of community is a body of men who have things in common, who are conscious that they have things in common, who judge those common things from a single point of view, namely, the point of view of general interest. Such a thing as a community is unthinkable, therefore, unless you have close communication; there must be a vital inter-relationship of parts, there must be a fusion, there must be a coördination, there must be a free intercourse, there must be such a contact as will constitute union itself before you will have the true course of the wholesome blood throughout the body.

Therefore, when you analyze some of our communities you will see just how necessary it is to get their parts together. Take some of our great cities for example. Do you not realize by common gossip even, the absolute disconnection of what we call their residential sections from the rest of the city? Isn't it singular that while human beings live all over a city, we pick out a part, a place where there are luxurious and well-appointed houses and call that the residential section? As if nobody else lived anywhere in that city. That is the place where the most disconnected part and in some instances the most useless part of the community lives. There men do not know their next-door neighbors; there men do not want to know their next-door neighbors; there is no bond of sympathy; there is no bond of knowledge or common acquaintanceship.