ployers or the employed of the immediate future, and they need the training that will give a broad view of their rights and obligations. Men should be led to a recognition of the fact that how money is secured is important, and that its real worth after it has been secured is the way it is used. But there is a larger But there is a larger view of this matter with which the schools should be vitally concerned, which is the preparation for what may be denominated an economic citizenship. Modern society is going through a sort of economic revolution, not unlike the intellectual revolution of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries known as the Renaissance, and the religious Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nicholas Murray Butler well says that the first question which should be asked of any course of study is, Does it lead to a knowledge of our contemporary civilization?", and he goes on to say, that if it does not it is neither efficient nor liberal." When the right of suffrage had been extended to the common people in England, a great statesman remarked, "Now we must educate our masters. It is not sufficient that leaders only be intelligent on the troublesome questions of public policy. Ours is a government of public opinion, and in the I minds of the people in last analysis is found the true stability of governmental institutions. John Morley says that to bid a man do his duty, and then to forbid him to study economic questions, utilitarianism, and kindred subjects which are the means of determining I what his duty is, is but "bald and naked counsel." " Andrew D. White, long since made the observation, that man is an economic animal as well as a political animal, that he is born into an industrial system, just as surely as he is born into a political state. In an enumeration of the ideals for a course of study, President Butler once put as fundamental, the statement, the dominant note of our society is economic." In a larger sense, political questions, state's rights, individual liberty, constitutional privilege, etc., have = been settled and the alignment of parties is now on economic questions, such as government ownership of public utilities, and the regulation of insurance. Momentous consequences are bound up with our economic citizenship. The present great pressing questions of 4 public policy on which voters are asked to pass, are tariffs, monetary reforms, banking systems, regulation of railroads, governmental supervision over combinations of capital, and the like, and if the citizen of the present and the future is to give a safe answer to these questions he must have training in the funda=mentals of the science of which they are an expres■sion. "Il fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay." We are in greatest danger from the failure to regard the gravity of present problems. In health, one is likely to disregard the laws of health, and in the bountiful prosperity and seeming security of our economic system we are in danger of disregarding the basal principles for the well-being of society. This is all the more seductive in America, because our prosperity has largely come from rich endowment in natural resources and the fortunate conditions under which we have lived. The conservatism of the schools is well noted by President Butler who says, It is a constant fight to get any proper teaching from an economic point of view," a statement which he held true of both schools and colleges. Those who are deemed mature enough to handle the intricacies of foreign languages, or to study the abstruse principles of higher mathematics, are thought by educators too immature for any economic study. Economics is held to be speculative and impractical. It often seems that school-masters seek to isolate those whom they train from the present world and to orient them instead to an earlier age. It would appear the part of wisdom, that through economics the schools should be brought into the closest relations with the economic society in which they exist, and should use the data of this society as a means of training. 66 66 The report of the Committee of Ten in the section on History and Social Science, recommended for the incidental study of political economy in connection with history. According to that report, history was to be what has been termed a for stalking horse both economics and civics, these subjects being treated as sort of poor relatives of the more exalted subject of history instead of being recognized as subjects in their own rights. The statement of the Committee of Ten, that there were no suitable text-books, is far less true now than when it was made, and similarly the further statement that schools could not procure efficient teachers for political economy is hardly true of the present. It is probable that economics can be considered with profit as an incidental subject in grammar schools, and in the earlier high school years. It may also be introduced as a part of the general exercises of the school and in more popular form as lectures. The subject, however, is altogether too important to be left wholly to any hap-hazard treatment. In the third or fourth high school year students are sufficiently mature and so grounded in history and acquainted with the world, that they may safely be asked to undertake this subject. variously recommended. Following the text-book exThe text-book and the topical methods have been clusively may lead to the notion that economics is a matter of the book and not of the world which is all about the students. The topical method alone is in danger of being vague and indefinite. To escape from the disabilities of either of these methods there may be recommended the use of the text-book to give unity and continuity to the study, and a generous following of topics, supplementary to the book. Economics may well begin as a practical and descriptive subject through the use of topics dealing with the local community. A few years ago President James suggested a syllabus of economics and social science for the use of both elementary and secondary schools. Such a syllabus would serve as a guide to teachers, indicating topics to be studied, and their order, treatment, and relations to other subjects, also methods of study and the like. A syllabus which cannot fail to be of great service, has been worked out by the faculty of political economy of the University of Chicago. Many manuals of the sort here indicated are already available for English, mathematics, geography, science, etc., covering both subject matter and methods of instruction, and no doubt others will be produced for economics. There are three divisions of economics, or three methods of treatment. The first is inductive, concrete, descriptive, based on the observation of the student, and an accumulation of familiar industrial and commercial facts. In this aspect of the subject, the study should conform to the principle, not words, but things. It is this method of approach which will give economics a point of contact with the world outside of school. The most natural approach to economics is in a study of the place and meaning of industrial and commercial employments in modern social life. Secondly, there should come a study of the more general laws and principles which make up the body of doctrine ordinarily passing as theoretical economics. This should naturally follow the introductory study suggested above, and may well be based on a text-book. This method is necessary in order to give unity and cohesion to the introductory studies. Third, there should be forms of applied economics along such lines of study as transportation, insurance, money, banking and regulation of business. The first of the three methods suggested above may very well take the form of the study of the local community, its manufacturers, and commercial operations. It can profitably be introduced into the early high school years, and may at once give valuable information on the community which the school serves, and the materials which afterwards can be used in the more formal course in economics. The study of more general aspects of the subject may well come in the third year while the fourth year may be reserved for applied economics along the lines indicated. Whatever the course in school, whether long or short, or whatever the type of school, it appears desirable that the three elements above mentioned should be involved in the study of economics, so that those being trained in the schools may have the information and point of view which will enable them to understand and serve their own community. It should be said further that the study of economics is more largely a matter of interpretation and spirit of other subjects than it is of the introduction of new subjects into the curriculum. But at least one independent course in economics seems necessary. Since the publication of the Committee of Ten report in 1893, when only one-twentieth of the schools replying gave instruction in political economy, there has been a marked change. Haynes in his recent book on Economics in the Secondary School, reports that he had access to records of some eighteen hundred representative high schools, and found that economics was included in one out of five of these schools. In 1912 as shown by the Kingsley report, out of two hundred and three colleges reporting, fifty-seven allowed economics to count for one or more units towards the entrance requirements for the bachelor's degree, and thirty-five allowed it to count as onehalf a unit. This is but the beginning of a tendency which we believe will result in a general recognition by the colleges, that economics is one of the subjects which the schools should teach and that they should be permitted to offer it for admission to college. In an article on "Austro-German Commerce in Our Colonies" (July Revue Politique et Parlementaire"), Deputy Perreau-Pradier gives many statistics to show the decrease in imported products in the various French colonies heretofore largely dependent on the Teutonic countries for manufactured goods. Despite the necessity for rigid economy, doubtless a strong factor in causing such a de crease, he states that the increasing ability of the colonists to supply their own demands, is largely responsible for the change in the economic situation. WHEN THEY WERE BOYS. "The Western Teacher" prints the following list of inventions showing the progress in discovery during the nineteenth century: When your father was a boy none of these things were known: paving, acetylene, asbestos, block signals, ball bearings, Aeroplanes, air brakes, antiseptics, automobiles, asphalt Bertillion system, canning factories, color photography, carpet sweepers, cash registers, dictagraphs, electric lights, electric bells, electric heating, fireless cookers, gas engines, gas mantles, gasoline, hydroplanes, ice factories, industrial education, liquid air, motorcycles, motion pictures, parcel post, phonographs, pianolas, pneumatic tires, paper towels, radium, re-enforced concrete, submarines, steel construction, smokeless powder, sanitary drinking fountains, typesetting machines, vacuum bottles, wireless telegraphy, wireless telephony, X-rays. When your grandfather was a boy none of the following were known: Aluminum, anesthetics, baseball, bicycles, breech loading guns, fountain pens, harvesters, knitting machines, photographs, sewing machines, silos, soda fountains, sleeping cars, telephones, turbines, Yale locks. When your great-grandfather was a boy none of the following were known: Canned fruit, cartridges, cook stoves, laundries, matches, postage stamps, railroads, rubber goods, the telegraph, washing machines. The History of American Life-An Experiment in a New Type of College Course BY PROFESSOR K. S. LATOURETTE, REED COLLEGE, PORTLAND, OREGON. All of us remember well the developments in the content of history courses since we first began school. We recall our introduction to American history, when the text was chiefly interested in military campaigns. Presidential campaigns, constitutional developments and territorial expansion were evidently regarded as a kind of necessary interlude to be gotten through as quickly as possible. We could map Washington's movements from the siege of Boston t the surrender at Yorktown. We were carefully drilled in the movements of the armies of the North and the South, and could tell the details of Antietam or Gettysburg or Bull Run. The Lames of generals were to us far more important than those of such presidents as were unfortunate enough not to have had military records. Of the significance of the constitutional convention we knew little, and of Marshall's decisions still less. For us history ended at Appomatox, or at best the years after it were a kind of postlude in which the monotony of presidential campaigns was broken only by the one interesting incident of the Spanish war. Then when we found ourselves in high school or college a new kind of history course met us. No longer were battles and military campaigns the chief interest, but a knowledge of politics and constitutional development became the goal. History was past politics and we knew the ins and outs of party struggles, platforms and constitutional theories. We talked familiarly of presidents and would-be presidents, but knew little or nothing about railroad builders, or great merchants, or the growth of the public schools, or of the development of our great religious bodies. For the past several years we have been rather reluctantly admitting that even politics and constitution making are not the sum total of history. Economic historians have arisen and forced upon us the consideration of their version of the story. The sociologist and the geographer have insisted that they have some things to add. Rather half-heartedly they have been granted recognition. The narrative of political development is now broken occasionally to interlard a chapter on social, religious, economic, and literary developments. It is added rather apologetically, without any apparent organic connection with story, and only as a pleasant intermission. Some works on American history, conscious of their limitations, warn the reader by the title, "A Political History of the United States that these newer phases are not to be handled. Some daring ones have sought to incorporate in texts and in courses these extrapolitical and extra-military activities of the nation as part of the organic whole. Even here, however, the political action still occupies the center of the stage. Economic and "social" developments are brought in merely to shed more light on the political story. History is still chiefly past politics, and other sides of the nation's activity, despairing of receiving equal recognition, are still studied under separate labels as economic history, the history of American literature, or the history of education in the United States. We are all of us realizing, as many have for some time before us, that our history courses to be complete should tell the whole story, that they should give a complete, well-rounded picture of the life of each age without undue emphasis upon any one side of it, whether it be military, political, economic, or religious. Leaders in our profession have given us successively in addresses from the president's chair of the American Historical Association, their convictions on the scope of our work and most of them have pointed out that it must be broadened. Most of us recognize the need of a change in history as it is now taught, but the difficulties in the way are discouraging. We have only a certain time in which to cram a knowledge of their country's history into students' heads. We already have difficulty in finding time enough to give them what seems to us an adequate knowledge of the political field. How can we hope to do more than to make an occasional excursion into these other fields? Moreover, there are few if any texts available in which the political and military do not predominate. Worse still, for in colleges and even high schools we are not necessarily bound to texts, reference material is often lacking. Economic historians have mapped out their field for us, and there are works on such topics as immigration, the history of education and the history of literature. But there are still great gaps. We look in vain for an adequate study of our religious history, or of the history of American thought. In spite of difficulties, however, the author has been experimenting the past year in a course which for want of a better title he has called History of American Life." At the beginning of the year the questions were asked: What are the chief features of American life of to-day? What are the chief interests of the American people? This involved a brief study of contemporary America and resulted in a classification under five general heads. (1) Economic. The nation is certainly interested in making a living and in all that goes with it. Some would even have us believe that money is our chief interest. (2) Political. We are all of us evidently interested in the State, and its activities vitally affect each of us. (3) Religious. In spite of seeming tendencies to pay less attention to religion than at some other times in our history, it is still one of the most prominent features of our life. (4) Educational, literary and artistic. We are concerned with education. The school, the book, the newspaper, are all prominent in our thinking. We even confess to an interest in music, art and architecture. (5) Social. This is a convenient title under which in these days we put all group activities which we find it difficult to classify elsewhere, often oblivious of the fact that the activities under the other four heads could for the most part lay just claims to the same title. Given these five divisions, the ideal method would have been to have pictured life under them in each period of our history, with due regard to the fact that it was life, that one must consider it not only in cross sections but longitudinally, that we must show it as something constantly expanding and developing, preserving continuity with the past, but never quite the same in two successive years. Limits of time, however, did not permit this. The attempt was made instead to sketch very briefly the history of each epoch, pointing out the more prominent and important contributions to the America of to-day. Since a choice was necessary, it seemed wiser to have in mind as the distinct aim of the course the understanding of contemporary life. If one can point out period by period the contributions which are important in present day life, one puts students in a fair way to understand the world in which they live; for life to-day is, of course, the product of two factors, heredity, the contribution of the past, and environment, the molding influence of the present. The colonial period, the period of the Revolution, the period of the formation of the Constitution, the period ending in 1815, the years from 1815 to 1860, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the period since Reconstruction were each taken up in turn. Each was considered under the five heads outlined above, the developments under these were sketched and the main contributions to the present were pointed With this end in view, less time was manifestly spent on the earlier periods and more on the recent Manifestly, too, in different periods different ones of the five main divisions claimed special attention. The period of the formation of the Constitution, by its very title seems from the standpoint of its influence on the present chiefly political in its importance; that since Reconstruction is chiefly economic and social. The class was not large and for purposes of experimentation was confined to those who had previously had a course in American history, either in high school or college. Manifestly no text could be found to cover the work of the course and the chief dependence was on lectures, papers on special topics by members of the class, and class discussions. One of the better recent series of texts was used, however, partly to insure some permanent results of the course remaining in the minds of the class. If lectures and discussions and special papers were to fail, a good text might be something solid in the midst of chaos. The course was, as is the case with most courses, not entirely successful. It had its rough edges and its weak points, but the conviction grows that these were due to the teacher rather than to essential weaknesses in the plan. The class was enthusiastic, and the experiment was sufficiently successful to warrant its repetition another year. A syllabus for it may later be printed. We are convinced that we are on the right track, and this brief description is given in the hope that it may prove suggestive to the who are working, many of them much more ably, along the same lines. We covet suggestions and criticisms, and information of similar attempts elsewhere. others Industrial History in the Standard High School Course RAYMOND G. TAYLOR, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. The demand for additions to the heavily burdened history course presents many difficulties to those in charge of high school curricula. Not the least of the trouble comes from the growing call for more industrial history. In college and university work the situation is met and the pressure relieved by the creation of new electives to which those desiring to broaden or specialize their historical knowledge may be admitted. In the high school, on the other hand, the time limit for historical studies is fixed. In few schools, indeed, can the teacher hope to carry his students through more courses than those recommended by the Committee of Seven or the Committee of Fiveoften he must be content with less. The tendency to reduce history in the high school to a three-or twoyear maximum and required history to two years or even one year is quite marked. In spite of the agitation of some enthusiasts it does not seem wise to substitute, for any of the standard courses, special courses in industrial history. In the first place it seems more than doubtful if such courses would be as effective in preparation for citizenship as the more general courses, taught with a broad and sympathetic view. Can we afford to sacrifice the intelligent understanding of our present day political and social institutions that comes only from this broader training? In the second place, industrial history presents certain practical difficulties in the teaching. The history of industries has not the unity of time and place, the apparent orderly development, which national history seeks to portray. As a people we are never so united or so uniform in development as our political action might indicate. From natural and abiding causes this differentiation between sections and groups always has existed and will exist for a long time to come. Chronology, stirring event and outstanding personality play a far less striking part in the story of industrial advance than in the usually accepted accounts of national development. For this very reason industrial history does not adapt itself readily to simple outlines or texts, or to the capacity of untrained students. Careful observation of several hundred college students in American industrial history has shown that it is the exceptional student who can master such a special course without previous training in general American history. Even this exceptional student must fortify himself by much reading of texts and manuals in an effort to orient himself. The difficulties of time and space of perspective are great even where the students have had some historical training. How much truer this would be in the high school we can only conjecture. In spite of criticism, the standard courses do furnish the student with the semblance of an orderly development, with events and chronology enough for a clear outline and the fixing of a few things in the memory. With far the larger number of teachers and schools the problem of teaching industrial history in the high schools, if it is to be taught at all—and there will be few to say it should not be-is a problem of weaving the story of economic and industrial progress into the regular, standard history course. How to accomplish this in such a way as to do it reasonable justice and at the same time refrain from crowding out other equally important things, and preserve the unity and clarity of the course is the task of the teacher. It is not necessary to work any great upheaval in the course in order to give the student some idea of industrial history. Something must be added to the content, but careful reorganization will give the industrial side of history its due prominence without overloading the course or destroying its unity or teachability ❞—indeed, the results will be quite the opposite. The principal change needed is in the viewpoint or angle from which the events of history shall be studied. The same outline or course can be followed and much of the same material used, but the events will be explained in the light of their industrial and economic causes and effects. It will often be merely a shifting of emphasis. 1 The artificial introduction from time to time of chapters or assigned lessons purporting to bring the story of industrial development down to date is unsatisfactory. It interrupts the story of history and moreover fails to show the vital connection between industrial, social and political developments. For this reason some recent texts which have attempted to meet the demand by the interpolation or forced introduction of short perfunctory chapters on industry will not do. There are indications that we are to have text-books of clearly defined and orderly outlines including a fair view of the industrial side of history, but until they become more plentiful than at present the teacher must work with the texts and outlines at hand. After all, this is not so bad as it seems, for, unless the teacher knows or can learn enough of industrial history to make this adjustment, his teaching of it would be of questionable value, and, further, there is some reason to believe that these conservative texts may act as a proper balance to the untempered zeal of the enthusiast, and aid in bringing about a just and abiding result. As each new event or great character in history comes to light in the development of the course, the teacher should at once raise the question of the reason for the event or the stand which the individual has taken upon public questions. Sometimes the question should be raised before the events themselves are reached. At once the road is open for the introductory story of the industrial and social background. Leaving to the text, which is usually more than sufficient, the burden of teaching the youth the essentials of constitutional and political history, the teacher, by questions, hints and informal lectures, and the judicious organization of collateral reading in books and periodicals, can lead the students to a broader understanding of the story. In the end history will be more, rather than less, unified, and events will be seen, as they nearly always are, the natural and inevitable results of their times. What has been said so far applies with equal force to any of the high school courses. For the sake of concreteness and because it is the most universally taught course, the rest of this paper will be devoted to some general suggestions for presenting the industrial side of American history. The principles may be applied to other phases of the same course or to the courses in European history. The industrial side of American colonial history is not hard to introduce or to handle, since, in the first place, political life develops along broad simple lines, and, in the second, colonial industry itself is simple. The organization of the colonies was fashioned from the other side of the Atlantic, though new environments and distance from the seat of authority led to considerable evolution in the political life of the people. The colonial attitude toward many public questions took tone either in direct obedience or opposition to the mother country. Hence the proposal to teach much of colonial history as a part of European history does no great violence. The industrial history of the colonies, however, is strictly an American development and should be taught as part of the American history course. Agriculture was the first and basic industry in all of the colonies. Differences in physical environment in the various sections of the Atlantic coast country combined with differences in colonists and organizations to bring about differences in land and labor systems and led to fundamental differences in the agriculture of the sections. By selected descriptions in the texts, in the various economic and industrial histories, in such works as those of Brigham,1 Semple,2 and Farrand, or the suggestive chapters of Simons, and extracts from the printed sources, and 4 |