We come now to consider the next great need felt to-day in the field of secondary education; namely, the establishment of schools and courses fitting our children for the industries. The question confronts us: What steps must Catholic educators take to supply the demand? Should we immediately add to our high school courses new ones in the arts and crafts? Or should the vocational schools be entirely distinct from the high school as we have it to-day? Conditions exist pretty much everywhere throughout the country which will furnish us with a very cogent reason for immediate action towards their establishment. In some places indeed the demand for such action is almost imperative if our Catholic school children are to take the part in the world's affairs that we expect them to take.

Those of our boys who do not follow a course of professional training have hitherto been constrained to seek employment as teamsters, elevator boys, car conductors, and in such like jobs in factories at small pay. The trades paying several times as much wages have been closed to them on account of the hampering restrictions placed by the unions on their employment as apprentices. Large industries, too, are loath to employ the boy who is wholly unacquainted with the crafts, and the courses of manual training of the grammar schools are little better than useless to prepare him to meet shop conditions. So great is the barrier to his entering the trades, that we must come to his aid with an enlargement of our field of school work and send him forth from our hands fitted to take his place alongside of skilled mechanics. But how can this be done? Must we further burden our Catholic people with the task of supporting these schools? For it is well from the beginning to understand that they cannot be made self-supporting.

As courses in domestic science and needlework have always formed a part of the girl's convent education, we shall have the boys particularly in mind in discussing industrial training. For a like reason commercial education need give us no concern. What we must discuss are the ways and means of providing instruction in the arts and crafts for our boys.

One solution of this problem which would possibly weigh least heavily on the Catholic school is that now employed in several

cities, and which I shall call the Fitchburg plan from its first coming to my notice on its adoption in that city in Massachusetts less than four years ago. There the school authorities arranged with several large manufacturing companies for the use of their shops, so that the high school boy spends the period allotted to technical training under actual shop conditions and is paid for the product of his hand. The same plan was later introduced into the Beverly high school, the shops of the United Shoe Machinery Company being used.

The plan has this advantage right from the start that the boy realizes that he is doing real work, and is earning pay. He also has the advantage of being able to gauge his own progress by a comparison, at any time, of his work with that of the skilled mechanics around him. Besides, the greater number of different machines and of other industrial operations such a plant affords, makes for a broader training than when the department of arts and crafts is limited to the school building.

The plan has its opponents, of course, in those who maintain that the companies whose shops are used, are likely to consider their own interests rather than those of their pupils, and thus in various ways to make the training preparative for their own line of work, depriving it of the broad character it should possess. Labor unions are another element to be reckoned with in such an arrangement. They have already shown themselves to some extent hostile to the plan, and where their influence is great they might make the plan inadvisable for the Catholic school.

Be these objections worth what they may, the Fitchburg plan seems to have considerable to recommend it in the case of those Catholic schools obliged to make immediate provision for such training. Any other solution for general application seems to be out of the question owing to the expense. We can assuredly find Catholic manufacturers in every city who will be ready to cooperate with Catholic educators in this matter. Arrangements satisfactory to all concerned can be effected and the work begun

at once.

In default of such arrangement as we have been considering, we can do the next best thing by introducing those trades requiring least expensive equipment. Though the expense of industrial

training on a scale as large as the times demand seems prohibitive of any immediate general application of the arts and crafts to our schools, still there are several useful and honorable trades that can be taught with very little expense beyond the first cost of installing the plant. Take bricklaying, for example. Most of the material can be used over and over again. Carpentry even, will not be found beyond the means of many schools. In learning the trade the boys can make useful articles, the value of which will surely cover the cost of the raw material used. The repairs which the young mechanics could put on the school building itself would make that branch of training far from burdensome. As for other trades, local conditions will determine their practicability. But everywhere Catholic educators will find it quite within their power to do something to meet the present general demand for industrial training in our schools.

For some parts of our country agriculture must take precedence in the vocational school. Here, it seems, the problem of ways and means is not so difficult. The success of the school garden movement in New York City and in several other places gives an assurance that if done systematically the course can be made attractive, profitable and inexpensive.

Local needs will soon suggest what phase of agriculture ought to be emphasized. In one place it will be the dairy, in another poultry raising, in still another it will be the scientific treatment of the soil or the raising of cereal crops. But wherever the demand exists for agriculture in our schools, we can surely meet it; for the question of expense in this connection is far less embarrassing than when considered in reference to the other arts and crafts.

Finally, whatever demands the times are making upon the Catholic schools, whatever the needs we ourselves have noted in the system, our attitude should always be characterized by the greatest confidence that God will provide the means and the help. Animated with such sentiments we should not hestitate, when once we see what is wanted, to adopt any policy and to start any work from which will accrue help to our children and glory to God.

RELIGION AND EDUCATION

VERY REVEREND EDWARD A. PACE, D. D., PH. D., OF THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

We bring to a close this evening one of the most successful meetings in the annals of the Catholic Educational Association. The purpose of this Association is expressed in its title. It is educational and it is Catholic. It treats of all the various and complex problems that present themselves in the field of education. It looks at them calmly, and it looks at them in the light not only of educational experience, but also of our Catholic Faith; and in that light it undertakes to solve these problems, not for one day, nor one year, nor one generation, but for all the years and for all the generations to come, so long as man shall need to walk in the light of faith and with the help of education towards his eternal home with God.

The way in which the Association undertakes to solve these problems, the spirit and the method which direct our efforts, must be very clear to all those who have followed our program and its execution during the past three days. You must have noted this one feature, namely, that Catholic educators are not afraid to face a question. We do not disguise the fact or try to hide from ourselves that education has difficulties; but we look those difficulties squarely in the face and we seek counsel frankly, candidly, of each other, and when the various expressions of opinion have been duly weighed, then the Association as such gives voice, at least in the way of advice or of suggestion, for the betterment of our educational work.

But underlying all these evidences of method, back of all the discussions that have filled these three days, there is something that is more essential, something that you could not but notice, and that is that with us Catholics education and religion are inseparably bound together. They may not be reiterated at

every moment; they may not be stated in so many terms by every speaker who appears on this platform; that is not necessary; but the keynote, the motive that runs through all the work of this Association, whether in this great city or in any other part of our country-the motive is one and the same, namely, education must be religious and religion must be educational. It is with this in view that I made bold, when I was asked for a subject, to say, "Religion in Education," and I might have said with equal justice, as I say it now, "Education in and with and through and for religion." Evidently here we have two distinct terms. One is education and the other is religion. I am not going to try even to explain the first of these, namely, education; for I take it for granted that most of you at least have followed the meetings of the Association since Monday, and so much has been said about education, about its meaning, its methods, its ideals, its aims, its practical carrying out, that I really do not see what could be added in the way of a fuller enlightenment, or of a deeper wisdom on a subject which has been so amply discussed. But I do think that the moment is opportune, at the close of this meeting of the Association, to look at the other term in the title.

What is religion? I know that a great many of you will say: he is going back almost to the first page of the catechism, and it is true. And not only to the first page, but to the first line on that page. What is religion? I raise the question here and I present it to you, for this reason: that if we propose to have religion in education or a religious system of education, then evidently the very first requisite is that we should understand very clearly what we mean by religion. It will not do, in a case like this, and in a cause like ours-it will not do to satisfy ourselves with any vague notion of what religion was, or what it is, or what it might be. The moment you make religion a vague thing, an indefinite thing, you take the life out of it. Religion, by its derivation, must be definite, must be clear, must come right down to details, to the facts of life. As long as it simply floats in the air, as long as it tries to get the aeroplane habit, it is not religion; and we as Catholics have and must have a very clear, definite, exact notion of religion when we advocate the teaching of re