on the road. A frequent complaint is that children have to start too early.

In contrasting the new plan with the old, and after several years' experience in Tippecanoe County, Mr. Crider says: "The complaints about consolidation, as I see it, are not more numerous nor as serious as the complaints made about poor work and inexperienced teachers under the old plan. The greatest proof that centralization gives general satisfaction is that these fifty-four schools are not missed."

In 1899 there were 164 township teachers in Tippecanoe County. In 1906 there were 133 with nearly one-half the schools of the county abandoned.

In Wea Township six wagons, each heated by a stove and made comfortable, are used to convey the one hundred pupils to a modern, central building heated by a furnace and provided with all the necessary appliances of a well-equipped city school. A well-selected library of nearly one thousand volumes is one of the great advantages of this school. The trustees have built a barn. large enough for ten horses and buggies for the high-school pupils who drive. One teacher who can do high-grade music work is employed to give instruction to all the pupils of the school.

Lauramie Township employs nine wagons whose drivers are carefully selected and their routes carefully laid out. One feature of their contract should be generally adopted :-every driver whose route crosses a railroad is required to get out of the hack and lead the team across the track, thus avoiding all chance of being run down by a train.

Shelby Township, after four years of experience with consolidation, makes the following report: (a) It has made it possible to increase the length of the term from 61⁄2 months to 71⁄2 months. (b) Schools made better. Pupils placed in larger classes, which permitted a fuller discussion of the lesson. It gave them a chance to measure themselves with others. (c) Interest raised in the school. Parents quick to realize the advantages and are anxious to keep their children in the high school. (d) The building, one of the finest in the county, has a large assembly room for lectures, public meetings, etc. (e) High school of four years. Graduates

receive credit for work done in the high school in nearly every college and university in the state.

Mr. S. D. Symmes, trustee of Union Township, Montgomery County, says: "The success of the consolidated school is in getting the children to and from school in the most approved way and in the shortest time. Our drivers are men of good reputation and are paid good wages. Each route is run on schedule time, so that the children know to the minute when the wagon

TRANSPORTATION WAGON, DELPHI WAGON WORKS

will arrive, and thus they can be ready to go. Drivers are not expected to wait over two minutes for children to get ready. They carry a book which shows the time they arrive at every home. Routes are from four to six miles in length and can be made in an hour and a half. The wagons are made specially for the conveyance of pupils, having a door and steps at the back, a door on the side for the driver, a window in front, roll side curtains, and are provided with foot warmers, lap robes, etc.

Lima, Lagrange County, a village of about six hundred population, gives the following interesting account of her experience with consolidation: Seventy per cent. of the children are from the country. Town and school centrally located. Length of

school term is nine months. There are nine years of grade work and four years in the high school. There are 160 pupils in the grades and 90 in the high school, with a total enumeration of 269. This was the first township high school in the state to be commissioned by the State Board of Education. It is placed on the accredited list of the North Central Association. It employs a special teacher of music and there are two pianos in the high school and an organ in each grade room. The high school maintains choruses and orchestra, and a glee club. There is a school hall with a raised floor and an equipped stage. A $400 lecture course is sustained. The school is provided with a library and reading room with one thousand volumes and a paid librarian; a laboratory well equipped for scientific investigation; a school garden of two hundred plats for the study of agriculture throughout the grades and high school; a free kindergarten and an athletic field; a five-acre playground and a separate building for gymnasium, well equipped.

There are four teachers in the high school-all college graduates, and five professionally trained teachers in the grades. The high-school course of study includes four years each of English, Science, Music, and Latin; three years each in mathematics, history, and German; common branch "review," household science, bookkeeping, public speaking and agriculture.

The following show conditions in the centralized school of Lima township:

One of the most remarkable schools in Indiana is located at Graysville, a small village in Sullivan County. This school is of unusual interest as a rural school from the point of view of the large amount of industrial work which is being done through

out all its departments. Friday afternoon is given up to industrial work in all the departments of the school. The rest that is accomplished in the industrial line is all done outside of school hours at noons and recesses, after school hours at night and on Saturdays.

Some of the things that are being attempted are sewing and stitching, basket weaving, venetian iron, pounding brass and copper, book-binding, rug-weaving and leather-tooling for the

girls; cabinet-work, carpenter-work, cement-laying, venetian iron, pounding brass and copper, wood-carving, setting type and printing, leather-tooling and book-binding for the boys. There are tools for doing all this work in the school, some owned by the township, some owned by the principal, and some by the pupils. Immediately adjoining the school-yard is a two-story building which has been fitted up for a workroom for the boys, and here, at noon and recesses, at night and on Saturdays, some twenty boys are busy. Some of this work is done for the township in the way of cement walks around the schoolhouse, building of outhouses, making bookcases, etc. The industrial work is correlated with

the textbook work in the various subjects in a way that not only gives a larger and richer meaning to these subjects but also an added value to every production in the shop.

These are some of the advantages which the great state of Indiana, great at least in an educational way, furnishes to more than a quarter of a million country boys and girls.

From the large number of reports from all parts of the country, from state superintendents of public instruction, from county superintendents, from principals of consolidated schools, from the parents and from the children themselves, wherever consolidation has been tried, can be gleaned this common and almost unanimous sentiment which can be summed up under three heads. First, better health, less exposure in going to and returning from school, better heat, better light, better ventilation, and better sanitary conditions. Second, better education: morally, socially, and intellectually. Third, greater economy of money, time, and effort.

Perhaps the best proof of the universal satisfaction with which consolidation meets, is the fact that so few schools ever return to the old plan, no matter how little or how great the cost to make the experiment. From the large number of reports examined, there was found but one school out of the several hundred that have tried the new plan that has gone back to the small, oneteacher school and that was because of an accident in transportation and before the new plan had been given a fair trial.

IV. ADVANTAGES OF CONSOLIDATION

To sum up, then, the many advantages which the system of consolidation and transportation offers:

1. Consolidation provides for better and more modern school buildings: better lighted, better heated, better ventilated, with better sanitary conditions; all of which tend to improve and promote the health interests of the school and of the community.

2. Consolidation is more economical than the many small schools. Under the consolidated system, the cost is less for repairs, fuel, apparatus, etc. Consolidation lessens the expense and equalizes, more nearly, the cost.

3. Consolidation provides for better teachers and, because of