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Probably the most distinguished and influential superintendent of schools in this country, and especially revered in the West-Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, pictured in the electric runabout in which she goes from school to school. Married teachers are not discriminated against in Chicago, and the records in Mrs. Young's office show that their efficiency marks are as high as those of

unmarried teachers

family and the school at the same time." South Carolina reports with definite negation, "commonly less efficient"; and twenty-one states don't know anything about it and say so. Summarize, and you have six times as much evidence in favor of the married woman teacher as against her-and more ignorance on the subject than the sum of the verdicts for and against!

Whenever the New York Board, or any other school board, gets in a position to present a case against the teacher-mother because of proved inefficiency in the classroom there will be solid ground under foot. People may argue that being kind to the poor is not a function of boards of education, that being grandmother to babies born of teacher-mothers is not their function, but nobody is going to argue that guardianship of the classroom is not their function; nobody is going to deny that teachingefficiency is their concern. When the New York Board stands flat-footedly on classroom efficency it gets support. When it wanders off into the old-fashioned home it gets mixed.

Neither the old-fashioned home nor the old-fashioned child that the old-fashioned mother bore and buried in the old-fashioned way has a chance against today's newfashioned requirements. Bearing twelve children and burying ten in infancy cannot be accepted today as the convincing evidence of upright living that it was once supposed to be. The waste of woman in the old-fashioned way was so merciless that it often took four wives to bring up one man's family. Sentimental reliance upon an old-fashioned phrase like "the old-fashioned home" is an

indefensible way in which to belittle the home of today. In vain for the Board to urge its sociological function in defense of its action in trying to force the new-fashioned teacher-mother back into the old-fashioned home. As for sociological function, the Board was over-plastic, conforming its argument now to this side, now to that, accepting or declining social responsibility according to whether accepting or declining would best help it get rid of the teacher-mother. And what more right has it, one asks, to invade the teacher-mother's home for the avowed purpose of forestalling neglect of her child, than it has to invade the homes of teacherdaughters, teacher-sisters, teacher-nieces, in order to forestall neglect of the thousands of aged mothers, bedridden fathers, paralyzed sisters, afflicted brothers, whom the spinster teachers undoubtedly could care. for better if it were possible to be in two places at once?

There is still another nice question to be weighed in connection with classroom efficiency. It is that question of the spiritual effect of motherhood on teaching power. Other things being equal, which should be able to educate more fully, more finely, the woman whose own child has brought her into more exquisite relation with all childhood, or the childless woman? "It is not merely," said the majority report of the committee on elementary schools, "the formal and routine teaching that a teacher may efficiently give that makes her a good teacher. She has a higher function." With so many people believing that motherhood adds far more to the teacher's complement of efficiency, through making her more of an individual, than it takes away through absence, it is not likely that the Board, when it comes to ultimate decision as to classroom efficiency, will be allowed to forget this self-commitment on the higher function of teaching. It is that higher function that lifts the question of the relative merits of the single teacher and the mother-teacher far above marks of attendance, punctuality, and "pure pedagogy." It is recognition of that higher function that makes you choose one woman rather than another for the teacher of your child.

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'Get off this lawn!" shrieked a woman I knew to a trio of childish interlopers.

"Goodness," said I, "you don't sound as if you exactly liked children."

"I exactly hate them," she said, through

teeth locked on her own tortured soul. Six years in the classroom, every year a longdrawn torment to herself! Do you suppose that sort of thing has or hasn't an effect on classroom efficiency? Yet her marks were high-“a fine disciplinarian," they called her.

"What of this point the Board of Education makes as to the injurious effect of school drudgery on women?" I asked of the dismissed elementary teacher. She turned eyes wide with inquiry toward me. "I don't know what they mean by 'school drudgery.' I never in my life finished a day in school without having received as much as I had given! Why can't people understand that some of us women want to teach because we love to teach?"

When the New York Board found the elementary teacher "guilty" last autumn, the verdict left woman's case in the New York public schools at this point: the woman teacher could marry the civil courts had said so; but she could not bear children; school or child, take your choicethe Board of Education had said so. To challenge this anomalous state of affairs, to make a test case for all women, the elementary teacher filed suit against the Board, made the claim that she had been dismissed for childbearing, submitted the facts on which the claim rested--and waited. Meanwhile the Board, equally determined, issued an order that the city superintendent of schools should list all the women who had had children during 1913. This frightened eleven women into resigning. And then, in the middle of November, came the decision of the Supreme Court, riddling the argument of the Board, sustaining the teacher's plea that she had been tried and convicted of motherhood, and granting her petition for reinstatement. The Board of Education's immediate case crumpled like a house of cards.

In its full significance, however, the question is by no means settled even yet, or even for New York. In its full significance the question is, Have women any economic function except household service and are they to express themselves through professional, industrial, and esthetic relations to life, as well as through motherhood, or are they to be limited to motherhood their one relation to life? It is, patently, a large question, and it may be long before it is settled, but when "settled" it will be settled not only for the woman

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teacher, but for all women of all professions. And it will be settled by the women themselves. As surely as the old, indiscriminate, helplessly acquiescent motherhood is giving way to a new, selective, demandant motherhood, as surely as the ideal of quantity is giving way to the ideal of quality, as surely as the "duty" and the "sac1ifice" of motherhood are giving way to the choice and the glory of motherhood, just so surely will woman more and more insist that it is for her, not for others, to assume direction of her biologic

needs of the child is piling scrapheaps high with many cherished but outworn customs. Can we afford to go backward by holding that marriage and motherhood should keep women out of the schools? function and the expression of her special aptitudes, talents, or genius; for her, not for others, in this changing hour of social and domestic economy for women, to strike the balance between such social service as mothering or teaching and such economic service as housekeeping; for her to say whether motherhood shall be allowed her only if she will nurse and cook and sweep and dust and wash and iron and sew; or, as well, when she has to or elects to, teach or paint or write or sing, or be a manufacturer, a merchant, or a mill-hand.

With "liberate the personality as her watchword. Mme. Montessori has made a world-famous contri

bution to pedagogy. But were she to apply to the New York schools for a position, under the by-laws her availability would depend. not on her teaching

efficiency but on her economic situation

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"Well, you two seem to be great friends," Mrs. Lawrence said graciously, turning from her conversation with

Miss Lord. "This is our cue to sing For You Was Once My Wife, Susan !" Peter suggested

"Saturday's Child"

"Friday's child is loving and giving;

Saturday's child works hard for her living."

By Kathleen Norris

Author of "Mother," "The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne," "Mothering Cecelia," etc.

Illustrated by Arthur I. Keller

Synopsis:-Susan Brown, a young, appealing San Francisco girl with an exhaustless fund of good spirits and goodfellowship, is longing for adventure when Peter Coleman, nephew of the head of the firm, is put into the office of the wholesale drug company where Susan is employed as an under clerk. Peter, young, handsome, magnetic, wealthy, and a great social favorite, fascinates Susan at once. In turn, he is strongly attracted toward her. Their meetings, however, are confined to chance encounters-delicious but fleeting at the office, until Thanksgiving day, when Susan goes with an office friend, Miss Thornton, to the big intercollegiate football game and meets Peter Coleman there with a large party of friends. After the game Susan is asked to go to the Palace Hotel for tea with the others. Once there, however, the cold, snobbish treatment she receives from these society folk blights all poor Susan's joy. Heartsick, she flees from the hotel back to the dingy boarding-house where, since the death of her parents, she has lived with her aunt, Mrs. Lancaster, and the latter's numerous relatives who help conduct the establishment. Later Susan tells

her pitiful little anecdote to Billy Oliver, a brisk, energetic, ambitious young fellow who boards at Mrs. Lancaster's and is the chief means of making Susan forget cares and troubles during her spare hours. But this time Billy is not particularly sympathetic. Susan continues downcast until Christmas comes-and with it a huge bunch of violets from Peter Coleman.

Shortly after this she consents to help Peter, who is leaving town on a pleasure-trip, select some new clothes. Their joyous shopping accomplished, Peter takes her to his own home for tea, and there she meets his aunt, Mrs. Baxter, and when she finally returns to the boarding-house, does so in the Baxter family carriage. This wonderful experience is capped within a few weeks by a meeting with Emily Saunders-one of the girls who was so rude to her at the Palace. Now Miss Saunders is extremely cordial, both to Susan and Billy Oliver, with whom Susan is having a little after theater supper. When Miss Saunders invites Susan to tea it overshadows in her mind all that Billy has been saying of his ambitions and his plans for growing rich. Susan thrills at the prospect of the new vistas she feels opening up before her. With such chances, she thinks, she can fit herself to become a possible wife for Peter Coleman.

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I hold it true, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

On stepping-stones of her dead selves Susan mounted. She wore a preoccupied, responsible air, her voice softened, her manner was almost too sweet, too bright and gentle. She began to take cold, or almost cold, baths, to brush her hair and mend her gloves. She began to say "Not really?" instead of "'S'at-so?" and "It's of no consequence," instead of "It don't matter." She called her long woolen coat, familiarly known as her "sweater," her "field-jacket,'

and pronounced her own name "Syusan." Thorny, Georgianna, and Billy had separately the pleasure of laughing at Susan in these days.

Peter Coleman did not return to San Francisco until the middle of March, but Susan had two of the long, ill-written and ill-spelled letters that are characteristic of the college graduate. It was a wet afternoon in Holy Week when she saw him again. In his gloves and big overcoat, with his hat on the back of his head, he was standing in Mr. Brauer's office, and the electric light, turned on early this dark afternoon, shone full on his handsome, clean-shaven face.

Susan had some bills that she had planned to show to Mr. Brauer this afternoon, and six months ago she would have taken them in to him at once, and been glad of the excuse. But now she dropped her eyes and busied herself with her work. Her heart beat high. She attacked a particularly difficult bill, one she had been avoiding for days, and disposed of it in ten minutes.

A little later she glanced at Mr. Brauer's office. Peter was gone, and Susan felt a sensation of sickness. She looked down a

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