of our surroundings and conditions of citizenship than we have ever yet atlife, let us think of the millions of tained. Our schools must now be so young men who have left good positions and comfortable homes that our liberty, homes and institutions may be safeguarded. It sometimes helps us to appreciate our own blessings to put ourselves in the other fellow's place. sustained and improved as to enable them better to prepare our boys and girls for life and work in the new age which will follow the close of the war and the coming of peace. No boys and girls must now be neglected or exploited for selfish ends. In all this probability no others can be quite so helpful as the club women of the country, most of whom are also mothers of children. For this reason I am taking the liberty o! suggesting to them that in all women's clubs this should be made a subject of discussion at their first meetings this fall and from time to time throughout the year; a suggestion to which they will, I feel quite sure, respond heartily and gladly. P. P. CLAXTON, Commissioner of Education. AN APPEAL TO CLUB WOMEN. Everywhere there seems to be fear lest our schools of all kinds and grades, and especially the public schools, will suffer this year because of conditions growing out of our en- SCHOOLS AND FOOD PRODUCtrance into the war. On the other hand, both for the present defense and for the future welfare of our country, as well as for the individual benefit of the children, it is of the greatest importance that the schools shall be maintained in their full efciency, both as to standards of work and attendance of children. TION. In rural sections of the country, farm work is the most active and inveterate enemy of school attendance, according to the August number of the Child Labor Bulletin which is devot ed mainly to a discussion of the ef fect of farm work on school attendance in times both of peace and of While the war continues there will war. The first study was made in Okbe many unusual temptations to many lahoma last year and was completed kinds of juvenile delinquencies. before the United States entered the Prompt and regular attendance at war. It is part of the broad survey of school and proper employment during the employment of children on farms out-of-school hours will be the chil- the National Child Labor Committee dren's surest protection against such is making and is representative of temptations. conditions existing in normal times. When the boys and girls now of It was found in Oklahoma that school age have reached manhood and farm work was responsible for more womanhood there will be need for a absences from school than all other higher standard of intelligence, skill, causes combined-73,121 days of aband wisdom for the work of life and sence being attributed to it and only for the duties and responsibilities of 44,148 days to illness, the next larg says the report, "but there is very In est group. "This shows how serious superintendents acted at once on the a factor labor is in the breaking down suggestion. "There can be no quesof rural school attendance," says the tion of the patriotic motives that led report, "especially as the total of the State superintendents of educadays absent is much more than a tion to advise local officials to excuse third of the total days present." The children from school for farm work," result of absence due to farm work is shown most clearly in the figures for retardation given in the report. Fif- grave question whether the action ty-one per cent of the farm workers taken by these officials was not shortare behind in their grade, while less sighter patriotism which will do the than 25 per cent of those absent be- country more harm than good." cause of illness, distance, and bad most of the States investigated by weather were retarded and only 12.6 the Committee it was found that per cent of these who attended regularly. "When in connection with the children were permitted to leave withfact that farm workers progress most out any preliminary inquiry into the slowly it is remembered that they lose need for their services, investigation more school time than all the other of the places they were to work, progroups combined, we are confronted vision for keeping track of them to by a relation showing a loigcal sequence," says the report. "Children know how many had left and where can not do good school work unless they were, or physical examination they attend regularly and the oftener of those who left to see that they they are absent the lower their standing will be." To meet the situation the report recommends that the compulsory education law be strengthened by making it apply to the entire term instead of to only two-thirds of it, as is the case at present, and that a larger unit of organization than the local district be adopted as it is impossible to have the law enforced where local officials have to prosecute their own neighbors if they make any attempt to enforce it. The tendency of war to aggravate the conditions found in normal times is brought out in another article on "The Child's Part in Food Production," based on an inquiry into the extent to which children have been excused from school to engage in agriculture as a patriotic service. Much was said last spring of the necessity for using school children to solve the farm labor problem and many school were strong enough to do farm work. As a result few superintendents of education had any idea how many children were excused, where they were, how much they were paid, what conditions they were living under, or whether they would ever return to school. The report points out that if the school officials are permitted to join with the farmer in putting crops before school attendance without any attempt to safeguard the children, conditions found to exist in normal times will be greatly aggravated and at the end of the war the younger generation on whom will fall the burden of carrying on the work of the country will be handicapped by lack of sufficient education and premature labor. In England it was found that wherever adequate wages were offered there were enough adults available to make it unnecessary to use young children on the farms. America must feed the world The war in Europe will be won on the farms of America! Increase the acreage! Improve the yield! Conserve the product! A GREAT COMMERCIAL CON- has done this through the aid of CERN AS AN EDUCATIONAL charts, lantern slides, lectures and acFORCE. tual demonstrations, and at an expense to itself which has been enormous. In doing this it has not waited for an appeal from the people, but has, through wide publicity and advertising, made known its willingness to help, and has urged the country to take advantage of the opportunities offered. "The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies and especially of foodstuffs." "Without abundant food alike for the armies and people now at war the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail," are some of the words in which President Wilson addressed the farmers of the country in his "Appeal to His Fellow Countrymen” when the die had been cast and we were definitely launched into the sea of war. A visit to the Extension Department of the I. H. C. was a revelation to the writer. He found it to be a veritable power house of enthusiasm. Everyone connected with it was an expert in the line assigned; they were not mere employees working for salaries, but inspired apostles of improvement in the field of agriculture and community betterment. They were not salesmen with goods to exhibit and exploit. There was nothing to sell in this huge department occupying large space in the great Harvester Building. There were ideas and The gospel of preparedness now be- ideals in plenty, ready-made and ing preached with such deserved fer- ready-to-send-out over the country vor is merely a new version of the wherever there was demand, but not, gospel of improvement promulgated for a price, except the reward that for years by the great International comes in the form of consciousness of Harvester Company, through their worthy service. Aricultural Extension Department, of which Professor Perry G. Holden, famous agricultural educator, is director. These and many others have been the appeals of the past few strenuous months. Their creed, as stated by themselves is: "The sole object of the Agricultural Extension Department of the International Harvester Company is to help you make your work more effective. It is not a matter of making money out of charts, slides, booklets, or any other material prepared and published by the Department. The Extension Department was not organized to make sales but we do want to work with people who are in earnest, who really want to do something worth while." This Department has done a wonderful work in the past few years and probably no one private agency has done so much in sowing the seed of improved and intensified agriculture, which is now to bear fruit in the time of need. Through its methods it has amplified and emphasized the old saying of, "making two blades of grass grow where one grew before," into making a dozen ears of corn grow How do they do it? The visual where there were none before. It method of education is used. They have compiled and published in the held throughout the country at which form of lectures, charts, and lantern slides the results of the most practical experiments and investigations conducted in America for the past twenty-five years with soil, crops, live stock, seed, insects, plant diseases, home economics, and many other subjects which directly concern the farm, the community, and the home. these charts and slides have been exhibited and these lectures given. Every State in the Union has had more or less of these meetings. We were shown maps marked with the places where meetings have been held. The maps of some of these States with their numerous points indicated looked like maps of the Milky Way. conducted by the Farm Development Bureau of the Memphis Business Men's Club, in which the International Harvester Company under the personal direction of Professor Holden, furnished charts, slides, thirty trained lecturers, and over 1,000,000 pieces of literature for free distribution, and during which some 2,100 meetings were held throughout seventy counties in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Other States have had these intensive campaigns and innumerable counties throughout the Union have been covered thoroughly. We saw many of these charts setThe history of some of the educating forth in more graphic form than tional campaigns conducted under the pages of print could possibly do, the auspices and through the efforts of facts desired to be impressed. A the International Harvester Company large drawing of two pigs starting are marvelous. We cannot speak of out in life under exactly the same many of them, but there was the circumstances, but fed by different Memphis Trade Territory campaign methods, one of which at the end of a certain period weighed 75 lbs. and the other 185 lbs. would make an impression on even the most careless farmer. Another showing one good cow facing forty poor ones and more than equalling them all in profit for a year, is a lesson not easily forgotten. Others which show the value of the corn crop and how to give it the right cultivation for the best results; which show that the annual poultry crop of the country would build two Panama Canals; which give graphic pictures of how to rob the soil and how to enrich it; which show how the fly is a dangerous scourge and how this may be lessened or eliminated; how household economics may be improved to the welafre of all concerned and especially of the housewife; the value of the right kind of education in the school-are merely indications of the wide range of subjects illustrated in these charts. And then there are the lantern slides elab- What has been done with these? While commercial bodies, boards of trade, granges, community clubs and other agencies have co-operated in all these propaganda, it is through the school organization that the larger part has been carried on. The village and rural school, the district or county superintendent, or the progressive local teacher offers a medium for the greatest cultivation of the project. |