How Uncle Sam Wooed His New Conscience IV. HE DISCOVERS ONE MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY WHO FINDS THEORY EASIER THAN PRACTICE Uncle Sam: "Yes, my dear, so I was just telling her, but she prefers books to dishwashing." The first of this series of cartoons appeared in the March number The World Go-Day VOLUME XIV JUNE, 1908 NUMBER 6 W Keep the Schoolhouse Open! E are face to face with two crises-the presidential campaign and vacation. At first sight it would seem as if the former were the more important. It is certainly important enough, but in the long perspective a vacation is almost terrifying to any one but an irrepressible optimist. For vacations help or hurt the citizens of We do not take the matter very seriously. Of course those of us who are sufficiently well-to-do send our children to camps and farms and grandparents and other substitutes for parents. But no matter how great the number of such fortunate persons is, it is all but infinitesimal in comparison with the army of those who can do little or nothing for their children and are not wise enough to do even the little they might. Our society is so broken up into social compartments that she is a rare woman and he a rarer man who stops to think of the millions of boys and girls who during the summer months will have broken training and will be left practically to their own devices and the influence of those who know little and care less about the responsibilities of citizenship. Why should our schools be closed during the summer? Is it to give the teachers a vacation? They certainly need it, but could not substitutes be found? Is it for the sake of economy? What worse economy is there than (Copyright, 1908, by THE WORLD TO-DAY COMPANY.) that which provides conditions which not only lead to the tremendous expense of courts and reformatories, but to the infinitely greater cost of lives that have been ruined through that mischief which Satan finds for idle hands? * tot Boys and girls might be injured by a twelvemonths' application to books? There are other things than books in our education. The vacation school should teach something else than winter school. Why not teach a trade? or play? At any rate boys and girls ought to be kept off the street. And it makes no difference whether the street is in the city or in the small town. A good many of us think that the small town street is as demoralizing as the city street. Notwithstanding all our talk about the new education, our schools still can be improved. But the reform that is needed is not so much in the curriculum in the conception of the very purpose of school. It is all very well to discuss "Frills" and the "Three R's," but let us open our eyes to something more fundamental. The welfare of the community demands training in self-restraint and plain decency. When that happy day for which we look dawns and we all come to our senses, we shall see that the duty of the State is not to teach boys and girls for nine months in the year and then turn them loose for three months; we shall see to it that if fathers and mothers forsake their children then the State shall take them up-into schools, not jails. If it is the duty of the school to keep growing children from bad influences in the winter, it is even more its duty to keep children from evil in the summer. The closed schoolhouse is a standing monument to an imperfect education. It is a guidepost to crime. Dr. Munroe is the inventor of smokeless powder and an authority on explosives. He has written over one hundred books on this and kindred subjects. He is now engaged in testing explosive gases in mines for the United States Government. He is dean of the faculty of graduate studies and head professor of chemistry in George Washington University, president of the American Chemical Society, Fellow of London and Berlin Chemical Societies, and has received from the Sultan of Turkey decoration as Commandant of the Order of Medjidieh |