the necessary instruction in Latin and Greek to prepare pupils for the university. The people, however, who have furnished the money for the maintenance of the high school have not been content that it should occupy so restricted a field. A greater breadth and variety have been given to its courses from time to time until it has come to be itself a great popular university. It is fitted up, in our cities and larger towns, with a palatial magnificence which only the richest universities can approach. It is provided with laboratories, recitation and lecture rooms, and with library facilities which very few colleges in the land could command forty years ago. The development of the last fifty years is something marvellous. But for the statistics, one even who has witnessed the process with his own eyes could scarcely credit it. In 1852 there were but sixty-four high schools in the Commonwealth. To-day there are two hundred and sixty-two. These afford instruction to forty thousand pupils, of whom thirty thousand are in schools whose average membership is two hundred and upwards. The high school as it is thus equipped and organized has wrought a complete modification, not to say transformation, in our system of education, public and pri

vate, inferior and superior. For in the lower grades the inspiration and spur to activity and achievement come from the high school, while it is no longer the exclusive privilege of the college to prescribe the curriculum and set the pace for the high school, but it is beginning to look longingly towards it and to consider how it can shape its own courses to meet the ever broadening and varying programmes so as to give a liberal training to every aspiring youth who has been substantially prepared. Thus the high school has become the final avenue of approach for every phase of education to which the Commonwealth has lent its sanction, opening outward towards the world and upward towards the university.

It only remains for me to say that a careful survey of the century will convince any unprejudiced observer, not only that the Commonwealth has made vast achievements in the educational field, but that she has been carrying forward an equalizing process designed to place the highest benefits of learning within the reach of rich and poor alike. The impulse of the educational movement has touched all classes. While the people in the more fortunate sections have been pushing forward for the best results in both the instruments and

substance of learning, those in the less fortunate portions of the community have been moved, if possible, by a fiercer ardor not to be left behind in the race for a true ideal and a perfect method. The aim has been to reach a uniform standard of excellence. Still, there are great differences; and these differences must continue under existing conditions. So long as the responsibility for furnishing educational facilities rests with each particular municipality, it will follow that the poorer and less enlightened towns will, as a rule, provide only inferior and ordinary schools.

Here, then, is the point for a great reform. Here is the work marked out for the educational leaders of the next century. To me it seems that the duty of the state is not discharged until all the children have an equal privilege. In a great city like Boston the children of the poorer sections have as good teachers as the children of the rich and fash

ionable quarters. The North End and the West End are on the same plane; Charlestown and East Boston, South Boston and Dorchester are treated as nearly alike as possible. Why should not this principle extend to the entire Commonwealth? Some one will say, "Because that would be interfering with

the principle of local self-government." But that argument was exploded when the district system was abolished. The taxable property of the state would undoubtedly object. It always objects when it is called upon to meet a new expenditure for the public good. But there is no reason why the property of the state, which receives the highest benefits from the education of the people, should not contribute as far as possible to make it equal to all, precisely as for similar reasons within the range of the benefits received it contributes for state highways, parks, sewerage and water-works. Our educational leaders and legislators must look this question in the face, and when they shall consent to give it careful and profound study, they will see to it that Berkshire and Hampshire shall not be separated by a great gulf from Middlesex and Suffolk.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE

MASSACHUSETTS

CLUB, MAY 10, 1902

Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Club:

I count it both a distinction and a privilege to stand in this place and give voice to your welcome to our almost, if not altogether, most distinguished fellow member on his return from a great career in the public service to private life in our good old Commonwealth. I have only one regret, and that I am sure you all share with me, that the honored and beloved President of this Club, Ex-Governor Claflin, is prevented by the infirmities of age from being here to give this welcome in person, which he would do with so much grace and with such genuine, heartfelt sincerity. If it were not an arraignment of the ways of Divine Providence I might also wish that Alanson Beard, that stalwart son of the Green Mountain State, were here to extend his strong right hand to this equally stalwart son of the Pine Tree State. These two men aside, who more than any others embody in our thoughts the ideals for which this Club