Mr. FLETCHER. The rank and file of the voters.

The CHAIRMAN. The Parent-Teacher Associations are on record in favor of the bill.

Mr. FENN. Every town in Connecticut has a Parent-Teacher Association, but I have not had a communication from one or from a single layman in my district with regard to this bill. If there was a great demand for this bill it would come from the people in our respective districts who would write to their Congressmen. My secretary tells me of hundreds of letters I have had in regard to the increase in the Navy. The lay people of my district take a great interest in that and there have been innumerable letters either in favor of a large Navy or opposed to it, but in regard to this matter I have not received a single letter except a communication from my State Board of Education which I filed in the hearing a couple of years ago opposing it. Regarding the great demand for this bill, as suggested by my colleague, these solicitations, to use that term, have come from the great organized bodies throughout the country but not from people in the districts, to whom Congressmen look for advice concerning what the people want. It is a singular thing to me that I have not received a single communciation in regard to this bill.

Mr. BLACK. I received more when we carried money in the bill but since the money has dropped out and the bill is purely a research affair, interest has dropped off.

Mr. MONAST. I have received 500 to 600 petitions against it from Rhode Island people.

Mr. FLETCHER. The requests should come from the people and they should give some indication that they want such legislation enacted.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. They have done that.

Mr. FLETCHER. I am sorry but, I must say that they have not. Doctor MACCRACKEN. The Y. W. C. A. in convention in California this week voted in favor of a department of education as one of the important things to be sought. They represent a lot of people.

Mr. FENN. When they come home they do not write to their Congressmen about it.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. The matter has been before Congress ten years and perhaps people have gotten tired of writing.

Mr. BLACK. At one time they were pressing the Federal aid. That was the all-important feature of the bill. When they found they could not get that but might get the first half of the bill, the less important part, the department of education, with a secretary, sitting with the President in the Cabinet meeting, that changed it. Some of them do not agree with the witness about the first part, Federal aid to education proposition. That is the first part, the Federal aid and the Federal aid part failed.

The CHAIRMAN. Before the hearings are over I will file a list of telegrams from all parts of the country and many of them will undoubtedly be from constituents of the Members who have not been hearing directly from their districts.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. I will say for my own profession, the profession of college teaching and administration, that the majority is overwhelmingly in favor of the bill.

Mr. BLACK. A great number of the leading educators in the colleges of the country are against it.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. More especially in the large universities of the East.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I am wondering if ill-advised propaganda may not have raised a great many false issues that have had a great deal to do with the failure of Congress to pass this legislation.

Mr. BLACK. Ill-advised, from what side?

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Sending out propaganda that tends to create feelings and prejudices which the bill does not warrant either for or against.

Mr. SEARS. I am interested in this bill. Miss Belle Ryan, one of the very important women in Omaha, who has been assistant superintendent of schools there for many years, came on here and wanted to see the committee on the subject, but Mr. Reed was not in town and the committee could not get together on short notice, so she left but urged me to support the bill and I told her I would do so. I am not a college man myself. I presume all the rest of you are, so I myself take a birdseye view of things. I suppose that, concretely, your association is one that realizes that the parents have very largely turned the children over to the schools. That is true?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Turn the children over to the schools? Mr. SEARS. Yes, for certain purposes. Every teacher has realized that the parents of many children do not devote as much attention to school activities as the teachers would like to have them give.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. We have just opened in New York a great Parent-Teacher Association hall occupying three floors, bigger than any economic interest has put up.

Mr. SEARS. The American people have not taken such a daily constant interest in the schools as the parents ought to have.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. The parents that I know are all very much interested. Their interests center on their children.

Mr. SEARS. I know that.

mind.

You have not answered what I have in

Mr. BLACK. With all the fads and fancies introduced in schools by educational experts, the parents are giving a great part of their time in the evenings to giving their children elementary instruction in the broad propositions.

Mr. SEARS. I am not attacking this in any way. The question I will ask you will be friendly, not unfriendly. Your teaching associations and organizations think there should be a place in the Cabinet for education because it is the greatest business in the United States. Is that true?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes.

Mr. SEARS. And there was not a general demand for the Department of Labor or the Department of Commerce by the people at the times those departments were ordained. That is correct?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. That is true. There was a great deal of opposition to the establishment of the Department of Commerce and the Department of Agriculture at the time.

Mr. SEARS. And at the present time no one would favor doing away with either of those departments, because they can all now see the great benefit of them..

Doctor MACCRACKEN. When the argument is made that it should be a bureau of education, I say if they will put agriculture and commerce and labor bureaus in the Department of Interior that education will agree to the same basis.

Mr. SEARS. I think you realize that the great benefit that the Department of Agriculture has been to the people of the United States is by reason of things going out and magnifying the importance of the general subject of farming.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes.

Mr. SEARS. It has magnified the importance of the farmer as a business man.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes.

Mr. SEARS. It has given his problems a more respectful hearing in the minds of the people, and you would expect that influence to go out and results to follow with respect to education generally, would you not?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes.

Mr. SEARS. That would make it uniform all over the country. For instance, you can go to places in some parts of the world, 40 miles apart, or at least 100 miles apart or a shorter distance, so I have been told, where people can hardly talk and understand one another, but one of the glories of this country is that our lines of national thought and our lines of education have been such that no matter where we go we use the same idioms of expression, the same line of words of common un drstanding, which gives a national integrity in our lines of thought. Those things have a bearing with you in your desire that education should have a seat in the Cabinet, known as the department of education?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes.

Mr. SEARS. I can see that those things will follow and the importance that is there. I can see how this would develop and not take away. I am a stickler myself for local self-government. I would not for a minute allow a condition to exist where that local integrity was not maintained. I want the educational systems of this country developed, whether Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, or anything else, so that things will go out harmoniously and properly and not arbitrarily, and not have the Department of Agriculture or any department sticking its nose into local affairs or into local conditions. You have no understanding, have you, that there is a desire to have that busybody influence exerted in the proposed department of education? Mr. DOUGLASS. Snoopers.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. No. The fact that State superintendents of education, who are supreme in each State, want it, shows they have nothing in their minds in the way of fear of domination. They are the only ones who would receive orders if there are any orders to be sent out.

Mr. DOUGLASS. Do you think education has fallen down in this country?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. No, I think as Doctor Davidson said, we have made great progress but not as great as we might have made. It is a question whether we get our boys as far along in the schools in the same number of years. I was a student in Germany myself and my experience is that we are not as far along in everything as they are.

Mr. DOUGLASS. Do you find the Germans are better citizens than the American boys are?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. No.

Mr. FENN. You would not want to apply that old system in Germany here, that imperial system?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. No, I think that is too uniform.

Mr. FENN. What is there that made you make the comparison that you consider the German boys better educated than the American boys?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. That was not my exact remark.

Mr. FENN. Would you like to have that implication stand? Doctor MACCRACKEN. Boys of the same age are further along than American boys.

Mr. DOUGLASS. What kind of knowledge?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Book knowledge.

Mr. DOUGLASS. Character comes in, too, and morals.

Mr. FENN. Why do we put the flag up every day on the schools? Doctor MACCRACKEN. When we come to Washington and want a department of education we are told it has nothing to do with the General Government. So when you want to fly the flag over the school houses, then it ought to be the State flag.

Mr. FENN. No, the national flag as it is now.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. In the school the teacher is supposed to teach patriotism. That is where patriotism is cultivated. When I teach patriotism I am interested in the National Government and my interest ought to have the same objective at Washington manifested in this way, but you say no, it is only for farmers and workingmen, labor and agriculture.

Mr. FENN. Why should it be a department of education rather than some other agency? That is the crucial question for the committee to understand.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Why would not a bureau be sufficient?

Mr. FENN. By implication; why has the bureau fallen down, and why should a department be added?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Lack of money is the answer to the first part of your question.

Mr. FENN. Why could not we appropriate money for the bureau if the bureau asked it?

Mr. BLACK. That is the trouble.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. The bureau has asked it again and again and has been refused. It can not go to the Budget; that responsibility rests entirely with the Secretary of the Interior.

Mr. FENN. Then Congress does not want them to have it.
Doctor MACCRACKEN. Congress does not vote on this.

Mr. BLACK. There is no difficulty about the American flag. Some might want the green flag.

Mr. SEARS. As a matter of fact, I do not suppose the bureau has fallen down, but is only functioning according to its condition.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. How much money do you give it? You give it $300,000, and you have voted $6,000,000 for vocational edu

cation.

Mr. BLACK. We ought to give this $6,000,000 if he goes into the Cabinet and sits with the President?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Educational research ought to get $6,000,000.

Mr. BLACK. The Secretary of Education could get his facts then? Mr. FENN. Is not the reason for it that the States contribute themselves to maintain their own educational facilities? Is not that the reason that great appropriations by Congress are not made.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. They are made. Congress is spending $40,000,000 a year.

Mr. FENN. Well and good.

Mr. BLACK. We will have to look into that.

The CHAIRMAN. What university did you attend?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. The University of Halle.

The CHAIRMAN. What per cent of the German boys attend that type of school?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. A very small per cent.

Mr. BLACK. You do not think there is such a heavy demand for this, do you, that we should get excited?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. The matter was of enough importance to be put in the last Republican platform.

The CHAIRMAN. The President also recommended it in his message to Congress.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. The joint committee of the House and Senate recommended it.

Mr. DOUGLASS. I am interested along this line. As you say education is not mere book knowledge.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. No.

Mr. DOUGLASS. It goes into the question of morals and character of the student.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes.

Mr. DOUGLASS. How is this bill going to improve the morals and character of the student body?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. That is a difficult question to answer offhand.

Mr. DOUGLASS. It is hard to answer. Doctor MACCRACKEN. Yes. It is not only difficult to answer with regard to the Secretary of Education but with regard to college presidents.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I will ask you this question and I invite the attention of my distinguished friend from Omaha to it. If we pass this bill as it is written, and it should function as you hope it will, will not the State just as this bill begins to function, have to, relatively speaking, surrender certain of its supervisory control over schools? Doctor MACCRACKEN. Not at all.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do you think there will be a conflict?
Doctor MACCRACKEN. No, sir.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. There will be no tendency for a centralized power to bring into line the forces that control the States' policy on education.

Doctor MACCRACKEN. No; I think not. The provision of a national council gives the State superintendents opportunity to advise the Secretary. It might increase their power because of their being brought together in a unified force.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do you not feel the Government bureaus get very jealous about their prerogatives and are very insistent that their mandates and edicts be followed?

Doctor MACCRACKEN. There have been instances of bureaucratic control.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Yes, and unfortunately we have no ground to hope they will cease in the future.