Nevertheless, the idea of compulsory insurance is in the air, and the principle is accepted by an ever-increasing number; so that the project, far from being killed by the rejection of the law of 1899, simply made place for the continued discussion and study of the matter. Among the new plans proposed, it may be interesting to glance a moment at that of Louis Ullmo. This project is remarkable from the fact that it would not commence obligatory insurance with the intelligent, prudent laborers, who by careful saving could make provision for the day of misfortune or for helpless old age, but that it would build a social pyramid of the insured, beginning with the poorest, the tramps, the professional paupers, as well as those reduced to misery by misfortune.

Says the author: "The insurance of the destitute, providing for old age, sickness, and accident, such is the aim of obligatory insurance." This insurance he would have paid out of the public revenue, on the principle that every individual may possibly fall into misfortune, and that, therefore, in the days of his prosperity he should contribute to the common fund of insurance, on which some day he may have to call for aid. Above the destitute, this scheme places the laborers, clerks, and small employers, and these he would have united in mutual insurance societies; while those in easy circumstances, forming the top of the pyramid, should insure themselves at will in independent companies, as at present. Such is the project which, amplified and supported by specious arguments, was recently offered to the Swiss public in attractive pamphlet forma project founded on a spirit of large charity, but which overlooks the innate defects of human nature, and deprives the masses of the impulse to honest effort, which only the feeling of personal responsibility affords.

In contrast to such a proposed premium on pauperism, the canton of Neuchâtel passed the law of March 29, 1898, which declares its object to be to insure under the most favorable conditions, and to encourage and popularize provident habits by means of a judicious and valid organization. Three kinds of insurance are provided for: (1) life; (2) life annuities payable monthly after the age of sixty years; and (3) mixed, that is, life insurance in case the insured dies before the age of sixty, or annuity after reaching that age, or capitalizing the annuity on arriving at sixty. The benefits of this State insurance are limited to sums varying from 100 to 5,000 francs for life insurance, and from 30 to 100 francs monthly payments for the annuities. Among the exceptional features of this system may be noted that no one under eighteen years of age is eligible, and that no account is taken of the condition of the health of

the insured, with the exception that those in poor health cannot benefit from the insurance until after paying premiums for three years. But in case they die before the expiration of that period, the sums paid by them will be reimbursed to their heirs.

Furthermore, when a person once insured stops payments, he does not lose all that he has hitherto paid. On the contrary, the canton of Neuchâtel, in such cases, calculates the capitalized value of the sums paid, and places that to the credit of the insured, to be paid to his heirs in case of death, or to himself if he reached sixty years of age. The cantonal government pays the expenses of administration, also the extra risk of admitting those not in good health; and it furthermore pays from five to twenty per cent of the premiums, according to circumstances, of the sums insured up to 500 francs capital and 30 francs monthly payment of annuities.

The law went into effect February 1, 1899, and the first report of its operation, dated September 22, 1900, has just appeared in print. Under the provisions of the law, five local mutual insurance companies turned over their policies and their funds, amounting nominally to 681,259 francs, to the new government institution. The premiums due for the year on all the insured amounted to 166,804 francs; interest on capital, 17,042 francs; and the government subvention was 96,406 francs. Payments to insured and their heirs amounted to 133,714 francs; and the cost of the first installation, furniture, etc., with recognized losses on the funds of the mutual insurance companies, were all placed in the profit and loss account. Yet the net profits of the eleven months' operation were 57,543 francs, which sum was added to the reserve. After the reserve has attained certain proportions, the surplus is to be applied to the reduction of the premiums to be paid by the insured.

On December 31, 1899, the number of life insurance policies was 7,971, aggregating 6,722,757 francs, including 3,410 policies of 500 francs, and 3,781 of 1,000 francs each. Of mixed policies there were but 627, aggregating 996,379 francs. But it should be remarked that the law permits the change from one kind of insurance to another; and the experience of the first year goes to show that many of the insured will take advantage of this feature, to capitalize their insurance on arriving at the age of sixty years. For a nuities, there were only 28 policies, calling for monthly payments aggregating 1,290 francs.

WALTER B. SCAIFE.

THE SUPERINTENDENT FROM THE PRIMARY TEACHER'S POINT OF VIEW.

THE ways in which a superintendent can hinder or help a primary teacher are many. That a superintendent would intentionally hinder any teacher is, however, unworthy of a moment's notice. Nevertheless, the hindering ways are distressing and multifarious; and the only consolation lies in the fact that no one man has ever yet been able to compass them all. But let us particularize.

In the first place, there is the superintendent with a hobby. A large percentage of our superior officers ride a gayly caparisoned, dappled steed that gallops industriously and gracefully from September to June without getting anywhere. Having selected the primary department as the best training ground, he brings in his hobby and winds it up. Sadder still, he keeps it wound up.

By a system of reasoning bearing his private monogram our superintendent has arrived at the conclusion that arithmetic, for example, is the central subject about which all other studies group and find their true relation. The primary teacher receives her instructions accordingly. She must twist and turn every subject-reading, language, phonics, art, or science—until she is able to discover some attributes of quantity or magnitude, or both. She must do this regardless of their obscurity or their remoteness from the central point in the lesson. The numerical attributes must be dragged forth, and the children set to find the relations existing between them. They are to lisp in numbers whether they come or not.

Their efforts at art the crude little drawings done in impossible colors, so dear to the heart of the teacher are an offence and an abomination to this superintendent. He will have none of these drawings, he avows, “because they are neither true nor exact." There must be no idle wanderings in the field of fancy, where the lilies and daisies run riot and smother the sturdy seeds of accuracy he has sown.

In music he requiries the pupils to give with absolute correctness and oily glibness the relative values of notes down to the hemi-demisemi-quaver: they must beat the time with an emphasis and precision

which the superintendent can recognize afar off. It matters not about their strident tones and lack of expression. The mathematical ideas must be developed first, and the others will develop spontaneously. If they shouldn't happen to do so, it is of no consequence. The one thing needful is being done the children are preparing to meet a world that measures much and carols little.

It is hard to leave the hobbyist right here without saying some good things about him; but we must pass on to consider the ways of his colleague, the experimenter the superintendent who has no hobby, but is making strenuous efforts to find one. Most likely he is a graduate of some higher institution of learning. He flourishes a crackling diploma and jingles medals galore for football and oratory; but the great requisite, pedagogical insight, he has never come in sight of, not even at long range. A tactful primary teacher can manage a superintendent with one hobby, without serious inconvenience to herself or permanent injury to her pupils; but when it comes to serving under a hobby hunter, or chronic experimenter, the case is much less favorable.

A teacher so situated was once asked if her superintendent had as yet succeeded in finding the primary panacea.

"No," she replied, wearily. "He is as restless and fanciful as a bantam hunting its first nest." And then she went on to describe their preliminary faculty meeting and the superintendent's inaugural address. How he impressed upon them the grave responsibility resting on the primary teacher, who must lay the corner-stone of the pupil's future career, and build the foundation of twelve, possibly fifteen, years of scholastic work! How he urged them to select their materials with the greatest care! How he besought them to build upon the solid rock, to be thoughtful, steadfast, and kind to these confiding, innocent babes, fresh from their mothers' loving arms for-"Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." There were tears in his classic eyes.

He said all that, and straightway turned that teacher's little kingdom into an experimental station, as if these "confiding, innocent babes” were so many incubated chicks, or Belgian hares, or scared rabbits. Having missed the main issue himself, he fell an easy prey to all the educational theories afloat. One week he had the teacher put numbers first on the programme, because he had just read that the reasoning faculties were brightest in the early morning. The next week he read that memory held the boards from 9 A.M. until 2 P.M., at which latter hour the imprisoned reason stalked forth and reigned till the sun went down. The programme was changed again.

At another time he appeared before the long-suffering teacher with an expression such as Columbus wore when he touched San Salvador. He had discovered that no child was able to make the proper associations for more than one new word a day. For proof he showed her an article in an obscure publication, and bade her read it. "It was sound," he said. "It was all sound," she thought. To carry out the theory of that stray article, he requested that thereafter she should teach but one new word per day.

แ "Hers not to make reply,
Hers not to reason why,
Hers but to do and cry!"

After that she got out the glossy manual which the superintendent had compiled all by his lone self, and she read: "Grade A must finish the First Reader in one year." Now there were 176 days in that school year, and there were 417 different words in the reader. One word a day! How could she manage it?

Happily, the "one-a-day " plan was soon displaced by a scheme of grander proportions. This time he came heralded by a rattling, rumbling sound that brought the pupils up standing. Upon his face a great radiance shone; from his neck a tape line dangled; in his left hand swung a pair of prodigious calipers; with his right he trundled a platform scale loaded with apparatus for eye tests and ear tests, with height gauges, ergometers, thermometers, spirometers, etc. The regular recitations were suspended while the instruments were exhibited and explained, and a few of the braver children measured and tested. The teacher was furnished with a new basis of classification and promotion, in which the physical record played an important rôle. She was ordered not to admit to the school in future pupils who should fall below certain standards of weight and measure.

No attack should be made upon judicious experiments. Without them teaching would be but a synonym for groove-running. But there is abundant reason for objecting most emphatically: (1) To a superintendent's utter lack of discrimination between good theories and bad ones; (2) to his hap-hazard way of springing experiments upon a school without consulting the teacher; and (3) to the rapidity with which he crowds theories upon a teacher, without allowing her time to weave even the worthy ones into her own originating force.

In this world of extremes, the experimenter is usually followed by the fossil, who calls himself a conservative. If he has fallen into this antiquated state from lack of energy or from lack of ability, he amounts to