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 undrstanding, 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 Čabinet, 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. 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 education. 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? 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. Doctor MACCRACKEN. You have just passed a $6,000,000 appropriation for the Vocational Board. Mr. SEARS. Mr. Leatherwood passed through Nebraska in getting his education. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. It was complete when I got through. Mr. SEARS. We have a department of education in the State government organization. I might suggest that I can not see that the department of agriculture in Nebraska has fallen down in the past because of having a department of education with a seat in the cabinet. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Have you ever found any of your school authorities in any degree running counter to the commissioner of education? Doctor MACCRACKEN. My interest in this subject was not begun. in New York, but out in Missouri in the county of Calloway when I was college president. A state superintendent of schools had just been placed over the local school districts, and the communities which had one-room schoolhouses felt it was an intrusion into their perquisites. The State superintendent asked me to go with him to visit the mountain schools. We drove over a clay road in Calloway County to visit schools and convinced the people that it was not going to hurt them to set up a State superintendent of education. They had been accustomed to run their own districts and pick out their own teachers, but had no standards, and it was felt there ought to be a State superintendent of education. At first they thought it was an unwarranted intrusion into their local rights, and we found the same objections we find against this bill now, when it is charged that the Federal department would override State superintendents of schools. But a progressive system of education has been set up in Missouri, and instead of the old clay roads in Calloway County there are now State roads, subsidized by the Federal Government, from St. Louis to Kansas City, so that now you do not have to be pulled out of the mud when you go through Calloway County. The CHAIRMAN. We will continue with the hearings this afternoon and give the same opportunity to those opposed to the bill that we are now giving to the proponents to be fully heard. I believe you have some more out of town witnesses. Doctor DAVIDSON. Yes. Several other speakers, Mr. Chairman. (Thereupon, at 12.20 o'clock p. m., the committee recessed until 1.30 o'clock p. m.) AFTER RECESS The committee met at 1.40 o'clock p. m., pursuant to recess, Hon. Daniel A. Reed, chairman, presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order; and if there is no objection, we will proceed to the hearing. Doctor DAVIDSON. The next witness to be heard is Dr. John A. H. Keith, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Harrisburg, Pa. STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN A. H. KEITH, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, HARRISBURG, PA. The CHAIRMAN. Doctor Keith. Doctor KEITH. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it might be profitable just to look at the bill itself for a little while to see what it proposes to do; and then as we are doing that let us keep constantly in mind two questions; first, whether or not the thing proposed by the bill is a new thing, and, secondly, what is the relation of all this new or old thing, as you choose, to the thing in the background of many, namely, how does it square with the Constitution itself. I would like to direct your attention for the brief time allotted me to that phase of this question. Turn to page 2 of the bill (H. R. 7) and we find that the first really new thing that is done by this bill is to transfer the Bureau of Education and all that pertains thereto to this new department of education. Certainly there can be nothing in the way of a constitutional question raised when the whole matter is simply the transfer of an existing agency of the Federal Government that has existed since 1867 or 1868 to another location within the Federal Government. Now, on page 3, the second thing is that the Federal Board for Vocational Education, an existing agency, having existed since 1917, is transferred to this new department. If there is any question as to the constitutionality it must lie against the Federal Board for Vocational Education and not against the proposal for a department or against the location of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, now an independent agency within one of the departments of Government. There is, however, in this provision on page 3, regarding the Federal Board for Vocational Education, one new item found in the last sentence of that paragraph. It says, "The Secretary of Education shall be a member of the Federal Board for Vocational Education and ex-officio chairman of said board,” Since the important work of this board is, according to the terms of this bill, to clear through the secretary of education, it becomes important that the secretary of education should be ex-officio chairman of this board, for he will have thereafter to bear a large share of the responsibility for the administration of vocational education throughout the United States. Now the third thing the bill does is found on page 3, subparagraph (d), where the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Howard University for colored youths are transferred from their present independent existence to a department of education. Certainly no question of constitutionality could arise there. Some interesting history clusters around both of these institutions which have been maintained by the Federal Government for many years, but no question of the constitutionality of the appropriations therefor has, so far as I understand, ever been raised. Turn to page 5, section 7, of the bill, and we find that an interdepartmental agency called a Federal conference on education is arranged for. Now we already have various interdepartmental agencies and a conference board made up of each of the existing departments of Government. They meet and discuss the points of contact of one department with another department. They smooth |