not possibly relieve itself of the tax; the tax cannot be thrown on the consumer by increasing the price. Therefore the public can, at any time, take over, in the way of a tax, any part it pleases of the advance which monopoly prices exhibit over what competitive prices would probably be at the time. The only serious difficulty in such an adjustment would be administrative. The taxation described would have to be a state affair, whereas nearly every syndicate traffics in several states. It is precisely at this point that many despair of ever securing justice from these great aggregations of wealth. Congress can not fiscally regulate them, while, should the states attempt to do so, their plans would be so various that any monopoly might be sure of a safe retreat in some state or other. From this perplexity there is a resource, as yet untried, which promises much cooperative, harmonious action by the states thru a joint commission or bureau, securing the taxation of interstate corporations state-wise, yet everywhere according to the same principles. To effectuate a plan like this would surely be a stupendous work, yet it is not beyond the brain power of our countrymen. It thus appears at least not impossible. I think it certainly probable, that in the course of time syndicated industry, already doing so much to accelerate the amassing of wealth by the nation as a whole, will be found not incompatible with a just and advantageous distribution of wealth. This form of industry, in other words, will prove not hostile to the general welfare, but immensely helpful, rather, so far as the possession of wealth can determine general welfare. If we clearly apprehend that thought, we have advanced a good way, for it suggests from the second danger we saw in trusts, the danger that they might, by making industries relatively few, forcing most men to work for salaries or wages, controlling universities, newspapers, and other sources of opinion, reduce the public to a species of vassalage, not unlike that which existed when medieval feudalism was in bloom. The remedy for this state of things, already beginning to exist, lies not in extirpating trusts, which I deem an impossibility, but letting them, under due oversight, go on multiplying wealth. The domineering power now possessed by wealth in this country arises not from its abundance, but from its paucity. The independently wealthy are too few for the public good, not too many. They are so few that they form a clique, easily acting in common, as they have been tempted, and almost forced to do, by the perverse disposition of many to treat every man of considerable wealth as certainly a blackguard or criminal. Multiply the wealth and they will break into hostile camps, each faction calling for adherents, and seeing to it that such are protected, each faction possessing powerful organs for creating opinion, each faction seeking to influence, and actually influencing social legislation. Opinion and action cannot be free in any community till it contains great numbers of citizens independently well off, so that they can champion unpopular ideas and causes without fear of the poorhouse. So, while the primary tendency of syndicated wealth is to place ordinary citizens under a sort of vassalage, its ultimate effect will be to make them, and all others, freer than ever, to liberate minds and bodies, and to restore social and political equilibrium. The snake's skin will cure the snake's bite. This agency of selfishness, this mechanical force for the democratic and equitable distribution of wealth will not, I believe, be left to work alone. Hardening and deadening as the influence of great wealth on character usually is, I look to her arise, in the course of time, from among the wealthiest themselves, armies of chivalrous men and women, with all exemplary ardor for humanity, who will gladly use their wealth in humanity's behalf to beat down wrongs, to tear off common men's fetters, to lift the weights, and remove the clogs and obstacles which now hinder the noble army of the fortuneless from getting on. When a line of production is absolutely subject to a single line of control, the management is little tempted to introduce new machinery, even if the new is known to be superior. In fact, the temptation is the other way. To put in the new machinery means lessened profits this year. It will be the same next year and the next. Like any other sinner the manager waits in vain for a more convenient season. Under competition, the improved gear would have to be put in, no matter what its effect on profits the first year; for, if the old were continued, mills with the new, producing more cheaply, would supply the market, driving the conservative mill entirely out of the business. But, strict monopoly prevailing, there is no competing plant and hence no pressure on you to use up to-date means of production. Inevitable results are (1) monopoly fails of doing its best even as a wealth producer, and (2) that public mentality in the direction of inventiveness to some extent falls off for lack of its old spur. To this last arraignment the advocates of the trust system can reply only (1) that syndicate industry, even if it does not beget wealth as rapidly as itself would do but for the friction spoken of, still turns it out ever so much more rapidly that competitive industry ever did or ever could; and (2) that while this new order of production may unfortunately check that peculiar form of intelligence known as inventiveness, it must at the same time, by vastly multiplying the means of education, reading, travel, reflection, and research, incalculably redound to the intellectual and æsthetic elevation of the race and the advancement of civilization. This search in a few of the widest yawning caves put down in the geographies emboldens me to believe that the earth is not going to cave in right away. The rock beneath us may be porous but it will do to build upon. My country, with all thy faults, I trust thee still; and I have faith in thee, not as a mother dead or dying, but as a mother living, youthful, with promise of indefinite progeny in noble lives and immortal deeds. The nation's past, great as it is, will be surpassed in splendor by the nation's future. Let patriots look up and renew their oath of allegiance. Let each be in the mood of Browning when he wrote his "Home Thoughts from the Sea": "Nobly, nobly Cape Vincent to the northwest died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadix Bay; Bluish mid the burning water, full in face, Trafalgar lay, In the dimmest northeast distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray. The Humane in Education. Extract of Address before the Southern California Teachers' Association by President Benjamin Ide Wheeler of the University of California. Wherever civilization and education have done the most to make individuality self-conscious and rational, there it is that individuality seeks most earnestly to merge itself in the external confessions of membership in the body of the whole. The statement of creeds, the standards of morals, the forms of art men adopt without regard to race and blood, or to climate and natural environment. They have them and hold them as historical endowment, and their lives are formal more than they are rational, are historical more than they are begotten of the day. It is because man is a social being that he is an historical being, and a social being he surely is first and foremost. Pessimism is as false to life as logic is. In human life and in all things human the inspiring, life-giving, creative forces are the inseparable three: hope, and confidence, and sympathy. For human use it is evident that criticism was intended by Providence as a purgative, not a food. The first thing to teach a child is to do what it is told to do, and for the reason that he is told. Our aim in educating is to make the individual more effective for good as a member of human society. An education which accepts this definition of its aim cannot admit itself to be in first line a branch or dependency of biology. Children are little animals surely enough, but it is for our practical purposes immeasurably more important that they are incipient social beings. The call which comes to the Universities from the need of the day is a call for trained men, normal men, not eccentricities, but gentlemen, men of sobriety and good sense, men of health and sanity, men trained in the school of historical mindedness. REMARKS ON THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE. I am very much interested in what seems to be the chief lack in the outfit of the California teachers, that is in the teaching of languages. Instruction in the language is the chief work of our schools. We are, of course, human beings in human society, and our tongue is the chief method of making us members of society, and of course speech is the mark and symbol of civilization. The training that is given in our schools in languages is altogether too firm and too useless. It does not seem to occur to a few as to what language means. Language is a matter of the voice, and a person cannot speak the English language when he does not voice it correctly. It is the simplest language of humanity, but it is and always was something for the voice and ear and not for the printer's ink. Teachers of whatever the language is, must remember that it is the English language that is the chief thing. I fear that we have been led astray somewhat in the last few years by the outspoken desire of some to teach children to think in their own language. I should be very careful that no one should translate out of any language into English leaving the English form hidden, and should be careful lest the work of translating be entered upon uncarefully. No shabby translation should be allowed. I would rather avoid translation than have it done hastily. The chief and best way, perhaps, to acquire the English style, is as expressed in a recent article, to carefully translate out of Greek into English or Latin by written translation. By all means encourage pupils to the written translation of short, distinct and admirable passages from the language you may be teaching. Encourage them to trans. late under a solemn consciousness of their sacred responsibility toward their mother tongue. In other words every teacher of languages is bound to regard himself as a high priest of this religion of the mother tongue. We cannot deal recklessly with that. In these modern days there is no other force which goes toward the construction of the emotional. We have been held together and have been able to assimilate these emotions by reason of our unity of speech. Let us revere it, let us take off our hats before it, let us never be seated before it, let us never forget our solemn responsibility to see that the English language is sacred. It is our national hope; it is that which makes us a people. I would not allow anyone, if I had my way, to teach any language, who had not a scientific knowledge of that language. I would insist upon the teachers being scientifically trained in the history of the languages. One does not know English really unless he knows it historically, and I would not allow any teacher, if I had my way, to teach languages anywhere who was not well schooled in the history of the English language. The important things about the facts which they are dealing with, the teachers ought to know, in order that they might shed abroad the right light, and the right atmosphere may abound. Let the atmosphere of every class-room in the high school and in the primary school, breathe respect and veneration for the mother tongue. The American High School and the German Gymnasium. DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN. President Leland Stanford Jr. University. I do not believe that there will ever be free articulation of the University and the High School, so long as the student is compelled to choose his course in the university before leaving the high school. I believe that the preparation for life and the university are exactly the same thing, and I feel absolutely sure, and I think Mr. Housh does, that a rightly organized system will not compel a child, or parent for the child, to pick out his future course. There is time enough after he has finished the work of the culture college to decide what his work in life is going to be. When I entered college I was the only one of about four hundred who had never been thru the high school, and, as I looked over the work of the others I was led to think that I had entered a gainer. My training was largely that of Special teaching, so that when I entered college I knew these four things very thoroly: French, Botany, Geology, and Modern History. When I compared my disposition to work with the others, it seemed I had the advantage. The things they had most gained in the high school was docility and listlessness. They had learned to do only what they were told to do. It seemed to me, as I looked into their course, that they had acquired these two things from the study of Latin. For it was the one thing for which very few of them cared, and the study of the thing we do not care for, predisposes listlessness. I do not think that Latin ought to be left out of the high school, but I think that the high school would be better if it were. The great majority of high school boys get better training out of several things, than they do out of Latin. And because they do not get what they want is the reason why the high school is becoming a special school. There is no rule that educated men should be controlled by the needs of girls, nor is it well that the teachers of boys should be women, as is now the case. The German system of education consists of what is called the Gymnasium. The German boy is put thru a very rigid course, it is almost a military course. The German Gymnasium is a classical school and Latin and Greek are made very prominent. Everything in the Gymnasium is practically fixed. When the student enters the University he does what he pleases, he studies when he pleases, and he comes up for examinations when he pleases. The University has the most absolute freedom that is known in any school anywhere. The period of transferring from the German Gymnasium to the University is a dangerous one. One third of the graduates work themselves to death, one third study themselves to death, and one third govern Europe. The Gymnasium corresponds to our High School in one particular, it is a local school. The Gymnasium is the local school of Germany. When a student goes to University he goes away from home. The German University corresponds to our University. In the German University the student goes to prepare for his life work, he goes to study one thing. He does not have any curriculum as in our institutions. The German student is further along at any given period than the American student. The American student of eighteen when he enters the University, knows a great many things besides the work of his books. One part of the great effectiveness of the educated American comes from his worldly attention to the management of things. In Germany there has been more or less restraint of this system. A German Professor made the rounds of the Universities of America, and one part of his mission from Germany was to examine into the works of our college system, to see whether the American system has not something that Germany needed. Whether the American college was not something that was missing in Germany. The question was raised whether Germany would not do well to establish schools after the American plan. If such a thing was done it would take away students from the Gymnasium. A student looses three-fourths of his college course if he tries to live at home and attend college. So the college ought to be so placed that the student cannot live at home and attend. Our colleges have grown up to meet our needs and our purposes and to develop something that the people of the outside world can afford to look at and study. There is a great deal that Europe can learn from our system Higher Education, Old and New. DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN. I wish to turn attention to the change in the American system of education of the last twenty years. A German has characterized the American system as one lacking system. The university in America had its impetus from religion. A university is a place where the chief work is original research or investigation. Most of the work done in Berkeley or Stanford is not real university work. The high school is not, and should not, be merely a feeder for the university; it should be a feeder for life. These two objects of the high school will soon coincide, for it will soon be necessary for every young man to have a university training. From another source than the state university come the technical schools. Our educational system is not a real system. James Bryce truly says that of all |