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We need the help through Federal grants in promoting and stimulating, as has been pointed out, and as is well known to be a historic fact, as has been true of the stimulus that comes from Federal grants, and has come over 100 years, over 50 years, and you stimulate the States to a maximum of effort along these several educational lines that are so closely related to our national welfare, as indicated in this bill; that is to say, whatever else education may do, whatever else may have been the aim of education, certainly we agree that illiteracy stands in the way of progress. It stands in the way of good citizenship, and if you think you help us to remove illiteracy from our midst, it has done us a national service. If we can lessen the amount; if we can lessen the amount of actual Americanism and promote the principles, ideals, and traditions of America at her best, if this bill helps to do that, it renders a national service. If this removes what has been found to be a national weakness on the side of limitations, from the standpoint of health, if can we do that service still, it is worthy of our greatest consideration; if we can do something through the agency, the agency provided in this bill for stimulating to a maximum, to the end that in several normal schools and teacher-training institutions throughout the State-it will make an appeal to the best that this country has in its high-school graduates, its rank and file of young men and women going out from high school-if we can draw upon the base, attract to these faculties through the stimulus of Federal aid somehow, the best trained men and women as instructors, that will be on a par in every way with those who teach in our colleges of agriculture and colleges of medicine, law, engineering, and elsewhere; if we make it possible to rapidly approach the standards of a well-trained teacher, with two years at least of training after high-school graduation for every child in America, then this bill ought to commend itself to the judgment of this body and to everybody, men and women in the Republic, as it seems

to me.

I can not help feeling that what the bill does, that the provisions, both with respect-or, first of all, with respect to a national department of education, a secretary in the President's Cabinet, and with respect to a Federal appropriation that will stimulate it along the lines that are specified in the bill, will render a large service, and that eventually it is certain to do it, and it is because I believe in that, because I believe it will operate that way, and because I believe so strongly in the next place that there is nothing in the bill, and nothing in our history with respect to Federal support of education, and nothing in the history of other countries with respect to a ministry of education, that leads me to believe that there is danger of local autonomy being wrecked by Federal control, usurping the place that ought to be given or left to the local communities, it is because of that that I strongly believe in this bill and rejoice in the fact that it is having the support not only of the nucleus of this great army of 700,000 teachers in America, but having the active support of 15, 18, or 20 other national organizations that are standing with the teachers.

Mr. TUCKER. I would like to ask you a question to clear up the trouble in connection with this bill. I have been reading for six months a little book, The Nation, and I found it of great interest, and in it I find a great deal said about federalizing and nationalizing

and standardizing the schools. What do you mean by "the federalizing of the schools" under this bill?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I suppose to federalize would be to nationalize. Mr. TUCKER. We all agree that the States alone have control of the education.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. TUCKER. That is clearly stated in this bill.

Mr. ENGLEMAN. I suppose if schools are federalized, if I know what the term means, it will be when education becomes a Federal function rather than a state-wide function.

Mr. TUCKER. Exactly.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. But I do not think there is anything in this bill that points in that direction.

Mr. TUCKER. I beg your pardon. As I understand, this book was written for the purpose of advancing this bill.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I can not discuss that intelligently without having seen the book, of course, but I can say something about standardizing.

Mr. TUCKER. It is a very interesting book.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I think there is a great difference between standardizing and making it absolutely uniform to the extent that the Federal Government puts its stamp of approval upon everything that is done, and everything is disregarded and ruled out of court that the Federal court does not have something to do with.

Mr. BLACK. How do you expect in this bill to cure the inequalities. that exist in the two adjoining districts in Illinois?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I use that instance only as an illustration of the fact that there are glaring inequalities in the first place within the State.

Mr. BLACK. There are glaring inequalities between the States, and does not this bill, by requiring a 50-50 arrangement with the State perpetuate that inequality?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. The removal of that inequality-I did not want to leave you thinking that I was wanting to appeal to the Federal Government. We remove that einequality. Here is my point: May I take one or two methods more to make this clear? In the first place, take any given local district, and we have got inequalities within a given city, great inequalities of wealth. Some places could support their own schools, and other places could not. We overcome the inequalities there by treating the whole group as a unit, and tax the whole district, the whole city, the rich and poor alike, and then putting the money where is it needed. The inequalities that exist within the State are overcome.

Mr. BLACK. Only by State-wide levies.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. Only by State-wide levies, rather than by wholly local support of the school. We tax the property of all of the State, and then we send it out and support the schools, wherever the children are found.

Mr. BLACK. Of course, you are not doing that.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. That is what we are doing more and more. The whole tendency throughout the country is to equalize the burden, and equalizing the opportunity within the State. If there is anything I have heard in favor of this-it is a discussion on the part of those acquainted with the local situation in different States to put

more and more of the burden there, and therefore equalize more and more of the opportunity of the children-to put the burden upon the State.

Mr. BLACK. This is in line with that development.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. This is in line. If there are inequalities among the States, and there are, and they are comparable with inequalities in the State, and inequalities in the given State, in a State that can be partly overcome by a provision which we have in the bill, that will make it possible to give Federal support to those States that can not reach desirable standards and maintain the sort of decent schools that they recognize, as everybody recognizes as desirable as a standard

Mr. BLACK. Who will pass on that?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. Well, I am not.

Mr. BLACK. Will the Federal secretary of education pass on that? Doctor ENGLEMAN. I suppose the Federal secretary of education, aided by the advice and judgment that comes to him through a council, in which every State is represented, through its leading State officer, and in which every phase of education in every State is also represented, and in which the laity is represented by its most intelligent citizens on this national council, I suppose the national secretary, aided by such a council, would have something to do with that.

Mr. BLACK. Suppose there were 48 States pulling and hauling the Federal secretary for funds, and the total demands are greater than the appropriation made by the Federal Government. Who is going to say what State will get the funds and what State will not get the funds?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. All that is a situation that is not very likely to be realized. We might have that same sort of thing in any State, where there is a State fund set apart for equalizing educational opportunities.

Mr. BLACK. You can do it in the State by legislation. That is what we are trying to avoid. You can do it in the State by political control within the State. Here you have one side, a sovereignty offering funds to other sovereignties, with no control of the sovereignty to which it gives funds.

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I can not conceive a situation like that which would not be easily met by the secretary of education aided by such council.

Mr. BLACK. I am afraid you can not get away from the Federal control of education, once you start to give them money as a practical thing.

Docter ENGLEMAN. We have had Federal support.

Mr. BLACK. You would not object very much to Federal control, would you?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I certainly would object to Federal control, but

Mr. BLACK. You would?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. I would not object to Federal help, where it is most needed.

Mr. BLACK. You mean financial help?

Doctor ENGLEMAN. Exactly so; that is what this bill contemplates, in part.

Mr. REED. We have two more speakers.

Miss WILLIAMS. The next witness is a business man from Boston, Mr. A. Lincoln Filene, treasurer and general manager, Wm. Filene's Sons' Co., Boston, Mass.

STATEMENT OF MR. A. LINCOLN FILENE, TREASURER AND GENERAL MANAGER, WM. FILENE'S SONS' CO., BOSTON, MASS.

Mr. FILENE. I feel, gentlemen and Mr. Chairman, a little bit lonesome. I am a business man, and I have this in the background of my mind at the present moment, that my lonesomeness is enhanced a bit from the fact that I come from a State which has neither a Senator nor a Congressman who is behind this bill. That may be a double handicap. I do not know if it is or not, but Massachusetts-and I am only saying this without personal allusions at all, because I am proud of my State, as any of you gentlemen are-I ought not to be expected to represent Massachusetts very much.

I would like to call attention to a few figures that might put a question in our minds as to whether Massachusetts is so much entitled to stand out as its lone star, as she was a few years ago, in 1920, the Sage Foundation, under Dr. Leonard Aires, who was among the most respected educational men in this country, and when he got through he found in 1919 that Massachusetts stood first, but when he got to 1918 Massachusetts stood ninth in rating. A little later, in 1920, in the United States Census report, the figures showed in taking the school ages of children that Massachusetts ranked first up to 13 years of age in children attending schools, but when it got to 14 or 15 Massachusetts was the forty-third State. When it got to the ages of 16 and 17, Massachusetts was the thirty-seventh, and when it got to 18 and 20 it was the twenty-seventh State.

Now, it might, if we were thoroughly unprejudiced in our viewpoint we might consider that Massachusetts had not been entirely progressive in its educational standards and educational ideas of progress.

I want to touch, a moment later, if I may, on the business attitude, the attitude of the business men in Massachusetts, but first I should like to tell you why I have been interested in this question. I shall have to be a bit personal, because I do not want you gentlemen to think I am a theoretical philanthropist among the business group. You do not know me very well. I happen to be in a business that in 12 years has grown from handling about 900 employees to somewhat over 3,000, a business that grew from less than $5,000,000 to $25,000,000 plus, during those two years, and a business that as one of its owners, I think I might say, would be interested in taxes, as the taxes paid to the United States Government roll up into some hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, so you see I am not entirely a theoretical gentleman, although I may be a poor and lonely business man around here.

Now, in 1867 some of these gentlemen, who know education which I do not, tell me we did have a department of education that was a separate department of the Government, and about a year later, as Doctor MacCracken says, we lost that prestige, and we have been looking ever since to get it back. A question was asked about the fact that all these years we have been working, and I would like to call to Mr. Black's attention the fact that while the

particular thing has not been accomplished as yet, there is a great deal of progress during these last years in our educational standards and the conceptions of what the Government is doing for education. I may touch that later.

Mr. BLACK. You think the Illinois schools are better to-day than 20 years ago?

Mr. FILENE. I will let the schoolmasters answer the questions. I am just a business man.

Mr. BLACK. I never thought of that until you got here.

Mr. FILENE. I might answer wrongly. After these interested groups had been working during the last 5 or 10 years, particularly more intensively, some of the group came to me and asked if I would not try to get together the groups interested in the bill, and certain representative laymen and laywomen of the country, with the purpose that when the bill got up here this committee which I happen to be the chairman of could supply to the members of Congress of both Houses a picture of who really wanted this thing in this country, and I think at least there are one or two gentlemen around this table who know I am not looking for additional work. I have considerable to keep me out of mischief, but I thought it was my duty to do this. I had no preconceived ideas, but I thought at least a business man might try to get these groups together and see what they expressed.

I would like the record to show who was represented in the Senate hearings: The National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Labor, the National Committee for the Department of Education, the National Council of Women, the National Congress of Mothers and Parent Teacher Associations, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National League of Women Voters, the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite Free Masonry, Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, the International Council of Religious Education, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Women's Christian Temperance Union, the American Association of University Women, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, the General Grand Chapter Order of the Eastern Star, the National Women's Trade Union League, the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association, the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Federation of Music Clubs250,000 members in that association, it is not so theoretical as it may sound-the American Library Association, the National Vocational Education Association, and the Woman's Relief Corps.

It struck me as a business man that when these national organizations which have been stated were in favor of a department of education, with a Cabinet officer there, ready to back this movement, after years and years of study, that if I could be of any assistance to them that I ought to be, and so with my little knowledge of education, although I have been serving some 17 years on the State board of Massachusetts most continuously, and have had something to do with educational matters in the administrative side, I felt, as I say, it was a duty I had, and I came forward to do it; and I did it because I felt that in Congress the real desire, which has been evident to me around this board to-day by you gentlemen in your earnestness to get the facts-I did it because I knew that if any disinterested group

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