The ACTING CHAIRMAN. How large a body is it? Mr. WARREN. Yes. Its membership numbers between 1,000 and 2,000. Mr. ROBSION. Can you tell us that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and your own distinguished son from Massachusetts, President Coolidge-all of them in their messages-urged Federal promotion and participation in education? Mr. WARREN. I have already referred to Jefferson. Mr. ROBSION. What? Mr. WARREN. I have already referred to Jefferson's advocacy of it through an amendment to the Constitution. Mr. ROBSION. Can it be that all of these distinguished men are wrong in their viewpoint about this matter? Mr. WARREN. I should not want to say just what they stood for. Mr. ROBSION. Have you not read us what President Coolidge has said in some two or three messages? Mr. WARREN. I have read what he has said about what? Mr. ROBSION. About advocating a department of education. Mr. WARREN. Yes. He also advocated the child-labor amendment, if I am not mistaken. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Of course he is not infallable. Mr. WARREN. No. He has all the advantages of being a Massachusetts man, but he was not born there. He was born in Vermont. Mr. ROBSION. He has lived there so long I just thought maybe he had taken on the infallibility of Massachusetts. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. We claim him in Massachusetts, though, and I am a Democrat. Mr. ROBSION. You should indeed be proud of him. Mr. WARREN. May I just say this in conclusion, gentlemen of the committee. I do not want you to think that I am opposing education, or that I am opposing the governmental supervision of education, or the Government supervision of any other activity which experience has shown needs some sort of governmental control. I think, however, that governmental control should be exercised under our constitutional scheme, and I think that scheme was a good one and should not be very greatly changed, should be exercised as regards education by the States, and not by the Federal Government. I believe that every governmental activity, whatever it is, should be exercised by the smallest governmental unit capable of handling it with reasonable satisfaction. That, I believe, is the fundamental principle in these United States. Mr. ROBSION. You believe in State rights? Mr. WARREN. I believe in State rights; and I believe in county rights; and I believe in city and town rights. Anything which the town can administer satisfactorily, even though theoretically it is not administered Mr. ROBSION. I think most of us agree to that. Mr. WARREN. As efficiently as it might be administered by a State official. Mr. ROBSION. The President made a very interesting speech on the subject to the Daughters of the American Revolution the other night. Mr. WARREN. Yes; well, I should expect him to. May I just say this in closing. The danger-because I think we all, as Americans, believe in the general principle of local self-government the danger is that every one of us where he has a pet theory is impatient of the slow process of getting that pet measure of his taken up by a sufficiently large number of these more localized units, and he wants to make an exception of his one pet measure either by having the State do it in a smaller matter, or the Federal Government do it in a larger matter; and when you add all those pet measures together you are going to get your central government overloaded; you are going to drag it down; you are going to change our governmental system, which has been the system which has brought the greatest happiness, the greatest intelligence, and the greatest prosperity to the greatest number of people that the history of this world has ever seen. Thank you. (Mr. Reed resumed the chair.) The CHAIRMAN. The next witness will be the Rev. J. Frederick Wenchel. STATEMENT OF THE REV. J. FREDERICK WENCHEL, REPRESENT ATIVE OF THE SYNODICAL CONFERENCE OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AT WASHINGTON, D. C. Mr. WENCHEL. The 1926 census has brought out the fact that the Lutheran Church is the third largest Protestant body in this country; and the body that I represent here is the largest organization out of that body. Mr. FLETCHER. How large is the membership of the church? Mr. WENCHEL. We represent about a million and a half of communicant members, according to this census. We have quite a system of private schools, church schools, and, therefore, we are vitally interested in all matters that pertain to education. But we are also interested in the public-school system. We have always taken the position that we want no support from the Public Treasury. At the same time we have many of our children, possibly the greater part of our children, in the public schools. So at the very start I would like to impress upon you the fact that we are just as much interested in the welfare of the public schools as we are in our own schools; but we have certain fears in regard to this bill, and for that reason we are here to-day. The importance with which this bill is being viewed by us, and the consequences that we fear is brought out in the fact that the officers of our synod even found it desirable, possible, or important, to send here two representatives who would like to speak upon this measure. One is the vice president of our body, the vice president of the synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States. I might say when we speak of the synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States it might appear that' we are very local; but, as a matter of fact, our constituency extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Canada to Mexico. In fact, we have congregations in Canada. I would, therefore, like to introduce the Rev. F. J. Lankenau, of Napoleon, Ohio, vice president of the synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States. STATEMENT OF THE REV. F. J. LANKENAU, VICE PRESIDENT, EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SYNOD OF MISSOURI, OHIO, AND OTHER STATES, NAPOLEON, OHIO Mr. LANKENAU. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, not many Americans fully understand the immensity of school life in our country. The total enrollment of our public elementary and secondary schools in 1924 was over 24,000,000 and the private and parochial schools had almost 2,000,000 pupils on their rolls. For various reasons the labor involved in educating these 26,000,000 boys and girls is far more complex than is the education of the boys and girls of any other country. For one thing, the area over which these millions of children and youth are scattered is more immense and of far greater variation than is the case elsewhere, with the exception of China and Russia, and neither of these countries comes into consideration in the question now before us. Then, too, our large immigrant and Negro populations present a peculiar and difficult situation. The educational situation in our country is unique in this; that while in other countries schools were almost invariably brought into existence and developed by strong central governments, our schools originated as community enterprises. And because of these small community beginnings of our schools they are still closely-I was almost tempted to say inseparably-intertwined with local traditions, local viewpoints, and local needs. The common schools of our country, from their very beginnings so largely locally supported, conducted, and controlled, in the opinion of many of us would lose much of their uniquely American character, if they should cease to be predominantly local enterprises. This seems to have been instinctively felt by our fathers when they laid the foundations of our Federal Government. In the convention which framed the fundamental law of our country, James Madison proposed that the National Government take up the business of education. Apparently the proposal was neither discussed nor voted upon, for the Constitution mentions neither schools nor education. The members of the constitutional convention, as much as they favored popular education, very probably considered the school to be too intimate and delicate a matter to be intrusted in any way to the Federal Government. And this attitude of the fathers which prompted the omission of schools from the Constitution, was emphasized by the ninth and tenth amendments. Both these amendments show that at the time there was a widespread fear that the Federal Government might under pressure of supposed "general welfare" attempt to exercise powers which had not been granted. These amendments stress the fact that the affirmation of particular rights implies negation in all others. They emphasize further the fact that the National Government is one of delegated powers and that it possesses and may exercise only those enumerated powers which are thus named and necessarily implied. For the Federal Government to go one step only beyond the enumeration is unconstitutional and void. Bryce commends the framers of the Constitution for taking this attitude in his American Commonwealth when he writes: The more power is given to the units comprising a nation, where other things are equal, be the units large or small, and the less to the nation as a whole and to its central authority, so much the fuller will be the liberties and so much the greater the energy of the individuals who compose the people. This quotation is found in volume one at page 344 of Bryce's work The same astute and observing statesman makes the following remark: Nothing has more contributed to give strength and flexibility to the Govern ment of the United States, or to train the masses of the people to work their democratic institutions, than the insistence everywhere in the Northern States of self-governing administrative units such as townships small enough to enlist the personal interest and be subject to the personal watchfulness and control of the ordinary citizen. The system of local self-government has not been only beneficial, but indispensable, and well deserves the study of those who in Europe are alive to the evils of centralization. John Fiske, our great historian, in his "Civil Government in the United States," approvingly quotes from Toulmin Smith's "Local Self-Government and Centralization" the following pair of admi rable maxims: Local self-government is that system of government under which the greatest number of minds, knowing the most, and having the fullest opportunities of knowing it, about the special matter in hand, and having the greatest interest in its well-working, have the management of it, or control over it. Centraliza tion is that system of government under which the smallest number of minds, and those knowing the least, and having the fewest opportunities of knowing it, about the special matter in hand, and having the smallest interest in its well-working, have the management of it, or control over it. Fiske adds: An immense amount of wretched misgovernment would be avoided if all legislators and all voters would engrave these wholesome definitions upon their minds. Although the Federal Government has thus been denied all authority in the education of the people, the growth of our schools and their spread in modern times has been great. In 1880 the total expenditure of the public elementary and secondary schools of our country was a little more than $78,000,000; in 1926 the total expenditure for public elementary and secondary education was a little over $2,000,000,000. From 1920 to 1926 the expendi tures for our public elementary and secondary schools practically doubled. In 1880, of 15,000,000 persons, 5 to 17 years of age, not quite 10,000,000 attended public schools; in 1926, of 30,000,000 persons of the same age, almost 25,000,000 were enrolled in our public schools. This shows an advance in six years of an attendance from two out of three to five out of six. In these years a like improvement may be seen in the value of school property, the increase in one recent year being over $400,000,000. An advance has been made in the lengthening of the school terms, average attendance, and the employment of trained teachers. There is nothing connected with schools that does not show a marked advance and improvement. And this is reflected in the census figures on illiteracy. Our schools as now constituted are giving us all reasonable hope for the future. Illiteracy is steadily decreasing and even the more back ward and poorer States are making fine progress in the way of more and more adequately providing for their youth. The decennial illiteracy percentages from 1880 to 1920 are as follows: 17, 13.3, 10.7, 7.7, and 6. These figures surely show a most encouraging decrease in the illiteracy of our people in the last forty years. Illiteracy is not spreading among us, as has been claimed. For our native whites the percentage of illiteracy has dropped by decades since 1880 as follows: 8.7, 6.2, 4.6, 3, and 2. In 1890, the first year when separate statistics were compiled for the negroes, the percentage of illiteracy for them was 57.1; since then every decade has shown a rapid fall: 1900, 44.5; 1910, 30.4; 1920, 22.9. Of course Negro illiteracy is highest in those States where most of the middle-aged and aged Negroes live, while it is lowest in those States where the Negro population is mostly composed of the younger Negro generation. However, there is one group among which there has been an increase in illiteracy, the group composed of the foreign born white population, due to the large immigration of people from southeastern Europe in recent decades. In 1880 illiteracy for this group was 12 per cent, in 1890 it rose to 13.1 per cent, in 1900 it fell to 12.9 per cent, in 1910 to 12.7 per cent, but in 1920 it had again risen to 13.1 per cent. But this increase can not justly be attributed to the lack of school facilities in our country. The doubling of schools would change this percentage but little, since the illiteracy is to be found amongst those who are above school age. For example, Connecticut has one of the best public school systems in the country, and yet its illiteracy rose from 6 per cent in 1910 to 6.2 per cent in 1920. This increase is found in Connecticut despite the fact that the illiteracy percentage for its native white population is only 0.4 per cent. the illiteracy of the foreign born whites in Connecticut is very high, being no less than 17 per cent; and it is, of course, this high percentage of the foreign born which gives the good State of Connecticut such an apparently bad showing. But Tabulated results shown by the last census verify the assertion that our schools are doing good work, are rapidly improving, and are taking care of our youth in an encouraging manner. Our children of grammar-school age are more and more taking advantage of the educational privileges offered them. Of the children in our country from 7 to 13 years of age, 90.6 per cent are in school; of the city children from 7 to 13 years of age, no less than 94.4 per cent are attending school. And these figures lead me to think that if we deduct from the children of that age not in public schools those who are crippled, under the care of physicians, and mentally incapable, we shall find that the percentage of those not in school is not far below the record of the most literate countries of Europe, who have not forced upon them the peculiar problems of the Negro and the illiterate foreigner nor such vast areas of sparsely populated regions. But while speaking of the illiteracy of our people, let us bear in mind that the illiteracy figures of to-day do not reflect the schools of to-day at all, but rather those of 10, 20, and more years ago. The great number of our illiterates of to-day are persons beyond school age. Of the persons who should be in school to-day, only 2.3 per cent are illiterate, and this includes the Negroes and foreign-born. |