Doctor KEITH. They have, and it has been their responsibility primarily.

Mr. DOUGLASS. It has been their responsibility and they have been successful at it, except with those exceptions you spoke of. With those exceptions the States have done great work, haven't they? Doctor KEITH. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, would you say that the States had given sufficient study to this question of why the boy leaves the farm? Doctor KEITH. No, the States have not.

The CHAIRMAN. And don't you think, when we know there are localities that have been successful in keeping the boys on the farm, that we have failed woefully in disseminating that information to the rest of the country?

Doctor KEITH. We have failed, and what we should strive to do is to make the idea contagious.

The CHAIRMAN. We are paying a very great sum for that failure now, aren't we?

Doctor KEITH. We are, and we will continue to pay it until we rectify the mistake.

The history of Federal aid to education is most interesting. It began back in 1787 while the Constitutional Convention was in session in Philadelphia. Congress up in New York sold land to the Ohio company, a New England company, a Massachusetts company, to settle and develop in southeastern Ohio. About 3,000,000 acres of land were sold, and a condition was that the sixteenth section in every township should be set aside for the support and maintenance of public schools, and not only that, but two townships were given by the Federal Government for the founding of a university. From that time on the Federal Government has been aiding and encouraging education in the States, and I understand that your committee only a little while ago further encouraged education of a certain type by recommending an additional appropriation of $6,000,000 for education of the vocational type.

Now, with all that record, with all these interests, even down to direct payments from the Federal Treasury year by year to the extent of $80,000 to each State, you can't find a single adverse court decision. Now that the Federal Government should aid and encourage education, that it should collect and disseminate information with regard to public education, clearly would have, sometime or other in all this span of years, had a court case that would declare it unconstitutional if it were unconstitutional.

Mr. DOUGLASS. Personally I think it is constitutional.

Doctor KEITH. Then, if that is out of the way, it is solely a question of whether or not it is wise and expedient to do it. Mr. DOUGLASS. That is the story.

Doctor KEITH. And I have tried to talk to that thing as best I can do it. I should be glad to answer any questions any member of the committee desires to ask, but I feel that I should take no more time.

Doctor DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, I would next like to introduce Mr. Edwin Smith. Mr. Smith is the representative of Mr. A. Lincoln Filene, a merchant known to you all as an outstanding business man in the city of Boston. Since 1918 he has been a

staunch supporter of this movement. He would have been here to-day, but he is presiding at a big business convention. He has sent his secretary, Mr. Smith, to represent him at this time.

STATEMENT OF EDWIN SMITH, SECRETARY TO MR. A. LINCOLN FILENE, BOSTON, MASS.

Mr. SMITH. As the gentleman explained, Mr. Filene has been an advocate for many years of a bill to create a Federal department of education. He has appeared at previous hearings for bills having this object, and he would have been present to-day, except he is presiding over a meeting of 18 stores, with which Mr. Filene is affiliated, and it was quite impossible for him to get away. In order that I may present thoroughly and briefly his point of view, he asked me to read the following statement:

STATEMENT OF A. LINCOLN FILENE, TREASURER, GENERAL MANAGER, WILLIAM FILENE'S SONS Co., BOSTON, MASS.

My advocacy of the Curtis-Reed bill creating a department of education in the President's Cabinet grows both out of my contact with education and my contact with research as it has been applied to business.

As a member for many years of the Advisory Board of Education of the State of Massachusetts and from contacts with other educational groups, I have been frequently impressed with the great need for more facts as a basis for educational practice. Education is one of the great enterprises of this country. The present value of school property is $4,676,603,539.

In 1926 the Nation expended $411,037,774 for public school buildings and sites. Much of this money was wasted, because local boards did not have the latest information on the proper construction and utilization of school plants.

Research would allow the school committee (or board of education) of each individual city to reduce expenses and carry out a far more efficient plan of school construction. Through information given by a Federal department of education it could profit by the examples, good and bad, of what other communities with similar problems had done.

The expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools alone for current expenses and building costs in the United States in 1926 were $2,020,812,685. In the conduct of this great enterprise too much waste takes place. We find obsolete and unjust methods of taxation; funds not distributed so as to equalize educational opportunities. Many boards can not tell with accuracy what their own schools cost; it is impossible to obtain accurate figures as to the separate costs of elementary, junior and senior high school education. Careful budgetary procedure is probably the exception rather than the rule in planning school expenditures. Research is needed to work out and popularize the best standardized methods of school accounting and budgetary procedure in order to guard against waste.

These are but two places where the schools could, I am sure, save much money or could at least get much better results for the money spent if they had the kind of information which a Federal department of education would make available. Even in Massachusetts, which has an unusually well developed staff of experts in its state department, we often have to decide school policies on the basis of insufficient facts. I believe Massachusetts is better off in this regard than most States.

Then there are certain types of information which only a Federal agency can collect most effectively. Even if every one of the 48 State departments were well equipped, it would be wasteful for all of them to attempt to get together certain summarizing studies needed by all of these departments. A Federal agency is best suited to do a piece of work like that.

These are some of the considerations which lead me to believe that we need far better facilities for obtaining information to guide our schools than we have at the present time and that we are particularly deficient as regards the type of information which a Federal agency would make available for the use of all.

I see no interference with State rights from such a proposal. The Massachusetts State Board of Education would be under no compulsion to use information issued by a Federal department of education. Such information, however, would often be of very real help in its decisions on larger educational policies affecting the schools of the State.

But there is still another reason growing out of many years' experience in business which causes me to support the bill for a department of education. I happen to be the president of a group composed of 17 leading department stores in this country and one in England which are not connected financially, but which maintain in common a cooperative buying organization and a research organization. These stores do an annual aggregate business of over $350,000,000. Each store is located in a different city and consequently no two stores are competitors. We have set up centralized facilities for studying the functions of each of these corporations and for exchanging comparative figures on every aspect of store operation. Thus each individual store is able to profit from the experience of the other 17 stores.

We

If one of them is doing something better than the rest, all the other stores automatically know of it, so that each of these 18 organizations is acquainted with the best methods of practice and procedure developed anywhere within the group. All of this research work grew out of a little organization which developed from an original grant of $25 a year in 1916. These stores are now spending over $150,000 a year on research alone. This amount constitutes a very small fraction of 1 per cent of the annual sales of the stores, but it has meant a saving of very many times that in improved methods of functioning in each business. For instance, we made a study in one of our stores not long ago which saved that particular store $40,000 a year on the cost of its delivery department. have studied the methods of personnel, how to deal with our employees so as to obtain greater efficiency and to improve the conditions under which they work. We have studied the best methods of operation of the departments which receive our merchandise from the shippers and mark it for sale. We have studied scientific control of inventory and a greater variety of other important subjects. It is worth emphasizing again that these stores are wholly independent financially. No one of them exercises any control over any of the others. Yet they are able to cooperate in studies of the kind I have described. There is no reason why the forty-eight school systems of the country could not similarly cooperate in the study of their common problems, providing an adequate agency existed to assist for this study such as a Federal department of education.

While I am on this topic I would like to say a further word about the charge that the proposed department of education will usurp the rights of the States. It is my belief that nothing would do more to guarantee the continuance of the control of education by the States than the creation of a Federal department of education. The best way to keep the Federal Government out of education is to keep the State governments so well informed of the best current educational practices that there will be no excuse for intervention on the part of the Federal Government. The dissemination of the needed information and the bringing together of the heads of educational departments of the various States for conference and for exchange of information would improve the educational efficiency of all the States and therefore strengthen the wise policy of leaving the control of education to the individual States. The Department of Commerce does not control business, and the Department of Agriculture does not control farming. Yet both of these departments disseminate information that is indispensable to the welfare of these great national interests, and which enables them to preserve more effectively their independence of Federal control. Similarly a department of education is the agency which could properly undertake the exchange of existing information and the general dissemination of additional information which is needed throughout the country if our schools are to be brought to the highest point of efficiency.

Just as study and research are good for business, they are good for education. We have too little information about our schools. That is one reason why our schools do not always get as good results as we would like.

It is self-evident that anything which gets better results from any of our schools is good for the school system of our individual States to know about. I happen to be a citizen of Massachusetts, but as a citizen of the United States and as a business man desirous of the prosperity of our country as a whole, I want to see the continuous, rapid development of the best educational facilities in all the States of the Union,

We all know that our wants in life increase as our knowledge increases. The totally ignorant man is satisfied with little beyond the humblest food and shelter. It is only when he has reached a certain level of education that he begins to find out about the opportunities for the enjoyment of life and starts in to ask for good clothes, an automobile, and pretty dresses for his daughter. The more educated the people of any State are the more they want to buy goods and the better customers they make. The business man spends huge sums to educate people by his advertisements. Education is really advertising in the broadest sense. It advertises the richness and the possibilities of life. People who have acquired a new vision of life through education have made themselves able to earn more money and to spend more. They are better workers and better customers. I do not believe a business man who has given much thought to the subject would object to a few cents or a few dollars more in taxes coming from his pocket for education when the returns to business as a whole are bound to be so great.

As a business man I want to see better and more widely diffused education for another reason. The Congressmen elected from all States come to Washington and make laws which affect Massachusetts and every other State in the Union. Business men have a selfish reason, which is perfectly legitimate, to want every State to develop the most intelligent citizenship possible. Business is vitally affected not only by Federal laws but by State laws which concern business in every State. Few investments will bring greater returns to business than those made for lifting. the general level of education.

There is another reason why I believe in the creation of a Federal department of education. Contact with large business organizations teaches me that lack of coordination and poor organization can cost large sums of money. We are constantly studying methods in business whereby better organization will save money, and get large results from such study in dollars and cents saved. I am confident that such a saving could be accomplished by the Federal Government by a better coordination of its educational activities. The present educational activities of the Federal Government cost several millions of dollars a year and are scattered through several departments and independent bureaus.

If certain of these activities were brought together in one Federal department, I believe that larger returns would come from each dollar which the Federal Government spends for education. In this attitude I am merely restating a proposal which has frequently been made by the eminent citizen of Massachusetts who has so ably filled the office of President of the United States in recent years. His last statement on this subject was in his message to Congress on December 6, 1927, in which he said: “For many years it has been the policy of the Federal Government to encourage and foster the cause of education. Large sums of money are annually appropriated to carry on vocational training. Many millions go into agricultural schools. The general subject is under the immediate direction of a Commissioner of Education. While this subject is strictly a State and local function, it should continue to have the encouragement of the National Government. I am still of the opinion that much good could be accomplished through the establishment of a department of education and relief, into which would be gathered all of these functions under one directing member of the Cabinet."

These, then, are some of the reasons why I have for many years advocated the creation of a department of education whose primary function would be research in education. The investigation which a department of education would carry on as provided by this bill will, I believe, be of greater importance than any other educational research known hitherto in this country. This is because the findings will be offered to the country with the sanction of a member of the President's Cabinet. The results of Federal research in education will receive an enhanced prestige among educators and people in general.

In the President's Cabinet sit representatives of Commerce, Agriculture, Labor, the Army, and Navy. Each one of these great institutions is interested in the problems of education. Each Cabinet officer has special knowledge of the educational problems and needs of the men and women in the fields which he serves. By regular contact with other Cabinet officers a secretary of education would be constantly broadening his outlook on the country's educational problems. He would get unusual insights into the difficulties which rural education and vocational education and many other forms of education are facing. He would, moreover, arouse in his Cabinet associates a fuller consciousness of the role that educators play in guiding the great problems of our national life in the fields of agriculture, business, and every other field.

Education would be lifted out of its present subordinate position and made the equal in name, as it already is in fact, of commerce and labor and the other great subjects which we have recognized to be of national concern. With education thus coming into its due place in our national outlook I would expect a quickening of all our educational work, both public and private. I would expect also a broader approach henceforth to all our national problems. Education's function is to make people want to do the best thing for themselves and others and to know how to do it.

Doctor DAVIDSON. The next speaker whom I wish to present is Dr. Charles R. Mann, director of the American Council on Education, Washington, D. C.

STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES R. MANN, DIRECTOR AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Doctor MANN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, it is always a pleasure to meet with this committee. On previous occasions I have talked about various areas or sections of this problem with this committee. To-day I am going to ask your indulgence for a few minutes in trying to get the scattered sections together in a coherent whole, so that we can visualize the real immediate issue in its perspective, because the department of education, taken by itself, is a particular proposal which offers a particular solution of the whole problem of the Federal organization of education and the relation of the Federal Government in educational matters to the educational activities of the States.

Now, I am very much interested in getting started toward a solution of this problem with a clear understanding of the relation of the Federal Government and States in education that will be coherent with the fundamental notions on which we are trying to develop this country. I have prepared here a brief series of statements, each statement embodying one fact as I see it with regard to this situation, and each statement is capable of expansion into a long argument, and it is capable of proof by a great deal of information which I can give you if you want. But I thought if I could just state these points, one by one, rapidly, it would bring the whole picture in the relationship of the various factors before you, and then we can take up the discussion, if you like, of any one of them, or of their interrelations. So I have prepared this series of statements. It sounds very dogmatic, because it is merely a statement of a series of facts, so far as I could make it so.

Bills for the creation of a more adequate Federal educational office have been pending before the Education Committees of Congress for nine years. There has been much discussion but no action. Fear of Federal control of public education is said to be the excuse. A Federal department of education with $100,000,000 for subsidies on the 50-50 basis, as proposed in the earlier bills would have real control of public education and so would justify that fear. The proposals for 50-50 subsidies for a department of education were abandoned three years ago.

The pending Curtis-Reed bill for a Federal department of education and the Phipps bill to extend the duties of the Bureau of Education carry no 50-50 subsidies; therefore they can not possibly result in Federal control. The Department of Commerce serves but does not control commerce; the Department of Labor serves but does not,