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Figures of column 1 in periods of 5 years.

The following table gives the summarized percentages of the tables of Chapter XXIII. To facilitate calculations the percentages are also grouped in five-year periods.

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Pensions for university professors.—Chapter III (pp. 133–247)'contains a compilation of rules and regulations relating to pensions and annuities paid to professors of German universities. The question of providing pensions for teachers has of late years assumed an importance in this country not anticipated twenty years ago. The munificent gift of $10,000,000 for the establishment of a pension fund for college professors by Mr. Andrew Carnegie attracts public attention as this report goes to press. In large cities private initiative. among teachers has done much in securing small annuities to superannuated or disabled teachers, and city authorities have lent their official aid to these efforts. In some States the legislatures have readily responded to the request of teachers and framed laws for the

establishment of pension funds, the distinctive feature of which, however, is that no teacher shall be obliged to contribute to the pension fund, voluntary membership being a requisite of any pensionfund society. This is quite in harmony with our democratic form of government, while in Germany membership is compulsory; i. e., membership in any teaching body means, nolens volens, the payment of regular contributions to the pension fund of that body except in elementary schools, where the State assumes the entire burden of pension payment.

In the United States only three States have provisions for teachers' pensions paid by the State, to wit, Maryland, Ohio, and New Jersey (see pp. 2449-2451 of Annual Report of 1903), while Germany has been for generations in a preeminent degree the country of civilservice pensions. The timely gift by Dr. Theodore Marburg, of Johns Hopkins University, of a manuscript to this Office makes possible an exhibit of the regulations in force in the twenty-one German universities with reference to pensions for professors and provision for their widows and orphans. The author of this compilation starts with the provisions for support of professors and their families in the ten Prussian universities; then follow those of Alsace, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg in the order named. Many points usually overlooked in establishing new pension funds are found here well met by provisions which are evidently the result of long and vexatious experience. The sums granted to retired professors, to widows of professors, and to their orphans may not seem large for America, but they may be weighty considerations for a professor in deliberating upon a call to another institution of learning. It may be stated that in all the many years of administration of these pension funds in Germany no case of default has occurred.

Teachers' salaries.-The first question of interest to the teacher inquiring about salaries is: Are the positions of teachers, in a State, annual positions, or merely temporary occupations lasting only for a small fraction of the year? The annual position means a teacher employed by the year, who takes up teaching as a vocation, and does not have to shift to other occupations to eke out his salary received from his vocation as teacher.

In most rural districts that are sparsely settled the taxable wealth is small, and the State does not make an apportionment of its annual funds sufficient, when divided pro rata for each person of school age, to provide for a full school year's instruction; instead of nine or ten months, instruction for only three or four, or five months possibly, is provided. Consequently the individual teacher has to find his main vocation in some other occupation than teaching-generally that of a farmer. The ungraded rural school can not afford to employ pro

fessional teachers, because it can pay only a fragment of an annual salary.

Villages and cities can depend upon a school appropriation for the year, and an annual session of from eight to ten months, or even longer, is kept up. Professional teachers are employed at living wages; that is to say, the wages paid teachers are in advance of the average rates for laborers who work the same length of time.

The second important question is: How many well-paying positions are there-how many positions are there in the teachers' ranks which promise the individual, successful in his profession of teacher, an increase above the position he at present occupies, say to a salary one-fourth larger, or one-half larger; how many positions will become open to him that pay twice or three times or four times what he receives now when he first enters the profession? The ambitious teacher wishes to have a career before him. Just as he objects to enter the work of teaching when teaching is a makeshift, lasting only three or four months each year, so it is objectionable, though not to such a degree, to enter a profession which has in it no future for him. Pretty much all the interest in statistics of salaries in the United States therefore relates, not to the salaries of rural schools, but to those paid in village or city schools, which are sufficient to support a professional teacher, and to the question whether there are a sufficient number of higher positions to hold out a promise of promotion from time to time in accordance with the increase of his professional skill. He is glad to learn, therefore, that the average annual increase in higher education throws open nearly one thousand new places a year in colleges and universities for teachers promoted from the secondary schools on being found to have the requisite skill and scholarship. There were, in 1890, 7,918 professors and instructors in the colleges and universities of the United States, not counting the professional schools. In 1903 the number had risen to 20,887. It started with less than 8,000, and had an increase of new places in thirteen years almost equal to 1,000 a year (12,969). The secondary schools of the United States were taught by 16,329 teachers in 1890, and in 1903 by 33,795. This increase gave 17,466 new positions in thirteen years for teachers in public and private high schools.

The recent canvass of teachers' salaries by the special committee of the National Educational Association, of which Dr. Carroll D. Wright, formerly the United States Commissioner of Labor, was the chairman, gives us data from which we may complete our list of better-salaried positions, besides those in colleges already named, counting in superintendents, assistant superintendents, high school principals, high school teachers (not principals), elementary school teachers-six classes of positions reported in 467 cities of over 8,000 inhabitants. This list aggregates 53,554 positions with annual sal

aries of $600 and over (one-half of which pay $800 and upward), and 14,193 of $500 and $600, and 17,728 of annual salaries below $500. The teacher's profession offers, in the elementary and high schools and the office of superintendent, the following positions:

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Adding the positions in colleges and universities (20,887) to 53,554 positions with salaries of $600 and above, we have a total of 74,441.

It will be seen, on inspection of the above table, that there are 26,475 positions that pay $800 and upward, which, with the college positions, make 47,362.

At

Education at the St. Louis Exposition (see Chapters XIV, XV, XXI, XXII, pp. 863-998 and 1177 to 1275).-Four chapters of this report are devoted to a description of the educational exhibits at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis, Mo., in 1904. St. Louis, for the first time in the history of expositions, a separate building was furnished for the display of the exhibits on education and its kindred subject-social economy. The building covered 276,153 square feet and cost $375,000. In it were arranged nearly all of the educational exhibits.

The four chapters devoted to this subject comprise a series of monographs descriptive of educational exhibits, compiled and edited by Mr. George E. Gay, president of the Educational Exhibitors' Association of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The series of monographs was intended to include a description of each separate exhibit, but it was not possible to obtain all of them.

Dr. H. J. Rogers, chief of the department of education at the exposition, points out two features that stood out prominently, namely, the similarity of the exhibits from the several States and cities in the United States, demonstrating the fact that we have a national system of education, and, second, the subordination of the humanities to industrial instruction in the exhibits of foreign nations.

The last monograph in Chapter XV is on the exhibit of the landgrant colleges and agricultural experiment stations. This exhibit was rendered possible by an appropriation of $100,000 made by Congress for the purpose. It was prepared by a committee of the association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations,

and was designed to illustrate the instruction given by the institutions established under act of Congress approved July 2, 1862, in agriculture and the mechanic arts, and the work done by the experiment stations established under the act of March 2, 1887. This collective exhibit occupied about 16,000 square feet of space, and represented on the agricultural side work done in agronomy or plant production, zootechny or animal industry, agrotechny or agricultural technology, rural engineering or farm mechanics, and rural economics of farm management. The mechanic arts side was represented by exhibits illustrating instruction in civil, mechanical, electrical, and mining engineering, technical chemistry, architecture, drawing, and shop practice, including textiles and trades. Instruction in domestic science and ceramics was also represented. The central part of this exhibit was occupied by the exhibits of the Bureau of Education and the Office of Experiment Stations, which represent the United States Government in its relation with these colleges and stations. These exhibits were largely documentary and statistical, intended to show the development of the institutions and stations in respect to numbers, students, material, equipment, etc., and their relation to other educational institutions in the country.

The school systems and exhibits of seven foreign countries are described in Chapter XXII. The organization of the school system of the Argentine Republic is briefly described by a member of the Argentine Commission. Each State manages its schools independently, while the National Government has control over those at the federal capital and in sectional territories. In the city of Buenos Ayres education is compulsory for children between 6 and 14 years of age. Primary instruction comprises six grades covering eight years. Coeducation is allowed only in the first three grades. The exhibit of Argentina was limited to a representation of the work of the schools of the city of Buenos Ayres, and was confined chiefly to a display of statistics, school administration, and pupils' work.

Primary education in Belgium is described by M. A. Genonceaux, chief inspector of primary education. All the elementary communal teaching, including kindergarten, primary, and adult schools, is directed by the communes. The primary school receives children of 6 to 14 years of age. There are in Belgium 18 principal inspectors and 85 cantonal inspectors for a school population of 800,000 children, and about 20,000 teachers of primary schools. Teachers of 55 to 60 years of age are entitled to a retiring pension of about two-thirds of the highest salary they have received. The practical tendency is very prominent in the primary schools. All trades provide their quota of practical exercises, with special reference to local wants. The girl applies her theoretical knowledge to housekeeping and needlework, the boy either to agriculture or to some branch of industry.

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