an age that produced some great geniuses in all the leading activities of human life and social service.

In the past three or four decades, however, educational ideas and ideals have had a phenomenal growth and expansion. The successive stages of the child's development,-physical, mental and spiritual,have been comprehensively and minutely studied, analyzed and classified. Modern psychology has prescribed definite means and methods for the harmonious expansion and expression of the ego of each individual life. The effort is being made to provide the best conditions for the highest possible development of each individual of the entire Nation along the lines of life and work for which he is best fitted. His own happiness and the welfare of the State are at stake, and must be taken into consideration. The Public has a vital interest in the individual child as a potential citizen. We are awakening to our responsibility and duty to train every child, not simply our own or our next-door neighbor's child, for the very highest and best service that he is capable of rendering. Here is the basis and the motive of our public school system. Thus we gain the vision of the supreme obligation of the government to provide the educational opportunities which will nourish and bring to fruition the best abili ties and ambitions of its citizens. This obligation applies to every part of the country; but most directly and emphatically to any part which, by reason of stress of war or other causes, has fallen below the normal average of intelligence and has less than the average ability to regain the opportunity and equipment for a suitable and effective preparation for a life of service. In these facts we find the compelling reasons for the Towner-Sterling Bill, now awaiting Congressional action.

NATIONAL THRIFT WEEK. January 17 to 23d, 1924. Thursday, January 17-Thrift Day. Friday, January 18-Budget Day. Saturday, January 19-Pay Bills Day. Sunday, January 20.-Share With Others Day. Monday, January 21.-Life Insurance Day. Tuesday, January 22.-Own Your Home Day. Wednesday, January 23.-Make a Will Day.

The following information, suggesting methods of co-operation between school officials and bankers in teaching Thrift is of interest. The National Thrift Committee, 347 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y., will supply a limited lot of material to any teacher requesting it. The Committee suggests that January is a long, holidayless month, and yet an oasis has been found by many teachers in National Thrift week, which opens with Benjamin Franklin's Birthday, January 17. In fact, a two-fold oasis,-a patriotic birthday event full of possibili

ties to teach citizenship, patriotism and early American history from the life of one of the makers of America, and the year's best opportunity to teach Thrift,-National Thrift Week, January 17 to 23. This season the plans bring into helpful co-operation the banks and schools of each community. An increasingly popular feature of the past two seasons is the poster-making contest, wherein banks furnish the poster ideas and materials. The finished posters are then displayed in the bank and store windows. It is proposed that each student whose poster is accepted will receive a modest compensation. Outlines of plans and directions are furnished free by the National Committee, who make five specific suggestions for National Thrift Week, viz.:

1. Arrange to briefly observe Benjamin Franklin's Birthday, January 17, the first day of National Thrift Week. The present situation lends itself to telling stories of Benjamin Franklin.

2. Secure from your public library books on Thrift and Benjamin Franklin, or the list of books furnished by the American Library Association, or send direct to 78 East Washington street, Chicago, Illinois.

3. Invite some banker to speak on Thrift.

4. In art classes have the students design posters on Thrift subjects.

5. Most progressive bankers welcome visits of delegations of pupils from the schools after banking hours, if accompanied by a teacher. These educational visits by school children have steadily grown in popularity in the past three years.

Believing that cigarette smoking is a menace to the physical, mental and spiritual welfare of the young people of America, we reproduce the following clipping from a recent number of Zion's Herald, the old and able official organ of one of the largest religious denominations in the United States.

"A report from Washington, D. C., appearing in the daily press a few days ago, said: The American appetite for tobacco continues to turn in the direction of the cigarette, according to figures just made public by the Internal Revenue Bureau, which disclosed that taxes were paid on 5,839,707,747 cigarettes during July, an increase over July of last year of almost 600,000,000. As for cigars, taxes were paid in July on 589,176,020 large and 42,341,000 small ones, the combined total being about 9,000,00 more than the number taxed in July, 1922.

"The increase in the use of tobacco induced by the war, together with the apparent disappearance of a strong witness against it by

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church and reform agencies, may well cause the thoughtful to pause and consider the question of its increased use in the light of scientific facts. We quote from The Voice of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals:

"Dr. McKeever, well known as a student of adolescents, studied 100 boys, ranging from twelve to twenty years of age, all of whom were smokers. He found that the beat-record of the smoker's heart was similar to that of a very tired person, that it responded to the influence of a smoke for a brief time, but that this inspiring period passed sometimes in less than fifteen minutes. The smoker approximated the heart strength of a non-smoker only immediately after a smoke. In 1897, at Yale, Dr. Seaver made a thorough study of the matter and found that of the 100 highest ranking students five were smokers and ninety-five were abstainers, although of the student body 60 per cent were smokers. Dr. Meylan studied the same problem with the students at Columbia University, and came to the conclusions (1) All scientists are agreed that the use of tobacco by adolescents is injurious; parents, teachers and physicians should strive earnestly to warn youths against its use. (2) It has been shown conclusively by this study that the use of tobacco by college students is closely associated with idleness, lack of ambition, lack of application, and low scholarship.'"

The Vocational Education Association of the Middle West will hold the Tenth Annual Convention at the Hotel Chase, St. Louis, Missouri, January 16 to 19 inclusive, 1924. A splendid program is being prepared, dealing with all phases of vocational education, including Agriculture, Home Economics, Vocational Guidance, Commercial Education, Trade and Industrial Education, Part-Time Schools, Co-operative Industrial Training, Foremanship Training, and a host of other topics. The committee on local arrangements is headed by Supt. J. J. Maddox as general chairman, assisted by others from the public and private schools of the city.

Standards by which juvenile courts throughout the country can measure their work for children have been published by the United States Department of Labor through the Children's Bureau, in the report of a national committee consisting of prominent juvenile court judges, probation officers and psychiatrists from many states, appointed by the U. S. Children's Bureau. The report of the committee, of which Judge Charles W. Hoffman of Cincinnati is chairman, was approved at a conference held this spring in Washington by the Children's

Bureau and the National Probation Association. It is the product of two years' study of the best methods of safe-guarding the interests of the child through the courts.

In drafting the standards recommended, the needs of rural as well as urban communities were considered. Important recommendations of the committee are:

Every community should have a children's court equipped to deal with all cases in which a child is in need of the protection of the state either because of his own conduct, or the failure of parents or guardians to provide proper care. The court should be able to obtain jurisdiction over children at least until the age of eighteen. Children taken into custody should be shielded from public observation and from conditions which might mark them as criminals, as for instance, tranportation in a police van or escort by a uniformed police officer. The report outlines methods through which each child may be given scientific treatment adapted to his own needs. It also places emphasis on the care of the child in his own home community, except when adequate investigation shows this not to be in the child's best interest. The Children's Bureau will endeavor to place the report in the Kands of all judges and probation officers and others engaged in juvenile court work. It is called "Juvenile-Court Standards."

Julius H. Barnes, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, in a recent address before the National Association of Insurance Agents, cited ten production records that have been established in industry during the last few months. They are: "The largest pig iron production; cotton consumption; steel ingot production; crude oil production; automobile and truck production; residential construction; production of lomotives; volume of mail-order sales; volume of retail sales; volume of railroad car loadings."

Mr. Barnes also made several significant comparisons of changes that have taken place in the United States since the pre-war year of 1913. The more important of these comparisons are: The poulation of the United States has increased fourteen millions of people with their enlarged requirements; the annual national income has increased from thirty-four billion, to fifty billion; the aggregate savings deposits have increased from six billion to fourteen billion dollars; the deposits in national banks have increased from six to seventeen billion dollars. Under these circumstances it would seem but fair that the salaries of school and college officials and teachers should have shown a corresponding increase.

Book Reviews

THE CHALLENGE OF YOUTH. By Alfred E. Stearns, Principal of Phillips-Andover Academy. W. A. Wilde Company, Boston, Chicago.

This is a book which will be read by many educators, and, let us hope, by many parents. It has some wholesome lessons in its pages for young men of secondary school age. Its author has been exceptionally successful in dealing with the problems of pre-college age. His position as principal of one of the oldest, largest and most noted fittingschools of the country has brought him into intimate contact with the sons of many rich and distinguished statesmen, merchants, and other leaders of American affairs. Even foreign nations have sent to his school their young men of rank, to get in touch with American culture and to be fitted for the Universities from which they will graduate to take diplomatic and professional positions at home and abroad. The outlook from the principalship of Phillips-Andover is a world outlook.

Dr. Stearns relates many instances where he had to administer discipline to the sons of the mighty. It is evident that he has schooled himself against partiality and partisanship because of mere wealth and social position. His descriptions of interviews with irate parents whose sons misbehaved or fell below grade in their studies are entertaining as well as suggestive. We could wish that all parents with boys to educate would buy and read this little volume. Surely every teacher should read it. Personally the reviewer appreciates its conclusions as to the influence of the moving picture on character and scholarship; but this only a minor feature of the book.

We realize the especially fortunate fitness of Dr. Stearns for the position he occupies, and congratulate the Academy on having such a Principal. The reviewer is a graduate of the Academy, of many years' standing, and easily notes the contrast of the school of today with that of yesterday. It has grown marvelously and become more or less aristocratic. It can pick its students and raise its standards, ad libitum. Sometimes we wonder which is better, and aristocracy of wealth and brains, or a demorcracy of intelligence? We seriously doubt whether Dallas Lore Sharpe approves of a school of this kind. As we have read the book the thought has occurred to us that we would like to listen to a debate on Boy Problems between David B. Corson (Superintendent of Schools, Newark) and the author of The Challenge of Youth. These two great master-educators must see the same problems from vastly different angles. Yet, probably, in great essential principles they would be found to be in substantial agreement.