and which will also show that several States will not be able to maintain an education program for the education and training of its boys and girls for citizenship adequate to the national needs without financial aid from the Federal Government. I thank you. STATEMENT OF DR. ROBINSON G. JONES, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CLEVELAND, OHIO Doctor JONES. Mr. Chairman, I am at your service. Do you wish to ask me questions, or do you wish me to speak on this bill? The CHAIRMAN. We would like to have you present your views on these bills before you and to have your views upon this whole question as to what should be the relation between the Federal Government and the States and localities upon this question of education. Doctor JONES. Mr. Chairman, I have not prepared a set speech on that subject. We have not accepted, in my belief, the SterlingReed bill as it has been written, or we have not accepted in full the subsidy question. I have not felt that the States would have any need for a subsidy such as is expressed in the quantity in the bill before you. The CHAIRMAN. Are you the superintendent of public schools of Cleveland, Ohio? Doctor JONES. I am. I would rather express, if I may, our view as to a clearing house for education centralized in the Government. I do not know that I care particularly what title the chief officer may have, or whether he may have a position in the Cabinet or may be regarded as a commissioner of education. I doubt whether the title in itself will confer dignity upon the institution. I feel that in the long run dignity will come to the institution only as it deserves it. I doubt whether any member of the Supreme Court would exchange places with a member of the Cabinet, and I doubt if the Chief Justice of the United State would be any more important if he were a member of the Cabinet, and yet we of the outlying districts have as great respect probably for the Chief Justice and for the Supreme Court as an institution as we do for any other institution of the Government that we know of. I believe that if a department of education, whether it be centered in the Cabinet, or be decentralized or attached to some other Government organization, were properly financed, and I mean by that adequately financed to provide the answers for the school public at large that it desires, the dignity of the relationship to the Government would be properly taken care of. I feel that there should be in that clearing house in Washington, under the Government, a department of research, a department for studying the financing of education, a department of physical construction and reconstruction, a director of welfare, a director of educational personnel, a director in charge of foreign education, and a director in charge of educational legislation. What the relative importance of those divisions may be, should be determined after the organization is set up under your commissioner. Whether there should be some condensation of those departments, or not, I am not saying. Those are the items in which we are concerned. I doubt if it is dignity that we require so much as information. If you were to ask the city of Cleveland, what it needs to-day, we would ask you to report to us what is the best system of taxation in a State, with our physical possibilities, to adequately provide education for the different types of communities within the State, with a proper differentiation between the needs. The needs of Cleveland are different from the needs of Gallipolis, on the Ohio River. We have talked about a uniform education for all; that is a theory, but, in my judgment, it is not a fact. We have to do with the education of adults in Cleveland, and that is probably not the case in Gallipolis. The director of research that you have set up in Washington is in a department which is inadequately financed, and, as a result, the National Educational Association, through its department, is trying to supply wants which you have not supplied through the Gov ernment. We are setting up a department of research which will provide practical answers which are needed in this country. For instance, this morning the superintendent of schools in Cleveland needs to know the cost of a first-class personnel surrounding him to provide for the direction of the schools for the ensuing year. That is important, and those facts are probably not within any of the files of the Bureau of Education in Washington. The National Educational Association is accumulating that type of information. The city of Cleveland would be interested to know to-day to what extent education shall go, and to what extent we are warranted in spending public funds to supply it in a given community. We are interested in knowing whether we shall provide for adult education; whether we shall provide for public welfare; whether we shall provide for eight years education or for 12 years education; whether we shall provide definitely for commercial and industrial education; and whether we shall enter upon apprenticeship training in trades. All of those questions are before us. How could we secure the answers? It would be providing the superintendent of schools with information to furnish the board of education. It would provide the facts, and then they would jointly determine upon the cost of the program of education for next year. We built up a department of research which is probably increasing the overhead of the city of Cleveland beyond the overhead of other cities, and this is where chickens come home to roost. When we have built up an overhead that is excessive, the board says, "tear down that overhead." When we proceed to tear it down, the department of research goes, and when the department of research goes, the superintendent of schools, or the manager of the school system, is without information to provide the board of education. He refers to the city of Washington, or to his Government, and there he finds that it has been torn down, too. We are having to practice efficiency, and are constantly building up the department of research. That, with the other added departments, are growing up around us to such an extent that we are going to be obliged to supply a system of accounting and bookkeeping such as we have never had before, or else the superintendent of schools will be changing positions very rapidly. We have a director of finance. Our city has found it necessary to provide a director of finance for the schools alone, and he is an authority in this country on the financing of schools. I have had occasion, in providing educational programs, to invite some of the best men in the educational world, among them Doctor Seligman, of Columbia Univerity, and Doctor Davenport, of New York, who have been so long interested in education, and so on through. Prior to that, I recall that I tried to obtain for the board of education in a smaller city information as to what extent the city was warranted in issuing bonds for school purposes. I was unable to get a satisfactory answer from the departments of economics in the universities or elsewhere. It is my judgment that the Government should have whatever information is extant upon this subject. The CHAIRMAN. We want to know what, in your opinion, the Federal Government should do. Doctor JONES. I think it would be hardly worth while to speak on the subject of the physical welfare in the outlying districts, which are suffering for the lack of sufficient preparation along that line. I believe that is common knowledge to all of us. I believe there should be a department, not held in the high estimation which is expressed in the chairman's bill, but making it coordinate, possibly, with the department of education. As to a director of welfare, the city of Cleveland has spent something like $4,000,000 for welfare. The cost of public education is about $13,000,000. There you see the ratio between the two costs. That $4,000,000 is provided by private subscription under what is known as the unit fund. In addition to that, the city, through its municipal agencies, has provided some additional help. The CHAIRMAN. The bill I introduced embodies the administration plan for reorganization of the executive departments and creating a department of education and welfare, the idea being to get under one head in one department all of the education and welfare activities of the Federal Government. I speak of that because you were talking about welfare. Doctor JONES. I think I know in a way what your plan is, and I think I agree with it heartily as it stands. Doctor Finegan has spoken of the training features. You would probably discount my expression on that subject. I believe training of teachers has not been adequately provided for in this country in point of quality, and possibly in point of quantity. Our State institutions for the training of teachers have become-I would express it mildly-rather light, so that they have built up adequate staffs of instructors without giving reasons, and you are relying very largely upon your larger institutions of the type regarded as schools of education being housed in your State universities, and some of the larger private institutions, undoubtedly, institutions like Columbia, Harvard, Yale, will find it impossible to provide the amount of trained teachers that are required by the schools on the basis of the standards that are now being set by the schools but not necessarily being set up within the schools. As to the director of foreign education, I do not know how widely your present bureau has kept in touch with what is being done in other countries. It occurs to me that if a department of education had been fully advised prior to the war as to what education was going on in other countries we would have been better advised of the various economic and social conditions in those countries and that might have been of value to us. I am sure that we should be posted on what is being done throughout the world. Progressive legislation as being prosecuted now in the States, in the Nation, does not follow a satisfactory, representative manner. The National Educational Association, particularly in support of the Sterling-Reed bill, may or may not represent the bulk of opinion and of the opinion which you might want. In so far as State legislation is concerned, probably throughout this country there are all kinds of teachers' pensions bills being provided. It seems to me that in some central clearing house there should be adequate information provided upon the maintenance and rehabilitation and future provision for the personnel of the teaching body. It is my judgment that unless the Government does make provision for some basis of extending the benefits of all that information from a clearing house to the country, and in the second place, unless there is proper attention given to the personnel, I do not mean just the raising of salaries, but the protection, care or improvement of the teaching body, just as a large commercial and industrial institution would do it, and unless there is an agency set up here to provide for it, that it will be provided by the organization itself, and to the disadvantage of the good of education nation-wide. That may not come this year or next. It would come within 10 years. The prevention would be far superior to protection later. I believe I have finished my statement. STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM TRUEMAN, TREASURER NEW YORK STATE RURAL SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION, KINGSTON, N. Y. Mr. TRUEMAN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, this bill has been referred to on several occasions this morning as the Dallinger bill. My understanding is that it is the Sterling-Reed bill. Mr. TUCKER. I think that is correct. Mr. BLACK. There are several bills before us. Mr. TUCKER. We will be glad to hear you on any of the bills. Mr. BLACK. If you are familiar with the Sterling-Reed bill, discuss that. Mr. MOORE. There are three bills, one of which is the Dallinger bill. Mr. TRUEMAN. That I had not seen. H. R. 3923 is the only bill I have seen. Mr. BLACK. That is the Reed bill. Mr. TRUEMAN. I am perhaps unfortunate, or maybe I am fortunate, in not having as good a background as Doctor Finegan. But I suppose, at least, I ought to give you some reason or some excuse for my being here, and I ought, at least, to supply some kind of credentials. My credentials are exceedingly humble. My official capacity is as a school trustee-a common, ordinary district-school trustee-which I have filled to the best of my ability for a number of years under difficulties, which I can not go into now. I might also add that I was recently elected as district trustee in an overwhelmingly Republican district, I myself being unfortunately a Democrat. So that I give you as my reason for being here and offer it to you as a reason. Mr. HASTINGS. I do not think you should apologize for that. Mr. TRUEMAN. It will depend on one's circumstances. I do not know this committee. I am only here as a stranger. But I do know my own conditions. I have fought. You do not know what I have been through. I am just through with one of the biggest fights I have ever had in the Empire State. I think it was largely through my instrumentality that the rural school bill was defeated at the last session of the legislature and the one previous. I take that much credit to myself, that I have fought that in and out, not a day—but in season and out, because I am convinced that it is dead wrong, and this is another one of the same pattern. I have told you what my credentials are for coming here, that I represent the farmers of New York State. I know the sentiment in the rural districts, I think, as well as any one there. I have expressed myself in season and out of season in the little schoolhouses all over the county in which I live, Ulster County, N. Y., and the reception that I have had and the clamor to get me back to tell people what this thing meant was simply wonderful. To give you an illustration of the sentiment there in regard to this bill I will read you a resolution, passed at a meeting at Syracuse before 221 farmers and rural residents of 21 counties, that will give you the attitude of mind of the people that are living on the land, that are doing the world's work. The Rural School Improvement Society was formed to combat the determined effort on the part of our State educational department and a few politicians to destroy our rural school system, replacing it with what they call "Modern education." The farmers are almost a unit against this, as is indicated in the following resolution passed at a conference of over 200 farmers from 21 counties at Syracuse recently: Whereas we are confronted with the complete breakdown of our public-school system in that instead of giving us educated people we have the cigarette-smoking flapper, the jazz-loving, joy-riding youth to whom labor in any shape is nauseous; and Whereas we are also confronted with a demand on the part of our professional educationists for more power amd more money to enable them to bring these blessings into the rural districts; and Whereas this means the wiping out of our rural-school system, which has proved itself for over 100 years the very backbone of the Nation, surviving without scandal as an institution every other organized human activity; and Whereas we are still close enough to the soil to know that some one must work if all are to live, and being willing to do our part in the future as we have in the past: Therefore Resolved, That we working farmers and rural residents of the State of New York hereby protest against any change in our rural schools as contemplated in the bill now before the legislature and pledge ourselves to do all in our power to prevent it becoming law; and further Resolved, That we can not sufficiently condemn the activities of those who are trying to put this scheme over on us, and draw their attention to the dire necessity of setting their own house in order before tinkering with ours. Now, gentlemen of the committee, you have heard this morning from the highest authorities up to State commissioner. You heard all of the sides of this from the top down. I want you to listen to the other side from the bottom up, which we have always understood as being the ground work of democracy, but it appears now that our democracy is to be handed down to us from above instead of working up from below. It was only 10 hours ago that I was putting manure into the hills for the corn we have got to reap, and all this before us is going to add to the burdens we are already bearing, and we know |