it, but our professional educationists, securely entrenched behind the powerful sentimental and superstitious value attached to the word education are now making an exhibition of themselves that is not difficult to explain.

We hired these people to educate our children in good faith; they have miserably failed to do this. Instead they have produced an uncanny species of precociousness that quickly changes to a soggy cynicism in which religion is a joke, statesmanship becomes synonymous with graft, and civilization itself is despaired of. Their clear duty was to eliminate ignorance; instead we find them allied with the grossest form of it in the shape of the education is the cure for all our illa gross superstition that a "formal

Instead of asking themselves the obvious question, "If what has been done in the past warranted us in going ahead in the future, we find them everywhere rushing off to Federal and State legislatures, demanding huge appropriations and unlimited power to force their desires and experiments down the necks of a most unwilling public.

Mr. ALLEN. Did this body that adopted those resolutions have in mind at the time of the adoption of those resolutions that education was the cause of the young men and young women smoking cigarettes, that education was the cause of the great amount of theft throughout the country? Did this great body believe that education was the cause of all those ills?

Mr. TRUEMAN. It would be impossible for me to interpret the inner thoughts of those 200 people, but we have a common notion among us, being common people, that education is intended to educate, and we find a decided lack of that kind of thing, and that resolution is a protest against it, not in education itself. Through the fight I have been making, it has been necessary for me to make an analysis of the situation and this is what I have found, that at the bottom of this whole thing we have our rural school teachers, one of the most despised group of human beings that you can find. I know, because I am living in it, and they are not in favor of this bill or in favor of the Downing bill that we killed in Albany on the 19th of April. Above those comes another stratum, the beginning of which is the district superintendents, and they are for all this thing, the centralization of education, of appropriations, of huge sums; the machinery is everything to them, and the educative part of it is nothing.

Mr. BLACK. Was not the Downing bill suggested on the theory that New York could not do enough along the old lines with the funds available?

Mr. TRUEMAN. It was suggested by a self-appointed group of individuals at Cornell University under the name of a committee

of 21.

Mr. BLACK. Their theory was that it was in the interests of economy and education.

Mr. TRUEMAN. Their theory was that they should bring the benefits of the State schools into the rural districts and wipe out the rural schools totally.

Mr. BLACK. That was consolidation in the interests of economy. Mr. TRUEMAN. Economy did not come in at all and was never mentioned. The real fight was fought out on the question of con

solidation, and Governor Graves has so discredited himself and the whole board of education in the State of New York to-day that I can give you my word for it that no bill that they could ever frame would be put through the assembly, and I know what I am talking about.

Mr. BLACK. It is your idea that the same people who favor the Sterling-Reed bill are in favor of the so-called consolidated school? Mr. TRUEMAN. It is all part of the same thing. This is part of what we have fought.

Mr. BLACK. You think if they got power they might get under this bill that they would force the rural schools out and consolidate them?

Mr. TRUEMAN. They certainly would; of course, they would. It is impossible for me at the present time to go into all the details of that fight up there, but it would be exceedingly illuminating to you gentlemen. We have got down on our knees in front of the high standards of these people in this matter, which we have practically worshipped, and to have the whole thing thrown down into the dirt has been a humiliation that I can not make you understand. They stand absolutely discredited because they have told us falsehoods; they allowed us to believe right up to the time of the hearing in Albany on the 19th of last month, the most extraordinary meeting that ever was held in the assembly chamber, packed from wall to wall. Eighty delegates from my own little county went up at my request, and the bill never came out of the committee, though the richest people in the city of New York were there lobbying for it and even walking up and down the aisle, and on the rostrum accosted the speaker of the assembly on the platform.

Mr. BLACK. Do you recall whether or not Doctor Downing, of the State department of education, took any position on the bill? Mr. TRUEMAN. What his position was?

Mr. BLACK. Yes.

Mr. TRUEMAN. He was in favor of it. It was the Downing bill. Mr. BLACK. Senator Downing?

Mr. TRUEMAN. Pardon me?

Mr. BLACK. I mean Doctor Downing, head of the department of education.

Mr. TRUEMAN. I am not sufficiently acquainted with these gentlemen up there. I only know one or two of them and they have not committed themselves to me. If a man will lie to me once he will twice, and I will not believe him, not if he swears it on a stack of Bibles. I have had my experience with this thing and I am speaking from conviction. I have spent an enormous amount of time and trouble in trying to get at the bottom of this thing and I believe that I have arrived at the true conclusion of it. I want to give you the result before I go on to my analysis. I found the most extraordinary thing. After the district superintendents, all of these different departments of education lie upon those like geological strata, one on top of the other, each fitting very beautifully into the other, until you get to the commissioner of education, a State commissioner of education, every one of them following in the other's footsteps and being absolutely in unison on one thing to break the rural schools. Then the extraordinary thing that dawned upon me was this, that immediately you get above the commissioner of education you go out into the pure air and there you have men like Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, Dr. Arthur T. Hadley, Dr. Charles Elliott, who are as much opposed to

that bill and to this bill as I am myself. There is something for you. gentlemen to think of. There is meat in the consideration of that thing. Why should it be that way? I am an uneducated man, never went to school an hour in my life, and know none of the blessings of all this, and some will say that I am an enemy of education. I hasten to say with Thomas Carlyle, "That one man should die ignorant, this I call tragedy."

Mr. BLACK. Is there anything vitally wrong with the rural education system?

Mr. TRUEMAN. Yes; there is as much wrong with our rural education system as there is with our farms and homes. This committee of 21 went to work with $75,000 in New York and made a survey of the State of New York, the State where I live, and dragged the Empire State in the dirt. They appraised the rural schools. They treated the trustees with obloquy and contempt. There was nothing that was bad enough for them to say about them, and after having done what I have done for my school, it got me hot under the collar, and I started in on an investigation. What do you suppose, gentlemen, has happened since then? A year ago when we had a hearing in Albany this committee of 21 was lined up with the Senate committee that heard the bill. It was with difficulty that we could decide which was in it. This time, on the 19th of last April, the committee of 21 was out and on making inquiries as to where they were, I found that Dr. George A. Works, chairman of the whole thing, had gone into Texas and got $50,000 from the Texas Legislature to perform the same operation in Texas. The residents of Texas have my sincere sympathy.

Opposed to this scheme we find two distinct classes. These are the ones I have just described to you; that is, the really educated men represented by Dr. A. T. Hadley, Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, and Dr. Charles Elliot. Then there are the common working people on whom the burden must fall.

The first of these are fully alive to the menace confronting us but are prevented by professional courtesy from coming out in the open and denouncing it. The second intuitively know it is all wrong but are largely unable to express themselves.

I do not usually take another man for my guide. I believe in getting at things for myself, but if I am to take the authority of any individual I like to get the authority of a man like Hadley or Pritchett rather than George A. Works. Here is another thing I am reminded of at the same time. Here is Doctor Ferrand, at Cornell at the present time. The very last thing he has suggested is this, that a law should be passed that every American citizen should spend three years in Europe before he is 25 years of age, and I can go down in my jeans and supply the money. That is the president of the college that has fathered George A. Works, who is now in Texas working on the same thing, of the committee of 21.

Mr. BLACK. It must be an agricultural college.

Mr. TRUEMAN. Yes; it is an agricultural college, and the crocodile tears those people have wept over us farmers would make a donkey laugh. The only reason they have been able to get away with it is that the people in our districts are so scattered that we are unable to meet them. I have done my best, and it has cost me a lot of

money I have no business to spend, but once in the fight I can not help but stick to it.

The second class of people are the farmers, the ones who have to pay for all this. The really educated people are opposed to it. The farmers, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries, are opposed to it, and the only ones who are in favor of it are those people who have fallen down on their job.

Mr. BLACK. You judge that by the results?

Mr. TRUEMAN. I judge that by the results. If you knew the trouble I have had to get from these highfaluting gentlemen a standard by which they judge their works you would be amazed. You would never credit it because you have been too busy, as we all are, to go into these things. But eventually I did get a reply from the commissioner of education of the State of Illinois. That was splendid. He said the real test, the real standard, is results.

Now, that is so simple that he who runs may read, and I being a man like Doctor Finegan said, with some horse sense, I was able to grasp that thing, and did not need any dictionary to help me out. Results are the things. I said, now, where are those results?

I am here to represent this large mass of rural people who have ever been the backbone of our country, and we feel the time has arrived for us to state the case in plain terms.

The plea put forward by the proponents of this bill is that the rural child shall have as good an opportunity for education as the city child, and the unthinking swallow the bait, while the superstitious believe work will be no longer necessary.

It is an exquisite piece of irony that at the moment that this plea was being urged in New York State by our commissioner of education he had in his possession a petition signed by every civic organization in New York City asking the governor to call for appropriations for a commission to investigate the New York City schools, which were unable to function, and that the merit system was inoperative through political favoritism.

Our professional educationists promised to educate us, and to make sure none escaped asked for a policeman and a club to drive us to it, and at this time, several generations after, we still appear a long way from the desired goal, and I am here to-day to ask the pointed question: In what department of human activity are we to look for the results of the glorious opportunities that have been denied the rural people? Where are the results?

Are they to be found in the church?

In the pulpit we have an unseemly wrangle between modernism and fundamentalism, while in the basement cigarette smoking and fox trotting are the order of the day.

Are they to be found in music? Let jazz answer.

Are they to be found in the home? Read "Main Street," and "Babbit."

Are they to be found in our youth? An army of flappers and joy riders supplies an eloquent negative.

Mr. BLACK. They might use these very reasons that you give for this bill.

Mr. TRUEMAN. I will come to that later. Are they in the movies? Not according to the censorship.

Are they in literature? The front covers of the magazines and jackets of new books does not indicate it, while the ability to discuss the latest adventure of Percy and Ferdie is the high sign of intelligence in modern education.

Are they in politics? Veterans' Bureau!

Are they in statesmanship? Teapot Dome!

The only reply to this terrific arraignment is this, not a denial of facts, but a denial of responsibility for this state of affairs. One hundred and fifty years ago William Cowper wrote this:

From education as the ruling cause

The public character its color draws.

That answers your question. These people were assuming the responsibility. These people who have been heard to-day assumed the responsibility to educate our children. They took the pay for it, and they have utterly failed to produce the goods.

Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in this orgy of materialism, this saturnalia of politics, in which our professional educationists are involved, the handwriting has already appeared upon the wall, and again we see the ominous words, "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."

Instead of a chair in the President's Cabinet, as this bill calls for, a cloister with garments of sackcloth and ashes is indicated until their arrogance is abated and they give evidence of a broken and contrite heart. I thank you.

Mr. BLACK. I think this gentleman ought to be heard by the full committee at some time convenient for him.

STATEMENT OF MR. MILTON FAIRCHILD, A. B., WASHINGTON, D. C.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

Mr. FAIRCHILD. My interest is chiefly in the State departments of education. I am chairman of what is called the Character Education Institution, and most of the State superintendents and State commissioners are members of that institution. For the information of the gentleman who has just closed, I will say that we have 20 sets of State committees already appointed determined to solve the problems of getting character results from the public school work, so that what he speaks of will be taken care of in due time. Mr. BLACK. You mean you hope it will.

Mr. FAIRCHILD. Yes. That is faith in human nature.

Mr. BLACK. I do not know about that.

Mr. FAIRCHILD. I have given to some members of the committee an article which I have written outlining in some detail the research work that needs to be done, the basic research work that needs to be done under a department of education or in any form. I myself am not committed to the immediate realization of the full program of the Sterling-Reed bill. These matters are very difficult to work out and it is necessary to develop them and to realize them step by step, feeling our way through to something that will work. I would like to distribute these to members of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you like to have it in the record?
Mr. FAIRCHILD. Yes.