State normal schools and the authorization of the reconstruction of the buildings of two of these institutions, the enactment of a law devising a plan for the retirement and pensioning of teachers in the State normal and other State institutions, the authorization of State aid to public schools which maintained approved agricultural and homemaking courses. The promulgation of the new course of study for elementary schools, and the enactment of the rural school supervision law.

A state meeting of 90 informal delegates representing all organizations that are working for country life progress, met recently in Bloomington, Ill. and with unusual unity and enthusiasm laid a very definite and complete foundation for the Illinois Federation for Country Life Progress. The meeting and its outcome are unique, the first of its kind in the United States; and the spirit and expressions throughout the three sessions showed clear discernment of the need for working together to the same ends, and that from the Illinois. experience and thought of the past several years the sentiment for allaround community building and for federation in it had grown to wide acceptance in the minds of the people. The motto adopted is "Country Community Building." The platform is as follows:

1. Local country community building.

2.

The federation of all the rural forces of the state of Illinois in one big united effort for the betterment of country life.

3. The development of institutional programs of action for all rural social agencies. This means a program of work for the school, another for the Church, another for the Farmers' Institute, etc.

4. The stimulation of farmer leadership in the country community. 5. The increase and improvement of professional leadership among country teachers, ministers and all others who serve the rural community in offices of educational direction.

6. The perpetuation among all people of country communities of a definite community ideal, and the concentrated effort of the whole community in concrete tasks looking toward the realization of this ideal.

7. The recognition of the country school as the immediate initiator of progress in the average rural community of Illinois.

8. The study and investigation of country life facts and conditions. 9. The holding of annual country life conferences.

10. The protection of this federation and of all country life from any form of exploitation.

The faculty of the Bellingham State Normal School desire to call attention to the new department of work which was organized last year by this institution.

The general purpose of this department is to bring some of the opportunities, and to a limited extent the actual daily work of the normal school, within the reach of the parents of our public school children. The work of the normal school is mainly to prepare teachers for our public schools, but the faculty desire to be helpful to the parents as well as to the teachers and for this reason the Extension Department has been established. For the present, therefore, the work of this department will include the presentation of subjects that will be of special interest to the patrons of the schools. The general equipment of the normal school will be available for this work. This includes a practical working library, a large museum, maps, charts, mounted photographs, electric stereopticon, lantern slides, and a number of collections of articles illustrating various phases of industrial education. The work done last year by the new department was quite extensive. A large number of addresses were given by members of the faculty, one or more lectures having been delivered in each of more than twenty places. Besides these regular extension lectures, special addresses of various kinds, such as commencement addresses, county institute lectures, and others, called for the services* of various members of the faculty. The object is to come in touch with the parents of the school children.

Some of the addresses are on the following subjects:

Educational Problems on the Pacific Coast. Education After Four o'clock. The Boy-His Environment. The Story: Its Value in the Home. School Luncheons. The Value of Domestic Economy in Rural Schools. Sewing Methods for the Grades. Hygiene in Home and School. Agricultural Education. The Beginnings of a Natural History Library in a Country School. Punishment and Its Relation to Discipline. Forestry in the Country School. The Call of Young America. Amusements. The Duty of Health. Beautifying the Home and School. The Mental World of the Child.

A discovery in the fundamentals of electrical science, augmenting previous discoveries, has just been announced by Dr. Robert A. Millikan, Associate Professor of Physics in the University of Chicago. By this newest discovery Professor Millikan has given complete proof of the correctness of the atomic theory of electricity and has given a much more satisfactory demonstration than had before been found of the perpetual dance of the molecules of matter.

A Bulletin of the Extension Division of the University of Wisconsin suggests the following summary of the arguments for and against free textbooks."

The principal arguments pro and con on the free textbook question may be classified under the following heads:

Affirmative:

1. Education will not be really free until textbooks as well as schoolhouses, instruction, apparatus, furniture, and fuel are furnished without cost to individual pupils.

2. The free textbook system encourages the attendance of children whose parents cannot afford to buy books, but are not willing to be classed as indigent and supplied by officials.

3. Experience proves that free textbooks increase the attendance of children in the schools.

4. The work of the school starts more promptly and a better classification is possible. Time is saved, and the work of the school

improved.

5. Books are bought at wholesale and a large saving in money is made.

Negative:

1. Books given to people are not appreciated as highly as those which are bought.

2. The readers, geographies, and histories used and owned by pupils ought to remain in the homes as means of instruction for all the family.

3. With free books the sense of responsibility and independence would be weakened.

4. Children will become careless in handling books which cost them nothing, and parents will allow this carelessness to grow.

5. Many people furnish textbooks for their children who attend private and denominational schools and they ought not to be taxed to buy books for other peoples' children who attend public schools.

6. The promiscuous use of school books by all pupils is objectional on hygienic grounds. Public books may be instrumental in the spread of disease.

An international editorial arrangement has just been completed between the department of Political Economy of the University of Chicago and the International Institute of Social Bibliography of Berlin, the organization which issues the Bibliographie der Socialwissenschaften, of which the English version is called the "Bibliography of Social Science." By the terms of the agreement the Department assumes the responsibility for furnishing the institute with a bibliography of all books and articles dealing with the social sciences published in America. For several years the department has published in the "Journal of Political Economy" a bibliography of economics, considered the most comprehensive in the world. This is to be transferred to the "Bibliography of Social Science" and aug

mented by being extended to all the social sciences. As a result the Bibliography will be provided with an exhaustive index of works in these fields. Similar arrangements have been made by the Institute in England. The new plan will insure a thorough review of the field and will give an important place to American publications in these sciences.

Recent reports received by the Russell Sage Foundation from 758 cities and villages show that 337 of them have established systems of medical inspection; 76 employ school nurses to supervise the physical welfare of the children; 449 provide for vision and hearing tests, which are made by the teachers; 571 have installed sanitary drinking fountains; 186 provide individual drinking cups; 69 have schoolbuildings equipped with vacuum cleaning outfits; 644 use dust absorbing compounds for sweeping; 462 enforce the use of moist cloths for classroom dusting; and 358 have adjustable desks, which are adjusted to fit the size of the children occupying them.

At the foundation of many problems of home and school is the question of the child's liberty. There are parents and teachers who base their treatment of the children under their charge on the theory,-consciously or unconsciously held,-that the child has no right to be free. He is to be restrained and repressed by every means in their power, and at all times. The proverb, "a child should be seen and not heard," is a reflection of this theory. The swathed and bandaged infant, the coddled and dosed and dandled child, the repressed, restrained and cuffed boy, the youth who is underfed, overclothed, or starved for fresh air, or kept from proper exercise and from association with other children, for fear of various physical and moral dangers,-these are all examples of children and youth who are defrauded of their birthright, liberty, without which no child can grow up to a strong, noble, useful maturity. The same theory, that a child has no right to liberty, produces schools, and even colleges, especially those for the gentler sex, which are loaded down with rules and regulations intended to govern the personal conduct of the students, down to the finest details.

A concrete illustration of two contrasted theories of child nurture is in evidence just outside the Editor's window. Two children of tender years are playing together in the May sunshine. The day is exceptionally warm. One is in a loose, cotton blouse, with no head gear save his own abundant hair, with sleeves rolled up, showing a pair of bronzed forearms, a ruddy glow of health on his cheeks and a sparkle in his eye. He is the free child, strong and attractive in his native beauty.

The other is loaded down with thick coats and coverings, a wool bonnet, with heavy ribbons tied beneath her throat, gaiters, leggins and mittens. Her motions are slow and feeble. Her face is thin and pale. She is the child defrauded of liberty.

Liberty is freedom to do what is best for one's self, consistently with the rights of others. License is the doing as we please, regardless of the rights of the true self or of others. The child who is allowed to go his own way utterly regardless of self and others, is intolerable. But for one child defrauded of his birthright to care, guidance and intelligent restraint from evil, there are a hundred who are harmed by the with-holding of liberty. Give nature a chance. Do not interfere with her processes unnecessarily.

"There are parents who worry because their child does not take readily to books, but prefers boisterous play," says Professor G. R. Davis, in one of the Child Culture Bulletins of the North Dakota State Normal School. "Don't think this means that the child will not have a good brain later. Mental power is the highest and most complex of human attributes. We do not look for fruit from orchard trees until after a long period of growth; so with the child. The fine fibers in the brain upon which mental power depends have not all developed by the twelfth year.

Don't compel a child to do much fine minute work, and discourage him if he wants to. If he is going to write, a big coarse pencil to make big letters is the thing to start with. A six year old child ought not to read type in which the capitals are much under a quarter of an inch high. This is because there must be considerable nerve development before there is a capacity for fine work.

Eyes were made for seeing at a distance mostly. They have to be broken in very gradually to the heavy strain so often demanded of them by our ways of working now-a-days. Let the child use his eyes as much as possible on large things, and out in the open. Eye strain, and the effort of attention to fine work like needle-work and too much reading and writing are sources of the nerve disorders now so common. The nerves that control big bodily muscles are in a way the foundation of the finer nerves. Let the child get a good foundation for his nervous system by plenty of running, romping, climbing, etc. And let the child work; not long and arduously, but so as to establish the habit of industry and to familiarize him with things and tools. It is one of the advantages of farm life that the child can get such an abundance and variety of industrial training.'