himself his place, and must show himself worthy of the place by winning it anew every day. In the new South not birth but worth determines place, and the criterion of worth is social efficiency.

The new education.-It is evident that this new order called for a new definition of the individual. Freed from the old institutions which had submerged him he must be stated in terms of the new social relations; no longer limited by the boundaries of caste, he must be conceived as a factor coordinate with his fellows in the larger social life. This conception of the free individual in terms of his social function carries with it the consciousness of needed preparation for this function. The freed man must be prepared for citizenship. This free citizen is also conscious of his worth as man, conscious of the fact that he is end as well as means; that therefore he has a claim to the full, free development of his personality. This conception of citizenship and of manhood as potential in every child has given rise to the modern public school, supported by the State for the education of all the people. This institution, impossible under the old régime, has had its development since the civil war. Just as the French after the revolution conceived a system of national instruction as the essential instrument in the hands of the State for transforming crude and monarchical material into republican citizenship, so the people of the Southern States after the war turned instinctively to the public free school as the chief factor in the work of reconstruction. The progress made within the past thirty years is nothing short of the marvelous when viewed in the light of the difficulties to be overcome. The fact that some of the States, as Alabama, for example, are appropriating more than half their total revenue to educational purposes gives evidence of an abiding faith in the new education.

Causes of retarded progress.—If the progress in popular education has not been all that its champions have wished for it, if the public school in the South to-day is very far below the standard set by other sections, it is due to serious obstacles in the way. And it is the consciousness of victory over many of these difficulties that has contributed so largely to the fine enthusiasm of the present educational campaign. Of these retarding influences perhaps the most persistent, and in many respects the most difficult to meet because of the subtlety of its manifestations, is the half unconscious conservatism inherited from the old South. While conserving much of the old life that is vital as well as beautiful, and thus contributing its part to the larger life of the future, it has at the same time clung to old forms which have been outgrown and which progress demanded should be cast aside. There was the old aristocracy, for example, refusing to recognize the new individual, and clinging tenaciously to aristocratic ideals and institutions totally out of harmony with the democratic spirit of the modern world. In education this manifested itself in a vigorous opposition to the public school. Prior to the war the Southern States had no public schools for the education of all people. The education of the slave, involving obviously enough the destruction of the system, was impossible. There was no system of schools at all adequate to the education of all the white children. There were universities, academies, and private schools for the education of those who could afford it. This indifference, and even opposition to the education of the masses, was an inheritance from England. So deeply ingrained was it in the tissue of southern society that when the public school appeared as the child of the new régime it was instinctively opposed; opposed in part, perhaps, because it was a product of the new order; opposed because it was public, offering equal opportunities to the plain people; opposed because it was free. Against these odds the system of popular education has had to fight its way to recognition. And to understand the present enthusiasm of the teacher and educational leader at the South one must appreciate the loneliness of his struggle at the time when he had to fight his battle single handed and alone.

Add to this the poverty resulting from the war and reconstruction. The war

alone cost the South one-tenth of her white male population and three billions of property. Reconstruction squandered the rest; it emptied the treasuries and handicapped future generations with bonded debts amounting to more than $300,000,000. North Carolina, for example, was left with a debt of $35,000,000, almost a third as much as the total valuation of her property; Louisiana with a debt of $40,000,000; Alabama with a debt of $18,000,000, and Tennessee with one of more than $14,000,000. Under these trying conditions the southern people began the work of rebuilding their fortunes and their institutions.

From this experience the schools suffered a double handicap, for, in addition to their inability, from extreme poverty, to give to schools the support they needed, the people had learned to hate all taxgatherers and to distrust all schemes for the public welfare,' interpreting them as devices for the private gain of the schemers."a This gave rise to constitutional limitations which are still in many parts of the South a barrier to adequate local taxation for educational purposes. The work of building schools was further retarded by the fact that southern society is organized on the basis of the family as the unit. This type of organization, with a population essentially rural, sparsely settled over large areas of country, has made it extremely difficult to create anything approximating a public or corporate spirit and to secure the cooperation necessary for any public enterprise. If to this we add the double burden of building and maintaining separate schools for the two races living side by side, we may form some conception of the obstacles to be overcome.

Thus the educational leader at the South, with the conservatism of the old aristocracy against him, with an appalling and unjust debt hanging over his head, with extreme poverty staring him in the face at every turn, has had the herculean task of creating public spirit in a society extremely individualistic in its organization, and of inducing a stricken people, taught by harsh experience to hate all taxgatherers and promoters, to build a double system of schools, one for the education of a people but yesterday their slave. With faith and courage he wrought and awaited his time.

The new generation.-But the years have brought to the South improved conditions. The young men of the present generation are facing toward the future; and this, without destroying veneration for the past, has given a new inspiration and a larger courage for the present. These "young captains and young soldiers of industry," in the words of Doctor McKelway, "refuse no reverence for the veterans of the civil war on either side, but the men of this generation are determined to run it. The sons will preserve and will magnify the fame of their fathers, but they will not foster or fight over again their fends. They believe in factories quite as much as in pantheons, in energy more than in inquests, and in schoolhouses more than in graves."

Material prosperity.-The aspirations of these young leaders are reenforced by a remarkable industrial development. Within 20 years, from 1880 to 1900, the South increased its wages paid to factory hands from $76,000,000 to $350,000,000; its production of pig iron from 397,000 tons to 2,500,000 tons; its output of coal from 6,000,000 tons in 1880 to 50,000,000 tons in 1900. During the same period the total output of her manufactured products was increased from $338,791,898 in 1880 to $1,173,422.565 in 1900. The development of textile industries within the period has been phenomenal. The number of spindles has been increased from 667,000 in 1880 to 5,000,000 in 1899. In the one year 1899 there were erected in the South 365 new cotton mills, as against 17 in the New England States. And

a Dabney, "The Public School Problem in the South," Report of the Bureau of Education, 1901, vol. 1, p. 1009.

See Proceedings of the Fourth Conference for Education in the South, pp. 89-90.

this is but the beginning of the development of almost unlimited possibilities, of which the people of this new generation are becoming conscious. But this mere beginning of an industrial evolution has already accomplished three things for education. It has initiated an era of prosperity, which makes an adequate system of schools a thinkable possibility; the establishing of larger trade relations incident to industrial progress has tended to strengthen and expand the social consciousness, and has brought to bear upon education, as upon all social questions, a larger perspective; and, finally, it has demonstrated that the traditional curriculum, organized for the education of ministers, physicians, and lawyers, is inadequate to the demands of modern life. The effect of this whole tendency appeared in a wholesome unrest, finally issuing in the present educational renaissance.

Returning national consciousness.-With this growing consciousness of creative ability and the hope which it carries with it of economic independence, there has come to the South the desire to regain the place which it once held in the councils of the nation. During all these years of preoccupation with the rebuilding of material fortunes the memory of past leadership has lingered as a beautiful dream. With the bounding, buoyant life of this present generation, this dream has been transfo: med into a definite aspiration.

The dream of world leadership.-Then comes the epoch of national expansion quickening the national consciousness throughout the land. There has come to all our people in these latter days the feeling that we are climbing into world leadership. At any rate, we have assumed the position of a world power, and it is clear that our destiny is to be wrought out in cooperation with all the other modern nations. This larger aspiration, carrying its larger responsibility, has brought to the American people, South as well as North, a keener sense of the solidarity of American life, and has put the provincial thinker under the necessity of trying to interpret the life and institutions of his own community in terms of the larger movements of civilization.

Into this larger life the Conference for Education in the South of 1898 was caught up and transformed into the Conference for Education in the South as we know it to-day. Although organized by a small boly of men interested primarily in the southern negro. it rapidly developed into an open forum for a frank discussion of all the problems and interests of a democratic society so far as they center in the education of the child.

Before the conference there were in the educational work all over the South men of vision and of power. These are men who, in the words of Doctor Dickerman, "with clear intelligence and unwavering purpose, have toiled while others slept, giving themselves with all their hearts to the task of thinking out these intricate mazes of popular necessity and trying every clew to a solution. They are to be found in every State and distributed in positions of educational power, clear-headed, pure-hearted scholars who find no joy so unalloyed as to serve the people among whom they live." But these men were working out their problems in lonely isolation. In the conference they found a clearing house, and the vague dreams and unexpressed aspirations of individuals have been, as by magic, transformed into a social ideal with a definite programme.

II. PERIOD OF SELF-DISCOVERY.

The period from the first meeting of the conference at Capon Springs in 1898 to the fifth meeting at Athens, Ga., in 1902, is one of rapid expansion and of selfdiscovery. The men who met as the guests of Captain Sale in the first conference knew that the South contained a large colored population but yesterday freed

from servitude and by act of Congress endowed with all the prerogatives and responsibilities of citizenship; they knew that a very large proportion of these people were illiterate and that no adequate provision existed for their education; they knew that there was an alarming degree of illiteracy throughout the Southern States, and in a general way that the facilities for removing this illiteracy, white and colored, were meager enough; they felt that this situation was a matter of national concern; and, impelled by a desire for social service, they came together to see what ways and means might be devised for bringing light and life to the toiling thousands who dwell in darkness and for lifting the nation's illiterate into intelligent citizenship. But beyond this there was little that was definite, and the real work of the conference during these four years was that of (1) discovering and defining its aims, (2) discovering the forces which were to be called into the service of these ends, and (3) devising methods of operation. The history of these four years of its development, therefore, is a record of progress from relatively narrow and nebulous aims, with a general striving for social service, toward purposes larger and more definite, with a system of organized agencies for carrying on a definite scheme of activities.

1.-Development of the aims of the conference.

Expansion of the conception of Christian education.-The first conference was styled the Conference for Christian Education in the South. Of the 34 members enrolled 20 were ministers of the gospel. Interest was centered primarily in church schools organized and maintained for the education of the colored race. The dominating aim seemed to be to make these schools more effective in the development of Christian character. The first paper closes with a quotation from General Armstrong:

Make the schools what they should be. Teach the boy and girl, the man and woman, that American citizenship means hard work, temperance, morality, the habit of right living, and there will be no room for disappointment. The negro will justify the faith of his friends.

The second paper on Industrial education" closes with this sentiment: The hope of our country is in schools dominated by Christian influences. Selfgovernment is impossible to the many if the many be ignorant, and just as impossible if the many be vicious. The heart and the conscience must be educated as well as the brain and the hand.

At the end of the third paper we find the same note:

The Christian religion has been the great mother of schools. Christ, who is the truth, has given the great stimulus to all human culture. And yet we must not forget that intellectual culture was not the primary end of His work, but only a part of it.

The Christian education in which the conference was interested was that administered by the church within a relatively narrow field. "It will be understood, of course," says Rev. D. J. Satterfield in the introduction of his paper, "that we are considering only the educational interests of the missionary work in the South." But in this same paper it is shown that there is an intimate relation between the denominational school and the public school, and that since the public schools are the only means for lifting up the masses it becomes the mission of the denominational school to cooperate in this field of educational endeavor. President Meserve, of Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., after a similar plea for cooperation, adds that "the denominational schools ought to be allowed to devote their energies exclusively to the training of leaders for the race, and leave to the public schools the education of the rank and file.”

The most significant paper of this first conference, as representing the line of advance toward the larger aim, is by Doctor Mayo, of Boston, on “The New Edu

cation," in which he maintains that the family, the church, and the state are not separate institutions, but the same people, acting as parents, churchmen, and citizens for the complete education of the new generation of young Americans. The American common school [says he] is founded upon and lives by the spirit of the new education, which is the last and highest response of the whole people to the absolute religion of the Great Teacher, as applied in the art of living together by 70,000,000 of our people. The American common school is founded upon the nature and possibilities of the child announced by Jesus. Its benevolent scheme of discipline is in accordance with this declaration of the law of love to God and man. In no church or family are the Christian virtues more thoroughly recognized and enforced than in the rules and regulations of a good common school. Nowhere are American children more shielded from temptation and better protected from their lower selves than in a good common school. In no body of public or professional people can be found a higher average of character, a more accurate knowledge of children, and a more devoted spirit of self-sacrifice for their good than among the 400,000 teachers of the 12,000,000 of children and youth in the common schools. While it does not assume the functions of the family and the church, its pupils and teachers live in the homes and are gathered in the churches, and are to a great extent what they are there made. In addition, the public school alone practically trains the children in the higher life of society and citizenship, where every principle of Christianity in which the life, liberty, and happiness of the whole people is involved.

Under these circumstances the old sharp distinction between the "Christian" and the "secular" education disappears. All American life is sacred, and there is no corner of it "common or unclean" to the view of the Christian citizen; and when the clergy and Christian parents realize this fact, and come forward heartily to make the school as the church and the Government what it ought to be, the old contention will disappear, and in their several relations the whole American people will work together for good" for that "general welfare" which means the test for 70,000,000 people in God's best country in God's world.

In harmony with this larger view of Christian education, and as indicative of this expansion of the conception of its aim, the "Conference for Christan Education in the South" became in the second year of its existence "the Conference for Education in the South.” At this second meeting there was a much larger percentage of business men and men representing the so-called “secular" schools. The event of the conference at this session was a survey of the educational field of the South by Dr. J. L. M. Curry. In an address of characteristic eloquence and power, with all the earnestness of his intense nature, Dr. Curry pictured the conditions of the rural South; urged the cause of the common school as the college of the people; presented the American child wherever found as the future citizen of the Republic, and on these premises made a fervent plea for universal education through the use and improvement of every educational agency from the kindergarten to the university. This address turned the tide of interest and of endeavor toward universal education through State-established, State-controlled, and State-supported schools.

In response to this larger outlook, the conference at the close of this session authorized the executive committee to appoint a field agent, who should work under the direction of Dr. Curry, and whose duty it should be to study conditions in detail and to ascertain such facts with respect to Southern education, both public and private, as would make more clear what methods and agencies should be encouraged and what avoided or reformed. Dr. G. S. Dickerman, New Haven, Conn., was appointed, and at the third conference he made an exhaustive report with recommendations. His conclusion was that the children of the rural communities of the South need schools which are adapted to the conditions that exist, and that to insure this the school must be developed on its own ground, and that this work was being done by the people of the South, especially in their public school system. Pointing out the difficulties of this work, he recommended that aid be given at this point.