Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

(d) The surface of the street.

1. Paving.

a. The various kinds, comparative advantages and costs.

b. The importance of good paving to the business interests, as
shown in transportation charges.

c. Why the surface of the streets is not better, and who suffers
from it.

(1) Poor paving at the beginning, and the reason for it.

(2) Constant tearing up of the streets and failure to replace
properly.

(3) Remedy for these evils.

A. The conduit or subway.

1. Why we do not have it.

2. Additional evils resulting from its absence.

a. Waste of gas.

b. Waste of water.

c. Difficulty of making repairs.

d. Injury to health and vegetation.

Poisonous gases.
Uncleanliness.

2. The cleaning of the streets.

a. Who has charge of it.

b. What it costs.

c. Why necessary.

d. How the department is run.

e. What is done with the refuse and what should be done.

f. Duties of the householder.

g. How we may keep the streets cleaner.

h. The sprinkling of the streets.

1. By whom done.

3. The regulation of traffic.

a. Who makes the regulations (ordinances, rules)?

b. Who enforces them, such as the direction and speed of traffic?

c. The encumbering of sidewalks and streets.

d. The restriction of certain streets.

e. Remedies for the congestion of traffic, as tunnels, belt lines,
etc., for freight.

f. The growth of business limited by traffic.

4. Sidewalks.

a. Regulations as to laying, repairing.

b. Who has jurisdiction over them.

c. The stoop line.

d. Right of the citizen to demand good sidewalks.

e. Blocking the sidewalk.

5. Gutters.

a. Whose business to keep clear of ice, snow or dirt.

b. Whose business to enforce the law and who makes the law?

6. The sewer system.

a. How and by whom sewers are put in.

b. Who pays for them.

c. Who has charge of them.

d. How connected with the houses.

e. How the sewage is disposed of.

f. What is done in other cities and what should be done here?

g. The importance of a good sewer system to the health of the
community.

7. The water supply.

a. Why the city and not the individual furnishes the supply of
water in a great city.

b. Why the water supply conditions the growth of the city.

c. Where we obtain our present water supply and how it reaches us.

d. Who has charge of the water supply.

e. The total and per capita supply of water in the city.

f. How water is paid for.

g. The danger of a water famine.

1. How it can be averted.

(a) Saving the water by the repairing of leaks, using meters,
etc., salt water for fires and cleaning streets.

(b) New sources of supply. The difficulties.

h. The advantages of city ownership over private company.

i. Cost of water supply.

8. Lighting the streets.

a. How it is done.

b. What it costs.

c. Who has charge of it.

d. Should it be done by the city or a private company?

e. The use of the streets for carrying pipes and wires.

f. Who controls this use?

g. The control over these companies by the city or state.

h. Ought the city furnish light to citizens for their private
purposes?

i. How the furnishing of light and fuel differs from furnishing
meat and groceries.

j. Who gives the right to place telegraph and telephone wires?

k. Why should they be underground?

(a) Appearance, (b) Light, (c) Fire.

9. Transportation by cars on the streets.

a. The giving of franchises, why?

b. What is paid for a franchise?

c. Who has jurisdiction over street railways and to what extent?

d. Should the city own them?

e. Importance of street passenger transportation in the life of
the city.

f. What cheaper fares could do for the city.

10. The rights of citizens on the streets.

a. Laws and ordinances which secure these, as those against
disorderly conduct, crowding, ball playing, excessive speeding
and those regulating processions, banners, etc.

11. Licenses to use streets.

a. What businesses require to be licensed and why?

b. How licenses are secured.

III. Part III of the course takes up the matter of protection to life and property by the various departments of the city government, as follows:

Protection to life and property by

1. The Police Department.
2. The Department of Education.
3. Fire Department.
4. The Courts and Department of Correction.
5. The Health Department.
6. The Tenement House Department.
7. The Bureau of Buildings.
8. The Park Department.
9. The Charities Department.

1. Police.

Policing the Streets.--The organization and management of the
police department. The duties of policemen. The importance of an
honest and efficient police department. Why this department is so
often criticized. The evils of graft and why it exists. State or
county control of police. Should the head arise from the ranks?
Should his position be permanent? The rights of citizens as against
the police. How to make complaints. Serving warrants. The police
control over street traffic, street crowds, push carts, etc.

2. Education.

The educational law and why it exists. Why the city furnishes free
education. The organization of the department of education. The
method of appointment of officials and the teaching force. The
advantages of the system of appointments. Kinds of day schools. The
total cost of education in the city. The cost per pupil in each
class of schools. The cost in the high school. The cost of books
and supplies. Is it worth while? Special schools and colleges:
Evening schools, corporate schools. The lecture system. The
vacation playground. Aims and advantages of each. Why they exist.
What they accomplish. The excellences and defects of our system
of education as compared with that of other cities and countries.
Supplementary education.

1. The Natural History Museum.
2. The Botanical Gardens.
3. The Zoological Garden.
4. The Art Museum.

3. The Fire Department.

Protection against fire depends upon (1) the building laws, (2) the
water supply, and (3) the efficiency of the fire department. How
one becomes a fireman. The organization of the department.

(a) The influence of the insurance companies.

(b) The poor construction of buildings.

(c) The esprit de corps. Salaries and pensions.

4. The Courts and the Department of Correction.

1. Civil Courts.

A. Municipal Courts. Their jurisdiction, officers and district.

B. The City Court (county).

C. The Supreme Court.

2. Criminal Courts.

Under the study of courts comes the work of the court officers
and the processes connected with the trial. The term of the
office, selection and salary of the various officials. The
meaning of the various terms used. Probation system.

The Department of Correction.--Its management and duties. Prison
labor. The indeterminate sentence system.

5. The Health Department.

(a) In relation to the ordinary resident. (b) In relation to the
landlord. (c) In relation to the business man.

A study of the actual regulations of this department as found in
the code, and a description of its activities, together with
comparison with the work done in other cities.

6. The Tenement House Department.

When and why formed? Who is subject to it? How organized? What
it has accomplished. Why it needs a strong head. Illustrations
from report of the Tenement House Department. Dictation of most
important provisions of law.

7. Building Bureau.

How it differs in organization from other departments. The
buildings subject to its jurisdiction. Why its inefficient
management is so disastrous. The temptation to graft and what it
costs.

8. The Park Department.

How it protects health. How our park system arose and what it has
cost. How the parks are managed. The need of small parks. What
parks have accomplished in New York. Boulevards as parks. The
need and benefit of playgrounds as conducive to health, educative
and preventive of crime. The desirability of school playgrounds.
Dangers threatening parks.

9. Department of Charities.

The hospital and ambulance service. Out-door relief. Asylums. How
the destitute may be aided. The city’s aid to private charitable
institutions.

In this connection it is both desirable and feasible for the pupils to visit the more important departments and get some first-hand impressions of their work. Our experience has been that the city officials willingly and helpfully coöperate with the school. Not only have they furnished us much valuable material, but they have also facilitated the inspection of their departments, and have not infrequently themselves given helpful talks to the boys.

IV. Following close upon the study of the departments comes a consideration of the cost to the city. The pupil has noted the extensive activities of the municipality and the important question of how they are all paid for looms up before him. The budget must be studied, and the manner of levying and collecting taxes must be understood, as well as the raising of money by loans. Under proper guidance he will come to realize how extravagant and inefficient government affects him personally, how honest and economic government has a money value to every citizen. He will want to know what city officers determine the amount of money to be spent, and just what officers spend the money. New York City has had a Board of Estimate and Apportionment in control of its finances for a decade, yet it remained for the recent three-cornered fight for the mayoralty, with its resulting choice of a Democratic mayor and a Fusion Board of Estimate, to bring home to the average citizen what the professional politician had long understood, that this Board have really much more to do with the government of the city than the mayor, that in reality New York has a sort of government by commission.

V. We come finally in our study to a consideration of the citizen’s part in the administration of municipal affairs. Topics such as the following should be taken up:

Becoming a citizen. Becoming a voter. Registration. Voting.
Voting but a part. The party organization. The cause of good or
bad government. How the citizen may govern the city through the
party organization. Enrollment. The district captain. The district
committee. The district leader. The general committee. The leader
of the organization. How the leader reaches his place. Organization
the key to success in politics. Candidates for office, how selected,
formally, actually. Why the high school graduate should work through
an organization for an honest, business-like government.

The preceding part of the course will have failed of its purpose if it hasn’t established in the pupil’s mind certain elementary ideas and ideals concerning the purpose of government and a sense of the duty and responsibility which every citizen owes to the community in which he works and lives. He will be an intelligent reader of the numerous items in the daily press bearing upon the administration of city affairs, and he will know how as a voter he may take an active and effective part in that administration alike for his own best interests and that of the community.

The course outlined is not an artificial affair based upon pure theory. It has been successfully carried on in one high school for half a decade, winning the enthusiastic interest of first-year pupils as well as of the teachers charged with its conduct. It can be adapted to the high school of any community, and will fail of its purpose only if it is managed in a perfunctory fashion by instructors who have not a professional interest in their work, or a high sense of their great responsibility and their great opportunity. It would be a splendid thing if we could require of all teachers in the public schools a knowledge of the governmental activities of the municipality they are called upon to serve, for surely they of all citizens, ought to be familiar with the purpose and practice of government.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Report at the Cincinnati Meeting (November 16, 1909) of the National Municipal League by J. J. Sheppard, Principal New York High School of Commerce, Chairman of the Committee on Instruction in Municipal Government in Elementary and High Schools.

Has History a Practical Value?[4]

BY PROFESSOR J. N. BOWMAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.

This question of the practical value of history rises not out of a theory but out of existing social and educational conditions. In a practical age where “doing things” receives such generous applause, and “ends” are held in high estimation; when “results,” and very frequently material “results,” are the norms of success, and “efficiency” widens its meaning beyond the physical world,--then history, as well as other subjects is called into question to render an account of itself before the judgment bar of the present. Life looms up great beyond all the parts of the school system. The eighth grade has its graduation into life as well as the high school and college. The grades feel their responsibility to the great majority of their pupils who go directly into life. In the East the high schools are breaking from the “preparatory status” to the college, and are looking to the good they can do for their pupils who get no more schooling. Trade schools are growing up within and beside the high schools, as the professional schools grew up within and beside the colleges. The college itself is in question by labor union committees and inaugural addresses. The university is becoming professional; even Arts and Letters in preparing teachers and general practitioners of arts and letters. The industrial movement has now the economic interpretation of history. The “Market Reports”[5] of the university have brought the “ticker” within the college walls. Students and parents are asking more and more insistently, “What is the use?” and “What is the practical value?”

The question is not new; the questioners are not new; the things questioned are new. In olden days when schools existed primarily for the Latin professions, the question was answered: these things prepare for law, medicine, and the ministry. Schools now prepare for other professions and also for the trades; but the question is not yet answered without condition, amendment or dissent. In those old days the members of the Latin professions were the bearers of the highest culture; but now with our ideas of democracy and opportunity, and the general diffusion of knowledge, these members are but a small fraction of the bearers of the highest culture. The school system has grown from the school of the professions into the school of the people; but do the schools prepare for the people as the older schools prepared for the professions? A healthy, growing institution--like Webster’s mariner--must constantly take its bearings relative to life to know how far the elements of fads, specialization, and scholarly isolation are driving it from its true course.

Practical relates to action, use, practice; it refers to ends or means to ends; it is opposed to theoretical, speculation or ideal. But there is nothing in the word to debar its use in mental as well as physical fields. It may be used as the German uses _übung_ in his university courses. Value is the quality that makes something suitable for ends or purposes. It permits the wildest limit of “art for art’s sake”; and equally permits one part of the “art” to be suitable to the ends and purposes of another part or of another “art.” Practical value, then, is the quality that renders a thing useful or desirable in meeting ends. It does not by any means alone imply “for revenue only.”

Has history a practical value? It depends on the ends. The narrowest specialist as well as the broadest humanitarian will both agree upon the usefulness and desirability of history to meet their respective ends, but they disagree upon what the ends are. The specialist is interested in history for its own sake; to him the element of history is the fact; the tradition of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries has forced him to select his facts in the fields of politics, war and diplomacy; the method he uses is rather a one-sided use of the natural-scientific method. He is interested in the facts for their own sake: he is often too little interested in their value, importance and inter-relations. He has performed a great service in the nineteenth century in correcting old facts and in finding new ones. But now he has such mountains of facts that he is overawed by their mass, and long practice in his method prevents him from using them. So a great Harvard professor is reported as saying, “Keep on piling up facts, their weight will squeeze out some kind of order.” In his attempt to be scientific the specialist has used only one side of the scientist’s method; he has forgotten that the scientist works not only with matter, but with the activities and relations of matter. He loves to brush the mold off the dry bones of the past. Perhaps he even has a dream of articulating a few of the bones into a cross section of the skeleton of the political past. This is a rightful part of the work in the university and graduate school, unfortunately often the all-dominating part. I have spoken at length of this work for the reason that in this state there is required of all high school teachers a year of graduate work in some university of the American Association. The specialist’s method received there is all too often taken, without adaptation into the high school and occasionally even into the grades. So “art for art’s sake” is perpetuated. The boy is prepared for carrying on research when he expects to carry on business, and the girl is drilled in turning out monographs when she expects to turn out biscuits. Here is where the parents, and others, raise the question, what is the use? The answer and the reform must come from the top downwards.

On the other hand the humanitarian is often so broad that his work contains but little of history; it is so thin and transparent that it may justly be called culturine. His pupils learn answers, but not the steps to the answers; or they learn the fashion phrase of the “example,” but not the steps of solution. At every point in their journey through the past they are dependent on their Bædecker. Here again is where the question is raised, what is the use?

It is not necessary to make a choice of either of these for the history work in the schools. Where the fact-hunter ends his work the historian may begin his. More important than either fact or generalization is the method of getting at each so that the pupil may become self-active. If he learns these methods he can use the facts in finding other facts, in explaining and interpreting other facts, or in understanding other departments of life. He can use facts inductively and through a process of analysis and classification reach generalization; or like Kepler, Newton and Faraday he can work on the facts deductively. He can follow lines of interest, threads of activity; he can view them from one view point or from different view points. On the other hand he can learn and use the method of working a fact after the Seignobosian “rules of the game.” So even within the narrower and professional field there is the practical value.

But the end is still in question. The pupil goes from the grades, high school and college into life to take his part as a workman some eight hours of the day and as a citizen all twenty-four; as an active, creative worker through the prime of his life, and as a member of society to his grave. The parents and the people out in life ask the question of the practical value, and they answer it from the standpoint of life and social efficiency. Does history stand the test?

From this point of view the specialist fails; the storehouse of facts is static, efficiency is active; the method of facts results only in another static fact. The culturine teacher fares somewhat better; he is active, but unfortunately with empty symbols. He deals with answers and not with problems, with his Bædecker and not with the thing itself. It is the long stretch between the two that is wanting--the process, the use. The history work must be adapted to the life needs of the pupils as members of society: those facts, those generalizations, and especially those processes of reaching from one to the other, that can make him an efficient member of society. Isolated facts will be soon forgotten, generalizations will perhaps stick longer, but methods of generalization can be used throughout life on new facts to reach new generalizations.

What are some of the things in life and society for which history may be used,--the ends to which it may be adapted in study and teaching? Someone has pointed out four ends, but I should like to add another, fully conscious of the excepting and varying relations between them: _reading_, _studying_, _teaching_, _writing_, and I should like to add _living_. Writing is justly the work of the professional, _i. e._, the graduate school; yet if history ever becomes a science it is not at all impossible that living may not usurp this position in graduate work. Teaching, in this state, is also the work of the graduate school and the last years of the college. This leaves, then, reading, studying and living that touch the history work from the grades to the college; these also underlie the other two.

The basis on which all these rest is life itself, and the interest one takes in life. Since one is here in this world he is interested in it, to get as much out of and put as much into it as he can; if he has no interest he at least exerts himself either to be a parasite or to shuffle off its weight. This interest is the starting point of the interest in the past of this life; the basis of the ascending scale from reading onward.

Reading runs through all history work from the stories--told and read--in the grades to the reading after dinner by the evening fireside. Interest in life as it was, is, and is becoming: the problems and policies, the activity and struggle, the peaceful life of the cotter or the demon life of the battlefield, the growth of trade and the sailing of Columbus, or the work of Bach or Paracelsus. From some life interest now one travels back to chosen places and times, and under the lead of some Virgil and Beatrice does more than Dante in taking up temporary habitation then and there. From a purely commercial point of view, also, the historian can here benefit himself--and his publisher--in preparing a public to demand his books.

Studying is a step beyond reading; Virgil and Beatrice are here dismissed. It explores some field of interest and follows some thread; it reads pages and chapters and not volumes or series. The books may be stories, texts or documents--the story must be pieced together from many sources. In reading, the books lead the reader; in studying, the student leads the books. It is the transitory inquisitiveness of the child become somewhat constant in the later grades and high school, and fixed in the university in the professional study of “ut clauses.” Reflection and study go hand in hand,--the latter to answer the questions of the former. For the very great majority of people this is the nearest they ever get to professional history work. It is of the greatest practical value to those who use history for other than the pleasant hour’s reading.

In living, life and history unite. This, of course, touches the live question of what is history. The specialist and his methods are adaptable practically alone to a past not coming within eighty to twenty years of the present. But the parent and the man in life deal on the one hand with human beings, institutions, matter, etc., and on the other with life forces and energies. All these exist in different and modified forms in the specialist’s past. If this breach between the past and present cannot be bridged, then the laboring man is right in asking that history be displaced by things that can bridge it. The man in life is busy with the art of living--can history help him in this? If history is ever to be a science and be scientific, it must consider, as do the sciences, the consequent question of being an art--of reaching desired effects with known causes.

Those who ask the question, has history a practical value, go from the present life into history. From that viewpoint they see its workings, and from life and society they draw their norm by which they judge it, accept it in the curriculum and pay taxes for the history teacher’s salary. For such a purely selfish note as this history should not wait; but should search out in society and life how it may be of service some way and somehow, and through its teaching supply these needs. It can then make itself indispensable and forestall all question of its practical value.

The practical value of history to life depends on a complex of race, age, country, locality and the individual. Some phases of this value might be stated thus: an ease in observing, analyzing and classifying the life activities of to-day. No other subject taught in the schools touches life at so many points and in so many of its activities. Through seeing in history the close interrelation of activities in the past the student can be led to see the close interrelation of the activities of his own day. Again, he learns to see life as a historic whole--his contemporaneous life in connection with the life of the race. He thus learns valuations and norms for judging character. He learns that Jeffries and Johnson are less valuable in life than Pasteur and Eucken; that even in the history of pugilism they perhaps are less noteworthy than either Sullivan or Corbett. Again, history can help him to save experience. He can learn to apply with due modification to present problems not the answers of the past to past problems, but the ways of solving those problems. Material and social environments exist now as they existed in the days of the Greeks; hunger and socialization, love and ambition, the desire to know and to feel, are as effective now as in the days of Socrates. The combination and the emphasis change. The past cannot answer the problem of the present, but can help him to answer it. Again, history can help him to be tolerant, since our day demands tolerance. In studying some struggle of the past he learns to see that question from two or more sides; this practice helps, with the practice in other subjects taught in the schools, to consider a present question from its many sides.

Historical impartiality is frequently misused: impartiality plays its part in the consideration of questions, but should not be allowed to mar decisions when once made. The specialist and his pupils can easily stand off from and out of present, active life like men from Mars. Tolerance, then, is desirable in the consideration of questions, and of the activities acknowledged by society; for tolerance, like liberty, does not mean license. Again, history has a practical value in connecting the present almost as intimately with the past as hope does the present with the future. It gives two or more points together with the present from which direction and tendency may be seen. It can thus help to break down the loneliness of the present.

The life of each succeeding present must dictate its own norms of efficiency: whether citizenship or patriotism, character or individuality, socialization or socialism, etc. The practical value of history is like the practical value of all other subjects--it must adapt itself to life needs, and by its leadership make itself indispensable to life and society. Also it must be of practical value to the individual for his pleasure, his use, and his business; by its adaptability to these ends it makes itself indispensable to him. It has this practical value for the pupils in the grades, high school, and college, in contributing something for themselves and for their parts in life.

An Idaho cow-puncher last summer defined life as “just one d---- thing after another.” It has also been pointed out that this is the best definition of history, as all too often taught and written. The “cow-puncher” forms a small class, and is rapidly disappearing; history will soon be forced to adapt itself to another class and to a life otherwise defined. In doing so it is hoped that it will not be by this chance and unconscious adaptation, but that it will consciously and deliberately adapt itself to the new class and its life.

I believe history has a practical value in life, and a place in the school system; and also that it can prove this value so efficiently that its critics will not wish to relegate history to the position of Greek and Latin.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Substance of a talk before a group of history teachers, in San Francisco, September 18th, 1909.

[5] A weekly report in the _Alumni Weekly_ of the University of California, on the fluctuating quotations in teachers, engineers, miners, etc.

“A Source History of the United States”

BY PROFESSORS CALDWELL AND PERSINGER.

Many of the literary histories written in the last half century have carefully avoided quotations or reprints of documents. In the early historical literature of America documents were inserted or appended to almost every history; but this style gave way to the literary ideal of expressing the thought of the documents in the historian’s own words. There are many volumed histories written toward the close of the nineteenth century which make no pretence of reproducing the form or words of the source-material. It was but natural, therefore, when the study of history came to be taken up seriously in colleges and schools, that teachers and scholars should desire to get away from the insipid literary generalizations, and taste the freshness of the original sources. It was this insistence upon a certain literary style which created the source-book; and to-day we have therefore the literary history and the source-collection side by side. Early source-books contained simply highly significant documents, or documents which might be treated as types. We have advanced far from this, and now our editor aims to give the narrative of history in the language of the original documents.

Casting aside all reverence for the document as a completed whole, Professors Caldwell and Persinger have cut and trimmed out every unnecessary phrase and sentence, taking a few words from one document, a few paragraphs from another, a few pages, perhaps, from another. By this process, the volume is made to approach nearly to the consecutive development of thought and arrangement shown in the narrative histories. The language and spelling of the originals are in all cases preserved, and all omissions are indicated by the usual typographical means.

The work is divided into four chapters; the first on “The Making of Colonial America,” occupies 165 pages; the second, “Revolution and Independence, 1764-1786,” fills 100 pages; the third, “The Making of a Democratic Nation,” 131 pages; and the fourth, “Slavery and the Sectional Struggle, 1841-1877,” 86 pages. Or, to put it in other words, the period before 1789 is allotted 284 pages, while that under the constitution to 1877 is given 200 pages. Each chapter is subdivided into sections, and these into smaller groups of sources. Taking for granted that the plan of the editors is a practical one, the test as to whether they have done it well is to be found in the proportions assigned to the several topics, and in the character of the extracts given or excluded. The first thought which comes to mind is that too much space has been given to the colonial and revolutionary periods, and too little to the constitutional period. An inspection of the several sections shows that the colonial period lends itself best to the form of treatment adopted by the authors, and naturally they have emphasized that period. The documents upon recent history, particularly the civil war and reconstruction, have not fitted so readily into the narrative. Yet it must be admitted that the editors have resolutely carried on their method to the close; they give extracts from Lincoln’s public papers and letters respecting slavery and reconstruction, and arrange them in the same analytical form adopted for the extracts bearing upon the Stamp Act or on Bacon’s Rebellion. One cannot but wish, however, that the editors had been as generous in their excerpts for the later period as they were for the earlier; perhaps five pages of quotations is not too much for the “Effects of the English Revolution of 1688” upon America, but surely two pages is too short for Lincoln’s attitude toward slavery; we welcome the ten pages of extracts from Washington’s letters bearing upon the Revolutionary War, but we wish for more than two very short quotations treating of the Civil War.

The method of the editors can best be shown by noting the character of the illustrative material gathered by them upon several topics. For instance in Chapter I there is the sub-topic, “Colonial Constitutional Development, 1689-1763,” occupying 17 pages. Within this space we have quotations from the ordinance of 1696 creating the Board of Lords of Trade and Plantations, and from the additional instructions of 1752 respecting the board. There are as many as fourteen extracts showing the increased parliamentary regulation of colonial affairs in the period 1696 to 1751. These include parts of the navigation act of 1696, Edmund Burke’s account of the sugar act of 1733, extracts from the woolens act of 1699, the hat act of 1732, and the iron act of 1750; excerpts showing the bounties on naval stores, rice and indigo; and quotations from the act regulating colonial coinage (1707), the post-office act of 1710, the debt recovery act of 1732, the naturalization act of 1740, the land-bank act of 1741, and the paper money act of 1751. Next there are four quotations showing the desire of the English authorities to reduce all the colonies to one form of government; and the same number of extracts from plans for colonial union. Then follow three extracts showing the desire to establish an Anglican episcopate in the colonies, and the section closes with papers illustrating the “growing assertion of colonial rights.” Under the latter heading we have four extracts relating to conflicts between the governors and the assemblies; an account of the trial and acquittal of John Peter Zenger; John Adams’ account of James Otis’ speech against writs of assistance; and a report of Patrick Henry’s speech in the Parson’s Cause. Such an array of quotations shows not only wide reading and intensive knowledge of the documents, but it also implies a keen judgment as to their pedagogical value, and an ability to arrange the extracts into a working analysis.

In such a work one would naturally look for the treatment of _Culturgeschichte_, and indeed the editors have not neglected this side of their story. An interesting section is that describing the industrial, social, and religious condition of the country in 1840. The subject is analyzed minutely,--like all other parts of the work,--into such topics as “business characteristics,” “means of communication,” “the standard of living,” “democracy,” “the South,” and “American Morals.” The sources for quotation are almost exclusively the accounts of European--mainly English--travelers in the country at the period. These accounts are well known to students of the period, but it has been difficult heretofore for teachers to bring the flavor of these criticisms to the scholars of high school or even college classes. The editors of the “Source-history” have selected and arranged a series of accounts from Buckingham, Martineau, Chambers, Dickens, Grund, Lyell, de Tocqueville and others which will be of service in both college and secondary school classes.

The two sections here mentioned show the method of the editors. Not only have they selected their material with skill, but they have also arranged it under such a scheme of topics that it may be used by the tyro in the study of history. He does not need to dig the historical jewels out from the midst of documentary rubbish; that has been done for him. In addition the editors have placed extended series of questions upon the text at the close of each section, and references to the standard text-books. There is an analytical table of contents, but no index. There are some typographical errors in the book which should be corrected in a later edition. It is also to be hoped if we are to have any more of such collections, that a simpler typographical device may be invented to mark omitted matter.

The work is a valuable pedagogical device; it marks the climax of the source-method. It should very widely extend the knowledge of sources in our high schools and colleges. We shall watch its use with interest.

[A Source History of the United States from Discovery (1492) to End of Reconstruction (1877), by Howard Walter Caldwell and Clark Edmund Persinger, pp. xvi, 484. Chicago, Ainsworth & Co., price $1.25.] A. E. M.

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The History Teacher’s Magazine

Published monthly, except July and August, at 5805 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa., by

McKINLEY PUBLISHING CO.

A. E. McKINLEY, Proprietor.

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EDITORS

Managing Editor, ALBERT E. MCKINLEY, Ph.D.

History in the College and the School, ARTHUR C. HOWLAND, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of European History, University of Pennsylvania.

The Training of the History Teacher, NORMAN M. TRENHOLME, Professor of the Teaching of History, School of Education, University of Missouri.

Source Methods of Teaching History, FRED MORROW FLING, Professor of European History, University of Nebraska.

Reports from the History Field, WALTER H. CUSHING, Secretary, New England History Teachers’ Association, South Framingham, Mass.

Current History, JOHN HAYNES, Dorchester High School, Boston, Mass.

American History in Secondary Schools, ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, Ph.D., DeWitt Clinton High School, New York.

The Teaching of Civics in the Secondary School, ALBERT H. SANFORD, State Normal School, La Crosse, Wis.

European History in Secondary Schools, DANIEL C. KNOWLTON, Ph.D., Barringer High School, Newark, N. J.

English History in Secondary Schools, C. B. NEWTON, Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, N. J.

Ancient History in Secondary Schools, WILLIAM FAIRLEY, Ph.D., Commercial High School, Brooklyn, N. Y.

History in the Grades, ARMAND J. GERSON, Supervising Principal, Robert Morris Public School, Philadelphia, Pa.

CORRESPONDENTS.

HENRY JOHNSON, Teachers’ College, Columbia University, New York.

MABEL HILL, High School, Lowell, Mass.

GEORGE H. GASTON, Wendell Phillips High School, Chicago, Ill.

JAMES F. WILLARD, University of Colorado, Boulder, Col.

H. W. EDWARDS, High School, Berkeley, Cal.

WALTER L. FLEMING, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La.

MARY SHANNON SMITH, Meredith College, Raleigh, N. C.

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EDITORIAL CONFERENCE.

A meeting of the editors and correspondents of THE HISTORY TEACHER’S MAGAZINE will be held in Teachers’ College, Columbia University, New York, on Tuesday, December 28, at 3.30 o’clock. The meeting will be an open one, and the attendance is requested not only of the editorial staff, but also of contributors and others interested in extending the usefulness of the Magazine. Such a conference, giving opportunity for comparison of views, should strengthen the policy of the paper. It is planned to make the editorial conference an annual matter, meeting at the same time and place as the American Historical Association.

THE HISTORY TEACHER AND THE COMMUNITY.

The teacher of history in secondary school or college has a better opportunity to influence the community in which he lives than the teacher of almost any other subject; and if to history it be his or her lot to add economics and government as well, the field of influence should be correspondingly widened. Mathematics, formal English, exact science, the foreign languages, one and all, must give way in human interest to that of biography and history. At the beck and call of the historian there are all our records of what man has thought and said and done. Shall the history teacher leave those fields untouched? Shall he keep his knowledge to himself alone? Shall he limit himself to text-book work in the class-room, and do nothing to extend the interest in his subject throughout the community? If this is his practice, no wonder his subject is treated with disdain by school directors, no wonder that he cannot get a library of books upon his subject, no wonder that he becomes an irresponsive fossil.

In many ways the history teacher may influence the community. He may advise and co-operate with the local librarians in the purchase and loan of books; he may give public lectures upon historical topics; he may write historical articles for papers or for publication in book form; he may found or join societies for the study of local history; he may use means to keep alive the local interest in history. These activities will win respect for the teacher and the subject, and develop in our American communities a similar respect for local history and tradition. Forthcoming numbers of THE HISTORY TEACHER’S MAGAZINE will discuss in detail certain of these activities, such as the relation of the history teacher to the public librarian, and to local historical societies; for the present, mention will be made simply of those miscellaneous means the teacher may use to keep alive interest in local history.

A receptive attitude with reference to local tradition and history should always be taken by the history teacher. He should know something of the local history within a few weeks after he has entered a new community, if he has not been able to study it in advance. A young graduate student entering a small western college as instructor, found in the library no volumes upon the subject of his doctor’s thesis. He did not wait for the summer vacation to continue his studies in Europe, but started at once to make certain local studies, which were so successful that they gained for him a national as well as a local reputation, and stimulated others to a scientific study of the State’s history. In a similar way the instructor in any high school or college should familiarize himself with local history, and aim, if possible, to make some definite contribution to its literature.

Another subject in which the history teacher should be interested is that of local names. The tendency of American legislators is to obliterate local names, particularly if they have not what is deemed a proper connotation, and substitute for them the names of petty politicians or, what is even worse, some system of numerals. Compare, for instance, the system of numbering public schools in New York City with that of naming them in use in some other cities; or that of numbering all streets and avenues and wards with the custom of keeping the old historic names. Much of the sentiment for us to-day would be taken from London, or Paris, or even our own Boston, if a numbering system, independent of local traditions, had been adopted two hundred years ago.

The proper marking of historic spots is a matter of interest to any community, and the history teacher should be a leader in such an undertaking. Much is being done in this direction by individuals and societies, but much more needs to be done. In awakening public interest, even by showing the authorities that it is economically wise to mark such spots for the encouragement and convenience of visitors, the history teacher will win respect from the community.

Historical pageants have been held in parts of Europe for centuries, but recently they have been revived upon a large scale, and already America has seen several which would rank high with those of Europe. The pageants at Quebec, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in 1908, at Lake Champlain in 1909, and the Hudson-Fulton celebration in New York all furnish excellent opportunities for education in historical facts and development. Such lessons will grow in number with increasing respect for the past, and with the growing desire for meaning in pageantry, rather than noise and sound in parades. Here also the history teacher will find wide opportunity for all his knowledge and experience.

Surely it is the fault of the teacher and not of history itself if the community ignores him and his subject.

American History in the Secondary School

ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor.

FOUNDATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.

The ratification of the Constitution of the United States marks the end of one period of American history and the beginning of another. At that point the teacher should pause and gather up with his class all the threads which he has thus far been following. The problems henceforth to be presented are those of a well-established, entirely independent nation.

First of all, it should be noted that the history of the nation during its one hundred and twenty years of existence divides itself into five more or less distinct periods. These periods are (1) the thirty odd years from 1789 to 1823, during which time the nation was settling the foundations of its political life, internal and external; (2) the thirty years from 1820 to 1850, during which the nation was moving forward, under two diametrically opposed parties (those in favor of the extension of slavery and those opposed to its extension), in the occupation of the vast tracts of land beyond the Mississippi; (3) the twenty-five or twenty-six years from 1850 to 1876, during which these two parties finally came to blows and settled the constitutional questions involved in secession; (4) the twenty odd years from 1876 to 1898, during which the nation is forced to deal with new and unaccustomed economic questions; (5) the ten years or more since the Spanish-American War, the period of present-day practical politics.

Such an outline as this of the entire course of American history may seem to many teachers to be a little forehanded, yet it is our firm conviction that only that teacher who sees in the beginning the entire work of the term can deal with each lesson as it arises properly. Of this outline, even the class should not be entirely ignorant.

As to the first period--the period of the establishment of our national policy--in it the class will be confronted by two more or less distinct problems: first, the questions of internal policy, the solution of which can be found in the study of the activities of Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, and of his contemporaries. These problems, important as they are, space requires that we leave for the present for the teacher himself to analyze and present to his pupils. In passing, we may say, however, that both teacher and pupils will find themselves amply repaid by a careful study of the reports of Hamilton and Jefferson which are to be found in Macdonald’s “Documents.”

Far more complex, and far more difficult, are the problems which are presented by the relations of the United States to its foreign friends and enemies. The mere study of the text-book, we have found, leaves the pupils hopelessly confused and bewildered. As the result of a number of years of experience we have come to believe that it pays, at the beginning, before one attempts to say a word about Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality, about the principles involved in the struggles with France and England, about the treaties with Spain and the purchase of Louisiana, to devote at least one or two lessons to a careful analysis of all the elements involved in our relations with foreign nations. In doing this we shall find that all questions of foreign policy fall under one of four headings: (1) commerce, (2) citizenship, (3) territory, (4) the position which the nation will take in case of disagreements between two or more foreign nations. Any class, skilfully led, will be able to furnish the teacher with these four headings. Then one may go on to further analysis. For instance, the class will see at once that commerce in times of peace and in times of war must be conducted upon a different basis. Under the first condition, commercial relations are usually settled by commercial treaties, though under special conditions they may involve questions like the right of the nation to trade with the colonies of a foreign nation, and the question of the “open door” of which we have heard so much in the last two or three decades. In times of war, the rights of neutral trade are much more complicated. Here they involve, especially in the earliest period of United States history, at least four different questions: (1) what constitutes an efficient blockade, (2) what articles may rightly be considered as contraband, (3) how far do “free ships make free goods,” (4) is trade with ports of one of the belligerents, closed in times of peace, open to the neutral in times of war (Rule of 1756)? Each of these questions, we have found, will offer opportunity for spirited class room discussion. None of them is simple, and the teacher should therefore be sure that he has his own answers ready before he attempts to open the discussion to the class.

The question of citizenship is easier. To begin with, we all agree that it is the duty of the nation to protect its citizens against unjust oppression. But not all nations at the end of the eighteenth century, or even to-day, are agreed as to what constitutes citizenship. Does naturalization, for instance, destroy the obligations which the individual owed to the country of his original allegiance? This is, of course, the single vital question involved in the dispute between the United States and England over impressment, though there is a subsidiary question, the right of entrance and search in times of war which the teacher should not neglect in presenting the subject.

The question of the acquisition of territory is again comparatively easy of analysis. All that it requires is for the teacher to show to his class that it was the “manifest destiny” of the nation to acquire, step by step, all the land lying south and west of the original limits of the country as far west as the Pacific Ocean. Whether the nation was wise in going beyond the confines of the continent in the acquisition of territory may be left till a later period for discussion.

Finally, there is the question as to the position which the United States should take in cases of dispute between the European nations. Here again the teacher should be prepared to show that self-preservation required that the United States should assume a position of absolute neutrality, that it was equally necessary, on the other hand, at least in the early years of the nineteenth century, that we demand that the European nations refrain from interfering in the affairs of America.

Coming now to the study of the specific events which illustrate these principles, the teacher will be ready to develop and the class will be ready to appreciate the series of events which begin with Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality, which are involved in the disputes with England which were settled temporarily by the Jay Treaty and later by the War of 1812 and the Treaty of Ghent. Next the negotiations with Spain concerning the right of entry and deposit at the mouth of the Mississippi and the later negotiations with France concerning the purchase of Louisiana may be developed. Finally in this analysis the class will find the key to that series of proclamations and messages which begin with Washington’s Farewell Address, which proceed through the messages of Adams and Jefferson, which end with Monroe’s message of December, 1823, commonly known as the Monroe Doctrine. When all this is done, the well-equipped teacher will be ready to discuss briefly with his class the later diplomatic history of the country, the gradual modification of the principles for which Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Monroe contended, but he will find to his surprise that until the very last years of the nineteenth century little change was made in the whole system.