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This small Volume is 
 DEDICATED 
 
 To THE Insistent Demands of Humanity Abroad in the World for . 
 
 UNIVERSAL OPPORTUNITY TO ACQUIRE USEFUL KNOWLEDGE ; 
 
 Affectionately to the Memory of My Devoted Teachers as 
 
 Distinguished Original Investigators in Science: 
 
 Doctors B. G. Wilder, James Law, and Professors W. R. Dudley, 
 
 William Anthony, Henry Comstock, George Caldwell, Samuel Williams, 
 
 Simon Gage, and I. P. Roberts, of Cornell University; 
 
 AND also 
 
 To Our Staunch Friends of Educational _Efficiency and Freedom 
 
 such as 
 
 WooDROw Wilson, Andrew D. White, and Charles H. Elliot 
 
 University Ex-Presidents 
 
 AND 
 
 Professors, Lester F. Ward, E. A. Ross, F. M. Leavitt, E. Davenport,, 
 
 Arland D. Weeks, Elmer H. Fish, H. Schneider, F, G. Bonser, 
 
 Irving King, also Wm.R. George and 
 
 Doctor F. B. VanNuys. 
 
-^NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 RATIONAL TRAINING 
 
 BY 
 
 THE SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM 
 WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 THOMAS L. BRUNK, B.S., M.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE FOUNDING OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 BULWARKS OF INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT 
 
 THE GREATEST HUMAN TRAGEDY 
 
 OUR COLONIAL INHERITANCE 
 
 SECTARIANISM, ETC. 
 
 FIRST EDITION 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 FROM THE PRESS OF 
 
 THE ALTON PRINTING HOUSE 
 
 ALTON, ILLINOIS, U.S.A. 
 1919 
 
 C<:rjio{ Z 
 
V 
 
 
 COPYRIGHTED BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
 1919 
 
 JAN 23 1919 ' 
 
 ICI.A512221 
 
 t^' 
 
 '^o^ ^ 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 No long-er is the Paid-Student Industrial Training School 
 an experiment. Ko longer are we in doubt about its need and 
 feasibility. No longer can the big world of production wait for 
 it to become the prevailing type of sciiool to prepare the mill- 
 ions of our near-adults who now leave our schools to earn a liv- 
 ing before they are trained to do anything but non-advancing 
 jobs. 
 
 In 1906 a report to tlie National Association of Manufactur- 
 ers by a Committee on Industrial Education, they said: 
 
 "Technical and trade schools should have opportunites 
 for teaching their students all the phases of practical work 
 by producing manufacturers of various kinds, aiid in addi- 
 tion may be placed on sale to the general public.'' 
 
 This same report also said tliat the initiative to start sxich 
 schools should be taken by corporations or individual mill own- 
 ers. 
 
 From this and many other evidences as shown in this small 
 volume, we conclude that the manufacturer, the miner, tlie lum- 
 berman, the structural engijieer, the building-tradesemployer, 
 managers of railroads, steamship, telegraph and telephone com- 
 panies, and, in fact, men of affairs in general have little or nosay 
 as to how our public schools shall be managed, what they sliall 
 teach, how they shall be equipped, or how they shall be correlat- 
 ed with industry. In fact but few of our Producers, either em- 
 ployersor employees, havelittle or no say-so about tliem, because 
 of the local and state incompetent arid political Control over 
 them. Sectarianism and Politics have more to do with our 
 schools than Industrialism. Lawyers and Clergymen have more 
 to say than Manufacturers and employers of labor. Mrs. Donoth- 
 ing in her mansion has more influence over them than the big 
 Trades or Union Labor. In fact they are run by Influence and 
 not by Science and Masters of Trade and Production. 
 
 Our System will not change itself. All change must come 
 from without by voluntary organization. Therefore, if we want 
 and must have Vocational training for the millions now thrown 
 upon the industrial market with empty brains and helplesshands, 
 tlie big men of Production and Distribution must get behind an 
 educational enterprise that will tit our youth for the work of tlie 
 world and All our industries with fully equipped labor. And 
 this educational triumph must be founded upon such Principles 
 as shall make it impossible for the Control to fall into the hands 
 
of the non-producing classes. The professional and clerical class- 
 es know very little about our large productional requirements. 
 Why then should they virtually rule our schools? 
 
 It is the purpose of this modest booklet to present briefly 
 the failures of our present school system, the Order of Nature to 
 rationalize all schools, the Program of action to initiate a Suppli- 
 mentary System based on nature and biological principles, and 
 the fundamental Democratic Control that will give every indus- 
 try and calling its full weight in the Councils of our most essen- 
 tial and instinctive social work — the education of our children 
 for a definite work-a-day purpose in an environment of nat- 
 ural freedom, 
 
 It is assumed that the writer is far from being alone in his 
 conceptions of the basic educational institution herein outlined. 
 There are many who have similar views and convictions but have 
 found no place nor the time to express them. It is to these we 
 are making an appeal to get into touch with the International 
 University Association, become members by simply subscribing 
 to the Principles given in Chapter 3, and help with their might 
 and main to push along this most urgent work to a full realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 If this truth-seeking, civic and manual-training work can 
 thus grow on the soil of democracy, it will bear the fruits of de- 
 mocracy. That is to say, it will be as non-partisan, non-sectari- 
 an and non-exclusive as the Social Center of Wisconsin and 
 other states, and we can hope with confidence that it will ma- 
 ture a priceless transformation in our whole social mechanism. 
 Alton, III. T. L. B. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 EDUCATIONAL DEMANDS AND CONTROL 
 The Paramount Issue is Educational Control. 
 Education without Representation. 
 Corporation and Sectarian School still Rules. 
 Teachers' Mouths and Science Muzzled. 
 CHAPTER 2 
 THE PRESENT SCHOOL SYSTEM 
 ITS FAILURE, INADEQUACY AND INEFFICIE:NCY 
 Order of Nature in Education. 
 Order of Nature Found in Science. 
 Primary End of Education, 
 
 Lowest and most Dangerous Class, Society should Educate. 
 Is Our School Plant Fit? Buildings for Confinement M; tliod. 
 Our Text- Book Medley and our Apparatus Junk. 
 Training Schools for "Geaitlemen". 
 The "Try-Out" System. 
 Our School System Inelastic. 
 Evils our System Fails to Correct. 
 
 Faulty Education gives Government Control to Drones. 
 Our Schools Encourage Dissipation and Idling. 
 Cleavage and Class Feeling Engendered. 
 The Paramount Deception. 
 
 CHAPTER 3 
 
 SCOPE, PRINCIPLES AND BIOLOGICAL 
 BASIS FOR A NATURAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 
 New World-View Demand of Education. 
 Foundation Principles of a Rational System. 
 Natural versus Artificial Law in Education. 
 We must Abandon AGE Absurdities. 
 Demands for Segregation at the Age of Puberty. 
 CHAPTER 4 
 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FORESHADOWING 
 THE NEW SYSTEM 
 The Correspondence School. 
 Trade Schools. 
 
 Trade Schools on Part-Time System. 
 Continuation Schools. 
 Evening Schools. 
 Gary Indiana School Plan. 
 The BIG Omission. 
 The Junior Republic. 
 
CHAPTER 5 
 
 SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 School Town to Rationalize Education. 
 
 A Miniature Democracy. 
 
 Natural Adjustment of the Sexes, 
 
 Education without Taxation, ■ 
 
 High Schools Abolished. 
 
 How Financed and Founded. 
 
 Ownership and Control of these School Properties. 
 
 University Spirit Fostered by the School Town. , 
 
 Correlation of Industry and Labor. 
 
 Education by Association. 
 
 Fitting Personalities to their Life's Work. 
 
 Fitting Work to Labor. 
 
 .Spontineity and Inventiveness. 
 
 Unfinished Mentalities. 
 
 Teachers not Bosses but Employers. 
 
 Preparing Teachers for Life's Work. 
 
 Text Books. 
 
 Rights of Student-Citizens. 
 
 Qualifications and Age of Students. 
 
 School Never Closed. 
 
 Schedule. 
 
 Public Medical Aid 
 
 Discipline. 
 
 Altogether Era Dawning. 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 EDUCATIONAL DEMANDS AND CONTROL 
 
 Education is not a preparation for life — it is Life itself. 
 And since Life is composed of two inseparable, elemental 
 types of knowledge, the one used to support life, the other 
 how to use it for the greatest social service, we are led to 
 the conclusion that every man needs two educations, one 
 that will fit him to work and another that will fit him to 
 live. Then a properly educated man or woman is one who 
 is trained both vocationally and liberally. The ditcher 
 will not ditch all his waking hours. What will he thiiik 
 about when not in the ditch? It should be of deep con- 
 cern to educators, as Davenport says*, that, 
 
 "The mind is an unruly member, and if a man 
 has ho training beyond his vocation, his intellect 
 is at sea, without chart, compass, or rudder, and 
 the human mind adrift is a dangerous engine of 
 destruction. ' ' 
 Therefore, in the consiideration of Education in all its 
 bearings upon human welfare, we must always remember 
 that we are dealing with a Man as well as a Craftsman, 
 a Civilian as well as a Producer, a Thinker as well as a 
 pair of Hands. To succeed in any calling, specific knowl- 
 edge related directly to that calling is required. Then 
 also at the same time, to be safe and happy, both general 
 and ciA'ic training are imperative. 
 
 THE PARAMOUNT ISSUE IS EDUCATIONAL 
 CONTROL 
 
 With our coming to realize that the traditional view of 
 education as an avenue to a Life of Ease is far from true, 
 but on the contrary that it is no relief from drudgery or 
 labor except as it enables us to utilize mechanical energy 
 and to give us a more economic and intelligent direction 
 to human effort, there is an irrepressible demand that our 
 
 *Kducation for Efficiency. By E. Davenport. 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 educational facilities be readjusted and brought under 
 such a control so as to give to every human being not only 
 greater powers to conquer nature, but also greater powers 
 to adjust human affairs equitably and in accord with the 
 unyielding laws of nature. 
 
 Never in the history of Education has the demand be- 
 come so insistent as at present that the recruits to fill up 
 th« ranks for the industrial battles of life shall be equip- 
 ped mentally and manually to step at once from school to 
 mine, shop, field or counting-room, ready to do and as- 
 sume responsibility. And along with this there has never 
 been such a pressing demand that there shall be Educa- 
 tional Freedom — freedom from mental, religious, political 
 and financial exploitation at the hands of those who have 
 assumed authority to control the destinies of men. Our 
 children demand freedom from arbitrary authority and 
 that they become independent of the bounty and repress- 
 ing rules of parent or school-board. 
 
 This age demands Universal Education, Universal Use- 
 fulness, and the conservation of all material and human 
 energy. The demand for the saving of our exploited nat- 
 ural resources is exceeded only by the imperative demand 
 that we stop the awful drainage and waste of our vital 
 resources. The destructive fires of educational wrongs is 
 greater than those laying waste thousands of acres of val- 
 uable forests and millions of value in buildings. 
 
 Then, too, the unjust waste of our wealth by the few 
 who profit by our system of education and industry is 
 causing such a universal protest that we are almost in a 
 state of revolt against the drone and social parasite. "Let 
 Everybody Work" is becoming our national injunction. 
 We are learning that Life means Action, and he who at- 
 tempts to live upon the sweat of other men's brows is 
 accounted a social deadweight and a menace to human 
 progress. And this revolt is growing more insistent that 
 the control of our much lauded Educational System shall 
 be liberated from politics and sectarianism, from local 
 favoritism and incompetent, useless boards, from exploita- 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 tion by profiteers, from fattening contractors and do-noth- 
 ing sinecures, from local whims and fancies by self-ap- 
 pointed neighborhood "magnates." 
 
 EDUCATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION 
 
 So complete is the control of our Schools that the plain 
 people are not represented in the deliberations over their 
 management or over what they shall teach or how they 
 shall be built to meet the demands of our general wel- 
 fare. Like the fashion-plates from Paris, the plates to 
 fashion the minds of our children are also designed by the 
 "proper authority" and deftly slipped into our "splendid 
 free-school system" so that these children may become 
 "responsive to the common instituional demands which 
 rest upon men in general. ' ' There is no denying the fact 
 that our educational system is not FREE in any sense of 
 the word. And our leading and advanced writers are 
 saying things. Professor Mead of Chicago University 
 says* ; 
 
 "To a large extent the educational policy of 
 most of our large cities has represented a fluctu- 
 ating compromLse between forces that have been 
 by no means all educational forces. The school- 
 teacher and politician have been standing sub- 
 jects for the wit of humorous papers." 
 Lester F. Ward sayst : 
 
 "Both public and private educational institu- 
 tions have always been and still remain chaotic. 
 False notions prevail as to what education is and 
 is for. The moment a step is made beyond the 
 rudiments, all object seems to be lost sight of, 
 method is abandoned, organization is not thot 
 of, and a mass of purposeless and useless rubbish 
 is forced upon the learner." 
 When we take a square look into our much-controUed 
 system we find that the Text-books are milled by school- 
 Itook monopolists, all of whom are "vested-interest protee- 
 
 •Bulletin No. 14. 1914 U. S. Bureau of Education. 
 tApplied Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 tionists" ;,that every little jerk-water town has its ''Board 
 of Education" clothed with the leg'al robes of authority 
 to "sit" on such text-books as they in their "wisdom" 
 may choose, and also pass upon the dove-like harmless- 
 ness and the social and political incompetence of the per- 
 sons who are to mould the future citizenship of their com- 
 munity. This same Board with its dictatorial powers often 
 fatten upon book, building and apparatus contracts, and 
 sanctions and gives moral support to the efforts of sec- 
 tarian groups to dominate their acts and also the imagina- 
 tion and thots of our youth. Thru this local domination, 
 our children are taught to venerate and revere the very 
 institutions that are enslaving them and, too, in the face 
 of the protests of a large majority of our citizenship. 
 
 THE CORPORATION AND SECTARIAN SCHOOL 
 STILL RULES 
 
 In a Report of the Educational Bureau at Washington 
 for 1912, we find that out of 602 universities, colleges and 
 technical schools which reported to the Bureau for that 
 year, 89 were under the control of the State while 513 
 were under sectarian or corporate control. While the uni- 
 versities had the largest individual attendance, yet the 
 total attendance at all the State schools as compared with 
 all the sectarian and corporate schools was as about one 
 to five. Since but about two to three per cent of the 
 student bodies of our universities and State colleges are 
 females, and since ninety per cent of our common school 
 teachers are women who have under their instruction and 
 influence eighty-five per cent of all pupils who never at- 
 tend any high or collegiate school, it follows, that our 
 teachers get their higher education largely from sectarian 
 and corporate schools, and that an immense majority of 
 our children enter life with their minds clouded, confused 
 and bewildered by the ERROR that filters down from 
 dominated college to teacher and without question from 
 teacher to pupil. 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 To the young inquiring mind, the world is full of mys- 
 teries. For each it demands a CAUSE, and since for 
 many, especially in the Biological field, the teacher can- 
 not assign a true cause, the insistent, growing mind must 
 be satisfied with a false one. And a false reason once 
 fixed in the child-mind by an authority he does not doubt, 
 it takes hard study and often the remainder of his life in 
 an artificial environment to effect a change, at least for 
 some of vital consequences affecting the renouncement of 
 friends and beliefs forming the very tap roots to his very 
 existence. 
 
 Many of our leading educators realize the power of this 
 insidious control and in recent years have offered some 
 strong protests. One made at the 1914 meeting of the 
 National Educational Association by Superintendent J. H. 
 li^rancis of Los Angeles is a notable instance. He said : 
 "Every child has the right to FREEDOM in 
 the pursuit of his normal development — freedom 
 from mental, religious, political and financial ex- 
 ploitation at the hands of those stronger than 
 himself." 
 To the mind of the writer this is the most laconic as 
 well as the most comprehensive declaration of Educa- 
 tional Freedom ever uttered, and one, too, which the 
 American and other peoples must endorse and follow if 
 we are to get rid of the control of that element of society 
 who wish to live without labor. 
 
 TEACHERS' MOUTHS AND SCIENCE MUZZLED 
 
 So long as Error enslaves and gives control over labor, 
 so long will those desiring this control protest against the 
 teaching of Truth. Error has been commercialized and 
 capitalized and the resulting ignorance in economics and 
 in Causation as applied to social welfare has been and is 
 a strong factor in the concentration of wealth and in 
 wealth accumulation by trickery. And any teacher who 
 attempts to free the coming citizen from this form of 
 bondage is butting his head against a stone wall. Many 
 a martyr of the school-room has been blacklisted, humil- 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 iated and relieved of his position simply because he dared 
 to trace home the sources of our social distempers and 
 group controls. 
 
 Not only are teachers' mouths closed, but many of the 
 sciences are either not taught at all or if taught are so 
 pruned down that they become mere harmless negatives 
 with which to amuse and decorate the child-mind. Can- 
 didates for professorships in many American colleges are 
 rejected on account of "unsafe views" about ERROR. 
 And the proportion is astounding. Ex-President A. D. 
 White of Cornell University makes this amazing dis- 
 closure* : 
 
 "From probably nine-tenths of the Universities 
 and Colleges of the United States, the students 
 are graduated with either NO knowledge or with 
 clerically emasculated knowledge of the most 
 careful modern thot on the most important prob- 
 lems in the various SCIENCES, in History and 
 in Criticism." 
 We see, therefore, that our first duty is to free our 
 Teachers, and, second, to take the shackles from the hands 
 of Science. And this can be done only by placing the 
 control over the property of our schools in the hands of 
 a large body of persons who will subscribe to the prin- 
 ciple : 
 
 "Whole Truth can be obtained only when all 
 those seeking it own in common the property nec- 
 essary to reveal Truth and have final authority 
 over said property." 
 
 BONDHOLDERS' CONTROL 
 
 Most of our large cities carry a large bonded indebted- 
 ness upon their School Plants. Most people do not see 
 anything in particular wrong about such a debt. In fact, 
 they usually endorse it under the impression that they 
 are getting better facilities for their children sooner than 
 they would by taxation. But this system is loaded down 
 with spoliation and foul play. Buildings erected forty 
 
 •The Warfare of Science and Theology. By Andrew D. White. 
 
 10 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 years ago by this same system, we are discarding as inade- 
 quate to the high-pressure needs of this generation and 
 new ones are erected by the contract-fattening class. We 
 are geting buildings far more expensive than they should 
 be, not to make book-study more easy or the comfort of 
 our children greater, but to make "fat" jobs for archi- 
 tects and contractors and a place for more materials made 
 by brick and other manufacturers. 
 
 With the coming of a more democratic industrial school 
 system, but few if any of our present million-dollar monu- 
 ments to an era of white-fingered book-training wall be 
 of much use. Our two- and three-storied buildings also 
 contribute largely to this age of Tuberculosis, Anemias 
 -and Insanity. Besides building more for utility and health, 
 there is every reason why our school buildings should all 
 be under the federal government and be built upon some 
 concerted plan, suited to expansion and change. We are 
 now in a constant state of experimentation with no settled 
 policy except that all buildings must conform to the "Con- 
 finement Method" of teaching our children how NOT to 
 make a living and become self-governing. 
 
 But paying Interest and Principal is the least of the 
 wrongs the public suffers under the Bond system. In 
 Kansas City the schools are bonded for $5,000,000. The 
 question arises, "Who really owns those buildings?" Who 
 controls them? Who dictates their uses ? Who nominates 
 new members for the School Board? Who holds a silent 
 control over what shall be taught? The Bondholding 
 Class virtually own the properties in which they hold 
 bonds. It is so in Railroads, Mines and Packing Plants, 
 it is so in Schools. And this ownership is the stone-wall 
 in the way of Democracy. 
 
 11 
 
NATURAL, KDUCATION 
 
 CHAPTER 2 
 
 THE PRESENT SCHOOL SYSTEM 
 
 ITS FAILURE, INADEQUACY AND INEFFICIENCY 
 
 It is not the desire nor the intention of the writer to 
 condemn our School System in total nor to overlook the 
 value it has been in disseminating much knowledge more 
 or less practical and uplifting in nature and of lowering 
 the percentage of illiteracy so that it is now quite a dis- 
 honor not to be able to read and write. What is needed 
 is not criticism but constructive light to help us to sup- 
 plement or reconstruct the present system so that it shall 
 be truly adequate and efficient for the requirements of 
 industry and for the needs of an advanced state of social 
 justice. No one has the right to point out the wrongs of 
 the present system before he has a clear idea of what 
 should be done to improve it and make it respond to the 
 overwhelming demands of our most aggressive and enter- 
 prising nation and age. 
 
 THE ORDER OF NATURE IN EDUCATION 
 
 The basic failure of our present system is that it is not 
 founded upon Naiture. It is almost wholly artificial, ab- 
 stract and far removed from the great storehouse of all 
 fundamental knowledge as found in the world round 
 about us. Inasmuch as the knowledge of most value to 
 human welfare pertains to making Nature yield to the 
 wants of man, it follows that any system of training that 
 neglects or excludes this fundamental knowledge or does 
 not follow the orderly sequence of Nature in presenting 
 it to the young mind, is not only inadequate and a failure, 
 but borders on the twilight zone of scholastic teaching, to 
 keep our children in mental bondage. 
 
 Then before we point out some of the failures, inade- 
 quacy and inefficiency of the present system, it is best to 
 lay the foundation stones for a system that cannot fail 
 because laid in the cement of eternal verity. Nature is 
 eternal, orderly, unyielding, a strict accountant and never 
 
 ]2 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 fails to ovorthrow any man-made system, law or state not 
 in accord with her array of positive forces. Therefore it 
 behooves us as sane beings to bow to her mandates and 
 seek out the patlnvay she would have us follow. 
 
 The first essential, then, is to adopt the Order of Nature 
 whatever that may be and make it the rule of Pedagogy. 
 And the second great principle upon which to build a 
 sound educational system is to design it so that every 
 human being of mature age and sound mind shall come 
 into possession of the Laws and Principles of Generalized 
 Knowledge. When the great truths in the natural order 
 are known, every minor truth, every small item of knowl- 
 edge, every detail in the whole range of experience and 
 of nature, finds its place immediately the moment it is 
 presented to the mind. And only to, the mind in posses- 
 sion of general truths do such details possess any mean- 
 ing or value. 
 
 Fundamental education is but a mind record of natural 
 causes regarding the properties and relations of matter. 
 And this record is acquired thru Causality the most fun- 
 damental faculty of the human mind. It is the faculty 
 that asks Why this and Why that and makes a normal 
 child a veritable question mark. When the child leai-ns 
 the simple causes of natural phenomena it soon puts them 
 together in. generalized form and we say that he has ac- 
 quired Generalized Knowledge. He now can THINK, for 
 in knowing the CAUSE of things one can THINK and 
 not before. 
 
 Moreover, when the mind is approached by the relation 
 of Cause and Effect, study is made a pleasure. Learning 
 things naturally related possesses a charm that carries 
 the young mind along irresistibly step by step up to the 
 more and more complex and it is all retained. He has 
 seen it, he has heard it, felt it, tasted it or has noted its 
 SAveet odor and then has asked the WHY about it all till 
 he has a full understanding of the thing from first-handed 
 knowledge. Evidently he can get none of this from a 
 printed page. The mind must come into contact with 
 
 13 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 matter in all its forms to study Cause and Effect in the 
 concrete. The record on the printed page with nothing 
 material to show that one thing is the cause of another, 
 requires an arbitrary, unnatural act of the mind to try 
 to comprehend it, and learning by it alone becomes slow 
 and tedious as well as uninteresting. 
 
 THE ORDER OF NATURE FOUND IN SCIENCE 
 
 All nature, every conceivable phenomena, fact, force, 
 property, substance or thing in the entire universe finds 
 its place and explanation within the scope of the six fun- 
 damental sciences, according to Ward,* arranged as fol- 
 lows in their ascending order from the standpoint of de- 
 pendence and subordination : 
 
 ASTRONOMY, PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY, 
 PSYCHOLOGY and SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 These sciences diminish in generality and increase in 
 complexity as we ascend the series. Astronomy is the 
 most general and least complex while the phenomena of 
 Sociology are the least general and most complex. And 
 this Law of Science is the TRUE ORDER OF NATURE 
 and all the phenomena of the Universe present themselves* 
 to our comprehension in this order. The relation also is 
 a causal one ; and from a pedagogic standing we must 
 study nature in the order of these sciences that we may 
 see hoAv each following science in the series depends upon 
 the phenomena and causes of the science preceding it. 
 As Ward says regarding this series,* 
 
 ''Any attempt to study the higher ones before 
 the lower ones have been studied, not only must 
 involve a great waste of time and energy, but 
 must fail to furnish any true knowledge of sci- 
 ence and of nature. It must also be very difficult, 
 irksome, and tedious, and what little is learned is 
 speedily forgotten." 
 
 * I bid 
 
 14 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 All other sciences are related to and can be classed 
 under these ground-work sciences. Geology and its re- 
 lated branches readily fall under Astronomy ; Engineer- 
 ing under Physics and Chemistry ; Zoology and Botany 
 and their branches under Biology ; Economies, History 
 and Pedagogy are now classed as special social sciences 
 and belong to Sociology. 
 
 And what should be done in all our schools in arrang- 
 ing studies according to the Order of Nature is to have 
 every science follow the sequence of the six basic sciences. 
 Biology, Physiology, Medicine, Zoology or Botany should 
 never be studied prior to the study of Asti'onomy, Physics 
 and Chemistry. Neither should Psychology be studied 
 before Biology and the preceding sciences in the series. 
 And above all, no one can fully grasp social problems nor 
 government nor economics nor social adjustment, the 
 highest knowledge of human conception, before having a 
 Genei'al Knowledge of the five sciences named first in the 
 Natural Order series. The ignorance of these related 
 sciences is the cause of the division of society into con- 
 tending factions and of all manner of strife nnd vvar. 
 
 THE PRIMARY END OF AN EDUCATION 
 
 Is to give strength to one's reasoning and thinking 
 powers, and to learn how to use and apply these powers 
 to the welfare of self and society. But with educators 
 there seems to be no clear-cut line of procedure or out- 
 lines of study or sequence to attain the greatest mind 
 strength as well as the most comprehensive gi'asp upon 
 the knowledge found in Nature. When asked a specific 
 use of a certain study, they commonly answer, "to develop 
 the mind". This vague phrase carries with it a false con- 
 ception of what the True Order of Nature is and what 
 bearing it has in giving order and sequence to the i^eason- 
 ing and thinking powers of the mind. Some studies de- 
 stroy the reasoning faculty and they find a rather large 
 place in our average curricula. 
 
 15 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 While mathematics, which is not a science, may ''dis- 
 cipline the mind in exactness and consistency of thot" as 
 has long been held, yet if "exclusively pursued, destroys 
 both the reason and judgment". As Ward says*, 
 
 "This is because it consists in prolonged think- 
 ing about NOTHING. A 'point' has neither 
 length, breadth, nor thickness. It is NOTHING. 
 • A line without thickness is equally NOTHING. ' ' 
 It is only when these terms are invested with material 
 attribtues, that the mind really thinks. ' ' Geometry could 
 never have existed but for men's experience with real 
 things." Purely hypothetical mathematics is demoraliz- 
 ing to the thinking powers. 
 
 "THE ONLY THING THAT CAN 'DEVELOP' OR 
 'STRENGTHEN' THE FACULTIES OR THE MIND IS 
 KNOWLEDGE, AND ALL REAL KNOWLEDGE IS 
 
 SCIENCE." 
 
 Science furnishes the mind with Realities. These con- 
 stitute its contents, and the power, value, and real char- 
 acter of mind depend upon its contents. Without knowl- 
 edge, the mind, however capable, is impotent and worth- 
 less. 
 
 "Science is the only working power of society," says 
 Ward, "and the working power of society increases in 
 proportion to the number possessing it. Only a few minds 
 possess any considerable part of it. All are capable of 
 possessing it all. The Paramount Duty of Society there- 
 fore is to put Knowledge into the minds of all its mem- 
 bers. " 
 
 LOWEST AND MOST DANGEROUS CLASS, 
 SOCIETY SHOULD EDUCATE 
 
 Probably the most irrational thing society does today, 
 is the cruelty it metes out to the so-called criminal classes. 
 The more we punish them the more they increase in num- 
 ber and the greater the rebound on society in expense and 
 industrial loss. About 13 per cent of criminals have de- 
 
 * Ibid 
 
 16 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 linquent minds and should be in a sanitarium for treat- 
 ment, and 87 per cent are forced into the criminal class 
 by the absurd and abnormal conditions society forces onto 
 them. If, then, society has set up conditions of living 
 such as to drive even a small per cent of its members into 
 law-breaking, high or low, big or little, society is to blame 
 and not the one who commits a crime. This is the view 
 now taken by all our leading Sociologists in our Univer- 
 sities. 
 
 And what society should do most of all is to rescue 
 every child from our slums of groggeries and bawdy- 
 houses and give them the Generalized Knowledge in the 
 Science Series forming the Order of Nature and in the 
 midst of Nature. With this done and society opens the 
 doors of opportunity in the Order of Nature, the 87 per 
 ^ent of sane criminals will entirely disappear. 
 Ward, our greatest social philosopher, says* : 
 
 "The people that make up the slums and the 
 criminal classes of societj^ are capal)le of ])eing 
 made good and useful citizens, — nay, in the nor- 
 mal proportion of all classes, they may become 
 agents of civilization and may contribute to hu- 
 man achievement. In a certain very proper sense 
 SOCIETY HAS FORCED THEM INTO THIS 
 FIELD and they are making the best use they 
 can of their native abilities. There is no other 
 class in society whose Education is half so im- 
 portant as this lowest and most dangerous 
 class." 
 
 IS OUR SCHOOL PLANT FIT? 
 
 BUILDINGS FOR THE CONFINEMENT METHOD 
 
 With the constructive objects of education before us 
 and the Order of Nature as the guide in the formation of 
 study courses, and the broadening altruism with it all to 
 inspire us, can we not turn to the question of introspec- 
 tion with honesty of purpose and face the defects in the 
 present school system? Shall we let our better judgment 
 
 ♦Applied Sociology. By l^ester F. Ward. 
 
 17 
 
NATURAI, KDUCATION 
 
 be misled by pretentious structures with heat, light and 
 ventilation adjusted with scientific accuracy and our sense 
 of duty blunted by makeshifts in training under unnat- 
 ural confinement? 
 
 In the modern factory, the modem mine, or on the mod- 
 ern farm, all run to get the largest output with the least 
 waste and cost, every detail is considered and guarded. 
 Buildings are erected and machinery installed and imple- 
 ments used fitted to the needs of the industry. As new 
 inventions or methods are introduced, the old are dis- 
 carded. The efficiency of the new outweighs the cost of 
 making the change. In other words, industry tries to 
 keep pace with advanced methods of production and dis- 
 tribution. And inasmuch as all knowledge is concerned 
 with Production, Distribution and Consumption, it follows 
 that both the knowledge of the science and of the art of 
 these three great divisions of man's activities should not 
 only be taught in a rational school system, but also should 
 keep abreast with all the advances made in all the indus- 
 tries as well. A school to be adequate should be the em- 
 bryonic factory, mine, farm, counting-house, railroad and 
 of all the great group of vocations. Is our School Plant 
 adequate in any sense of the word to these requirements? 
 Does it keep pace with Industry? Does it prepare boys 
 and girls for anything in particular? 
 
 Leavitt of the Chicago University states the casie 
 strongly thusf : 
 
 "We take boys and girls at a time when their 
 impulses are strong for active participation in 
 the vital interests of life and we confine them 
 within narrow schoolroom cells with books and 
 pencils as the chief and sole means of participa- 
 tion. We take them when their individual differ- 
 ences in capacity, interests and prospective ca- 
 reers are properly matters of growing and vital 
 concern and we require them to pursue a uniform 
 course of study having little direct relation to 
 those specific powers, motives and prospects." 
 
 tExamples of Industrial Education. By P. M. Leavitt. 
 
 18 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 Our school plant is designed almost entirely to teach 
 the abstract on the printed page, and no young mind is 
 iitted for nor interested in the study of words. Not books 
 but THINGS hold the interest and attention of children. 
 And not till a School Plant is devised which will deal 
 with THINGS and PROCESSES primarily and with the 
 language, mathematics and other elementary secondary 
 branches needed in the study and application of THINGS 
 and PROCP]SSES, will we have a School Plant following 
 the natural bent of every child and the trend of all life 
 itself. 
 
 OUR TEXT-BOOK MEDLEY AND OUR 
 APPARATUS JUNK. 
 
 And it is a medley and a junk heap, and unprejudiced 
 observers admit it. Uniformity, thorogoing instruction 
 facilities and the latest and best of everything to make 
 school-life something real and a stepping-stone to a life 
 of usefulness, would mean Federal Government CON- 
 TROL and that would not suit the multitude of profit 
 harpies at the heels of our present system. It would not 
 ■do for a child to have a set of books he could use in Cali- 
 fornia as well as in New York. No, the parent must pro- 
 vide for a change on moving even to an adjoining school 
 district two miles away. Then, too, the "new teacher" 
 wants some new-fangled spelling-book or language-book 
 (full of System pgeans) and the Board orders the change. 
 The patrons protest, but the books must be bot, "the 
 Board has the authority". Kansas as a state publishes 
 her school text-books and furnishes them FREE to all her 
 schools. Some few states buy the school-books for the 
 whole state from private book concerns and furnish them 
 free, but what a large portion of our country is still in 
 the hands of Profiteers ! 
 
 Then, too, text-book mongers have learned that it is to 
 their PROFIT to pander to the clamor for more objective 
 features in their books. The school "Board" has no au- 
 thority to have a cow or a mule or a skunk at the school 
 
 19 
 
NATURAL EDT'CATION 
 
 for instructive purposes, hence the demand for the ''half- 
 tone, true-to-life" picture of the same to hold the interest 
 and curiosity of Johnnie. So today our "Texts" have 
 become portable picture-galleries with "catchy" filigrees 
 to make "talking points" before the Text-book Commit- 
 tee. Not to build Brains and LIVES OF ACHIEVEMENT, 
 but to build FORTUNES, are text-books now made, and 
 our SYSTEM maintains this exploitation of our children. 
 Great System, isn't it? 
 
 However "traveled" you may be, you have missed 
 man}^ of America's school-room sceneries. The scenes are 
 as frequent as are High Schools and sectarian colleges. I 
 refer to the "grand" display of Apparatus. It is almost 
 tragic in its disorder, odds and ends and ancientness. 
 Some pieces date back to Avhen grandma attended school 
 and they still have dust upon them she helped to make. 
 Then, too, each j)iece has a historical halo of regard and 
 local enshrinement of bygone selectors of this ' ' concourse 
 of atoms". "Mr. Brown, who was here twenty years ago, 
 selected this piece. And Mr. Jones, whom everybody 
 loved, made this piece. He was so enthusiastic over elec- 
 tricity. ' ' And so on with the w^hole confusion of the plan- 
 less lumber with which our children are supposed to get 
 the fundamental laioAvledge of the forms, products, func- 
 tions, harmony, change, properties, laws and classifica- 
 tion of Nature. 
 
 Instead of apparatus composed of pieces made by regu- 
 lar manufacturers to do work in regular factories from 
 which the latest technique can be learned and the latest 
 mechanism studied, "Boards have the authority" to buy 
 from "Junk" makers only apparatus "toys" for High 
 Schools, Military Institutes, Seminaries, Parochial Schools 
 and other places where the coming generation will not get 
 too interested in the application of the Physical Sciences 
 to life 's needs, and lose interest in litanies, fairy tales and 
 smart-set jargon in French or Italian. 
 
 20 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR "GENTLEMEN" 
 
 What else is an appropriate appellation for our so-called 
 Manual Training Schools in which not a single piece of 
 machinery is used as are found in regular factories? They 
 are but schools for children whom their parents- never ex- 
 pect to toil for their living, but who must learn the use of 
 tools to keep up a semblance of sanctioning the demands 
 of a growing Democracy that requires "Evervbody to 
 Work". 
 
 How do those who think that the Manual Training 
 School prepares one for the real activities of life, square 
 their opinions with the following quotation from P. G. 
 Bonser, Director Industrial Arts, Columbia University* : 
 "I count it a travesty upon our schools and a 
 tragedy for our boys and girls that a number of 
 large hardware dealers in New York who con- 
 duct supply houses for the whole country, carry 
 a large stuck of goods no longer used at all in 
 the trades, but carried to meet the steady or even 
 increasing demand of the Manual Training de- 
 partments and schools of the country." 
 
 "The work of a thousand Manual Training 
 Teachers in this country, fondly supposing them- 
 selves to be vocational trainers for present-day 
 industry, shows how the factory system wdth its 
 division of labor, its machine processes, and its 
 applied science has entirely escaped them." 
 
 THE "TRY-OUT" SYSTEM 
 
 Manufacturers today are forced to go into the open 
 market and take such labor as they can find and "try" it. 
 Thoy often take half a dozen on trial to get one for a par- 
 ticular process. This is expensive, haphazard, and unsat- 
 isfactory. In large Corporations schools are maintained 
 to prepare labor for their one industry, and this, too, im- 
 poses a heavy expense and an environment for the stu- 
 dent not conducive to natural training and a successful 
 life. 
 
 ♦Bulletin No. 14, 1914, U. S. Bureau of Education. 
 
 21 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 To get first-handed information as to what large manu- 
 facturers want in an educational institution to prepare 
 workers for industry and thus avoid the "Try-Out" sys- 
 tem, the writer called upon seventeen in Kansas City. 
 I was agreeably surprised at the unanimity of opinion that 
 our present Manual Training work is a failure so far as 
 they benefited by it. One said, '"It always makes me 
 smile when I visit a Manual Training school to see the old 
 lathes they use." When asked, "How would it be if we 
 had training institutions where any one of any age or sex 
 could be prepared for some definite skilled work so that 
 he or she could step from training school into the factory 
 and start at once as a skilled operator upon the regular 
 full wage?". Invariably the answer was, "That surely 
 would be great ! " I said it could be done and it must be 
 done. They all expressed a deep interest in the School 
 Town System described in Chapter 5 and said they would 
 be willing to donate machinery or products which they 
 make for study and operation to adapt the school to the 
 exact needs of their several industries. 
 
 OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM INELASTIC 
 
 Our present system has little or no adaptability to the 
 inequalities found in children. The reflective and percep- 
 tive, the commercial and mechanical, the professional and 
 literary types of minds are all crowded together into the 
 same room, with the same books, the same teacher, the 
 same discipline, the same method of grading and advance- 
 ment, the same number of months to attend each year, for 
 the same amount of unrelated book-stuff. The abnormally 
 deficient and the abnormally overdeveloped, those of good 
 and bad special senses, those with wide mental capacities 
 of attention and memory, are all treated with the same 
 prescription daily. And for those with little or no im- 
 agination, only the most exaggerated and distorted mind 
 pictures are developed from the printed page. This is 
 well illustrated by city children expressing astonishment 
 and asking such trivial and amusing questions on seeing 
 
 22 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 for the first time the commonest as well as the most im- 
 portant animals and plants which supply the everyday 
 wants of man. 
 
 Not the picture but the real cow, the real apple tree, 
 the real plow, the real engine, must be substituted for 
 book-trust pictures wearily reviewed every day in a mil- 
 lion-dollar building. The plan of building and teaching 
 at Smith's Agricultural School at Northamton, Mass., 
 with an arena in which animals and crops are judged and 
 studied, more generally applied to our whole system, is 
 far superior to watching Johnie six long hours a day to 
 see that he does not do anything natural when virtually 
 imprisoned in a hard seat from which he dare not leave 
 or whisper or break the monotony by thro^wdng a paper 
 wad. It is almost cruel to keep children inactive longer 
 than an hour and even that hour should be one of move- 
 ment and animated talk. Confinement is ultra antag- 
 onistic to every child instinct. 
 
 EVILS OUR SYSTEM FAILS TO CORRECT 
 
 One of the strongest indictments of our system was 
 uttered by ex-President Elliot of Harvard before the Con- 
 necticut State Teachers' Association. He said: 
 
 "These evils fall under three heads: 1. Mis- 
 government instead of public efficiency. 2. Dis- 
 sipation and idling instead of a constructive use 
 of leisure and recreation. 3. Cleavage and class 
 feeling instead of social order and public spirit." 
 
 FAULTY EDUCATION GIVES GOVERNMENT 
 CONTROL TO THE DRONES 
 
 Let us see if President Elliot was right. If so, our sys- 
 tem should be revolutionized at once. A Democracy is 
 one in Avhich the government is under- control of the whole 
 people. But to have such control every citizen must have 
 the knowledge necessary to give him an enlightened vote. 
 He must have the Generalized Knowledge referred to in 
 this chapter else he will not know nature's plan of jus- 
 
 23 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 tice. Aristocracy; has planted in this civilization certain 
 customs of ownership, especially of land, that keeps it 
 intrenched and forces the laboring masses to support it in 
 idleness. These customs are taught from the standpoint 
 of being ''right" thruout our whole school system. The 
 child comes from school with these false customs and 
 practices fixed in mind as the only method of dealing with 
 property; and not knowing the disasters that come to 
 society from them, he falls in line as a citizen who actu- 
 ally supports what enslaves him. 
 
 Also knowing that ignorance of statecraft and of social 
 economics is favorable to government control by the large 
 property owners, they have always found that control 
 over law-making is a powerful means of diverting wealth 
 into their hands. Why work if a crooked law shifts wealth 
 from the ignorant, honest worker to the wise, dishonest 
 idler? The leisure class must rule or starve or beg or 
 steal or become producers. To force them into the pro- 
 ducing class, a large proportion of the willing workers 
 must gain a knowledge of how to rule as well as how to 
 produce. And that means that Statecraft MUST BE 
 PRACTICED in any system of education looking to the 
 freedom of workers from drones. 
 
 Our schools are managed upon the same sectarian basis 
 as the political party, church, public press, league and 
 club, and hence are run favorable to these groups. They 
 do not invite an all-together expression from the whole 
 community as to any public policy. Therefore, being ruled 
 out of the right to manage their o-wn affairs, the people 
 have no experience in their all-together business and of 
 course cannot aid in rectifying the causes for misgovern- 
 ment. Like learning to plow or to construct a house, gov- 
 ernment must be dealt with in the concrete to be compre- 
 hended and means of social adjustment discovered. The 
 beginning of our legislative, judicial, executive and infor- 
 mational departments of government should be coincident 
 with the beginning of school. The school will never be 
 the seat of true Democracy till it is the seat of diffusing 
 the knowledge of all the industries and affairs of men. 
 
 24 
 
wrniorT taxation 
 
 Weeks supports these views in this language* : 
 "It by no means follows that popular educa- 
 tion guarantees Democracy. Indeed it may be 
 the source of undemocratic conditions. It may 
 thwart Democracy. Popular education may pro- 
 mote Democracy only when the curriculum pre- 
 pares the individual for the three great economic 
 processes of Production, Distribution and Con- 
 sumption. When this knowledge is diffused thru- 
 out society, class distinctions melt away and De- 
 mocracy, so far as nature permits, must prevail." 
 "First of all, the courses of study should be 
 formed so that all should be trained as producers. 
 If all are trained as producers there will be a ten- 
 dency for all to continue to be producers. Aim- 
 less idleness does not appeal to the man or woman 
 who has been schooled in industry. If all are 
 trained to do useful work, society would appreci- 
 ate the workman's needs. If the sheltered classes 
 knew from experience how slow and painful 
 often are the processes of production, would there 
 not be a new spirit in the world?" 
 
 OUR SCHOOLS ENCOURAGE DISSIPATION 
 AND IDLING 
 
 Of all the shortcomings of our "free" school system, 
 the unintentional encouragement to dissipation and idling 
 is the worst. Wheeler of Clark University has said : 
 "Learning now is secondary to pleasure at our 
 colleges. It is no secret that there are loafers at 
 Harvard. And what is true at Harvard is true of 
 all the colleges of the Atlantic seaboard." 
 This is the natural resultant of a system teaching 
 largely how to consume and not how to produce and dis- 
 tribute justly. 
 
 But probably the greatest factor in augmenting the 
 idling, intemperate, shiftless, homeless classes is our eco- 
 
 *The Education of Tomorrow. By Arland D. Week.s. 
 
 25 
 
NATURAL KDUCATION 
 
 nomic shortsightedness in thrusting 85 per cent of our 
 children into the awful tragedy of an overcrowded mar- 
 ket of unskilled labor. Of those who thus pass unpre- 
 pared into the industrial struggle between the ages of 12 
 and 16, about 90 per cent fill blind-alley jobs to which 
 there is no advance. They become the great horde of 
 Job-Hunters who float from city to town without home, 
 reputation or friends. As Professor Ely of Wisconsin 
 University says : 
 
 "The problem of child idleness is a far more 
 serious question than the problem of child la- 
 bor." 
 And speaking of this horde as a national calamity, Pro- 
 fessor Bonser of Columbia University asks* : 
 
 ''How long must this army of ambitious, capa- 
 ble boys and girls be allowed to go to the scrap 
 heap of adult inefficiency, disappointment, and 
 too often of pauperism and crime? How long 
 must this army of tens of thousands ask for the 
 bread of real, present-day life, of opportunity to 
 prepare for gaining an adequate, respectable and 
 efficient living and citizenship, and be given the 
 stones of academic gymnastics?" 
 Again, treating those under 17 as incapable, irrespon- 
 sible beings without judgment, without reasoning power, 
 "without self-assertion or the capacity of self-support, is 
 another reason for a country-wide shiftless, game-seeking 
 contingent of thousands of capable young men and 
 women. "William R. George, founder of the Junior Repub- 
 lic, says in this relation t : 
 
 ''Boys sometimes become so desperate from be- 
 ing preached at and treated as irresponsible be- 
 ings, that they commit violent and often criminal 
 acts to assert their self-respect. Every youth has 
 an instinctive fellow feeling for every other 
 youth who falls into the toils of adult-made laws. 
 The lad who does a dare-devil act against prop- 
 
 *BuIletin No. 14, 1914, U. S. Bureau of Education. 
 tCitizens Made and Remade. By William R. George. 
 
 26 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 erty has the open or secret admiration of prac- 
 tically all youth who know him, and he knows it. 
 Give these selfsame law-breakers full responsibil- 
 ity of property, of self-support, of law-making 
 and civic responsibility, and at once the point of 
 view is changed and the dare-devil heroism dis- 
 appears. They see it is a menace to property and 
 the stability of society in which they now have 
 a stake." 
 Our youth yearn for activity, for power of control, for 
 self-assertion, but unfortunately in our training plant 
 their wills are repressed by Board Rules in which they 
 have no voice, adult laws, and too often parental and 
 teacher admonitions that belittles and discourages them. 
 Thus having no responsibility, no hand in making their 
 school-buildings, their clothes, their food, their books, or 
 their tools, they are in the position toward all these as 
 mere consumers. And not costing them labor, they have 
 no appreciation of their values and therefore tend to 
 waste them ruthlessly and even boast to their fellows of 
 their prodigality. Thus school-buildings costing thou- 
 sands are carelessly mutilated, books destroyed, food 
 wasted, tools and machinery ill-used and their clothes are 
 scuffed out with no regard as to how they are to be re- 
 placed. 
 
 CLEAVAGE AND CLASS FEELINQ 
 ENGENDERED 
 
 From the fact that our schools are class-ruled, they nat- 
 urally follow the caste-forming strategies. And promi- 
 nent among these undemocratic hostilities are as follows : 
 the Doctrine of Inequality, the admixture of true and false 
 causation, the teaching of fashionable nonessentials for 
 show, and the absurd worship of military and big land- 
 owning ''heroes". Class-feeling and division are the only 
 resultants from such an intellectual desecration. 
 
 The Doctrine that the difference between the upper and 
 lower classes of society is due to difference in their intel- 
 
 27 
 
NATURAL KDUCATION 
 
 lectual capacity, something ' ' preordained ' ' and inherently 
 inevitable, is entirely false. Every form of sophistry is 
 employed to uphold this view. We are told there must 
 be social classes, that they are a necessary part of the 
 social order. That there must be laborers and unskilled 
 workmen to do the drudgery of the world. That there 
 must be menial servants to wait upon us. That only the 
 "Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal" are capable of 
 controlling social and national affairs. 
 
 This is an old Doctrine and it is only within recent 
 years that our deep students of society have brot to light 
 the real truth regarding intellectual capacity, and they 
 are now declaring that ** Intellectual inequality is common 
 to all classes". Ward tells us that,* 
 
 "If an equal number taken at random of the 
 lowest stratum of society had been surrounded 
 from their birth by exactly the same conditions 
 by which the intelligent class have been sur- 
 rounded, they would in fact have constituted the 
 intelligent class, instead of the particular indi- 
 viduals who happen actually to constitute it." 
 In other words, class distinctions in society are wholly 
 artificial, depend entirely on environing conditions, and 
 are in no' sense due to differences in native capacity. 
 What was once the slave class in the Middle Ages is now 
 furnishing the brains of the world, and if there is any in- 
 tellectual inferiority it is found in the poor remnant that 
 still calls itself the Nobility in some countries. 
 
 Along with this Doctrine of Inequality there followed 
 the fallacy that only the "well-bred" could understand 
 TRUTH. But this, too, is false. Quoting Ward again, he 
 says: 
 
 "Helvetius maintained that all Truth is within 
 the reach of all men. This is certainly true for all 
 practical truth. And truth that is so subtle or 
 involved that it cannot be grasped not only by 
 the average mind, but by minds of minimum 
 power, is likely to be of little practical value as 
 
 ♦Applied Sociologry. By Lester F. Ward 
 
 28 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 a guide to conduct and an aid to success in life. 
 Most of the so-called 'knowledge' so difficult to 
 acquire is not in fact knowledge or truth at all, 
 but fine-spun theory, hair-splitting metaphysical 
 disquisition, and mere mental gymnastics, by 
 which the mind is violently exercised over prob- 
 lems without objective content. It is largely 
 'abstract reasoning', by which is meant reasoning 
 without anything to reason about. This is and 
 ought to be difficult, because it is useless. But as 
 soon as a real something is furnished to the mind, 
 it is not only readily perceived but easily rea- 
 soned about by all sane minds. And such knowl- 
 edge and truth are always useful." 
 The second cause for dividing society into classes is 
 found in mixing True and False causation in our schools. 
 This fact is pressed home and convincingly stated by Prin- 
 cipal Henderson of a Philadelphia Manual Training school 
 thust : 
 
 "The ability to be consistent is a proper test 
 of intellectual progress. A great advance has 
 been made when the Beliefs in one department of 
 thot are not entirely contradicted and neutralized 
 by the Beliefs in another department; when '^ur 
 science does not contradict our religion, and our 
 religion our politics, and our politics our sociol- 
 ogy. With religion and ethics and sociology- and 
 biology in a state of incoherence and empiricism, 
 it is manifestly impossible for education to be 
 rational. 
 
 "Education has too often been a thwarting of 
 the spirit, an attempt to fit a square plug in a 
 round hole, a pressure, a dead weight, rather than 
 an unfolding. We shall succeed when we aban- 
 don our educational nostrums, our tonics, our 
 pills, our philosopher's stones for turning ignor- 
 ance into knowledge, our short-cut methods of 
 
 tC&use and Effect in Education. By C. H. Henderson. Popular 
 Science Monthly, May, 1894. 
 
 29 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 salvation for making BAD into GOOD. We shall 
 transform education into a science and educators 
 into scientists when we give up these off-hand 
 remedies, these false views of causal relation- 
 ships, and come to recognize the simple fact that 
 the child is an ORGANISM, and that the proc- 
 esses of growth and education must conform to 
 the Laws of Organisms. We say the boy is bad 
 when we ought to say that his life conditions are 
 unfavorable ; that his parents and teachers are 
 unwise. ' ' 
 The third element in our system which keeps up class 
 distinctions, is the teaching of traditional studies and 
 those which our smart society dictates as "classic" and 
 of course favorable to the maintenance of itself as the 
 ruling and non-producing class. And this SHOW and 
 IGNORANCE is keeping a large percent of the producing 
 classes duped into the belief that if their children can be- 
 come "cultivated" with Latin, Greek Myths and poetry, 
 that somehow they too will be able to take their places in 
 the exclusive class and not be obliged to live by drudgery. 
 As Herbert Spencer says:* 
 
 "Men dress their children's minds as they do 
 their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. If we in- 
 quire what is the real motive for giving boys a 
 Classical Education, we find it to be simply con- 
 formity to public opinion. The immense prepon- 
 derance of "accomplishments" proves how USE 
 is subordinated to DISPLAY. Dancing, deport- 
 m.ent, the piano, singing, drawing — what a large 
 space do these occupy. * * * Not what knowl- 
 edge is of most real worth, is the consideration ; 
 but what will bring most applause, honor, re- 
 spect, what will most conduce to social position 
 and influence, what will be most imposing." 
 
 THE PARAMOUNT DECEPTION 
 
 While military and royal oppression have been largely 
 
 •Education. By Herbert Spencer. 
 
 30 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 overthrown and the power of the nobility and the priest- 
 hood have been broken, the unabated fact remains today 
 that we have new forms of oppression, new forms of slav- 
 ery and serfdom, and a new type of feudalism, all of which 
 are quite as effectual in supporting an idle, spendthrift 
 class and in degrading the masses into servitude as were 
 the older forms of oppression intensified by religious per- 
 secutions. The consummate deception of today is in 
 preaching and teaching pernicious and false economic doc- 
 trines to the exploited workingman and to his children as 
 well as false historic facts regarding the origin of our 
 institutions. 
 
 Our children leave school, most of them still children, 
 with distorted and exaggerated estimates of the *' great- 
 ness" and "justness" of our government, the "magnifi- 
 cence" of our western civilization over all others, and 
 the "wonderful efficiency" of our social and political in- 
 stitutions. They are surcharged with the eagerness to 
 enter the field of exploitation to become rich, to become a 
 Lord over a million acres, over a railroad system, over 
 the stock exchange or as a magnate dictating the financial 
 destiny of tribute-paying toilers. 
 
 Both children and teachers are grossly deceived into 
 the belief that we are enjoying "the best school system 
 in the world", and that the system prepares one for the 
 "exceptional opportunities" awaiting the magic touch of 
 graduates "to turn base metal into gold." In this con- 
 nection Dr. Russell of Columbia University made this open 
 comment : 
 
 ' ' The public school system of the United States 
 is tending to develop grumblers, faultfinders. So- 
 cialists and Anarchists. The greatest peril of our 
 education today is that it promises an open door 
 to every l)oy and girl up to the age of fourteen 
 and then turns him ruthlessly into the world to 
 find most doors not only closed, but locked 
 against him". 
 Univei'sity men almost with one accord are condemn- 
 
 31 
 
NATURAL- EDUCATION 
 
 ing our system and pointing out its deceptions. Dr. Irv- 
 ing King of the University of Iowa makes this incisive 
 comment : f 
 
 ''Our public school work today is being sub- 
 jected to a rapid-fire criticism of a most search- 
 ing order. Some of it must be seriously faced. 
 That a good deal of school work from the begin- 
 ning to the end does not make for vital contact 
 with the child and youth is fairly evident. * * * 
 The work of the school is so abstract and un- 
 related to the interests of life that it fails to grip 
 them in any impelling way." 
 If then we are willing to investigate our system with- 
 out prejudice, it takes but little insight to see that the 
 pathway of our present school life is artfully banked with 
 perfumed roses and diverting for-get-me-nots to conceal 
 the hideous thorns and deadly poison-oaks found in our 
 past and present social and political underbrush. 
 
 CHAPTER 3 
 
 THE SCOPE, PRINCIPLES AND BIOLOGICAL BASIS 
 FOR A NATURAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 
 
 THE NEW WORLD-VIEW DEMAND OF EDUCATION 
 
 Out of the travail of society there had been born a new 
 social life, with new demands to meet the realizations of 
 what has evolved into a fullfledged World-View of Edu- 
 cation for World Organization. And these new demands 
 encircling the globe, coming from all thinking men of 
 every race and every nation are focusing upon one cen- 
 tral, dominating fact inherent in all humanity itself; and 
 that fact is, in the words of Bridgeman :* 
 
 "The mind of the world will ceaselessly de- 
 mand TRUTH and it will have Truth as far as it 
 
 tBducation for Social Efficiency. By Irving King. 
 ♦World Org-anization. Raymond L. Bridgeman. 
 
 22 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 has increasing power to attain it. History will 
 be reversed unless there continues a weeding out 
 of ERROR and a progressive establishment of 
 that which the mind cannot overthrow because it 
 satisfies the demands for eternal verity." 
 Then indicating along what line education will have to 
 
 follow for man to increase his power to attain Truth, he 
 
 clearly expresses it thus : 
 
 "World organization must grow out of the es- 
 sential unity of mankind. It cannot be a federa- 
 tion or any agreement which has in itself the 
 seeds of nullification or secession or any implica- 
 tion that the conditions were created by men and 
 may be destroyed by men at will." 
 
 Since organization of any character implies education 
 and preparation, we get the larger view of the features of 
 a system of education which will be comprehensive enough 
 to meet the demands of this "Unity of Mankind" to se- 
 cure omnipotent Truth found in the very nature of things 
 and Avhich exist and advance in spite of the obstructive 
 creations of men. Our very existence demandsi that we 
 shall know certain fundamental operations — how to pro- 
 duce, how to distribute, and how to consume. And all 
 law and all constitutions denying the innate right to any 
 human being of the opportunity to secure this knowledge 
 and to apply it to his full content to the resources of the 
 earth, is contrary to the constitution and laws of the 
 "very nature of things" and all such opposing laws and 
 constitutions will be swept aside by the great current of 
 the "unity of mankind". 
 
 The growing world-view is that education must be a 
 universal life-growth for each individual of whatever race 
 to realize his or her fullest life powers. The world-view 
 realizes that if a single individual is neglected and does 
 not have the educational advantages to develop his or her 
 faculties to their full content, that the progress of society 
 as a whole is retarded. Every individual who has no 
 knowledge of production must per force live on the pro- 
 duction of another; he thus becomes a social parasite, a 
 
 33 
 
NATURAL KUUCATIOX 
 
 drone, or a thief. Drones and non-producers nullify the 
 laws of social progress ; in the very nature of things they 
 are social obstructionists. Then the future trend of edu- 
 cation must be toward the elimination of the non-pro- 
 ducer. In other words, education must be along the lines, 
 of SELF-SUPPORT and SELF-GOVERNMENT. 
 
 FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES 
 
 All systems of human action are based upon some fun- 
 damental principles of control. And to devise an educa- 
 tional system that will oppose the rule of a class, it must 
 be based upon principles fitted to the Altogether Control 
 which in itself is Democracy. While the Principles given 
 below may seem radical to some and without an empirical 
 basis, they have been deduced from the various education- 
 al experiments which have proven to be sound, feasible 
 and basic. They are now in practice part here and part 
 there in the Junior Republics of the East, in the Conuner- 
 cial-Shop trade schools in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, in the 
 part-time Trade Schools of Pitchburg, Massachusetts, the 
 Commercial-Shop Trade School of Worcester, Mass., in 
 the Continuation Schools of Cincinnati and several more 
 educational tests and plans now in operation in a num- 
 ber of cities. 
 
 They have all been subjected to the crucial test of 
 thorogoing experience and have not been found wanting. 
 All we need to do is to enlarge upon and coordinate 
 schools like these pioneers to have those that hold to all 
 these Principles ; and when we accomplish that, educa- 
 tional as well as political freedom is won. 
 
 PRINCIPLES 
 
 1. No student can develop normally, become self-reli- 
 ant and obedient to law, without the democracy of self- 
 government and self-support. 
 
 2. Without remunerative labor at the seat of learning, 
 general education is impossible. Such labor, also, should 
 be related to and be a part of a course of study. 
 
 34 
 
WITHOUT TAXATIOX 
 
 3. To secure the maximum of interest, thoroness, speed 
 and efficiency in any technical course of study, useful 
 labor is imperative. 
 
 4. Whole truth can be obtained only when all those 
 seeking it own in common the property necessary to re- 
 veal truth and have final authority over said property. 
 
 5. The division of any student body into fraternal or 
 sectarian groups is hostile to the spirit and growth of 
 democracy and detrimental to the acquirement of ti'uth. 
 
 6. The maintenance of both student and school should, 
 so far as feasible, depend upon commercial products made 
 by student labor. 
 
 7. Educational facilities should cover, so far as feas- 
 ible, all the vocations of life and should adapt the natural 
 aptitude of each student to the one best suited to him. 
 
 NATURAL LAW VERSUS ARTIFICIAL LAW AS THE 
 FOUNDATION OF A RATIONAL SYSTEM 
 OF EDUCATION 
 
 How shall we blast a way into the rock of hoary custom 
 and into the flint of educational maladjustment? Where 
 shall we begin? To put these Principles into practice is 
 no easy task. A huge mountain of prejudice must be 
 climbed and an ocean of sophistry must be crossed. But 
 in educational as well as in commercial, industrial and 
 ethical realms, progress has been made only when the 
 orderly sequence of the universe as expressed in Natural 
 Law has been followed ; when we have excluded exterior 
 supernaturalism and have applied the uniform unfolding 
 of the present out of the past, in a word have followed the 
 Law of Evolution, we have advanced. 
 
 We have failed when we have not observed the true 
 sequence of cause and effect in the life of the child. We 
 have arbitrarily tried to pour the child-life of every pos- 
 sibility into the same mould. On a fixed day and year it 
 must be placed into the mould and on another custom- 
 made, anti-nature day and year it must be taken out. In- 
 stead of the school to fit the child, the child must fit the 
 
 35 
 
NATURAL KnT'CATION 
 
 school. The future system will be an adjustment of the 
 school to every condition of the child-life, and will be 
 designed and so appointed to make the maximum social 
 force out of each human unit however strong or hoAvever 
 weak in its organic construction. The new system will 
 turn to good account every atom of possibility, every nat- 
 ural tendency, every inborn power found in every yearn- 
 ing breast. It will not tolerate the frightful loss of mil- 
 lions of human seed falling by the wayside, and on the 
 rocky soil of premature toil to produce a fruitage of but 
 five or ten fold ; it will sow every seed on fertile soil away 
 from the thistles of greed that each may bring forth a 
 social fruitage of an hundredfold. 
 
 WE MUST ABANDON AGE ABSURDITIES 
 
 Knowing that the child is an organism and that no two 
 children are of the same mental strength nor have the 
 same attributes of mind, we are safe in concluding that 
 the processes of its growth and education must conform 
 to the laws of organisms. And all organic law operates 
 on the basis of USE or function and adapts itself to the 
 limitations of the organism. And in no truer sense should 
 education conform to the age of the individual. Life from 
 the cradle to the grave is a period of education ; and it is 
 a mooted question at what age one's mind is most acute, 
 receptive and educable. The absurdity of our present sys^ 
 tem and the common error made by many of our educa- 
 tors comes from a Report made to the Government by 
 Henry Suzzallo as follows:* 
 
 ''That class in the community especially fa- 
 vored with mental ability and financial resource, 
 and for whom the colleges are intended, should 
 in general complete its liberal education by the 
 end of the twentieth year. * * * ^he period 
 of plasticity during which a human being can be 
 PROFITABLY educated is not coterminous with 
 life; people may be somewhat flexible and edu- 
 cable to the end of life, but the period of great- 
 
 *Bulletin No. 38, 1913, U. S. Bureau of Educatloa 
 
 86 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 est educability closes for most by the end of the 
 twenties. ' ' 
 
 Very evidently, from this quotation, our system of edu- 
 cation is not intended to give ALL our boys and girls a 
 liberal or vocational mind power, but only those "favored 
 with mental ability and financial resource." And, too, 
 the colleges "are intended" for these only. This is and 
 has been the aristocratic view of education down thru 
 the ages. 
 
 We hear educators state at conventions that the Public 
 Schools must prepare candidates for our universities and 
 colleges. In fact, that is the general accepted view of 
 most of our teachers. But when we remember that but 
 one-tenth of one per cent "favored with mental ability 
 and financial resource" can complete a university course, 
 we can more fully understand the motive behind our pres- 
 . ent system. 
 
 Twenty-nine persons gain a living in business to one 
 who gains a living in the professions, and about 74 per- 
 sons gain a living in the agricultural and mechanical fields 
 of labor to one in the professions, while a vast horde gain 
 their living at common labor and nonadvancing jobs. 
 From this statistical point of view, we surely can see that 
 a system maintained at public expense to prepare one out 
 of a thousand for college and the professions and inci- 
 dentally teach the rudiments of knowledge and a mass of 
 useless time-wasters to the great generality of mankind, 
 is not only absurd but essentially unjust and prepos- 
 terous. 
 
 The fitting of the age of persons to our school system 
 is uiibiological and a failure. Custom has shamed many 
 a valuable young person from attending school slightly 
 overage or above the average age of a class or grade. The 
 future system will be open in every grade, in every study 
 in every project, in every department to every person of 
 every age. The school should be the repair-shop for any 
 mentality to become a better social asset as well as a place 
 to build early mental structures. 
 
 37 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 But this innovation, so sweeping in its scope and utility, 
 brings me to consider a natural age question of vast im- 
 portance to any comprehensive plan of education and for 
 which probably a new one should be especially built. It 
 is the question of segregation of youth as soon as they 
 reach the age of puberty for school training. 
 
 THE DEMANDS FOR SEGREGATION 
 AT THE AGE OF PUBERTY 
 
 The question society has not settled for its general wel- 
 fare, is at what age should an offspring cease to be main- 
 tained and controlled b}^ its parents? When does a human 
 being really become self-supporting and self-governing? 
 To say a boy at tAventy-one and a girl at eighteen has 
 reached such an age, is arbitrary and without scientific 
 foundation. To the biologist, Nature has declared other- 
 wise. 
 
 Every physiologist as well as every psychologist will 
 affirm that when Nature matures the reproductive func- 
 tions, that she thereby places her seal of adulthood upon 
 every such individual. This "wonderful" change and 
 development in every normal individual at about the age 
 of 13 or 14, in a few cases as late as 16, is a phenomena 
 of vast import to an efficient educational system founded 
 upon natural law. At this age the umbilical of depend- 
 ence upon parents is severed and life takes on new de- 
 sires, new impulses animating the fertile being to enter 
 into the activities of life preparatory to the building of 
 a new home. In fact, when we consider education broadly, 
 it can be summed up in stating that it is to make the 
 HOME a worthy unit of society. Profit-making is surely 
 secondary to the Home, but in our present system PROFIT 
 is placed first and Home last. 
 
 Every mother and father will testify that as a rule their 
 trouble with their boys and girls sets in largely at this 
 physiological turning point in the life of their normal chil- 
 dren. They become less obedient, demand more freedom, 
 are more self-assertive. Unthinking people say with more 
 wisdom than they realize, that youths at this near-adult 
 
 38 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 age have the "swell-head". And they have very definite 
 ideas of their own ; visions of achievement, visions of how 
 they will acquire wealth, learning, position, and the ideals 
 of a sex relationship. And to all this they have a war- 
 rantee deed direct from Dame Nature, a title which no 
 man-made law nor custom nor whim of parent can ever 
 set aside or annul. 
 
 And why should we wish to suppress this incarnation of 
 a new momentum to life? Why should we wish to hold it 
 under control and restraints? Why should we wish to 
 confine it within narrow school-rooms removed from the 
 very activities Mother Nature, in all her amazing creative 
 power, hath ordained and approved? How can a boy or 
 girl cultivate the power of self-assertion, hanging to the 
 apron-strings of mother? Are not the mother's sympa- 
 thies too shielding and too weakening? When war comes 
 do we not take the boys in their teens away from mother 
 and place them in the cantonment there to undergo the 
 daih^ course of forced marches and all the hardening 
 processes that they may stand the nerve and physical 
 strain of the battle front? The industrial battle calls also 
 for recruits with trained and well seasoned nerves and 
 muscles from the actual school of experience. Industry 
 demands it, our Avilling boys and girls demand it, society 
 as a whole demands it, and we MUST have it. 
 
 The segregation of youth is not a new innovation. We 
 send our girls early to the convent, female seminaries, 
 private boarding schools, and our boys to military insti- 
 tutes, agricultural colleges, business colleges and to many 
 more training institutions away from mother and home. 
 But to attend these schools, one must have parental sup- 
 port and this is possible to but a small per cent of the 
 whole student body of the country. That great army of 
 ninety per cent of our children are not provided for in 
 our schools of higher education and eighty-five per cent 
 of the ninety must leave school between 12 and 16 to 
 earn money. This shameful blot upon our civilization 
 must be erased by reorganizing our system or building a 
 
 39 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 new one based upon the seven foundation Principles, 
 named above. 
 
 Elmer H. Fish, Principal of the Worcester Trade School, 
 has done much to develop the ideas embodied in the Foun- 
 dation Principles already stated. He says:* 
 
 "It is wonderful what an amount of potential 
 energy there is in a 14-year-old boy that can be 
 turned into a large amount of valuable work. 
 And that institution which could pay wages to 
 its students is the best possible solution of the 
 educational problem." 
 
 At the Worcester school, wood and iron are manufac- 
 tured in the various shops for the market and the stu- 
 dent is paid for his labor while learning a vocation. A 
 boy there can earn $1000 in four years. His expenses for 
 that time are but $600. And as Professor Fish says, par- 
 ;ents whose children need the training most, cannot afford 
 to make an investment of $600 in each child. 
 
 At the Cincinnati University the part-time system is 
 practiced. A student studies in school one week and the 
 next he Avorks in a regular machine shop or factory in 
 that city on a Avage and under the direction of regular 
 craftsmen. The Principal, Professor Schneider, reports 
 that a boy can earn $2000 in six years by this half-time 
 work, which is five times his expenses. He also says that 
 the demand for training associated with remunerative la- 
 bor and a course of study is so great that three thousand 
 applicants for admission had to be turned down because 
 of lack of room. That the demand for self-help in getting 
 an education was practically limited only by the number 
 of young men and young women in Cincinnati. What is 
 true of Cincinnati is true in every city and every town 
 and hamlet. The most significant fact today is that, men 
 of all classes have come to look upon education as a thing 
 that will better their conditions ; something that will en- 
 able them to live fuller lives, pay their bills, and become 
 better members of society. 
 
 ♦Examples of Industrial Education. By F. M. Leavitt. 
 
 40 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 CHAPTER 4 
 
 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FORESHADOWING 
 THE NEW SYSTEM 
 
 THE CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL 
 
 So pronounced are the demands of thousands of minds 
 of high capacity to become of greater social and industrial 
 value and to have a hand in the lines of employment that 
 promise advancement, that many men of foresight seeing 
 the financial gain in this large endless field, have invested 
 thousands, and even in one case several millions, of capi- 
 tal, and have employed the highest talent to cope with 
 this immense virgin field of education. 
 
 So minute and exacting are the demands of industry 
 for skilled labor, trained engineers, expert electricians, 
 agriculturists, salesmen, accountants, advertisers, story 
 writers, market gardeners, insurance and real-estate 
 agents, architects, construction superintendents and a 
 vast number of railroad, building trade and mechanic art 
 specialists, that these Corre^spondence Schools have under 
 the private-capital-profit incentive developed a most mar- 
 velous system of technique, text-books, displays, local 
 agencies, and methods of instruction, all of which makes 
 our FREE School System measure as a mole-hill to this 
 mountain of exactitude and efficiency. 
 
 And while these schbols demand large scholarship fees 
 and are making the man at the bottom of his career pay 
 dearly for his start, yet their results are so prolific in 
 meeting industrial demands that the price is gladly paid 
 and of course the Corporation School is making millions 
 on this public necessity. The public won't do it, a Cor- 
 poration does it and reaps a harvest of many hundred- 
 fold. The public school is spending millions more in 
 teaching rudiments, while the Corporation with business 
 frugality and sagacity is teaching practically all the tech- 
 nical, commercial, literary and art knowledge needed in 
 the business and everyday life of our country. This shows 
 
 41 
 
NATURAL KDUCATION 
 
 conclusively that the administration of the one is a public 
 byword for inefficiency and waste, while the other is one 
 of the most completely organized structures known to the 
 business world with every detail so thoroly worked out 
 that every scientific phase of every large vocation or 
 industry is taught so that the average man can put it all 
 into actual practice and thus increase his chances many- 
 fold for success. 
 
 These are the schools that are making the Designers, 
 Electrical Engineers, Draftsmen, Superintendents of 
 Power and Lighting Plants, Chief Engineers, Chief Elec- 
 tricians, Substation and Switchboard Operators, Wiremen, 
 Signal Maintainers, Dynamo Tenders, Foremen of Foun- 
 dries, Plumbing Manufacturing, Machine Shops, Steel 
 Mills, Building Material Factories, and a vast number of 
 producing organizations of Capital. Students of these 
 schools become expertly trained for some particular trade, 
 industry or profession, which has a distinct object in view 
 and the training moves toward that object in a straight 
 path. They teach, as ail other schools should do, the 
 theory and practice, the knowing and doing about the 
 world of production. They place a man above the fear of 
 WANT and give him hope of increasing prosperity as he 
 advances in life. It is this technical educ?ition that gives 
 welfare to millions and makes for the progress of civili- 
 zation. They are schools of actual business, actual results 
 and actual need. 
 
 One of these schools in Pennsylvania has an enrollment 
 of over two million, has home-office buildings covering 
 five acres, has 2500 employees, has 280 courses of technical 
 study and all the text-books to instruct with the most per- 
 fect exactness of detail and has in thousands of cases in- 
 creased the earning power of typical students $128.58 per 
 month. Reports on 27,000 typical students show 14,990 
 now receiving $1500 a year or more, 2451 receiving $2500 
 or more ; 413 receiving $5000 or more ; 20 receiving $10,- 
 000 or more ; and 8 with annual incomes of $25,000 or 
 more. Who can point with pride to such a showing of 
 any present public school? 
 
 42 
 
WITHOUT TAXA riON 
 
 TRADE SCHOOLS 
 
 In his report for 1910 the United States Commissioner 
 of Education says : 
 
 "In general, there may be said to be three 
 types of industrial training: 1. Complete trade 
 training, in which the effort is made to graduate 
 finished mechanics or skilled workers capable of 
 doing journeyman's work and earning journey- 
 man's wages. 2. Intermediate or preapprentice 
 trade training, in which it is sought to shorten 
 the period of apprenticeship or to give skill and 
 intelligence preparatory to industrial occupation. 
 3. Industrial improvement or supplementary in- 
 struction for those already engaged in industrial 
 pursuits. 
 
 "The number of vocational schools in 1910 was 
 195. * * • In only 41 schools is it possible to 
 learn a trade completely ; in 120, many varieties 
 of apprentice work are offered for the student's 
 choice; in 58 schools is furnished what is known 
 as Continuation Training, which is intended to 
 give higher efficiency to journeymen of inferior 
 grade or to fit the most skillful workmen for fore- 
 manships." 
 A high authority says about our Technical Training 
 schools that they are "utterly inefficient". That many of 
 our states have no vocational schools at all. Germany 
 Avith half our population has 12.000 technical schools 
 teaching a million and a half students. We have a beg- 
 garly 195 schools including several manual training high- 
 schools with scarcely 50,000 students. Thousands of per- 
 sons in sore need of industrial education must go without 
 or resort to the correspondence or other private concern. 
 But, as has already been stated, we have a few of most 
 excellent experimental and real trade schools which ought 
 to be sufficient to leaven the whole loaf. Probably the 
 most efficient is the one at Worcester, Mass. At this Trade 
 School they make wood-turned 70ods, rough foundry 
 
 43 
 
NATURAL EDfTCATION 
 
 work, parts of machines and some suiall machinery, all 
 for sale. It trains only machinists, pattern-makers, car- 
 penters and cabinet-makers. It is under a Board of Trus- 
 tees elected by the City Council, and is supported by fie 
 city and state. 
 
 At the Milwaukee Trade School for Boys they train in 
 Pattern-making, Tool-making, for Machinist, in Carpen- 
 try, Woodworking, Plumbing and Gasfitting. The courses 
 are for two years of 52 weeks except Plumbing, which is 
 for one year. About ''one-fourth of the student's time i.« 
 devoted to academic instruction incidental to his trade.'' 
 Their mathematics is SHOP Arithmetic, SHOP Algebra, 
 SHOP Geometry and SHOP Trigonometry. Notice there 
 is no waste of time on the UNSHOP kind. "The school 
 does not claim to turn out journeymen mechanics," says 
 its Prospectus. "Its aim is to instruct its students thoroly 
 in as short a time as possible, in all the fundamental prin- 
 ciples and in the practice of the trade in question, so that 
 they may upon graduation possess ability and confidence 
 and be of immediate practical value to their employers 
 and receive a fair remuneration at once." "A special 
 feature of all the classroom work consists in adapting it 
 as nearly as possible to the special requirements of the 
 various trades." "The cost of maintaining this school is 
 approximately two hundred and twenty-five dollars per 
 year for each pupil." Boys must be 16 years of age for 
 admission. Tuition is free between the ages of 16 and 20, 
 but students are charged for materials used. 
 
 In the Trade School for Girls the Trades offered are 
 Dressmaking, Millinery, Applied Art and Design and 
 Household Science. The AIM of this school is in the e^cact 
 wording as given above for the Boys' Trade School and 
 it "does not claim to turn out experienced workers". 
 Girls enter at 14 and may complete the courses in about 
 two years. Three-fifths of the time is spent in actual shop 
 practice. 
 
 Inasmuch as the Prospectus does not state that the stu- 
 dents receive pay for their salable products, a letter to 
 
 44 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 Supervisor C. F. Perry gave the following information in 
 
 reply: 
 
 "In reply, \vill state that while these two 
 schools are administered under a three-tenths 
 mill tax, every problem given to every pupil is 
 based upon commercial methods. A resolution 
 passed by the Board of School Directors several 
 years ago reads as follows : ' Resolved, That the 
 products of the Schools of Trades for Boys and 
 Girls may be offered for sale in the open market 
 at current market prices.' Our Girls' Trade 
 School performs work in Dressmaking and Mil- 
 linery for customers. Our machine shop is build- 
 ing, at the present time, one hundred lathes to be 
 used by the public schools of this city. Band 
 saws, jointers, grinders, gas engines and other 
 tools also are built upon order. In our Pattern- 
 making and Woodworking Departments we also 
 do order work. ' ' 
 
 TRADE SCHOOLS ON PART-TIME SYSTEM 
 
 The Cincimiati University was the first to introduce the 
 Part-Time plan of co-operating with certain manufactur- 
 ers in the city in placing the University students into the 
 regular factories alternate weeks. One week in school 
 and one week in the shop doing regular machine work un- 
 der the eyes of the foremen of departments. Boys are 
 thus paired off so that the same machine is run all the 
 time. For this shop work they get 10 cents an hour with 
 an increase of one cent every six months. The course of 
 study is six years, and during that time, Dean Herman 
 Schneider says that they earn about $2000 or five times 
 their school expenses. School runs eleven months a year. 
 The demand for this pay-system is so great that thou- 
 sands are turned away for lack of room. 
 
 So widespread has been the interest in this plan that 
 other cities have adopted similar methods. Fitchburg, 
 
 45 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 Mass.,* was the first to take up the plan in 1908. Sixteen 
 manufacturing concerns joined in co-operating with the 
 Fitchburg High School Industrial Department. Of the 
 40 school weeks per year, 20 are spenl in the shop of a 
 manufacturer where the student is paid 10 cents an hour 
 the first year, 11 cents the second, and the third year 12^2 
 cents an hour. ''This compensation is a strong induce- 
 ment for the boy to continue in the course. He can go to 
 school and at the same time earn as much as he could get 
 from ordinary employment in stores and offices. ' ' When 
 there is a vacation the shops furnish work for all those 
 who wish it. During July and August those desiring to 
 choose the industrial course are given a trial in the shops 
 and if the pupil likes the work and shows aptitude for the 
 trade he continues with the course. A practical shopman 
 is director of the course and all that the employers insist 
 upon is that "the course be practical". The choice in the 
 course are of the following trades : Machinist, Drafts- 
 man, Moulding, Pattern-making, Sawmaking, Sheet-Metal 
 work. 
 
 CONTINUATION SCHOOLS 
 
 Boston and Cincinnati have what are known as Con- 
 tinuation Schools to piece out what our Public Schools 
 do not do or try to do. In Boston a School Committee 
 with the co-operation of Merchants hired a room and or- 
 ganized a Dry Goods, a Shoe and Leather, a Preparatory 
 Salesmanship and a Banking School. In each of these the 
 technical subjects and the materials and their sources and 
 manufacture were studied so as to give the employee a 
 fifteen-week course of practical knowledge of his daily 
 work. These courses are repeated twice a year for 15 
 weeks each. They have proven a very valuable addition 
 to the efficiency of those already employed who made good 
 help but were mentally unfitted to give the employer the 
 best results. These schools are taught by a teacher from 
 the Public Schools and by heads of departments and ex- 
 perts. 
 
 ♦Bulletin No. 50, 1913, TJ. S. Bureau of Education. 
 
 46 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 The Cincinnati Continuation Schools run 48 weeks a 
 year and are for machine-shop apprentices who attend but 
 four hours per week and get for the time the usual wage 
 paid by their employer. They have blue-print reading, 
 freehand and mechanical drawing, practical mathematics, 
 shop, science and theory, English, spelling, conmiercial 
 geography and civics. The Ohio law of 1911 authorizes 
 School Boards to establish Continuation Schools. There 
 are also Continuation Schools for girls in which they take 
 orders for dresses and millinery and are paid out of the 
 receipts from these goods. 
 
 EVENING SCHOOLS 
 
 Nearly every city now has its regular Night Schools in 
 which children and adults are taught special practical 
 courses and cultural studies which are supposed to adapt 
 the student to his industrial environment and increase his 
 ability to earn his living and be a better producer. But 
 such schools are generally poorly attended. They, too, 
 lack the facilities to illustrate the work of the classroom. 
 They are taught as a rule by inexperienced teachers taken 
 from the day schools of the city who of course are not 
 versed in the Crafts or Trades into which the pupil is 
 likely to merge. 
 
 These schools in themselves show that we are piecing 
 out what is wholly an inefficient system and, too, that our 
 industrial system is so mad after the dollar that it must 
 use our boys and girls to run automatic machinery and 
 thus save high-priced labor. The Night School is a blot 
 upon our civilization and should not find a place in any 
 well-organized society. The night is no time for a brain 
 in a weary body to be active. Neither is a schoolroom 
 with nothing but benches an inviting place for industry 
 to be taught. 
 
 47 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 THE GARY (INDIANA) SCHOOL PLAN* 
 
 With school open twelve months in the year, open on 
 Saturdays for voluntary work by pupils, and evenings for 
 Continuation School work as well as for social and recre- 
 ational activities, the use of the Gary school plant is more 
 in accord with the needs of evei;y community. The Gary 
 system is a step forward, but with that step there is asso- 
 ciated the traditional CONTROL that is altogether un- 
 democratic. 
 
 There is a most perfected and equipped set of school 
 buildings, from the two large ones — the Froebel and 
 Emerson — down to the smaller ones, even to the portable 
 structures for special work, on about 13 acr«s of ground. 
 There are the shops equipped with modern machinery with 
 regular skilled mechanics as teachers, and nearly air of 
 which are self-supporting and some a source of revenue 
 to the schools. There are the gardens, playgrounds, houses 
 for pet animals built by the students, tennis courts, sand- 
 pits, wading pools, trees, and almost every conceivable 
 kind of apparatus made by the pupils for the playgrounds. 
 There is the Auditorium where the children are at certain 
 hours engaged in dramatics, singing, listening to the 
 player-piano or illustrated talks, or looking at the mov- 
 ing pictures. Charts, maps, specimens and other mate- 
 rial are found in the corridors. In the laboratories, older 
 pupils are showing younger ones apparatus and processes 
 or specimens, or teachers are conducting classes. 
 
 There are many new innovations most highly commend- 
 able. The grade pupils and high-school pupils are all in 
 the same buildings and high-school work begins down as 
 low as the fifth grade. Work is fitted to the bent and age 
 of the pupil regardless of old customs. Teachers are all 
 specialists. Even the common school branches are divided 
 between two teachers for each class. The schedule of 
 classes isi so arranged that half the day of seven hours is 
 given to regular studies and the other half to special ac- 
 tivities. By alternating a classroom period with an active 
 
 *Bulletin No. 18, 1914, United States Bureau of Education. 
 
 48 
 
WITHOUT TAXAIIOX 
 
 period the old plan of "confining" pupils in their seats 
 for three hours is entirely replaced by a more natural one. 
 The desks have vises attached and the tops are removable 
 so that with the sitool for a seat they can be changed into 
 a workbench or moved outdoors or into the corridors for 
 such Avork as sketching, copying, etc. Repairs, making 
 new furniture for the school, keeping the accounts, print- 
 ing and making notebooks, cuts for illustrations, and re- 
 binding books for the large library, are all done within the 
 school by both teacher and pupils. It is a beehive of in- 
 dustry and interest. It eliminates the misfits, provides 
 for the mentally and physically weak, for those that are 
 defective, retarded or exceptionally bright, and all are 
 promoted by subjects. Thus the flexibility of the Gary 
 schools is nearlv ideal. 
 
 THE BIG OMISSION 
 
 With all this admirable organization of educational 
 forces in the kinds of schools described above and the un- 
 deniable fact that they all are more or less a social neces- 
 sity, yet it cannot be said that any of these schools pre- 
 pare any one for the exercise of his civic duties and the 
 just relations of men. , 
 
 What is Industry without an equalizing all-together 
 control? Only the football and speculative arena of the 
 strong. To a workingman, preparation for government 
 and control is as essential as learning how best to pro- 
 duce, else what will become of his earnings? Society 
 fails and decays the moment it tolerates any legislative 
 act that gives to the strong any privilege to extort from 
 the earnings of the weak. Probably the most important 
 function of a rehabilitated educational system will be its 
 poAver to place the CONTROIj of the equitable distribu- 
 tion of Avealth in the hands of the WEALTH PRO- 
 DUCERS and to eliminate the social parasite. And this 
 can be done only by the PRACTICE of government. But 
 to practice government the government makers must get 
 together under some such plan as the School Town offers. 
 
 49 
 
NATURAL KDrC^TION 
 
 The Correspondence School is the least fit to perform this 
 all-important function with its scattered students. It fits 
 men to earn higher salaries under a control that rules mar- 
 kets and production in its own interests. It stands for 
 wealth concentration and keeping the skilled engineer or 
 foreman ignorant of the first principles of democratic rule 
 The Trade Schools are equally as weak in the teaching of 
 civics, tho they all claim to give such courses. They are 
 easily manipulated so as to be simply mills to grind out 
 better profit-makers. What we need above all in any 
 justice-loving civilization is civic-men as well as laboring- 
 men. Men who can make and understand a just ]aw as 
 well as make an honest suit of clothes or an honest loa^ 
 of bread. 
 
 The Gary system, with all its beautiful surroundings 
 and remarkable appointments for industrial efficiency and 
 fitting the school to the child, has beneath it all the hid- 
 den fist of control giving out a servile training of how tr 
 make a dollar and incidentally of how to make more easily 
 utilized labor for the near-by Steel Mills. Its control is 
 vested in a Board of Education, and, like all such Board?, 
 is politically appointed or elected. The cost of the build- 
 ings up to 1914 is $620,528. Of this cost $332,500 is n 
 bonded indebtedness which is proof that the people of 
 Gary do not own their school plant. The majority of the 
 ''stock" belongs to the Bondholders and of course that 
 carries with it the power of control. 
 
 The only hint at self-government at Gary is a studen+ 
 organization known as the Council of Boyville which is 
 an imitation of a City Council. This Council passes ' ' ordi- 
 nances" with no referendum vote of the student body, 
 thus following the old system of lawmaking by the few. 
 But none of these "ordinances" become effective as a 
 part of the organic law of the school. They are "play 
 laws" and therefore worthless as a means of discipline. 
 While the mechanism of this school is much like a great 
 playhouse with every device to secure and hold the inter- 
 
 50 
 
WITHOUT TAXATKJX 
 
 <ist, thus reducing the discipline to the minimum, still the 
 principle of "master" teachers and obedience to adults 
 is there. They do not allow SELF-GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE JUNIOR REPUBLIC* 
 
 Many are not aware that since 1894 a most highly dem- 
 ocratic and largely self-supporting educational experi 
 ment has been in operation at Freeville, New York, and 
 that from this father institution at least six others have 
 been established in tlie East, one in California and one in 
 England. These actual practice schools in both self-gov- 
 ernment and student self-support come the nearest to a 
 practical solution of the educational problems of the pres- 
 ent and are the forefathers of what the future educational 
 system of the whole country will be if we are to have a 
 self-perpetuating civilization based upon equality of op- 
 portunity and civic justice. 
 
 The greatest achievement in education will be the com- 
 bination of academic study with productive industry un- 
 der democratic control. The Junior Republic is the near- 
 est approach to this achievement. They are town democ- 
 racies in which every student is a citizen of the Republic 
 and has a voice in the making of the laws and in the elec- 
 tion of the officers to execute those laws. They have a 
 legislative body which at the start was a double one as 
 our Federal Congress is yet. But they soon found the 
 weakness of a double-house legislative body as well as it^ 
 inelasticity and obstructiveness to the will of the major- 
 ity; so they discarded the Senate and now have a single 
 legislative body that responds to the electorate quickly, 
 as it should. 
 
 These Towns have been built largely by donations and 
 student labor and contain nearly every sort of business 
 found in any modern town and, besides, a farm on which 
 to grow most of the food and raw materials. There are 
 banks, hotels, laundries, plumbing shops, printing plants, 
 carpenter shops, stores, bakeries, shoe-blacking parlors, 
 
 ♦Citizens Made and Remade. By William R. George. 
 
 51 
 
NATURAL KDUCATION 
 
 tailoring, dressmaking and millinery shops, and in fact 
 all industry needed to supply local demands and often to 
 fill orders from the outside. Students are hired in what- 
 ever line of employment they choose to follow as a future 
 business and are paid for their labor. All labor is of com- 
 mercial value and products are sold. The farm has been 
 improved and the buildings have all been built by stu- 
 dent labor under direction of skilled farmers and me- 
 chanics. 
 
 The motto of the Freeville Republic is "Nothing Avith- 
 out Labor." And whether the student comes from a rich 
 or poor family he or she must labor and be a productive 
 unit' in the busy hive. There are no drones", no nonpro- 
 ducers, no vagrants. Obedience to law is well-night uni- 
 versal. The courts and police, both wholly student-citi- 
 zens, have very little to do. Boys from the vilest slum 
 districts with the most savage-like habits of doing dare- 
 devil deeds or boys from rich parents who have been sent 
 home from other schools as incorrigible, here become the 
 best citizens under the influence of self-government and 
 the responsibilities of making a living by honest toil. 
 
 Two features of these Republics, however, have oper- 
 ated to lessen their usefulness and their more rapid ex- 
 tension. The first is the small amount of land they had 
 at their disposal on which to develop more lucrative lines 
 of production and more diversified vocations ; and the 
 other is that they have no co-ordinating control that ce- 
 ments them together under one general directing head. 
 Each stands alone under the direction of a Board of Trus- 
 tees, each of which manage and plan as they think best. 
 And while they have done many things to develop the 
 natural aptitude of the student and to prove that our 
 Public School system, is far behind it as a social regener- 
 ating system as well as a far more natural system of edu- 
 cation, yet they have no interrelations with one another 
 which would add greatly to their powers of development 
 and growth. In other words, they are individualistic in 
 the way they are founded and supported and not self-gen- 
 
 52 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 crating and self-supporting. They are too limited in size 
 and scope of work to meet the tremendous demands for 
 such institutions. Every county of our populous states 
 should liave such an industrial school town. But it will 
 require at least two sections of land to provide the soil 
 and building sites. 
 
 The Freevilie Republic started with but 58 acres of land 
 and now has about 248 acres and has never been able to 
 provide for more than 400 student-citizens at a time. 
 
 CHAPTER 5 
 THE SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 This is an age all aglow with rapid change. New insti- 
 tutions are being forged almost daily to replace the old. 
 New horizons and new points of view are appearing and 
 men are becoming more united and more submissive to 
 the generalized world-views resulting from a better un- 
 derstanding of the laws of universal harmony and agree- 
 ment. 
 
 And knowing that all movements during the past ages 
 that have persisted have been those supported by Schools, 
 it has become evident that if Ave are to have real Democ- 
 racy, real Freedom, real Justice, and real Brotherhoods of 
 Men, we can have it all only thru the medium of the 
 School. Therefore, to develop a rational system of edu- 
 cation, the writer has concluded that the segregation of 
 our youths at the age of puberty is all-important for their 
 welfare as well as for the welfare of parents and society. 
 At this crucial period of life, there is a merging into the 
 vicissitudes and the mechanism of the community life and 
 Ave should provide such a transitional institution as will 
 prepare the individual to play his part Avith the least 
 social loss and for the highest attainment of his mind. 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 THE SCHOOL TOWN SYSTEM TO RATIONALIZE 
 EDUCATION 
 
 The School Town System contemplates the founding of 
 real towns devoted entirely to school purposes and located 
 away from all city influences upon tracts of land of a 
 thousand or more acres of productive soil on which to 
 grow all the raw materials possible to grow in one locality 
 and also to inaugurate the various special and general ag- 
 ricultural lines of production. Then in the center of the 
 town plat, about a hollow square of perhaps ten acres, the 
 simple buildings are to be erected by studentiabor for th€ 
 several mechanical and academic departments associated 
 there also with those devoted to the commercial and man- 
 ufacturing industries. There is also to be a large assembly 
 hall in the central administrative building and sipecial 
 rooms for courts, police quarters and all the civic depart- 
 ments considered necessary to the proper government of 
 any advanced community in which persons and property 
 inust be protected. For living quarters there are to be 
 cottages upon the home-like plan on large airy lots facing 
 oil wide streets. And besides all this there are to be spe- 
 cial buildings even tho small for the personal service em- 
 ployments as tailors, barbers, cleaning and pressing, and 
 ihoe polishing, for the various farm purposes and for cold- 
 storage, telephone exchange, post-office and bank. 
 
 A MINIATURE DEMOCRACY 
 
 Such a School Town should be a miniature world of 
 Democracy with all the problems of social adjustment to 
 be worked out under the same struggle to make a living 
 as' in the outside world with the one large exception, that 
 opportunity will be open to all alike and special privileges 
 to none'. Since this will be an aggregation of coordinating 
 Agricultural specialties with manufacturing school-shops 
 or specialized factories in which all grow or make things 
 to sell for self-support, it will be found that they will first 
 
 54 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 suipply the local "trade" which will provide all the ex- 
 periences of making, delivering and consuming found in 
 any well organized community. 
 
 The parts of machinery, implements or other products 
 to be made will largely be those which outside manufac- 
 turers suggest to be made and which they can use and 
 will buy as is done at the Milwaukee and Worcester Trade 
 Schools and at the Junior Republics. In fact these schools 
 are to bo fully correlated with existing industry and in 
 no sense to become competitive but rather exceedingly 
 helpful and in fact indispensable to industry. Why should 
 not a near-man at fourteen make soap, ink or baking pow- 
 der as well as a nearer-man at twenty-one? Why be so 
 arbitrary with nature as to deny our custom-made ''under 
 age" persons industrial rights when done in their own 
 interests and in the interests of society as well? Why 
 waste the seven years from 14 to 21 in doing "jobs" and 
 learning rudiments when they can learn a vocation and 
 earn their living at the same time and reach manhood with 
 exact knowledge about a definite calling that will always 
 keep them from penury? When it comes to War our 
 blind custom vanishes. Suddenly "boys" become "men". 
 Over two-thirds of the Civil War armies on both sides 
 Avere MEN under twenty-one. But when those heroes re- 
 turned home, they returned as "infants" under our la^^ 
 without a vote and under the rule of parent and teacher. 
 This inconsistency can be blotted out only by the intro- 
 duction of the Biological basis of Education which Avill 
 allow each individual to develop and mature unhampered 
 by any age absurdity, by fixed courses of study, by lim- 
 ited time to graduate, by an inflexible, iron-clad custom 
 or rule that defeats the natural aptitude or the principles 
 of Evolution as applied to the human mind. Many a 
 youth is capable at eighteen to assume high responsibility 
 and hold it. Others develop late in the twenties or not 
 till forty. The school must meet this natural inequality. 
 
 55 
 
NATURAL EOUCATION 
 
 NATURAL ADJUSTMENT OF THE SEXES 
 
 While this plan does not contemplate the separation of 
 the sexes, it does provide that they shall commingle under 
 their own rule and be removed from all adult rule. One 
 of our greatest evils is the economic and custom barriers 
 we throw about the normal mixing of the sexes. Rarely 
 do we find parents who are properly mated. And one 
 large cause of this is the restricted choice that fell to the 
 lot of most of them. Our near-adults are thrown into the 
 whirlpool of unmitigated industry, leaving their mating 
 to mere chance. And because some work and some are 
 idle, some have learned a real vocation and a vast number 
 have not, we find that the road thru the Married State is 
 decidedly rough and lined with thorns and thistles. 
 
 When ALL WORK and ALL are producers at an insti- 
 tution where riches and idleness cease to be misguiding 
 incentives, the sexes will have Natural Freedom and will 
 mate in strict accordance to natural aptitudes, and natural 
 promptings. When a girl has been taught industry in- 
 stead of society fads, how to care for the home instead of 
 how to play some smart role in a club, and the boy learns 
 some settled lucrative vocation that will anchor him to his 
 home with a steady income, who dare deny that there vnll 
 be a new alignm.ent of the sexes, a new spirit in the home 
 and a new era of married felicity? From our haphazard, 
 discouraging methods, we are unable to comprehend from 
 our experiences what a real normal association of the 
 sexes would do to correct the alarming family relations 
 Ave now suffer. 
 
 Belated marriage would also become historic, could both 
 male and female earn a "nest-egg" while attending their 
 institution of learning and on leaving each have a savings 
 account of even a few hundred to start a home and the 
 business for which they have been thoroly prepared. At 
 this School ToAvn there will be a reversal from idleness 
 and spending to industry and saving. Earnings cannot 
 be frittered away on catch-penny or habit-making arti- 
 
 56 
 
WITHOUT TAXATIDX 
 
 ■cles, for they will not be there. With every inducement 
 to thrift there will be every inducement to save and pre- 
 pare for the future family and future business success. 
 And any one can see that all this desirable control cannot 
 be secured in any city or town with all its commercial 
 allurements to spend. 
 
 EDUCATION WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 As Lincoln said, "As each man has one mouth to be fed, 
 and one pair of handsi to furnish food, it was probably 
 intended that that particular pair of hands should feed 
 that particular mouth, ' ' may we not add with equal truth 
 that "since every man has one brain to be fed, and one 
 pair of hands to furnish food, that it was probably in 
 tended that that particular pair of hands should feed that 
 particular brain ' ' ? 
 
 In 1912 the Boys' Trade School of Milwaukee built 100 
 lathes to distribute to other schools of that city. They 
 als) make parts of machines, electrical and wood work 
 for sale. In the Girls' Trade School, dresses, underwear 
 and millinery goods are made to order and sold. The boys 
 and girls are paid for their labor while learning. At Grary, 
 Indiana, as we have seen, "law infants" make and do 
 nearly everything needed by their schools. At Worcester 
 and Beverly, Mass., boys earn about a thousand dollars 
 during their four-year course. In the Cincinnati Univer- 
 sity they earn about $2,000 during a six-year course work- 
 ing part-time in co-operating factories. At the Junior 
 Republics everybody earns his or her living and are build- 
 ing up a substantial industrial school-town in which to 
 work out the problems of self-government and self-sup- 
 port. 
 
 If youthful mind and muscle can do all this, is it a 
 dream to say that they can build their own school build- 
 ings, make and install most of their machinery and appli- 
 ances, in fact, do nearly all that is required to equip them- 
 selves with their own educational institutions and get an 
 
 57 
 
NATURAI, EDUCATION 
 
 experience in doing it all that is of prime importance to 
 their after-success in life? Also in thus building, would 
 there not be a pride and interest in such school property 
 not developed by the bond-contract system of exploiting 
 taxpayers? Would we not also leave off all the showy,, 
 awe-inspiring trappings and build for strict utility? 
 
 Slowly but surely the Principle, "the maintenance of 
 both student and school should, so far as feasible, depend 
 upon commercial products made by student labor", is 
 finding its way into the public mind ; and the energy now 
 wasted on motor cars, loafing, following athletics and dis- 
 sipation will be utilized in the future school to restore 
 society to a normal equilibrium and wipe out the abnor- 
 mal idle class. 
 
 With the heavy school tax and the yearly keep of the 
 big boy or girl, taken from- the shoulders of the parent, 
 to what heights could the family not reach in providing 
 comforts and conveniences and even luxuries now un- 
 dreamed off EDUCATION WITHOUT TAXATION is 
 not a DREAM ; it is to be one of the big achievements of 
 the twentieth century; and with its advent, perhaps more 
 than to any other factor, will it advance the cause of so- 
 cial freedom and remove human misery. 
 
 HIGH SCHOOLS REDUCED IN NUMBER 
 
 By the School Town system there would be an economy 
 in the gradual reduction of the number of High Schools 
 to about one in each county instead of from five to twenty 
 as now provided; The average county, except those con- 
 taining large cities, in our most populous states, has but 
 forty to fifty thousand inhabitants. Of this population, 
 not over 10 per cent are of the ages ranging from 14 to 18. 
 And were these four or five thousand removed from the 
 abnormal influences and surroundings peculiar to our 
 overcrowded cities to a School Town, a new revitalizing 
 era would dawn to reclaim our decaying civilization. It 
 would settle to stay settled most of the conditions that 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 lead to vice, crime and idleness and solve the question of 
 adverse family influences. It would be a large factor in 
 reducing our serious urban populations and in renewing 
 the ambitions of our youth to become allied with the in- 
 dustries connected with the mine, field and forest. 
 
 HOW FINANCED AND FOUNDED 
 
 Nearly all of our advanced Educational Experiments 
 have been flnanced by those members of society who have 
 the means and the foresight to see the need of better ways 
 of opening opportunity than by our Free School system. 
 The lands for the seven Junior Republics in the Eastern 
 States were all donated, in one case by the Lehigh Valley 
 railroad. Tools, machinery and even second-hand clothes 
 were generously sent from all over each state and express 
 companies carried quantities of everything free. 
 
 But all the work of improving the land, making roads, 
 fences, drainage, and building barns, cottages, offices, and 
 installing machinery and, in fact, everything that was 
 done at each Republic, was done by hired student labor. 
 Once the plant was put upon a productive basis, then self- 
 help and self-maintenance began which in large measure 
 supported each Republic. These Republics are a big step 
 forward and are the pioneers in giving us the empirical 
 knowledge we needed to stimulate our confidence in the 
 self-supporting and Paid-Student Schools. They have 
 sho\vii us how these schools can be started without public 
 funds. We are taxing ourselves millions to support pri- 
 vate schools because they give us a measure of real prac- 
 tical knowledge ; and if we can have schools that will give 
 us more nearly the ideal education, we will be willing 
 again to contribute to them even more liberally. 
 
 The School Town plan already has the first thousand- 
 acre tract donated and it is expected that other donations 
 of like size will follow when once the scope and design is 
 understod and known. If lands already under cultiva- 
 tion cannot be donated, the Association controlling this 
 property will accept donations of any fertile unused or 
 
 59 
 
NATURAL HDrXATION 
 
 wild lands located anywhere jusx so they are not over twO' 
 miles from a railroad. Corporations owning large tracts 
 of stump or other lands not now in use but with the nat- 
 ural advantages of good water, fuel and building mate- 
 rials, will find that one of these schools located on a thou- 
 sand acres in the midst of their properties will become the 
 most effective advertisement for unsold lands. The Town 
 would prove up all the qualities of soil, the healthfulness 
 of the region, the possibilities of certain crops, and ^vould 
 bring to the region many productive resources that w^ould 
 be very helpful and a convenience to new 'settlers. It 
 would be the trading point asi w^ell as the place where mill- 
 work for buildings and all the building trade work could 
 be found by the surrounding community. Buildings could 
 be erected by the student labor for miles around. 
 
 The income of the Town would come from many sources- 
 From the dairy, food crops, sale of furs, poultry products, 
 blooded stoel^:, nursery stock, fruits, market gardens, 
 would be steady incomes. With plenty of land at hand, 
 every one can make a living. And under high culture 
 a thousand acres of good soil w^ould easily support four or 
 five thousand persons. But the output of the factories, 
 the building trades, the publishing department, the mak- 
 ing of toilet articles and family specialties, of confection- 
 ery goods and many more are sources of possible large 
 incomes. In fact, the incomes are practically limited to 
 the number of products that can be made at any one place 
 to advantage and to the equipment the Town can com- 
 mand. 
 
 Besides the incomesi from labor products, it is planned 
 to rent all cottages and sell concessions for any business 
 to be run by any student for profit. Thus a Picture Show 
 would pay into the school treasury a certain per cent of 
 its income, the students managing it would retain the 
 balance. Stores, hotels, banks, bakeries, and other enter- 
 prises managed by students for gain, would also pay to 
 the Towii a part of their profits. 
 
 60 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF THE PROPERTY 
 OF THESE SCHOOLS 
 
 In order to place all the property of these School ToAvns 
 into safe hands for TRUTH and for the ends of the Seven 
 Principles herein given, the INTERNATIONAL UNIVER- 
 SITY ASSOCIATION was organized, which has quite a 
 considerable membership of earnest people from all 
 classes and the highest types of citizens. They include ex- 
 Mayors, City Officials, Doctors, Lawyers, Manufacturers, 
 Union Labor (Jfficials, School Superintendents, High 
 School Teachers and many more of the intellectual classes. 
 The OBJECT of this Association, as stated in the Pre- 
 amble of its Constitution, reads as follows: 
 
 "First, to establish technical schools anywhere 
 and with them all the means of broadening the 
 educational facilities of all classes under condi- 
 tions of an enlightened democracy; and. Second, 
 to unite these schools into a co-operative, inter- 
 collegiate association based, first, upon the com- 
 mon ownership of the property of said schools 
 by the alumni and membership thereof; second, 
 upon the sovereign authoi'ity of the alumni and 
 memljership of said association, and, third, upon 
 uniform and intoi-changeable courses of study 
 and methods of instruction and administration. 
 "The membership of this Association shall con- 
 sist of all graduates of recognized universities, 
 colleges and technical schools, all donors, officers, 
 insti'uctors and graduates of said schools, and all 
 other persons who may be solicited by duly ad- 
 mitted members; but all members are required to 
 subscribe to and endorse the Principles upon 
 which said Association is founded." 
 With this sound organization ready to take charge of 
 the property and administer it in accord with the seven 
 Foundntion Principles stated in Chapter 3, all donors who 
 themselves are Avilling to endorse these Principles will be 
 confident that their donations ^^ill be used to the best in- 
 
 61 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 terests of all concerned. All of our present schools, in- 
 cluding our public schools, are founded upon class con- 
 trol. Public schools are controlled by local Boards who 
 modify the instruction and change the instructors in 
 agreement with their whims and interests. There is no 
 bond of unity or centralized control anywhere. Every 
 University is a unit to itself with no definite relations to 
 any other University. Every State has its own political- 
 made school laws, requirements and methods of financing. 
 No two are alike. Hence the reason for the many incon- 
 gruities and lack of utility found in the education of our 
 children and hence in the government that will not re- 
 spond to the wishes of the majority. This heterogenity 
 will never get anywhere, except to give educational con- 
 trol to polities and the profiteering class. We must have 
 a centralized, all-together control and unity of purpose 
 before we can have a sound, natural educational system 
 that will also respond to and perpetuate Demorcacy. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY SPIRIT FOSTERED BY THE 
 SCHOOL TOWN 
 
 In the most admirable wording in the speech by Presi- 
 dent Wilson at the University of Paris, we get the high- 
 est conceps of the Spirit of this Age as revealed and cham- 
 pioned by the l^niversities of the world. He said: 
 
 "The University spirit is intolerant of all the 
 things that put the human mind under restraint. 
 It is intolerant of everything that seeks to retard 
 the advancement of ideals, the acceptance of 
 Truth, the purification of life. And every uni- 
 versity man can ally himself Avith the forces of 
 the present time with the feeling that now at last 
 the spirit of truth, the spirit to which Universi- 
 
 ■ ties have devoted themselves, has prevailed and 
 is triumphant. " 
 
 ■ But from the nat"'"^ of the Control over our public and 
 sectarian schools, there is little or none of the University 
 Spirit in them. In fact they are intolerant to the Truth- 
 
 62 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 seeking spirit of this ^ge and hence the "rapid-fire criti- 
 cism oi* a most searching order" coming from educational 
 leaders everywhere 
 
 Witii this Control po thoroly intrenched, the outlook 
 for releasing our schools from this bondage seems almost 
 hopeless save thru a separate organization such as the 
 School Town under the Constitutional checks of the In- 
 ternational University Association. It is designed that 
 the School Town will have the genuine University Spirit 
 and will therefore be the means of bringing to the masses 
 of men that freedom of mind and tolerant spirit needed 
 for the advancement of ideals and the purification of life. 
 
 THE CORRELATION OF INDUSTRY AND LABOR 
 
 Every productive industry requires Materials and La- 
 bor. While materials are comparatively easy to get, labor 
 is difficult to control. And under present unnatural in- 
 equalities and absurd conditions of obstruction to aspira- 
 tions, we find labor in a most hopeless state of anarchy 
 and waste. But few are fitted to their positions. Many 
 are but half masters of their calling and millions are not 
 prepared for anything in particular. There is no correla- 
 tion between labor and industry, no system, no unity of 
 purpose, of agreement or action. And on account of all 
 this, men who control large industries have had to sup- 
 ply the demands of their enterprises by supplementary 
 schools. Railroads have mechanical Apprentice Schools. 
 Big Department Stores educate their clerks in salesman- 
 ship. Telephone and Telegraph companies give free 
 courses to their prospective employees. And were it not 
 for these thorogoingly practical additions to our present 
 lame educational facilities, industry would be hopelessly 
 adrift and helpless in securing special trained men for the 
 various processes of present-day production and distri- 
 bution. 
 
 These Corporation schools, however, are expensive and 
 naturally have features of self-interest and lack of asso- 
 
 63 
 
NATUKAL KD17CATION 
 
 elation. Students become fastened to one industry with 
 very little of associated knowledge one would get where 
 many vocations are taught. They have a narrow point of 
 view about everything, ■They do not become trained citi- 
 zens or become interested in their government. 
 
 "What is needed is a combination under one suDreme 
 control of all technical schools independent of but sub.iect 
 to the demands and advices of all industry. As members 
 of the Association in control of these schools there must 
 be included the manufacturer, merchant, mine owner, 
 lumberman, ranch owner, and all who employ labor, to 
 act as advisors on what is to be taught to fit workers for 
 each special industry and to aid in getting the equipment 
 to meet their demands. 
 
 A school with such advice behind it and in which inter- 
 est, thoroness, speed and efficiency permeates the whole 
 atmosphere, will command the constant respect and con- 
 fidence of all employers of labor. And they will be only 
 too glad to take all Avho- are recommended from such a 
 school at regular skilled labor pay. When this alignment 
 between school and industry is accomplished, we will have 
 an era not only of the highest productive power, but also 
 of the highest social adjustment toAvard justice. 
 
 EDUCATION BY ASSOCIATION 
 
 One of the most fundamental values to a University is 
 its broadening infiuence on every student because of the 
 fact that so many departments of learning are associated 
 together under the same management and are taught by 
 a body of men who have also absorbed the broad view of 
 every related knowledge there represented. If this is true 
 of the University, it is true of any school of technology 
 for that larger number of students who wish to fit them- 
 selves for the general productive industries. With most 
 of the specialties in agriculture, in mechanic arts, archi- 
 tecture, manufacturing industries, publishing, building 
 : trades, banking, and many more of the everyday callings 
 all going at the same time and place with art, method and 
 
 G4 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 thoroness in evidence everywhere, one would absorb 
 enough in such surroundings to make a full secondary 
 course of training. Our present schools are lamentably 
 limited in their scope and cannot be made otherwise as 
 at present founded. They have little or none of the atmos- 
 phere of doing and association about them. They are 
 often almost as recluse as was the Middle-Age monastery 
 and the teachers largely as forgetful of the rushing world 
 about them of making and selling as the secluded Monks 
 of old. 
 
 Davenport states this indispensable educational princi- 
 ple in this language :* 
 
 "In a system of universal education, the best 
 results will always follow when as many subjects 
 as possible and as many vocations as may be 
 taught in the same school under the same man- • 
 agement are taught to the same body of students. 
 Much of our education comes from association 
 and the best of it comes in no other way. Tn no 
 other way can a perfectly homogeneous popula- 
 tion be secured. In no other way can universal 
 efficiency be so closely combined with good citi- 
 zenship. In no other way can activity and learn- 
 ing be so intimately united. In no other way can 
 morals and good government be so safely trusted 
 to a fi-ee people." 
 
 FITTING PERSONALITIES TO THEIR LIFE'S WORK 
 
 Probably no more favorable and serviceable thing 
 could be done for human happiness and for the best inter- 
 ests of society than to adapt each individual to the occu- 
 pation best suited to his talents, disposition, personality 
 and special mental powers. It is a social loss to tind a 
 ditcher who could be a leader among men. A plowman 
 who could be a great inventor. A deckhand who could 
 be an admiral in the Navy. Or, on the other hand, a 
 k^^'yer who should have been an engineer, a preacher 
 
 •Education for Efflcipncy. By E. Davenport, Illinois University. 
 
 65 
 
NATURAL KDUCATION 
 
 who should have been a farmer, and a vast number of 
 such misfits. 
 
 Our present school system seems to ignore altogether 
 this immense field of adjustment. Nothing is done to 
 make for industrial efficiency by well-known psychological 
 tests to put the right person in the right place. There is 
 nothing done to discover individual differences in exhaus- 
 tion, ability to recover lost energy, ability to learn from 
 practice, of attention, memory, judgment, feeling, imagi- 
 nation, suggestion or. emotion. ^ 
 
 Young people know very little about themselves and 
 the parents often know less. A boy may have exceptional 
 strength of one or another mental function which, if left 
 to family or relatives or to himself, may go unnoticed and 
 be lost to the world. They do not know when their mem- 
 ory, attention, will, intellectual apprehension, or sensory 
 perceptions are unusually developed which may give them 
 special success in a certain vocation. Our entire scheme 
 of education gives to the individual little chance to find 
 himself. Unusual abilities are discovered by accident. 
 Life 's callings are chosen by family traditions, by the suc- 
 cess of others, by whims and chance, by imitation, by hope 
 of quick gain, by laziness and desire to reap where others 
 have sown. 
 
 YVe have, too, the deplorable condition of virtually forc- 
 ing coming industrial operatives to remain in the city 
 because the instruction in city public schools does 
 more to prepare one in general for city ''jobs" than for 
 the possibilites of mining, farming, lumbering and 
 other productive industries. In other words, distribu- 
 tional and consumptional knowledge is emphasized to the 
 minimizing of the productional. This of course tends to 
 increase and hold city populations much to the interests 
 of local trade and industries and incidentally to the in- 
 creased values of real esitate. We are sacrificing native 
 talents and powers of mind upon the altar of greed 
 and our schools are the accomplices in the shedding of this 
 social blood. 
 
 66 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 FITTING WORK TO LABOR. 
 
 Not only should the school fit labor to work best adapt- 
 ed to it, but it should also teach how Work can be best 
 adapted to Labor. It is one thing to know how to do 
 a thing skillfully and perfectly in all its details and an- 
 otlicr thing to have the tools and work so adapted to the 
 labor that the output in a given TIME is the maximuni 
 for the least labor expended. A mason may know ever 
 so well hovv' to lay a brick wall of a given dimension, but 
 another mason of equal skill but trained to use a better 
 trowel, to locate the brick to better advantage and to lay 
 them with the least waste of motion, might lay the same 
 vcall in half the TIME. 
 
 F. W. Taylor, the originator of the Scientific Manage- 
 ment of Movement, foundf that after the study of the mo- 
 tions and tools of masons and readjusting both, 30 ma- 
 sons without greater fatigue completed what by the old 
 method required 100 masons to do. Also the total expense 
 of the building was thereby reduced to less than half in 
 spite of the increase of wages. 
 
 In a factory where various materials had to be shov- 
 eled, he found that by constructing shovels suited to the 
 sevei-al materials and limiting the weight to about 21 
 pounds per shovelful aud alternated with well-arranged 
 pauses that would give the largest amount moved with the 
 least fatigue, that the average workman who previously 
 shoveled but 16 tons per day, could now shovel 59 tons 
 'without greater fatigue. The outcome of this test was 
 that only 140 men were needed to do the work which by 
 the old method required 500 men. Wages were raised 66 
 per cent and the expense of shoveling a ton decreased one 
 half. 
 
 These studies and practical demonstrations in many fac- 
 tories has brot out a set of very definite deductions gov- 
 erning movements which a modernized school should be 
 prepared to apply and teach. This is a vast, largely un- 
 explored field which needs much study to shorten the 
 
 1Psycholog-y and Industrial Efficiency. By Hugo Munsterberg. 
 
 67 
 
NATURAL KUUCATIOX 
 
 methods of applying labor to many occupations and pro- 
 cesses yet untouched. And no better place could be de- 
 vised than the School Town with all itsi interrelated in- 
 dustries, to develop this Science of Motion as applied to 
 all industry. 
 
 SPONTANIETY AND INVENTIVENESS 
 
 It can be seen that the whole plan of the School Town 
 is toward a full emancipation of the human mind so that 
 there shall be no obstruction to its originality, freedom of 
 growth or freedom of action. Every means should be 
 used to stimulate inventiveness and the interest in the 
 betterment of every department, machine, plant, animal 
 or apparatus in the whole school. By becoming familiar 
 with natural forces at first hand, by living healthful lives, 
 with interesting investigations and experiments going on 
 all about them, with teachers imbued with the principles 
 of educational freedom, with plenty of food and clothing 
 provided by their own hands, with uplifting and idealiz- 
 ing entertainments to keep the mind happy and vigor- 
 ously stimulated, what else could be the result but the 
 very highest development and accomplishment? 
 
 Genius is found when least expected. Should an idea 
 of value come to any mind, it should find a place where it 
 could be tested to prove its worth and applicability. If 
 an invention requiring dramngs and models, the place 
 should be at hand to make both without cost. And finally 
 if the tests prove it a success, means of securing a patent 
 should be provided wath the least expense to the patentee. 
 With all this opportunity opened at a school, how it would 
 open wide the gate to inventive genius and bring to the 
 front many a mind that would otherwise lay dormant and 
 helpless ! 
 
 Commenting upon this phase of school work, James P. 
 Monroe, President of the National Society for the Promo- 
 tion of Industrial Education, says : 
 
 "Manual Training in our public schools has 
 confessedly serious deficiencies. There is little 
 
 (58 
 
WTTHOUT TAXATION 
 
 play for individuality. Shop-work should per- 
 mit spontaneity and inventiveness and should em- 
 phasize the con structural side and should connect 
 itself in the closest way with industries of the 
 neighborhood." 
 
 UNFINISHED MENTALITIES 
 
 Should the present generation correct its mistakes or 
 make amends for its sins of omission? Have unfinished 
 minds the right to make themselves better social assets 
 at such a seat of learning as the School Towm where their 
 labor while at school will support them? The constant cry 
 of industry is: "Give us more men who can do thing.s, 
 who are skilled craftsmen, who have the academic train- 
 ing to follow directions and blue prints. ' ' If wanted why 
 not supplied out of present unfinished men ? 
 
 Huxley said with great wisdom, "The crucial test of a 
 successful educational enterprise is catching capable men 
 wherever they are to be found and turning thcra to ac- 
 count." And the originators of the School Town plan 
 have designed to put this far-reaching educational pro- 
 gram into practice. 
 
 The most pathetic reality in present society is to see 
 good men struggling to support a family or dependents or 
 even themselves, with an untrained brain as a mill-stone 
 about their necks holding them down and making them 
 the prey of those who take advantage of their ignorance. 
 
 All men should be skilled, and if they were, menial 
 labor and drudgery would be reduced almost to the zero 
 point since they would invent means of doing it so easily 
 that it would become almost inconsiderable. The reason 
 we have so much drudgery is because we have so much 
 ignorance. And all society wants a hundred fold more 
 production. We seldom find a family whose Avants are 
 supplied. We all want more. Skilled labor only can 
 give us more. Then why not have Repair Educational In- 
 stitutions where anyone can go to add to his knowledge 
 
 69 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 or learn a new vocation more nearly adapted to his nat- 
 ural aptitudes ? 
 
 It is one of the purposes of the School Town to arrange 
 
 facilites to take as many as possible of these unfinished 
 men and women and let them earn and learn till they be- 
 come proficient and capable. And when finished, place 
 them in position in the outside world. 
 
 Since they would be Special Students remaining biit a 
 few months, it would not "be well to give them the rights 
 of full citizenship at the school, but reserve such rights to 
 those who take regular courses. This then would keep 
 the local government in the hands of the younger students 
 vv^iere it should be to encourage them and to make them 
 feel the responsibility of self-government. 
 
 TEACHERS NOT BOSSES BUT EMPLOYERS 
 
 It can be. readily seen from all we have said about the 
 School Town as a busy hive of industry, with the buzzing 
 and whirr of machinery, with the wide-spreading fields all 
 alive with gro-wth and activity, and with every favorable 
 incentive to stir the aspirations of burning youth into ac- 
 tion and accomplishment, that the attitude of the "teach- 
 er" will be far from that of the traditional "school-mam" 
 giving her threats and commands from an elevated ros- 
 trum and thus repressing every atom of ambition within 
 the yearning breasts before her. 
 
 Every student-citizen being paid for his or her labor, 
 becomes an "employee" and whoever directs the employ- 
 ment must become an "employer" to have the proper 
 incentive to get results. AVhen a boy or girl is placed 
 in the position of self-dependence, of working and earning 
 or go hungry, a more powerful "reason why" is behind 
 him or her than simply to do a thing because "one in au- 
 thority" commanded it. "Nothing without Labor" will 
 be the student-citizen unwritten law. And where there 
 are no drones, no parasites to clog, waste, consume or be 
 an example to live without work, would there not be a 
 
 70 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 healthy public opinion favorable to workers having first 
 consideration';? 
 
 To be "employers" all teachers in the technical de- 
 partments musit be practical craftsmen. There must be 
 a real Carpenter to ''hire" the boys to do carpentry. An 
 experienced Plumber to take the boys into a house the 
 carpenter boys have built and do actual, salable plumbing. 
 A long-experienced Dressmaker to employ and direct the 
 girls in choosing materials, and in fitting and making gar- 
 ments to sell on order. And an expert Baker to show 
 his "employees" all the secrets of pleasing the palate and 
 stomach. And because everything that is made or done 
 is to be sold and the "employees" are to be paid for their 
 labor, as Professor Elmer H. Fish of the Worcester Trade 
 School says, there will be "Interest, speed, thoroness and 
 efficiency. ' ' 
 
 Those who have charge of the productive departments 
 will be paid part salary and part in commissions on the 
 products sold. This will place the superintending-teacher 
 on his metal to "produce the goods." He must therefore 
 be proficient in both the art and science of his pri^fession 
 and also a saver of waste in both time and materials. He 
 will be inclined to work early and late the same as any- 
 one in the real business world. He must meet the demands 
 of the market for his goods and that requires just the 
 quality needed to instill the same business acumen and 
 frugality into the minds of his employees — the students. 
 Under this actual-business method of employment, a large 
 per cent of our public, private and sectarian teachers 
 would not only starve but they would be totally incom- 
 petent to meet the requirements. That is, they cannot fit 
 anyone for actual business or production. 
 
 FITTING TEACHERS FOR LIFE'S WORK 
 
 Logically you come to the conclusion that the market 
 for the kind of instructors needed for such an actual- 
 business-training school is at present quite small, and it is. 
 To find men and women, tutored under the old regime, to 
 
 71 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 assume these tasks and master them, will be one of the 
 difficult problems of the management. To overconje this 
 deficiency, of necessity there must be a NORMAL TRAIN- 
 ING department to prepare employing-business teachers 
 to learn the art of DOING to meet social demands, and 
 how not to "boss" students under their own rule. 
 
 From such teachers there cannot be a do-nothing caste 
 wasting public funds. There will be no "Aunt Julias" 
 "teaching" a school twenty years under School-Board 
 favoritism and leaving a neighborhood pervaded with 
 shocking ignorance and helplessness. There will be no 
 expensive "Normal Schools" not as "normal" as they 
 might be under the direction of state political authorities 
 and in which many of the instructors become "Text-Book 
 Authors" who fatten on deals with Book Concerns. In- 
 stead of teaching that the imagination is developed by 
 "stories, fables and the classics", it will teach that reason 
 and judgment as well as the imagination are strengthened 
 far more by mechanism and the study of things. Instead 
 of these Real-Normal Schools splitting hairs over techni- 
 calities of Grammar, over the "fine art" of discipline, 
 and magnifying the abstract, it will teach the technique of 
 actual business, the art of leaving discipline alone, and in 
 magnifying the concrete. 
 
 TEXT-BOOKS 
 
 Such Text-Books as are used will be those adapted to 
 the needs of each department and will not be lumbered 
 with «a mass of unrelated subject matter just to make a 
 "good seller". They will be written by men and women 
 who have made a record in originality both in methods of 
 teaching and in developing their departments and in meet- 
 ing the keen demands of industry. These books will be 
 published by student printers in the school printing plant. 
 Of necessity they will be small booklets which can be 
 modified at little expense to be abreast of new methods or 
 discoveries in the industrial world. They will contain the 
 mathematics, language and geography needed to under- 
 
 72 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 stand the processes with which they deal and that only. 
 
 While doing actual business with the school bank, the 
 student will absorb his banking, discount and interest. 
 While trying to invent some improvement on the sewing 
 machine, he will naturally study up the history of that 
 invention. Before the present Cotton Gin could be in- 
 vented the history of the Whitney Gin and its simple prin- 
 ciple had to be known. All the history worth knowing is 
 that from the evolution of industry and industrial proc- 
 esses and their effect upon the happiness and conduct of 
 men. When students study government from the stand- 
 point of the economic changes, they will see the philos- 
 ophy of political games. When they practice government 
 they will get applied history by association as a natural 
 component part of the sociology needed to improve their 
 government. They will get also their civics, their power 
 over language, their logic, their rhetoric, their elocution, 
 their quickness of thot and repartee and their dauntless 
 control over self. They will care not "who run" at Bull 
 Run, but will become interested in the historic forces 
 which they can apply that have led to human betterment 
 and achievement and will lead to still greater heights of 
 social justice and redemption. In fact, they will be mak- 
 ers of History. 
 
 It Avill be seen that by this process of teaching, that 
 purely academic work is largely discarded. It becomes 
 incidental instead of the main function of the schoolroom. 
 And at the same time it becomes applied information by 
 which the real thing or process is thereby more easily com- 
 prehended. We do not study arithmetic just to become 
 a "prodigy in figgers, " but to use it as a means or tool 
 to make w^orkmanship exact and to prevent the waste of 
 materials. And with a material objective in view or a real 
 something to measure and compute, the dry-bones of pres- 
 ent school mathematics vrould be resurrected into life and 
 reality. And most of all, Arithmetic would be based upon 
 Production as well as on Distribution and Consumption. 
 
 73 
 
NATURAL KDnCATION 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF STUDENT-CITIZENS 
 
 Article XII of the Constitution of the International Uni- 
 versity Association enumerates six Rights of Student-Citi- 
 zens which are probably as comprehensive as any brief 
 comments that might be made upon them. They are as. 
 follows : 
 
 "Section 1. Every student-citizen of said 
 schools shall not be denied the right : 
 
 "1. To self-government thru such a form of 
 democratic government as the student bodies of 
 said schools may devise for the conduct of each 
 student, attendance to classes, for social duties,, 
 practical businesis and the protection of all stu- 
 dent property while a student. 
 
 ''2. To self-support in labor largely related 
 to and a part of his or her course of study and on 
 products of commercial value. 
 
 "3. To freedom from all sectarian influences 
 or divisions of the student body into unrelated 
 voluntary groups. 
 
 ''4. To an impartial, scientific psycho-physical 
 and physiognomical examination on entrance or 
 during his first term, to aid in deciding on his or 
 her aptitude and physical fitness for a given vo- 
 cation. 
 
 ''5. To a joint and equal ownership in the 
 property of said Association upon finishing any 
 course of study in any one of said schools, and 
 with said ownership the full rights of member- 
 ship in said Association. 
 
 ''6. To protection against unemployment and 
 failure in business as an alumnus and to loss of 
 money or abuse of his or her person while a stu- 
 dent." 
 It might be added that students have the right to^ 
 visit their homes when their absence does not interfere 
 with some particular work of the school, and also to re- 
 ceive their parents or friends while at school. 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 QUALIFICATIONS AND AGE OF STUDENT- 
 CITIZENS 
 
 Willingness to WORK is about all the entrance quali- 
 fication required. The entrance examination will be di- 
 rected to get the history of the applicant and to get his 
 present mental and physical abilities. If he cannot read 
 or write, some student can teach him enough to start and 
 the rest he will get by contact with his work, the same asi 
 one learns to use a tool by practice. 
 
 While the School Town is designed primarily for both 
 sexes above the age of 14 and below the age of 20, yet it 
 has adopted the liberal policy of taking boys and girls, 
 under extenuating circumstances, pven as low as 8 years 
 of age. Then, too, as already stated, provision will be 
 made to talce Unfinished Adult Mentalities even for a short 
 period of training. To have the voting privilege one must 
 be above the age of 14 and must have been a resident of 
 the community three months. It has been designed that 
 the Government of the School will be in the hands of that 
 large majority between the age of 14 and 20. 
 
 No one will be excluded except for lack of room, sex 
 and other communicable diseases and unwillingness to 
 subscribe to the Fundamental Principles upon which these 
 schools are founded. 
 
 These schools are to be instituted as much for the rich 
 as for the poor. They are not to be asylums for any class, 
 but red-blooded institutions for every class to become use- 
 ful citizens and producers. 
 
 THE SCHEDULE OF TIME 
 
 Everybody should do their work upon a Schedule of 
 Time. Punctuality and the methodical use of TIME are 
 the big factors that make for success. And no school 
 should fail to impress the importance of this element in 
 every career of large achievement. As one uses his time, 
 so is he. If without system, his life is usually made up of 
 waste and failure. Regularity in all we do should become 
 
 75 
 
NATURAI, KDUCATION 
 
 a habit. For such a habit in eating, sleeping, working and 
 playing will fill life to the brim with health, longevity and 
 accomplishment. 
 
 First of all, the School Town will inculcate the value of 
 Time by so arranging its SCHEDULE that the whole com- 
 munity will act with clock-like regularity in all its daily 
 functions. Society as it is today runs riot in its waste and 
 abuse of Time. And this is due to industry being irregu- 
 lar and running by fits and starts to meet the demands of 
 an orderless distribution of products. Society as a whole 
 should be Scheduled and made to operate all its services 
 and crafts with system and regularity. During the World 
 War we had glimpses of how "Orders from Coal, Food 
 and Railroad Administrators" were obeyed willingly in 
 the interests of the general welfare at war. We all with 
 one accord felt that this centralized authority was needed, 
 was to our best interests, was the almightiness that gave 
 us the victory. If this regulation of industry, of produc- 
 tion and consumption was so efficient in Avar, why not ap- 
 ply the same methods to regulate us in Peace? The War 
 taught us that when we act together as one people, for- 
 getting our party and sect divisions, that we are uncon- 
 querable. Then by acting together in industry, in trade, 
 in pleasures, in education, in government all on Scheduled 
 Time, what a world of waste and disaster, fear and worry 
 would we eliminate ! 
 
 SCHOOL NEVER CLOSED 
 
 One of the unaccountable features of our present school 
 system is the rule that there shall be a large Vacation dur- 
 ing the summer months just v/hile Nature is lavish with 
 all her lessons of growth, leaf-beauty and wonderful pro- 
 ductions of flower and fruitage. Just when the Book of 
 Nature is wide open for obs-ervation, our children are 
 turned upon the paved, dirty streets to waste their time 
 in undirected "play". This is a grave mistake and at the 
 School Town will be corrected by never closing the 
 school. We do not "close" our cities, factores, or rail- 
 
 76 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 roads in the real world, then if our youth are to get into 
 touch with life as it is, they must have the same experi- 
 ence they AviU find in the "outer" life. 
 
 What all our schools need is a Constructive Play and 
 not the Destructive sort we now have. A child will be 
 i'ar more interested in a play that benefits him than in 
 one that develops his baser instincts. Then too Play 
 should be evenly distributed thruout the whole year. 
 "All work and no play" is as detrimental to mental and 
 physical development and growth as haphazard, wasteful 
 play. At the School To-wn every day will bring forth its 
 time for joyous play. And while the great National 
 Games will not be eliminated, they will be discouraged as 
 great betting orgies and combinations to control Pleasure 
 for inordinate gain. 
 
 PUBLIC MEDICAL AID 
 
 For the highest efficiency to a community like these pro- 
 posed Towns, every one should be kept well. It evidently' 
 would be a mistaken policy to allow the "Fee System" to 
 take advantage of any one under stress of sickness or 
 necessity. Instead of waiting for the patient to get very 
 sick before he calls a doctor, the doctor will be hired on 
 salary to be the judge of when medical assistance is 
 needed and to direct all measures to keep the community 
 healthy. Sickness is more of a public calamity than it is 
 to the individual. The moment a producer cannot work, 
 society loses the products of his labor. Also society by 
 the Fee System is often the cause of epidemics and indi- 
 vidual sickness ; if it is the cause, it should pay the bill to 
 restore the individual to health. As it is now the producer 
 when sick must lose his income, suffer the pains of disease 
 and pay the bill of restoring himself that he may again 
 become of value to society. This is evidently an injustice 
 that detracts greatly from the word civilized and places 
 us almost in the class of savagery. 
 
 Therefore at the School Town the Doctor will be placed 
 in the scientific attitude toward his patients to treat them 
 
 77 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 with the single aim of getting them well in the least time, 
 regardless of any fee or favor and free from temptation 
 to deceive, defraud or practice any trickery to increase his 
 income. He will thus be able to nip disease in the bud 
 and prevent both loss of time and life. 
 
 To aid in keeping the community in health, a hospital 
 will be built and maintained at the expense of the whole 
 community, and at this hospital all will receive full med- 
 ical attention alike free of any charge. 
 
 DISCIPLINE 
 
 As has already been gathered, the Discipline will be in 
 the hands of the Student-Government machinery consist- 
 ing of a one-house legislative body, City Officials, a Court 
 and Police Department ; and all infractions of the law will 
 be adjusted by the English system of court procedure 
 which is both swift and just as well as inexpensive. 
 
 A student being under his own rule will have a greater 
 respect for it than he would for any adult-made law. And 
 respect always brings obedience to lav^r. If he breaks the 
 law, he knows that he will be dealt with by his peers and 
 that justice will be meted out to him. Instructors will 
 thus be relieved of all responsibility for the conduct of 
 student-citizens and hence the attitude of teacher to stu- 
 dent will be one of fellowship and equality. Thus there 
 will be nothing to repress aspiration or spontaneity or to 
 restrict freedom. This does not mean that there will be 
 a looseness to the conduct of students, but quite the oppo- 
 site; for having the responsibility upon their own shoul- 
 dersi they will feel that they have their own interests at 
 stake and that rude conduct or destruction of property or 
 inattention to duties would all detract from the general 
 efficiency of the school by which they would all be losers. 
 Self-rule also brings out honor and the highest type of 
 public spirit, which are better than rules to popularize 
 right conduct and those higher relations and amenities of 
 a refined society. 
 
 78 
 
WITHOUT TAXATION 
 
 THE ALTOGETHER EEA DAWNING 
 
 During these awful years of a world war, mankind has 
 come out of the travail of a marvelous rebirth, the ends 
 of the earth have been brot together and every civilized 
 people the world around is anxiously looking forward for 
 those organic changes and adjustments that will give them 
 the fulbiess of life and the common enjoyment of the heri- 
 tage of the past. The whole earth seems to have come out 
 of the womb of a new destiny, and that destiny is to give 
 to every human being an assured opportunity to reap the 
 full reward of his labor and to develop his mind faculties 
 to his full content ; a destiny of a generous reconstruction 
 and restoration that the weak may be protected against 
 the aggressions of the strong; a destiny that will place 
 human life and human happiness before the traditional 
 rights of property; a destiny that will simplify, national- 
 ize and internationalize law and give to all men a true 
 voice in how they shall be governed ; a destiny that shall 
 not only declare that all men are brothers, but shall also 
 enact and enforce the declaration into just law and order 
 so that each one shall receive the fullness and abundance 
 of the earth. 
 
 Over the hills of human woe and injustice the blazing 
 sun of expectancy is rising, and men as never before are 
 searching earnestly for Truth that they may be led into 
 just relationships so that peace and plenty may become 
 universal and lasting. And because the general funda- 
 mental knowledge needed to discover and interpret Truth 
 and to lay the foundations for a social superstructure that 
 will perpetuate itself, is in possession of the minds of but 
 a small number of mankind, great are the responsibilities 
 that now rest upon them and all the greater will be the 
 brilliance of their achievements if they can so construct 
 and teach that the fulfillment of this world expectancy 
 can be fully realized. 
 
 And inasmuch as right thot begets right action and 
 ignorance is the cringing slave of greed, it behooves this 
 
 79 
 
 .. vo «^' 
 
NATURAL EDUCATION 
 
 generation to begin at the bottom and build an Educa- 
 tional Structure which in all its foundation stones will be 
 found the power of constructive freedom based upon the 
 just and everlasting laws of a bountiful universe. No time, 
 therefore, is more opportune than NOW to institute a sup- 
 plemental educational system that will harmonize with the 
 present demands of industry and will respond to the 
 world-wide yearnings for liberation and achievement now 
 dominating the mind of the civilized world. 
 
 80 
 
 1 
 

 
 
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