"They turn to the public school for the reformation of their lives and for the guidance that will fit them to realize their fondest dream-the dream that in the not distant future they may see the star of the Island of the Sea rise and nestle in the folds of the flag of the free." They are learning what we everywhere need to teach that the door to statehood in this federal union is the door of the free American public school.

The CHAIRMAN.-We shall now hear from another of the gentlemen who went to Porto Rico without wanting to go, Dr. S. M. Lindsay, Professor Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, the successor in the island of the gentleman who has just spoken to us. He has but recently (Oct. 1, 1904), resigned that office.

EDUCATION IN PORTO RICO.

BY DR. SAMUEL M'CUNE LINDSAY.

I am sure you will realize from the very interesting address to which you have just listened, how difficult I find it to follow so able and clear a speaker as Dr. Brumbaugh; but I have found during the last three years in Porto Rico some of the difficulty of following Dr. Brumbaugh, and I have become somewhat used to the task.

I shall try to begin where he left off,-first of all to remind you that the problem, or problems, as you please, in the island of Porto Rico, are quite peculiar to that particular locality. The island itself is different from any other island of the West Indies, and of course totally different from the sort of thing we find in the Philippine group.

We have there a very dense population, a denser agricultural population than is to be found, I understand, in any other part of the world, with the single exception of the island of Barbadoes. We have a people speaking one tongue. We have a people divided, as Dr. Brumbaugh has told you, into two classes, a cultured class sharing in all the traditions of our common Western civilization, and a class of persons, honest, simple-hearted folk, with good intentions, but densely ignorant.

I was glad to find that I was not the only representative of education when I landed in the island, and I think it is worth while. telling you that so long as the spirit of education, in the broader sense of the word, dominates every official sent into every one of our insular possessions, I think you need have no fear of the disastrous results of our colonization. I found the educational spirit deeply fixed in the Governor of the island, and in the heads of departments; all of the work that had been begun and was being continued in the island was done in the deepest educational spirit.

The special character of the Porto Rican people has presented peculiar difficulties. I talked one day with the President of the House of Delegates; we were philosophizing about the character of the Latin Americans, and he said he was pessimistic in a way about some of their traits and the ultimate outcome of their civilization. We asked him, "What is it that the Latin American wants?" He said, "He wants-because he feels by his past history his inferiority to some other peoples-he wants you AngloSaxons, you Americans, to recognize his equality with you; once that, and you can do what you please with him. He wants the form rather than the substance." Those are the words of one of the best lawyers, and one of the best representatives of the cultured class of the Latin Americans with whom I have had the pleasure of talking.

You need not expect the Latin American to be contented. Biologically that is easily explained. It is a process of selection by which all his history for centuries past has been a protest against existing conditions. He will always find fault, but beneath his fault-finding there is a genuine human heart, and there is a kindly spirit, and an earnest purpose to strive for the best things. And it is that to which our educational system has appealed.

The great work which my predecessor, Dr. Brumbaugh, did in that island was to arouse the common people from their apathy regarding education. I found the demand for instruction in general had been so judiciously aroused that it was always in excess of the supply. When a delegation from a small town would come in and ask for an additional English school, I would want to find out if the desire was real or only fanciful, and so I would say: "I will take this matter under advisement, and will let you know as soon as possible if I can persuade the Governor to put the school there." And if after a week or so I found the desire real, and that the delegation came back and brought all the political and other pressure they could to bear to get the school, I would yield to their request, and throw the responsibility upon them for making that school a success.

That policy has worked well in the island in making them feel that they have a right to demand certain things, and that when they demand anything it carries with it a responsibility to carry that thing through and make it a success, to justify the demand by the result. That is what we have attempted to do in the way

of schools.

The military government had to take over the assets of the old regime, and they took over a bankrupt concern in every department. It is not necessary to make any apologies for saying that we took over a bankrupt concern when we took possession of the island of Porto Rico. How much longer it might have run without going into a court of bankruptcy I do not know, but

from the facts as I saw them I do not think that that island could have run very much longer without creating a spirit of revolution such as tore up things from the very roots in the island of Cuba.

The military government took over as an asset from the old regime a bankrupt and corrupt system of public schools. They called them public schools, and we have the official statistics of some 520 of them with an enrollment of 25,000 children. How many of these 25,000 children attended the schools I do not know, but I do know that the teachers were unprepared for their work; that they were appointed under a political system of patronage, and that they did not look upon their task with any feeling of responsibility for the results. They frequently hired a deputy to do the work, and drew the salary-though they very rarely got their salaries regularly. The whole system was inefficient from top to bottom. Very often the teacher lived in the school and taught his scholars outside under the palm trees.

The first year under civil government some $500,000 of the funds of the insular government was set aside for schools. The military government could do nothing more with this asset of the school system than to canvass the situation, try to make the position of the teacher a dignified one, and make a beginning of a school system based upon American pedagogical ideas. With the advent of civil government there was set aside about one quarter of the total revenue of the island, or $500,000, and these 500 schools were made 800 by the end of the first year. By the end of the second year they had increased to a thousand, and they have now increased to 1,200, and the sum of money set aside for their maintenance has increased to $700,000 annually.

So the people themselves now vote a quarter of their revenue, twenty-five per cent. of every dollar of taxation insular and local. All that money comes from the people themselves, and they would vote twice that amount if the American majority in the upper house would allow them to do it.

I had not been in the island more than a month when a bill was brought forward to increase the appropriation for educational purposes. The Governor and heads of departments showed me that the finances would not stand it, and so I sent the bill back to the house. They said to me, "What kind of a Commissioner of Education are you anyway, not to want more money for your department?" I tried to argue with them, and said, "The money is not in the treasury, and we cannot vote what isn't there." "Oh," they said, "the Governor will find it if we just vote it. He has got a secret chest somewhere up there in the palace, and he will get the money."

All of that money, or nearly all of it, has gone into the common schools, the regular, little, simple, primary school, in the country or in the town. I have not got the statistics at hand, but

I should say roughly that eight-tenths or nine-tenths of all that money goes to the support of the primary schools, and a few of grammar school grade. Besides this, there is the cost of maintaining the normal school, which is a branch of the university. Some people say, "What do you need with a university?" Well, we have got the organization of a university for the future, we are looking fifty or a hundred years ahead. We have simply got the organization of an insular university with this normal school as one of its departments.

The normal school is justified as a part of the common school system. It is necessary, as you have just heard, to train teachers there. This summer we brought 500 of those teachers to the United States, and half of the expense they contributed themselves out of their small salaries; they contributed in all some $21,000 toward the expense of the trip. Some 300 of them went to the Harvard Summer School, and some 200 of them to the Cornell Summer School. The change effected in these teachers was something marvellous; the officers on the vessels on the return trip said they did not seem like the same company that went out, and all over that island there is spread out now a strong Americanizing spirit through those teachers.

Soon after the return of these teachers from their visit to the United States, a member of the council of a little town near San Juan came into my office one day, and said, “Are you employing a public lecturer?" I said, "No." 'Well," he said, "there is a man in our town who gathers the people in the plaza every evening, and mounts a box, and tells them about the United States of America." I found he was one of our teachers who had been here this summer, and the stories he was telling about the United States of America were losing nothing in the telling.

We cannot increase the taxes, but of course as taxable property increases in value the amount devoted to educational purposes will increase a little. With what we get at present we are able to keep going economically about 1,200 common schools and this normal school, agricultural schools, and two or three industrial schools, and there are also two or three high schools that take in those who have progressed far enough.

In this way we have accommodation for 70,000 children of school age, but there are 370,000 children of school age in Porto Rico, so that there are still 300,000 children out of school, for whom there is no place in a school in that island today. I could put 100,000 children in school down there next month if I had the equipment and the teachers.

Now how long are we going to stand for a system of colonial government that will not give the opportunity of a common, ele- . mentary, primary school education to 300,000 children that are growing up to form the next generation of citizens? What is the

use of talking about a great many of the problems that we discuss in an experiment of that kind, when we do not face the first great fact?

The question is not how much these islands are going to be worth to us commercially, but the question is, how much we are willing to pay out of our pockets for a missionary experiment that is worth while doing. Now I know that means one thing, and I haven't time to lead up to it in any graceful fashion, I have got to throw out the hint and sit down. That means one thing; it means Federal aid to education.

Now that is an unpopular sentiment in some parts of our country, perhaps in all. You try to talk to a Congressional Committee about it, and you find the ice getting pretty thick around the room no matter what the outside temperature. I don't care about the precedents against it, there must be a way found, and whether or not the American people are going to justify their experiment in colonial government in Porto Rico, depends upon their finding a way to give some Federal aid to education by bringing public opinion to bear upon the representatives of the people in Congress.

There is a demand in the island for a loan for educational purposes. Here is the opportunity. Let the Congress of the United States vote a substantial sum, a sum that we could well afford,— ten or twenty millions of dollars,-as a loan to the island of Porto Rico, to be vested in a board of trustees, and the income of that loan to be used for the support of public schools. In that way you will furnish the capital necessary for the upbuilding of industry in that island, and you furnish the income to be used for the permanent educational prosperity of the people of that island.

The CHAIRMAN.-Whatever we may think of the suggestion with which our friend has just closed his very interesting remarks, one thing seems to be clear, that in Porto Rico, as well as elsewhere, everything comes down in the last resort to a financial problem.

We will now hear from Dr. J. H. Hollander, on the financial re-organization of that island, which will be a fitting introduction to any measures of financial re-organization which may be involved in its further development. Dr. Hollander is Professor of Political Economy in Johns Hopkins University, was appointed Special Commissioner to revise taxation laws in Porto Rico, and then was first Treasurer of the Island, inaugurating the revenue system now in operation, known as the Hollander Law.