SALARIES AND LEARNING.

Plato despised the Sophists, who taught for pay, but the conditions Plato dealt with were not like those of today. Nowadays teachers are not isolated individuals who roam the streets offering their learning for what they can get. They are members of institutions and it is the privilege of these as such to undertake nothing less than the decent support of their teachers.

The schools, it must be said, respond to the best of their ability, but their ability is sometimes very limited. Public institutions stumble over the question of appropriations, private institutions meet the problem of insufficient endowment. Both are usually defeated. The result is such a scale of salaries that Normal School graduates find it more profitable to serve, let us say as hotel waiters, and full-fledged college professors have to content themselves with stipends that the Brotherhood of Railroad Engineers would treat with scorn.

Learning is not and should not be made a thing of dollars and cents. We are, however, forced to consider the question of a respectable living for our teachers, of a proper opportunity for investigation, and, by investigation, of adding something to human knowledge. There are plenty of good men and women in the field of education. Indeed one wonders how so many dared face the hardships of a course of training that covers so many years and offers no immediate remuneration. If we intend to elevate our standards and make our methods more efficient we must, out of common justice, first undertake the problem of higher salaries.