ural districts, even where the rural district maintains a full
elementary and high school course. In Nebraska and Iowa, the town and
city rate is about double that of country districts.

When there is added to this difference the further fact that town and
city property is commonly assessed at more nearly its full value than
rural property, the discrepancy becomes all the greater.

It is not meant, of course, that farmers should pay as high a school-tax
rate for the elementary rural school as that paid by town patrons who
also have a high school available. But, on the other hand, if better
school facilities are to be furnished the country children, rural
property should bear its full share of the taxes required. The farmer
should be willing to pay as much for the education of his child as the
city dweller pays for a similar education for his.

During the last generation farmers have been increasing in wealth faster
than any other class of industrial workers. Their land has doubled in
value, barns have been built, machinery has been added, automobiles
purchased, and large bank credits established. Yet very little of this
increased prosperity has reached the school. Library, reference works,
maps, charts, and other apparatus are usually lacking. In Iowa, as a
fair example, a sum of not less than ten nor more than fifteen cents a
year for each pupil of school age in the district is required by law to
be expended for library books. Yet in not a few districts the law is a
dead letter or the money grudgingly spent! In many rural schools the
teacher has to depend on the proceeds of a "social," an "exhibition,"
or a "box party" to secure a few dollars for books or pictures for the
neighborhood school, and sometimes even buys brooms and dust pans from
the fund secured in this way.

This is all wrong. The school should be put on a business basis. It
should have the necessary tools with which to accomplish its work, and
not be forced to waste the time and opportunity of childhood for want of
a few dollars expended for equipment. Its patrons should realize that
just as it pays to supply factory, shop, or farm with the best of
instruments for carrying on the work, so it pays in the school. Cheap
economy is always wasteful, and never more wasteful than when it
cripples the efficiency of education.

State aid for rural schools has been proposed and in some instances
tried, as a mode of solving their financial problem. Where this s