school superintendent said that the Italian children attend
school fairly regularly, are able pupils, and excel American children in
their studies.

There is at least one school district in the same colony which has a
defective one-teacher school, which the writer chanced to visit. The
trustee of the school, an American woman, married to an unnaturalized
Italian settler, said that she was worried about getting a
school-teacher for next year, as the county pays only $17 a week. Last
year it paid $15, and that was an increase of $3 over the former salary.
She thought the county might possibly pay $20 this year if she could not
get anyone for less. The people did not like the teacher they had last
year--they thought she did not know enough. There are now seventy-three
children of school age, but there were only twenty-six before, and the
schoolhouse is only large enough for twenty-six. The building is very
small, oblong in shape, with a small partition at one end for cloakroom
and entrance. The school board voted $250 for enlarging the building and
taking down the partition, but the trustee was certain that this would
not be done for that small sum, as "lumber is so high, and the carpenter
wants something." The building needed painting and a number of the
windows were broken The woman said that last year many children of
school age worked instead of going to school, as there was nobody to
force them to go. Now that she was trustee, she said, she would see that
everybody went.

GROWTH OF THE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL

The defects of the one-teacher school have led to the consolidation
movement which is rapidly developing throughout the country. The
Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Dakota reported in 1916
that the consolidated school was becoming more and more the school of
the rural districts and he recommended liberal state aid to these
schools. There were at that time 123 "open country" consolidated schools
in the state and 210 town consolidated schools, the latter being in
reality rural schools.

One county superintendent reported that in the last two years a number
of districts had voted to consolidate their schools; another said that
40 per cent of the pupils were attending consolidated schools. The Rural
School Commissioner of Minnesota stated that consolidation has a very
promising growth in the state; that 210 districts have been organized,
half of which were established during the two years ending in