and of L80 to L220 for women. If the maximum
rate were L150 for men and L100 for women the cost would be L220,000 a
year. Where is the money to come from? Will a Nationalist Parliament be
prepared to find it, and if so, from what source? Ireland is a
comparatively poor country and is not in a position to bear much more
taxation. The Intermediate Board, with its present resources, cannot
afford to step into the breach, and the only solution seems to be that
the British Exchequer should come to the rescue and that the Board
should be granted the means of dealing with this all-important matter,
the neglect of which is having a most injurious effect upon the
efficiency of the Intermediate Schools. It has been suggested that a
half-way house might be found, that the Treasury should grant L60 for
each assistant master and L40 for each assistant mistress, and that the
remainder should be raised by the authorities of the schools under the
direction of the Board. This alternative scheme would cost the State
about L88,300 a year, but, like all makeshifts, would not effect a real
settlement of the difficulty, creating, as it would, a patchwork system
of payment which might break down at any moment. On the other hand, let
the settlement be a generous one, and the return will be a hundredfold
in added efficiency, a higher sense of duty, and an increased personal
interest on the part of the teacher in the class of which he has charge.

In close connection with the question of salaries are those of pensions
and security of tenure. The pensions of the Primary teachers, inadequate
though they be, would be looked upon as a provision of the most
munificent kind by the poor men and women who enter service under the
Intermediate system. The Primary teachers, moreover, can fall back upon
subsidiary occupations if they find that their salaries are insufficient
for their maintenance. They can run a little farm or keep a shop or do
other remunerative work, but the assistants in Secondary Schools are
debarred from these methods of supplementing their exiguous wage. Those
terrible words might, without any extravagance, be inscribed for them
over the doors of their schools: "All hope abandon ye who enter here."
Something must be done. A starvation wage, with an adequate pension to
follow, might be tolerable, a decent wage, without any pension, might be
borne, but starvation at both ends is a disgrace to the Treasury while
it lasts and one of the th