uality in the "battle of life" was
the expectation and intention of those who settled and built up the
western part of the United States, as it has been that of all the
democracies of new countries. But this reform alone would certainly
require not one but several billion dollars a year; as much as all the
other improvements mentioned by Dr. Eliot put together. We may estimate,
then, that the application of the principle of democracy or equality of
opportunity to education in accordance with the present national income,
would require the immediate expenditure of three or four billion dollars
on the nation's children of school age, or ten times the sum we now
expend, and a corresponding increase as the wealth of the nation
develops. This would be a considerable proportion of the nation's
income, but not too much to spend on the children, who constitute nearly
half the population and are at the age where the money spent is most
productive.

Here is a program for the coming generation which would be indorsed by a
very large part of the democrats of the past. But nothing could make it
more clear that political democracy is bankrupt even in its new
collective form, that it has no notion of the method by which its own
ideals are to be obtained. For no reformer dreams that this perfectly
sensible and practicable program will be carried out until there has
been some revolutionary change in society. "I know that some people will
say that it is impossible to increase public expenditure in the total,
and therefore impossible to increase it for the schools," says Dr.
Eliot. "I deny both allegations. Public expenditure has been greatly
increased within the last thirty years, and so has school expenditure"
(written in 1902). But Dr. Eliot doubtless realizes that what he
advocates for the present moment, the expenditure of five times as much
as we now invest in public schools, at the present rate of progress,
might not be accomplished in a century, and that by that time society
might well have attained a degree of development which would demand five
or ten times as much again. Dr. Eliot is well aware of the opposition
that will be made to his reform, but he has not given the slightest
indication how it is to be overcome. The well-to-do usually feel
obligated to pay for the private education of their own children, and
even where public institutions are at their disposal they are forced to
support these children through all the years of