d agriculture. It is
seldom that any father objects to his son taking carpenter work, but once
in a while a farmer smiles at the thought of a "professor" teaching
farming. The results, however, of the good work in teaching better farming
is already seen throughout our country, and the time is not far distant
when "scientific agriculture" will return many fold the price of its
investment. The agricultural department at Washington reports that the
Burbank potato is adding $17,000,000 yearly to the wealth of the U.S.

The people, too, are well satisfied with this new type of school. They are
beginning to see that education is a very practical and vital matter and
is not merely for ornament. It is a rare thing now to hear the once common
remark that education is too expensive.

Statistics show that the average wages paid to unskilled laborers in the U.
S. is about $500 per annum; careful reports indicate that the average
yearly earnings of high school graduates is $1000. In a lifetime of 40
years the high school man will earn $20,000 more than the unlearned
laborer.

From a financial standpoint it is very evident that education pays, yet
five and one-half years is the average length of time the children of the
U.S. attend school. The nation ought to enrich itself through putting more
money into education.

The natural resources of the country are largely taken up and the free land
is practically all occupied. What then is to be the future of the great
mass of laborers unless a thorough-going system of industrial and
vocational training is made possible? The Industrial Commission appointed
recently by Congress found that three-fourths of the male laborers in the
U.S. earn less than $600 per annum, yet the U.S. Government has found "that
the point of adequate subsistence is not reached until the family income is
about $800 a year. Less than half the wage-earners' families in the U.S.
have an annual income of that size."

Now the rich can take care of themselves and the very poor and unfortunate
cannot be permanently helped, but this great middle class, upon whom the
nation must depend in every crisis, can and must be assisted to the extent,
at least, that conditions be made possible through which they may raise
their efficiency and so increase their earning capacity to a point
commensurate with their needs. A thorough-going, national system of
industrial and vocational "preparedness" would solve this problem.

The marve