tand when the time comes, is as though one were to
attempt to put all the law of the state into its constitution to make it
more binding. The result would be hopeless congestion and general
uselessness.

[Illustration: Doorway of Public School No. 165.]

It comes down to the teacher in the end, and there are ten thousand of
them in our big city.[39] To them, too, a day of deliverance has come.
Half the machine teaching, the wooden output of our public schools in
the past, I believe was due to the practical isolation of the teachers
between the tyranny of politics and the distrust of those who had good
cause to fear the politician and his work. There was never a more
saddening sight than that of the teachers standing together in an almost
solid body to resist reform of the school system as an attack upon them.
There was no pretence on their part that the schools did not need
reform. They knew better. They fought for their places. Throughout the
fight no word came from them of the children's rights. They imagined
that theirs were in danger, and they had no thought for anything else.
We gathered then the ripe fruit of politics, and it will be a long
while, I suppose, before we get the taste out of our mouths. But the
grip of politics on our schools has been loosened, if not shaken off
altogether, and the teacher's slavery is at an end, if she herself so
wills it. Once hardly thought worthy of a day laborer's hire, she ranks
to-day with a policeman in pay and privilege. The day that sees her
welcomed as an honored guest in every home with a child in school will
break the last of her bonds, and do more for the schools and for us than
any one thing I can think of. Until that day comes the teachers, as a
class apart, will have interests apart, or feel that they have, and will
be bound to stand together to defend them; and they will work for pay.
But for the real work of a teacher no one can ever pay her.

[Footnote 39: On May 31, 1902, there were 10,036 class teachers in
elementary schools in the Greater New York, exclusive of principals
and the non-teaching staffs, and of the high school teachers. With
these, the total number was 11,570, with a register of 445,964
pupils.]

The day is coming. The windows of the schoolhouse have been thrown open,
and life let in with the sunlight. The time may be not far distant when
ours shall be schools "for discovering aptitude," in Professor Felix
Adler's wise plan.