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THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.

'Desire the Trade to Know that in Addition to their Complete Stock of

Miscellaneous Books

They Carry a Full Line of the

SCHOOL-Books

Of all the Educational Publishing Houses.

We sell at the lowest jobbing prices, give our customers the promptest and most careful service and all the advantages of

trading in the largest American book market.

Our General Catalogue of School and College Text-Books containing Net and Mailing Prices and a Telegraphic Code Mailed on Application to

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.,

740 and 742 Broadway, New York.

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school-book can safely be put alongside any miscellaneous book, or any school-book from any other country, of equal size, character, and wealth of illustration, if such can be found, and challenge comparison in price as well as in other respects. This is one result of the competition which has done so much for American educational literature. But there was another result of this extreme competition which in a measure interfered with the full development of this cheapening of books, and also produced more positive evil. This was the enormous machinery and consequent expense made necessary in "working" the extended school-book constituency of the country, either in introducing new books, or in holding old books in place against the attacks of rivals, or in exchanging one series for another, and so on until the end of the chapter. This required an organization of the most costly sort, because only men of a high order of ability have the intelligence and keenness to do this work, and such men must be well paid. Another type of men replaced that ability with lower cunning, and it is undoubtedly true that more or less corruption had crept into the school-book system as one result of this competition.

THERE has been nothing more creditable in the history of book publishing within the last Some time ago some of the leading schoolgeneration than the progress made by American book publishers formed themselves into an assoeducational publishers. Our educational litera- ciation with the purpose of working in harmony ture may fairly challenge competition from any rather than in opposition, that is to say, of requarter of the world for its combination of schol- straining their rivalry within specific limits. They arship and educational progress in the text, and agreed to see that only "fair and honorable its remarkable mechanical excellence, particularly methods" were used in introductions, to restrict in the matter of illustration. The German, the themselves to not more than fifteen travelling French, and the English educational literature agents each, and in general to promote better each has its special excellence, the first for solid methods of business which would correct past research, the second for popular adaptation, the abuses, leaving competition as to qualities and third for high scholarship. But while we are prices absolutely free. That plan has worked little if any behind those nations in these partic- sufficiently well to justify a further step, of which ulars, we are far in advance of them in seeking to some mention has been made in the daily papers, train the eye, the observing faculty, and the taste looking to the abolition of canvassing agents altoby means of the improved mechanical get-up of gether, except in such large cities as New York, our text-books, especially those for younger chil- which allow the schools to select from an “open dren, in which this feature is especially recog-list" of books, and the direct sale of books from nized by educators as almost of first importance. the publishing houses, or from local offices, reThis result has been brought about by the recip-stricted to eight in number. It is not, in any rocal influence of a progressive body of educators sense a Trust, nor will it destroy competition of demanding the best, and of a competitive en- the right sort. Any business arrangement which deavor on the part of publishers to supply what undertakes to diminish competition in quality or will best meet this advanced demand. Our Amer- price is against public interest and ought not to ican school-book publishers can safely challenge succeed. This combination, as we understand it, competition in any world's exposition, and it is has the contrary purpose of serving the public by rather a pity that they are not more often repre- saving labor and cost. If it should go farther than sented adequately at them. this, and bring the trade into the stagnation which comes from the destruction of competition, the results would not be good, and the arrangement, we believe, would not last. There is not the slightest thought, however, of any such scheme. The usefulness and indeed the existence of such an association as this depend upon the good faith

Parallel with this result has been an extraordinary cheapening in the price of this class of books, which, supplied as they are in considerable quantities for classes or for whole schools, have, when once introduced, both a surer and a wider market than miscellaneous books. An American

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and common-sense of the weakest member of the combination. It is the old story that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. When any house is tempted to evade the agreement and cannot hold itself back from attempting to profit by such evasion, the agreement cannot last. But the benefits to be gained by the arrangement are so much greater than any incidental advantage to be got by breaking it, that we hope to see a fair opportunity given for the full test of the experi

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and sending sample copies is and will continue to
be freely done by all houses and agents.
The recent movement in the school-book
trade has been only another step in this same
direction, namely, to dispense generally with
travelling agents, and conduct the business from
the houses or their local offices. This action has
been taken simply with reference to carrying a
stage further the reform which has already so
long been in successful operation. Its whole
tendency will be towards freer and cheaper books
for the schools, and, like the whole movement of
which this is a part, is quite as much in the in-
terest of the public as of the publishers. It has
absolutely no relation to prices, except as by
reducing expenses it makes cheaper production
possible, to the ultimate benefit of the public.
INDIANA'S DIFFICULTY IN THE SCHOOL
BOOK BUSINESS.

the school-book introduction business, which had become overladen with numerous evils familiar to the public. Each house is left entirely free to fix its own prices, as it has always done; and as a matter of fact prices of different books vary very considerably among the different houses. The only thing attempted has been to correct the evils connected with the old methods of schoolbook agency work by restricting the number of travelling agents, and by an agreement not to interfere to displace books where in satisfactory use, but to leave the educational public, entirely free and untrammelled by outside influences, to select whatever books they choose to use. AdIt has been a general superstition that the edu-vertising, quotation of prices, correspondence, cational publishers have been making enormous profits and rolling in wealth. As a matter of fact, the business, which in all is probably not much above $5,000,000 for the whole country, is confined to at most about a hundred houses, of whom half a score or so do a handsome business, on which small profits aggregate considerable return. But the profit of educational publishing is really inadequate and is not proportionate to the return of equal energy and brains in other lines of business. The superstition of which we speak is ill founded; nevertheless, over and over again, one State after another has attempted, by a system of State text-books or in some other way, to "bulldoze" publishers, or to get more for its money than can be given. The result in most cases has been disastrous educationally and not successful financially. While the books have been nominally, perhaps, sold at a lower price, they have been inferior in the particular qualities which have made American educational books so remarkable, and they have cost an untold amount in clerical and other outlay concealed in salaries and other kinds of expenses. The State of California is a marked example. It is beyond reason that the individual supply of any one State can be made as cheaply as great educational houses supplying the whole country can provide it. The new arrangement should remove any just cause of complaint which the schools and public can bring against the educational publishers, and we trust, therefore, that the experiment will be fairly and fully tried.

THE SCHOOL-BOOK ASSOCIATION:
AN AUTHORITATIVE STATE-

MENT.

In view of the recent publication in the daily press of rumors in relation to movements of the school-book publishing houses of forming a combination and discontinuing travelling agents, it may be well for the information of the trade, and the public, to give an authoritative statement of facts in this connection.

A WEEK ago it seemed as if the Indiana State Board of Education would be left without schoolbook supplies under the working of the new law. At that time the representative of a prominent school-book publishing house of New York is reported to have said: "The truth of the matter is, first-class modern books cannot be published for the prices required by the law."

At the eleventh hour, however, Professor Parsons, of the State Normal School, chairman of the Committee of the Whole, handed in a report, which was made up of six resolutions: (1) To reject all manuscripts submitted, because the board had no funds with which to advertise for books; (2) to accept the bid of the Indiana School-Book Co. to furnish geographies; (3) to accept the series of arithmetics proposed by the Indiana Company; (4) to award the contract to furnish copybooks to the Bowen-Merrill Co., of Indianapolis; (5) to reject the spelling-book offered by the Indiana School-Book Co., because it was not equal in size to the standard named in the law; (6) to accept the series of readers proposed by the Indiana School-Book Co. The resolutions were adopted unanimously, excepting the second and the last, Superintendent La Follette objecting in both cases. He voted in the negative on the second resolution because he "didn't believe that the geographies offered by the Indiana SchoolBook Co. were up to the standard."

The Board has now reached the end of its possibilities, and histories, grammars, physiologies, and spellers are unprovided for. Under the decisThere is not, and there never has been, any-ion of the Attorney-General it will be impossible thing in the nature of a trust, or pool, or trade combination of any sort controlling prices, or sharing profits, in the school-book trade. There has existed for the past six years an Association, the only purpose of which has been to regulate

to advertise for additional bids until the Legislature has met again and made an appropriation to defray the expense of advertising.

The Indiana School-Book Company seems to be a concern recently called into existence, in

which are interested Edward Hawkins, who recently retired from the office of United States Marshal for Indiana; Josephus Collett, of Terre Haute; Wm. Fleming and R. C. Bell, of Fort Wayne; Wm. Heilman, D. C. Mackey, and E. P. Huston, of Evansville; and James Murdoch, of Michigan. It is alleged that it is a political combination that has been gotten together for the purpose of taking advantage of the present complications in the school-book affairs of the State. It proposes to supply the books specified in the act at the following prices: First Reader, 10 cents; Second, 15 cents; Third, 25 cents; Fourth, 30 cents; Fifth, 40 cents; Spelling-Books, 10 cents; Intermediate Arithmetic, 35 cents; Arithmetic Complete, 45 cents; Hotze's Physiology, 35 cents; Elementary Geography, 30 cents; Complete Geography, 75 cents; Copy-Books, 5 cents. They offer to exchange the new books for those of corresponding grade at the following prices: First Reader, 9 cents; Second, 13 cents; Third, 22 cents; Fourth, 26 cents; Fifth, 35 cents; Elementary Arithmetic, 32 cents; Complete Arithmetic, 40 cents; Physiology, 33 cents; Spelling-Book, 9 cents; Elementary Geography, 27 cents; and Complete Geography, 74 cents.

The company offers, if its bid is accepted, to contract with the board to supply within the required time the number of books called for by lawful requisition, and they have ready for filing a bond for $50,000. The proposal is signed by the officers of the company-Josephus Collett, President, and Edward Hawkins, Secretary.

The officers of the company state that" they are making this bid solely in their own behalf, and not as representing any other corporation, firm, or individual; that their purpose is, if awarded the contract, to carry it out fully, in the letter and spirit of the law, and to demonstrate the entire feasibility of the project of furnishing to the school-children of Indiana text-books in every respect equal to those now in use, at prices very much lower than are and have been for many years charged for such books."

CLUBS AND CIRCLES.
From Boone's "Education in the United States." (D.
Appleton & Co.)

less sociological than biological that vigor and
fruitfulness are promoted by adaption and corre-
spondence among the parts. Personal culture
and special knowledge, and individual invention
and local intelligence must somehow be worked
down into communities crystallized into form,
talked about around hearthstones, shaped into
customs, and so erected into institutions. And
to this end, born of the need and fed by the spirit
of local self-interest, have sprung up more or less
general, less or more formally organized socie-
ties. They are variously named, and even more
diverse in constitution and ain; but, taken as a
class, they are of greater importance as education-
al means than appears from a casual view.
Under the guise of clubs for intellectual and
social advantage have been formed philosophical
and scientific organizations, less pretentious than
the learned societies; literary bodies for the study
of the masters; and historical unions, with no of-
ficial countenance from the large associations, but
gathering up into permanent records the delicate
and far-reaching but fast-wasting threads of a rich
local life. Then there is the modern reading
circle, including societies for home study, corre-
spondence schools, the Chautauqua and Agassiz
Associations, etc. These cannot be regarded
with indifference when it is considered that they
enroll nearly twice as many students as all the
colleges of the United States combined, for both
men and women, and as many as all the secondary
institutions* taken together.

LESSONS FROM THE HISTORY OF
EDUCATION.

From Payne's "Contributions to the Science of Educa-
tion." (Harper & Bros.)

EDUCATION has always been moulded in accordance with political or religious needs; that is, the school, instead of dominating the State and the Church, has been dominated by them. For example, Phoenicia was devoted to traffic, and so the art of computation was made a staple of instruction in her schools. The small states of Greece, exposed to the ever-present dangers of invasion, had need of a brave and hardy soldiery; and so gymnastic training of the military type was enjoined on all Grecian youth. Egypt was In its social significance, the distribution of pervaded by the spirit of caste, and so the purculture is the great educational desideratum. pose of instruction was to prepare the son for folHow to make the technical and particular knowl-lowing the occupation of his father. The preocedge of the few the common experience of the many, this fixes the direction of all systems of education. Yesterday's doctrine of a class is the wide rule of conduct to day. To extend the boundaries of knowledge and obedience, and man's mastery of nature, is the function of universities and societies, of laboratories and endowed research. To the college and secondary school, the church, the lecture, and the press, are left the diffusion of this knowledge, and making more wide-spread this obedience and mastery. Looked at from the social standpoint, the latter is fundamental. The success of the undertaking conditions the health of the social body and the perpetuity of government. In homogeneity of culture are political and civil strength. "There is no future for a stratified civilization;" hence the need for every possible local agency for the exchange and circulation of the maturest and most saving experience. It is of less importance even that much intelligence exists than that the data of intelligence shall under wise direction be brought within easy reach of all. It is a law of life not

cupation of the Jew was the maintenance of the
sacred traditions, and so instruction became a
careful process of indoctrination. The Reforma-
tion, by throwing on each human being the bur-
den of his own salvation, made it necessary that
every child should know how to read; and, to
meet this necessity, schools were multiplied till
all had an opportunity to learn to read.
In cases
where state needs were felt to be urgent, and
where there was not a prompt response to the
public call, there was a resort to compulsion, as
in ancient Sparta, and, in a measure, among the
Jews, as well as in most European states of the
present day. We may generalize these facts and
say that the prevailing type of education during
the whole historic period has been technical or
professional, its purpose being to equip men for
service as agents or instruments. Side by side
with this narrow conception of education there
has at times appeared the wider conception of
education as a process by which a human being is

*These include high schools, academies, and seminaries, college preparatories, and normal schools.

46d

and forces, all contribute to the shaping of edu-
cational doctrine and its ultimate creed. The
enlargement of university pedagogy on the side
And if the
indicated is one of the hopeful signs of the day.
Never was it more needed than now.
present movement shall result in calling to the
universities throughout the country its best men
to study these questions in their universal rela-
tions, study education as philosophy, and mark
its bearings, it will have done the generation an
eminent service.

EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE.

wrought into the likeness of the highest type of
his kind. I believe this conception appeared for
the first time in Greece in the fifth century B.C.
Plato had such an exalted conception of the State,
and of the qualifications needed for full citizen-
ship, that, in his scheme of training, technical
education and liberal education became essentially
one and the same. To be a citizen of the Repub-
lic was to be a man in the fullest sense of that
term as then understood. These two concep-
tions, the narrower and the wider, of man as an
instrument destined never to transcend his envi-
ronment, and of man free to transcend his envi-
ronment, in obedience to his natural aspirations
towards the highest type of his kind, have de-
scended to our day, and their struggle for suprem-tributing literature.
acy is involved in most of the educational polem-
ics of the times. On this subject three opinions |
are held: Ist. That education is to be of the tech-
nical type, the school being a place for acquiring
a trade. 2d. That education is to be of the lib-
eral type, the purpose of the school being a gen-
eral intellectual training. 3d. That the ideal
education is first general or liberal, and then
special or technical, or that the best type of the
human instrument is to be made out of the best
type of man.

THE PREPARATION OF TEACHERS. From Boone's "Education in the United States." (D. Appleton & Co.)

IT need scarcely be said that the work as a whole, and in this country, is yet only tentative. A few of the courses are painfully narrow and barren; others are subordinated-made to share both time and attention with unrelated subjects. Nevertheless, the movement is assuring and is, almost without exception, favorably regarded by

educators.

"The great need of the hour," it has been said "is to ascertain what has been done in the line of educational effort, what plans have succeeded and what have failed, and the conditions under

which success or failure has come." This is one of the most stimulating services of the contemporary college-the large contributions it has made to the intelligent and systematic and comthe history of education and its institutions. This parative study of history; and now, especially, involves not only the education of the states, ancient and modern, but the accompanying social and political forms, custom and creed, antecedent and environment, and the physical and other conditions which determine the institutional life. It is a work, viewed from the pedagogical side, peculiarly within the province of the university.

Again, as the principles of instruction are to be sought in the nature and functions of the mind, and the general spiritual life, the conditions of education, in its deeper content, presuppose the broader coordinations of knowledge included under anthropology, ethics, and the indefinitely complex sciology in the study of institutional life. Philosophy of education is, then, a phase of general philosophy, rests upon its constituent knowledges, borrows its deductions and is conditioned by them. Theories of mind and the individual responsibility; prevalent estimates of the social life and the functions of the state; the changed interpretations of natural phenomena

*Prof. Payne, "Contributions to the Science of Education," p. 265.

One of the conditions of professional efficiency, at the present day, is familiarity with the con

It marks economy in service, and is the starting-point for any sound original study of current conditions. This is neither less nor more true of teaching than of law, medicine, or theology. Paraphrasing the famous dictum of Matthew Arnold, it may be said the right acquaintance with the best that has been thought and said touching one's profession is a liberal professional education.

Incomplete and unsatisfactory as this literature is in the United States, most departments of modern inquiry have made some contributions.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

From Payne's" Lectures on the Science and Art of Education." (E. L. Kellogg & Co.)

ALL authorities agree that educators have a better chance of improving the physical condition of their pupils if they are themselves acmoreover, that the health of the body is not only quainted with the laws of health; and they insist, desirable for its own sake, but because, from the interdependence of mind and body, the mens sana depends so much on the corpus sanum.

In short, hundreds of writers have written on this subject for the benefit of educators, thousands of whom have never even heard of, much less read, their writings; or, if they have, pursue the even tenor of their way, doing just as they did before, and ignorantly laughing at Hygiene and all the aid she offers them.

The trainer of

Physical education also comprehends the training of special faculties and functions, with a view to improve their condition. horses, dogs, singing-birds, boxers, boat crews, and cricketers, all make a study, more or less profound, of the material they have to deal withall except the educator, the trainer of trainers, who generally leaves things to take their chance. or assumes that the object will be sufficiently the gymnastic apparatus. It would be easy to gained by the exercises of the playground and show that this self-education, although most val

mented by the appliances of Physiological Science. uable, is insufficient, and ought to be suppleThis science would suggest, in some cases, remedies for natural defects; in others, suitable training for natural weakness; in others, still graver reasons for checking the injurious tendency, so common amongst children, to over-exertion; and in all these cases would be directly ancillary to the professed object of the educator as a trainer of intellectual and moral forces.

The effect, too, of the condition of the mind on that of the body-the converse reciprocal action -is an important part of this subject; but there is no time to enter on it.

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