Chapter 1: 528 copies (6)

I do believe there is a way out, and that is to admit frankly that the library schools can select, as Dr. Hill has well said, and send students to the libraries for the trying-out process, and above all to have the library association show very much more interest and attention to what the library schools are doing. And I can say to you, as an old librarian, that you are reaping what it seemed to me was a whirlwind sowed some years ago. For a long time past, and when we first had the schools, we shut the door on the possible entrance of politics into libraries,--a very serious menace, as we all know. We all rushed forward and talked about the library school, and if a community had a man or woman who could fill the place, who had special literary ability, had been well educated and was proved to have some executive ability, we all roared, "You're lost if you don't take some one who has gone through a library school training." You know we did. And the poor old committee succumbed and got a library school candidate. We cannot prepare librarians unless we relate them to the great field of human endeavor and social affairs to which the library belongs, if it is used in a proper way, and we must find other means in the library association to evolve some system to afford the trying-out process.

Mr. WALTER: Although we get at the matter from different points of view, I am quite certain that Miss Rathbone, Miss Kelso and I are in exact accord on some points. One is in the recognition of the real responsibility for the curricula of library schools. The library school courses are what they are because the libraries want them so. Miss Kelso may probably not be quite so familiar with the special demands of libraries as those who are on library school faculties are. A great demand exists at present along two lines. The most frequent demand, I think, is for college or university graduates, who are masters of every branch of library technic, and who possess as well a wide and extensive knowledge of all subjects, which will make them valuable in varied lines of work and in different departments; in other words, universal specialists. This demand comes repeatedly from the smaller libraries and not infrequently from the larger ones. The library school is forced in many ways to make a concession to that demand and to teach many things rather than a few specialties. I am not sure that the concession is always as great or as harmful as has been asserted, and one reason why I am not so sure of this is because I have been studying the curricula of several schools of philanthropy (whose practical character has just been commended) in order to make some improvements in a proposed course in the institution with which I am connected, and the differences in the general plans of the two kinds of schools are so far from being radical that we have been able to take over many of their specialized ideas and put them in our curriculum, with so little change that I defy you to find where the joints are.

Another demand is for real specialists to put in charge of special departments of large libraries. I believe that demand is growing. But you must remember, if you are going to have them, that two things are necessary. If you want specialists trained in different subjects, you must give them time to get their training and you must pay them enough to attract them and to keep them when you get them.

In an engineering school you have lengthy courses full of engineering technic, because you demand engineers. No good school would cut out that technic simply because you needed an engineering student in your technology department and couldn't afford to wait or to pay for a graduate. Why should we have to stop doing what experience, and the experience of years, has proved necessary, what most of the people who go out of the library schools say is necessary--why should we cut out general subjects simply because of a temporary or limited demand for short-cut semi-specialists? You do not give time to prepare specialists. You are prone to send in a letter on Saturday saying you must have a man in charge of a special department next Tuesday, that he must be a graduate of one of the best technical schools of the country and that he must also have a thorough knowledge of library technic. At present I do not believe there is enough demand for those people to attract many of them, because, these specialists, in most cases, are obliged to come into general library work and to keep in general work until the special positions for which they are particularly fitted become vacant or are created.

I believe thoroughly in the missionary spirit. I believe every librarian ought to have in him the spirit of St. Francis, to enable him, if need be, to go barefoot and get along with almost no food at all, but I do not believe in the right of the public to demand that he work for a salary so small that he must wear the habit and eat the food of St. Francis. If you expect to find these exceptional men you must pay for them and have places ready for them. You cannot expect the impossible. The question of technic is a serious one but it is not going to be solved entirely by omissions and short-cuts.

I might also say that the institution with which I happen to be connected depends very largely, so far as the changes in its curriculum are concerned, on the suggestions of the people who have gone out from the school and who are working in libraries, and it often plans its courses in accordance with what they suggest, as the result of their own experiences. What is more,--and I am not speaking for ourselves only, for similar conditions exist in other schools--in this way we have (among others) the experience of more than thirty men and women who are at the head of libraries in cities of the United States in either the first or the second class.

Mr. JOSEPHSON: It may well be that the present library schools cannot train both librarians and assistants; and perhaps, in consequence, we must have two kinds of school, one school for assistants and one for librarians. However that may be, either school must teach bibliography, and by that I mean the knowledge of the records of books and the art of describing books, so that the one who reads the description may know what the book is. Description includes, of course, not only cataloging but classification and annotation as well.

I would like to supplement Mr. Strohm's paper in one particular. I think it would be well if chief librarians would do something to encourage the continuation of professional studies among the members of their staffs, particularly among the younger members, both those who come from library schools and those who do not. We cannot expect them to study too hard after a full day's work, but I think in most cases we would find that such encouragement would be appreciated. The assistants who are ambitious to go forward would be willing to spend a couple of hours a week on further studies, and it might not be entirely out of the way for the library to allow some time for such work.

Mr. GEORGE: It seems to me that in our discussion today a means of practical relief has been missed by each of the speakers, and that is that the ordinary, customary method of universities be adopted by these library schools, and instead of attempting in a year's time to issue a diploma of doubtful value at best, as representing anything in particular, they should adopt the certificate plan, and allow their course to extend over a sufficient time to guarantee something; have their courses divided up in such a way that a certificate will represent something definite to those of us who want to use library school students. It seems to me in that way we can get some practical value from the schools and get efficient aids and assistants in the library service. The great difficulty about the whole thing is that most library school graduates lack a sufficient background and there is not time in one year's course, naturally, for them to acquire anything of that kind, or an experience that can be of practical value to us. I merely throw this out as a practical hint, because I have been waiting for it to come from some of the speakers. By having a certificate covering part of the ground, either cataloging or some other branch of library service undoubtedly we would be perfectly willing to recognize that as an authoritative guarantee from the schools, rather than a diploma that, as I say, is doubtful at best as representing anything, because of the varying courses and requirements of the different schools.

At the conclusion of this discussion the session adjourned.

FOURTH GENERAL SESSION

(Monday, July 1, 9:30 a. m.)

=Dominion Day Program=

Dr. James W. Robertson, C.M.G., took the chair, on behalf of the Ottawa local committee, and called the meeting to order.

The CHAIRMAN: Your president has in her genial and successful way insisted that the acting chairman of the local committee should preside on this occasion.

Of most men one might say when they are forty-five they are middle-aged and mature. This is the forty-fifth anniversary of the birth of this Dominion; and Canada is still but a youth, a sturdy, growing, promising youth among the nations. She is a people of great heritages, of lofty aspirations and of fine ideals, and she has in Sir Wilfrid Laurier a son worthy of herself. He will speak to us this morning.

SIR WILFRID LAURIER:[4] Though I have no claim whatever to be here on this present occasion, still if my presence on this platform can further convince our American visitors how welcome they are amongst us, I can assure them that I would have traveled many and many a long mile to swell the greeting with the seal and hand of the Canadian government and the Canadian people. Welcome you are, not only for the good work in which you are engaged, not only for the intellectual labors which are your daily vocation, but also because whenever you cross our borders, and whenever the Canadian members of this association cross your borders, you and they are real missionaries of peace, apostles of civilization, and those visits tend further to improve our relations, to dispel old prejudices and to make us appreciate the blessings of the peace which hath prevailed between your country and my country for nearly a hundred years.

[4] Printed only in part.

May I take advantage of the present opportunity to remind you of the fact, which has been twice already brought to your attention, that today is the national holiday of Canada. We celebrate our national holiday on the first of July, you celebrate yours on the fourth of July,--but the resemblance goes no further. The day you celebrate on the fourth of July recalls the fact that your forefathers wrenched and violently tore asunder the tie which had bound them to the motherland. I think I can call upon your memory to confirm that history attests that this step was not taken lightly, that it tore the heart strings of many and many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, but that it was forced upon them by the vicious policy that was followed toward the colonists by the British government.

Our history is a very different one. The day that we celebrate in Canada recalls no violence. On the contrary we celebrate the day when the authorities of England, King, Lords and Commons, delivered unto us a charter of union, of liberty and of local independence. Thus at the very start our courses were cast in different directions. You are a republic, we are a monarchy. We have kept the old monarchy of England. As to the merits of respective forms of government, republican institutions or monarchical institutions, I would not say a word on this or any other occasion, because this has always seemed to be an idle speculation. We know that the form of government is after all a matter of indifference; we know that there must be a virtue in republicanism, and we Canadians are here to testify that in the monarchy of England there is as ample liberty as there is in any part of the world, not excepting even the American republic.

Proud as I am to say that you have your democratic institutions, we are blessed with institutions more democratic, and we have what Abraham Lincoln called the government of the people, by the people and for the people. I do not mean to say by this, Ladies and Gentlemen, that the people never make mistakes. I speak for my country, not for yours. But speaking for my country, I would say that at that we must not be surprised nor angry, because it is an attribute of mankind, after all, to err.

Though, Ladies and Gentlemen, as I have told you, our lots have been cast apart, though you are one country and we are another, still, after all, we can say with some pride that we have been friends, and better friends we ought to be. Men there are in this country, I am sorry to say, who are rather afraid of you American people. They believe that you have some hostile design upon us; and some of your men have perhaps harbored that thought themselves. But if these views are scattered amongst some of my countrymen, they have not at all scared me; I have no fear at all of the American people. I am not afraid of contact with you. I would not be afraid to trade with you, to sell to you and buy from you, because I believe that after all, proud as you have reason to be of your own nation, we Canadians are just as good as you are.

But, if we cannot trade, if we cannot sell and buy,--and I would not enlarge on this, because I would perhaps trespass on politics,--if we cannot trade and buy from one another, at least we can exchange ideas, sentiments, principles, and this is the very thing which you have been doing in Canada during this last week. To this nobody can object. Ideas and principles can travel freely across the line, and I believe that everybody would be all the better for this interchange. So I have no fear whatever that there should be an absorption of this country by your country. And may I say what is my own ideal?

It seems to me that there is a greater future for Canada, and for the United States. You have your problems and we have enough of our own problems. We can afford to share the continent and we can be, you Americans and we Canadians, the pioneers of a new civilization, a civilization representative of the twentieth century. We can give to the world this example of friendship without hesitation and with perfect confidence in one another. The bane of Europe today is militarism. All the nations of Europe are distrustful of one another; they spend one-half their income for war, in military preparation one against the other. Thank heaven, on this continent, we never think of war with one another. We have the longest frontier that separates two nations, and I thank God there is not a fortress to be found upon it, nor a gun nor a cannon to frown across it. This is the example which we give to the rest of the world. It is certainly an achievement of which we have every reason to be proud; and when you, Ladies and Gentlemen, come over to our country, as you have, you are further instilling the truth of that sentiment, and my last word to you will be, as the first. Come again, come often, and the more often you come the more cordial and warm will be the welcome.

President ELMENDORF: I am quite certain that this audience would be unwilling that some reply should not come from itself. May I ask Mr. R. R. Bowker, whom I see in the box, to reply for the audience?

Mr. BOWKER said, that as he rose to propose on the part of the United States members of the American Library Association a vote of thanks, he wished to express the equal gratification of our fellow members that we have received the hospitality, so unbounded, of the administration of Canada, and especially that we had been thus welcomed by the man whose presence personifies and whose name is a synonym not only for his own party but for United Canada. He said the United States members took only one exception to what he had said, and that was that they used the word "American" in a broader sense than he. The American Library Association means, not the United States, not Canada, but both. We have no United States library association. We may almost hope that there shall be no Canada library association, but we hope that Ontario, with its library association, will be the pioneer to lead its sister provinces into the fellowship and affiliation in which our other associations stand in the American library association.

The speaker said it was not only in the brilliant and eloquent pages of Parkman that the history of the two sister nations was interwoven; that a man from Woburn, Massachusetts, was the first to see what the site of Ottawa meant; that our own Thwaites had brought anew to life the deeds of the Jesuit fathers and early explorers, and that Miss Plummer had personally conducted many thousands of boys and girls of the children's rooms through Canada with her "Roy and Ray."

Mr. Bowker said he supposed we did not rightly recognize Canadian writers in the United States libraries because they were so thoroughly a part of English literature, and that it would be very grateful if some one so good as Mr. Hardy, the secretary of the Ontario library association, could before the close of the meetings give a bird's-eye view of Canadian writers.

"It is a significant coincidence that on this very day there goes into operation throughout the British Empire a law which, if not for the first time, at least most explicitly, recognizes the relationship of the several English nations to the motherland, for the new copyright code which today goes into operation states in so many words that the self-governing dominions of Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa may adopt the imperial act, or modify it to meet their own judicial process, or legislate independently. It is interesting to some of us that this recognition should be so explicitly made in the field of letters."

In closing, the speaker proposed that we express our thanks to our Canadian brethren, our hosts who have been so hospitable, by a rising vote.

Amid hearty applause the entire audience arose.

The CHAIRMAN: Before it became necessary for Dr. Otto Klotz, who was and is chairman of the local committee, to be absent from the city, I had agreed to deliver an address to the convention on Conservation in Canada. The time having come, on the program, for that event, I propose now to tell you a little of what we in Canada are doing to conserve the best we have.

CONSERVATION OF CHARACTER

We are all concerned for the good name of our community, for its reputation and its character. Most of us are concerned for the welfare of our nation, for its place of honor and influence and power among the nations of the earth. Canada is one of the youngest among the self governing peoples. It is only forty-five years since we became a Dominion, and we begin only now to find ourselves as a nation. A people who gain self-government become in reality a nation only when they are animated by some dominant purpose to preserve their ideals by further achievement. The preservation of whatever we have found to be worthy in the past,--the good, the true, and the beautiful,--by using them in everyday life for further accomplishment and attainment,--that is conservation. There have been rotations of nations and of civilizations on the face of the earth, as there have been rotations of crops on the fields of the farm. This year's crop is for its own harvest and also to prepare the land for the crop to follow it. The far foresight which peers thoughtfully into eternity while planning for tomorrow is also a part of conservation.

In common use the word "conservation" becomes a bland and comprehensive expression into which we put all our scattered convictions and aspirations and gropings after what is best for the largest number of people for the longest stretch of time. It took on a new meaning when Theodore Roosevelt used his megaphone on it. And because it is an omnibus with room always for one more,--for one more idea, one more suggestion, one more policy, it becomes mightily popular.

The first concern of conservation is necessarily with natural resources, but it does give a significant purpose to all the activities of a nation and of an individual. The large, inclusive aim of Canada in conservation is that Canada shall be great in the character of her people, great enough to match the matchless heritage that has come to her in blood and ideals, in possessions and institutions, in opportunities and obligations. Canada's contribution to humanity in a large, uplifting way will be in the perfection by a composite people, diverse in origin of race, language and religion,--the perfection by such a people of the finest of all fine arts, the fine art of living happily and prosperously together, while working with intelligent skill and unfaltering will for ends believed to be for the common good. These large ends include the improvement of the material and social setting of every home, the refinement of the inherited quality of life of every child and the reformation from generation to generation of the habits, standards and ideals of the people. All to the end that we may find satisfactions, large, broad and lasting, through invigorating labor, social service and abiding good will amongst ourselves and also extended to all our neighbors.

Let me give you a very brief glimpse, merely an indication, a suggestion, here and there, of what we are trying to do. First of all, a word on what we have in possessions to conserve; then a glimpse or two of what we are doing with our estate; afterwards a glance at what we are seeking for ourselves; and finally a look in on what we stand for as a young people among other kindly and competing nations.

=On What We Have=

We have a great deal. Never before in the history of the race did seven millions of people have such a heritage come into their free possession. Half a continent wide and a whole continent long,--that is our estate. We are happy in the setting of our national life. A very brief survey of what it means to us and what it is in itself must suffice this morning. Who knows it? I hear people speak of Canada as a red patch on the map, as a stretch of prairies where wheat grows, as the northern fringe of the glorious free republic of the United States. These hardly shed a candle power of light on our estate. Half a continent wide and one-sixth of the way around the globe! If Europe were eleven in area, we are twelve, and much of it habitable, destined to be the setting of fine homes of a robust people.

Let us take Canada in four areas, in thousand-mile stretches. We can afford to speak of ourselves in those dimensions. A thousand miles in from the Atlantic,--where else do you find a better place for homes for a dominant people whose purpose it is to pull up by strength and intelligence and justice and good will, and not to crush down and hold back? Dominant because the human race can be at its best in physique, in endurance, in tenacity, in capacity, in aspiration, where apple trees grow in beauty and bounty and the summer air is full of the fragrance of clover blossoms. Think back through your books, and over the globe, and into the lives of the people. Recall the old stories, the apple trees of Eden and the land flowing with milk and honey. After all, physical setting means much for the glory of human life. This is a fine stretch of a thousand miles for homes, of apple trees and clover blossoms with plenty of running water, with skies decked in beauty by clouds, with showers and sunshine in alternate abundance, and farm houses with yards full of children rolling on the grass picking flowers and climbing the apple trees. That is worth while,--to have a thousand miles filling up with homes, willing for more to come and share their joy.

Then we have a thousand miles of wilderness, a great reservoir north of the Great Lakes. It tempts the adventurous to seek gold and silver; great areas for trees, and lakes to refresh the thirsty land on both sides by the genial droppings from the rains gathered from the wastes.

Then come a thousand miles of prairies, stretching out to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It took a thousand times a thousand years to make that place fit for our possession and habitation now. The frugality of prodigal nature was storing in the soil plant food for crops for thousands of years, not that men might ship wheat, but that boys and girls should have the finest chance that the race had known hitherto to be a strong, dominant, lovely and loving people. A thousand miles of prairies! Why do your people flock over to those prairies? Not for greed of money. I have been enough in the States to know that you libel yourselves in one unkind way. You say the American worships the almighty dollar. Chase the charge down and he wants the dollar for the sake of a home, for the pleasure of conquest, for the worship of some boy or girl, to give him and her a better footing and a better start. The call of Canada is not merely from property and a chance to get it. The call of Canada is the call of a wide chance for possessions, for a piece of good land to own for oneself. It is also the call of the land where law is respected, as well as obeyed. It is most loudly and convincingly the call of a land with chances for children. That is what pulls them here, the chances for children; and these newcomers are amongst the foremost of those who see that the biggest and best and best-sustained building in the place is the public school.

Then we have five hundred miles, half a thousand, going over the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It is a piece of the great Creator's fine art in the rough, with the impressiveness of nature's majesty and the instability which endures. Tucked in between the mountains are fertile valleys with peaches and plums and wheat and all good things to sustain the homes. A great asset is that five-hundred mile strip, the mountains pregnant with coal and gold and silver, and the streams teeming with fish from the inexhaustible feeding places of the north.

That is a glimpse, merely the head-lines, of our national home, our real estate; and we believe the people will be quite a match for it. We come to feel the responsibility for that now.

Only a word or two of detail. We have forests in vast areas, some of them as yet unsurveyed, and a climate and soil which lets nature far more than restore the lumberman's cut. Our forests are inexhaustible in the abundance of their serving power for coming generations; now that we have begun to conserve them by preventing fires, by providing patrols, and also by diffusing knowledge, training and conviction throughout the common schools. Then we have fisheries. Many of you come up here and regale your friends for evenings afterwards by fish stories. I speak of the great value to Canada of fish and fishing. When I go to the coasts, how I glory in the conservation of life by fishing! I fish a little. One of my pawky friends once gave me a book called "Fishin' Jimmy." It had one sentence with which I comfort myself when I feel disposed to fish when I should be otherwise diligently employed. It was this, "Young man, the good Lord, when He needed fellows to help Him for the biggest job ever taken up, picked out chaps who caught fish." Think of Nova Scotia, the fishing smacks, the men who are not afraid, those who go down to the deep in ships, they see the wonders of the Lord while they do their duty for their families. There is conservation of the quality of life by the un-boasting and the uncomplaining, heroic commonplaces of daily toil. With quiet tenacity, against conditions of discomfort which cannot be escaped, and carelessness of personal ease such men teach us how to live. Then we have waterways, and water powers, not merely to illuminate houses and run cars, but to enlarge leisure by having our heaviest tasks done by man's further alliance with the electric current. Then we have minerals and lands. Each of these merits more than a discourse for itself. I feel the incompleteness, the insufficiency, of my statements of our resources and our efforts towards conservation. However, just a word about lands, good land and fertile land.

Take an example, one only. Seager Wheeler lives north of Regina. How our hearts go out in sympathy to those people who suffer from nature's inhuman manifestation of her strength. (A reference to the Regina cyclone of the day before.) I have not learned to look up through nature's devastations to nature's God, but I have learned to look through human life to man's God,--Whose tender mercies are over all His other works. Seager Wheeler lives north of Regina. Out at the Experimental Farm, where we were on Saturday, Dr. Saunders, patiently, quietly, modestly, brought together a strain of wheat from Calcutta and a strain of wheat from the North-West. A new child is born unto us in Wheatland. Seager Wheeler gets some of that wheat and begins the process of selection on his own farm, "the best out of the best for the best." Last autumn I was in New York at the back-to-the-land exposition. A thousand dollar prize in gold was there for the man who would bring the best bushel of wheat from anywhere on the continent. The judges were expert men from the United States, and Seager Wheeler from the middle of our North-West plains won the thousand dollar prize for his bushel of wheat from that part of our land. More than that, I have a photograph of the plot from which this bushel of wheat was taken, and it measured up 80 2-3 bushels to the acre. No wonder we think well of our land, and you folks want to get some of it.

One other sentence only, otherwise I should be beguiled into talking far too long about our lands. In these days, dangerous in their clamors for bigness and swiftness and luxury, one needs to remind himself that satisfactions do not come from these things, but from honest labor whereby one conserves the strength and beauty of some part of nature and man, and develops power and joy in another unit of nature and man, making the earth and man rejoice together. Truly a nation's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things it possesseth.

=On What We Are Doing=

We in Canada are happy in the occupations of the people, as well as in the setting of our lives. What has occupation to do with conservation? Occupation conserves the best that humanity has achieved in human beings themselves. Not books? It would be a loss if all the books were taken from us,--it would be a loss somewhat modified by the advantages. But whosoever will offend one of these little ones in whom is conserved all the achievements and attainments of the race to this day, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck. The menace of books is that they sometimes crush down and crush out the aspiration of young life for joy in constructive, creative, co-operative labor, through merely selfish, silent reading for gratification. We are happy in the occupations of our people that minister to greatness in character. A new country like ours needs the constructing and conquering qualities, more than the sedentary, absorbing, remembering capacities. The farmer follows one of the conquering, constructive occupations, gathering wealth out of the otherwise chaos. His labor creates wealth and conserves the health and virility of the people. What a grudge I have against the modern factory that, in making things, debases men. I do my thinking aloud in a meeting like this. Therefore I do not flatter. I will warrant we should not have women, as I have seen them, working in factories, with poor air and little sunshine amid the infernal rattle of machinery, if we believed in our heart of hearts that things were for homes and that good homes for all the people was the dominant object of a strong nation. Why should I have cloth in my house because it is cheap--when it is transfused by the blood of women in Leeds? Why should I want a coat on my back that carries with it the stain of tears from children who have had no chance? Why should I walk easily in boots, factory-made in order that they may be a dollar a pair cheaper, when I have seen women atrophied by the monotonous poverty of their job who should have been mothering a family and nursing the aspirations of young people? We do not want to have things, things, things as our idols and our end in life.

The fundamental occupations which engage the large majority of our people are farming, making homes and teaching and training the young. The farm, the rural home and the rural school together provide the opportunities and means of culture in forms which children and grown people can turn into power--power of knowledge, of action and of character. Farming is much more than moving soil, sowing grain, destroying weeds and harvesting crops. It is taking care of part of the face of Mother Earth as a home for her children. Making homes is much more than building houses and providing furniture, food, clothing and things. It is creating a temple, not made with hands, as a place of culture for the Divine in us. Those who live by agriculture are not all of the earth earthy, and the rural home is a fine school for the soul. Teaching and training the young is much more than instructing children in the arts of reading, writing and reckoning--those flexible, useful tools of the intellect. Much of the time of the school has been consumed in these tasks; but now we come to a happier day when those arts can be acquired joyfully in less than a year and a half, instead of painfully, reluctantly and with difficulty as spread over six years. The main portion of the school time will soon be devoted to caring for the health, the habits and the standards of the pupils while watching and directing the development of their powers of body, mind and spirit.

These three fundamental mothering occupations in Canada nourish and sustain all the others, such as commerce, manufacturing, transportation and the professions. By means of them, followed as well as they can be by an educated and cultured people, the country will be kept prosperous and fertile. It can be made beautiful only by radiant homes, whence youth will go forth from generation to generation to refine life by their characters, to exalt it by their ideals and to improve its conditions by intelligent labor.

I must say a word or two as to whence we got the impetus, the stimulus, towards conservation. Intelligent, conscious, planned and organized effort for conservation came to us from Washington. We are the Washington of the North in more ways than one, and I think I express, if I may venture to do so, the hope and conviction of my friend Sir Wilfrid Laurier when I say that, a hundred years hence and less, the Washington of the North will be more than abreast of the Washington of the South because of the influence, the moulding influence, of climate and homes and schools such as we in this country will have. But the Washington of the South had a great gathering in 1908, when the Governors of all the States and others were assembled to consider conservation. I read the report of the proceedings with some care. Then I turned more than once to read, right after it, an old classic about a gathering in the time of King Ahasuerus, the gathering of the governors of 127 provinces. And I laid down the Bible with the conviction that that Ahasuerus assembly was no higher in its essence and in its fruits than a pow-wow debauch of Indian chiefs on the plains. Take the setting and the spirit of the Ahasuerus crowd--self-seeking, careless of human rights, neglectful of children's claims. That story was worth recording as a great exhibition of monstrous selfishness, the thing itself--worth avoiding, worth opposing, worth smiting to the death every time it rears its ugly greedy head. On the other hand, consider Washington. The governors of sovereign states come together, for what? Not to consider how they might enrich themselves at the expense of the weak and those in their care, but how they might conserve for all the people, the property of all the people, for the benefit of all the people, for the longest stretch of time. That was a great gathering. It will go down in history as marking a new epoch in human activity and endeavor. And whatever may be said amid the transient controversies of party politics, the name of Theodore Roosevelt will stand out illustrious for leadership in a new effort for conservation that saves, not merely forests and material resources, but that saves moral earnestness among the people. I have no sympathy, myself, with your own harsh criticism of these political conventions you are holding now in the States. Not being a politician, I can speak of politics without fear. May I tell you what my thinking has been? Perhaps only twice before did the United States ever get such service, such an awakening--when you had the struggle for liberty, and, afterwards, the war for freedom. What means the present commotion which bursts through conventional conventions of polite speech? Is it not that you shall be saved from a supine sense of satisfaction with having only things--from the loss of great concepts of justice and right aflame in moral earnestness? I rejoice with you that we are indebted to Washington for impetus and stimulus in moral earnestness regarding forests and other resources. That is Gifford Pinchot's contribution--not to make lumber cheap, but to make the land fertile and prosperous, that boys and girls may be beautiful and strong and glad. Worth while is the moral earnestness that uses materials only as the mechanism of its efforts for the improvement of life.

Then Canadians attended officially another meeting in Washington in 1909, came back and Parliament instituted a Commission of Conservation. That Commission has been at work for three years seeking to serve our people by showing how they could improve themselves as well as their circumstances through effort to conserve their resources.

On the Provincial experimental farm in Wellington County, Ont., Professor Zavitz works. He took thin, light grains from a variety of oats, and sowed those by themselves; and, from the same variety, he took plump, heavy, dark grains, and sowed these by themselves. For twelve years he followed that plan on the same soil, under the same climate, with the same management. At the end of twelve years the crop from this plump seed rose by twenty-six bushels more to the acre and ten and a half pounds more to the bushel than the crop from the poor seed. That was conservation secured by intelligent application and good management. You can do that with life as well as with seed and with land. The long distance aim as well as the local object of conservation is to make Canada a better country to live in and a more beautiful country to love; and to make Canadians a people of greater vigor, finer texture and nobler character.

=On What We Are Seeking=

We in Canada are a composite sample of life. We have come to us Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Gallic, Teutonic, Slavonic and others. All these streams of blood flow over Canada and mingle in us. It is not any longer with us merely a toleration of an individual or of an idea from Russia--or the States--but an appreciation of the person and the idea, to make them serve our people better. There is conservation in that. The best we have inherited is the quality of life. Our more immediate ancestors loved liberty, prized intelligence and cherished justice. These they had won by courage, by struggle, by patience and by privation. They left them to us to be improved by education. Concepts such as these are what count in the great issues of life.

Let me without any offense or bad taste be personal and speak of one of my ancestors. He has been dead a long time. I didn't know him. But not infrequently I can feel the thrill and the efforts at domination of his convictions and his habits. I remember a dog biting me. I could have strangled the creature with my hands. I did not learn that in school, but I had the instinct in me from that old ancestor. I can think of him in a cave, living a bare coarse life. But he conserved the chance for the babies; and the lion and the wolf and the bear could not stand against the club and the fire which he used for the protection of his wife and children. Coarse! Of course he was. A thing of paws and claws and jaws! But he conserved his concepts of duty, his ideals of protection for the young and the weak. His concepts and the labors and struggles they involved by and by refined his body. Then, ages afterwards, 20,000 or 30,000 years afterwards, we had Lord Lister. Two hundred and fifty thousand women saved annually through the service of his refined brain and his trained hands, and his large concepts of duty. And we had Florence Nightingale; and you had Abraham Lincoln. And we all have everybody and anybody that conserves concepts of joy and glory through duty discharged by constructive, contributing labor, social service and abiding good will. In these and others innumerable we have a heritage, not made with hands.

Time fails me even to name all our other heritages which are not in material resources. There are customs, institutions, laws, manners, ideas, traditions, standards, ideals, art, songs, language and books. Books are more than material things. They are material humanized into food for the mind and spirit as soil and air may be glorified into apples and flowers for the senses. Sometimes produced with immense pains, they bring infinite joys. The Kingdom hath come to us for such a time as this when a new day dawns for happiness and well-being on earth.

Some of the means under modern conditions through which further advances in the formation and conservation of character are to be looked for are,--first those which lead young people to the achievement of joy through the processes of labor as distinguished from its wages or other rewards. Every child who is given a fair chance can manage that. In this a little child may lead us. Secondly, those which produce the pleasure of working together for some end believed to be good for all. Will not school pupils and older students work themselves into social efficiency, by co-operating in productive labor, as well as play themselves into ability by means of team games? Both together are better than twice as much of either alone. Thirdly, those which yield gladness through creative work whereby each individual strives to give expression to his own concepts of utility and beauty in concrete things as well as in words and other symbols. The insistence, by school and college, upon passive receptiveness for prolonged periods may have disciplined the mind for the perception of symbols, and the understanding of theories and rules. But has not the heaping of instruction upon enforced passivity led to an atrophy of the love of constructive creative labor? Immobility in classes all day long is not goodness. That sort of thing is the one persisting attribute of the dead or the nearly moribund. Every man who actively conserves these constructive, co-operative, creative powers, and achieves joy and satisfaction through their exercise, saves himself and becomes a saving factor in his community. In doing these things he transfuses the routine of life by a spirit of trained intelligence, cultured ability and habitual good will. The use of books and book-information are a helpful aid to the growth of mental power, the development of moral ideas and the progress of education. Books furnish some of the food and stimulus to thought. But when these are not turned into service through action, they become so much cloying debris upon vitality.

I have happily seen enough in the last few years to bring me to the conclusion, that, in less than ten years on this continent, all children from rural homes will come to the schools at 6 or 7 years of age able to speak better than they speak now, and able to write and read and to figure up to division. They will come to school able to do all that, having played themselves into ability. We have been on wrong lines in making a child take up a book at six, and so far as schooling is concerned, stay under the domination of a book until he is sixteen. Then he has been liberated into a laboratory, or into life, and says, "Thank the Lord that book business is done!" That is not wise, that is not safe. How the book has menaced humanity in recent years, on all sides, by its insistence that reading is the end of education, the main means and object of culture, instead of being merely a contributing means toward the larger end of living. You people concerned with books must take the bread of life in your hands and minister to life, not under the guise of book-learning, but for the formation of habits and standards and fine ideals.

Put into the language of everyday life the main steps in every complete educational experience are: observing, thinking, feeling and managing towards and into some form of expression. It appears to me that the closer in point of time the steps are taken together, the greater the growth of power and the surer the formation of habits. Frequency of experience is what forms habits and not repetitions of instructions or information. In so far as these experiences can have close relation to the threefold activities demanded by life, so much the better for the culture of the student, even if not so complimentary to a subject or its professor. I mean the activities which we explain as those of body, mind and spirit in the individual's capacity as an earner, a member of society and a trustee in the scheme of life. No doubt this runs counter to the common notion that culture--even real culture as a process and as a result--develops and implies a certain aloofness from the practical work done by men and women to earn their living, and a sweet, or sour, sense of superiority to utilitarian questions of bread and butter. But we must not forget that invigorating toil--invigorating bodily toil--is the only known road to health, strength and happiness. Nowadays culture is becoming a term almost as elusive as education itself. Agriculture was doubtless the root, the root word as well as the fundamental process, of human culture. The man on the farm gets some light on its intrinsic nature from his occupation. To him culture stands for crops, the best in quality and the largest in quantity that can be obtained, for the suppression of weeds, insects and disease, and for the increase of beauty and fertility. Culture has no origin in idleness, indolence or sloth. These make for the corrosion of all the vigors of the physical and mental and moral nature. Culture means plowing and harrowing and sowing and hoeing. It means labor and sorrow as well as play and flowers. It means the ripping of the iron share as well as the genial affection of the sun. Culture is far deeper than the polite polish on the skin of manners and speech. It is not gained by the mere learning of languages, living or dead, or the acquisition of knowledge, scientific or superstitious, in the poetic meaning of that word. It is the residuum, the leftover, such as it is, in character--in body, in mind and in spirit--after every completed educational experience. From actual practice comes skill in the finest of all fine arts, the fine art of living happily together while working for some good end. Alike in school and college, on farm and in factory, in shop and office, in home duties and public affairs, that kind of life develops a quick sense of responsibility, it establishes good standards close by which are understood, it nourishes conscience and strengthens the will-energy towards further culture, better work and happier living. These things we seek to conserve, using our material resources for the enrichment of the quality of life we have inherited, in order to pass it on undiminished and unimpaired.

=On What We Stand For=

This end of an educated people, cultured in character, which itself is only a means towards the largest end, is worth striving for and worth living for. All life is an unceasing struggle. The point is to choose the right objects and means. In the past, humanity has been winning all along the line with an occasional setback such as threatens the present. Its warfare is ever against ignorance, helplessness, poverty, disease, vice and ill-wills. Education is to train individuals for that warfare. Its endeavors are most successful when the experiences which it provides for each individual are in themselves a vital part of the hard campaign. It must ever vary its strategy and tactics and weapons, as the field of operations is moved forward. Times change and we change with them. The need of the times is education to qualify us all to achieve satisfaction through labor and service and good will.

Finally, I present to you the more excellent graces of conservation as earnestness, cheerfulness and the habit of cherishing and following high ideals. At first these are rather traits of character in embryo than fixed attitudes or habits of mind. The particular and specific disciplines of life and of good books are to correct softness, to promote gentleness and to develop a capacity for enduring and enjoying hardness as a good soldier of truth, beauty and goodness in everyday life. In reality, each individual disciplines himself in liberty, by self-government, by diligence, by rational obedience to authority and by co-operation. The discipline which develops character and power is administered from within; external regulations are like the finger posts to indicate the open path and also the place where trespassing is forbidden. In the choice and in the action is discipline. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" is at the parting of the ways every morning, and is seldom displayed in prominence at the dramatic crises of life. Habits are grown in quiet ways, like the shapes of trees and the budding and ripening of fruit. They become the destiny "which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." The librarian and every other citizen who lives and moves and has his being in an atmosphere of earnestness, cheerfulness and high ideals, is ready for his best work. Such men and women go through life with open minds, with broad sympathies, and appreciative respect for all the worthy achievements and attainments of men and women, of boys and girls. Their patriotism, their humanity, in brief, their conservation of character, finds its best accomplishment in making and leaving a better place, with a better path, for better children, to carry the torch of life onward and upward, clearer and stronger, because of what they have been and done.