Volume 139

An Assault on

Democratic Education

J

ONATHAN M. DAVIS, retiring Governor of Kansas, defeated for re-election last November, has stirred up a hornets' nest by his attempt to remove from office, without a hearing, the Chancellor of the University of Kansas, Dr. Ernest H. Lindley.

On the face of it the action of the Governor is a raw attempt to use the State University for party politics. The Chancellor had refused to dismiss University employees to make way for political appointees. He sought to prevent the removal, by the State Board of Administration, of the Dean of the School of Medicine. It is reported that the Ku Klux Klan had induced the Governor to discharge the superintendent of buildings and grounds of the University in spite of the Chancellor's resistance. The conflict between the Governor and the Chancellor, however, did not become a real issue until the Governor attempted to interfere with the instructing staff.

The actual authority to remove the Chancellor rests with a body which has control of the penal institutions of the State as well as the University. This State Board of Administration is headed by the Governor. The other members are the Governor's appointees. In a public statement following the vote of ouster Governor Davis, besides charging that the University had made purchases contrary to law, asserted that he had discharged the Chancellor for incompetency, insubordination, procrastination, political activity, and aloofness from the people and the student body. The charge of "aloofness" was at once repudiated by resolutions passed during the Christmas vacation by students living in Lawrence, the seat of the University, and remaining in Lawrence for the vacation -a charge on which they rightly declared themselves to be "first-hand judges." In the mass of rumors and reports which obscure some of the reasons for this action, some facts are clear. These are that the Governor acted during the University vacation, when the Chancellor's chance for defensive action was the smallest; that the Governor is

January 7, 1925

a Democrat and is to be succeeded on January 12 by a Republican, Ben S. Paulen; that the votes of the Board for the removal of the Chancellor were cast solely by its Democratic members; and that the attempt at removal has been temporarily blocked by a court injunction.

It is believed, not without reason, that the purpose of the Governor in taking

Wide World Photos

Ernest Hiram Lindley, Chancellor of the University of Kansas, removed by Governor Davis

this action just before his term ends has been to embarrass his successor, and to been to embarrass his successor, and to provide issues for a contemplated return to politics when his successor's term ends two years from now.

Dr. Lindley is a scholar of standing and an experienced administrator. He is a Bachelor and Master of Arts of Indiana University, a Doctor of Philos-. ophy of Clark University, and a Doctor of Laws of Indiana University and the State University of Iowa. After serving on the Faculty of Indiana University for twenty-four years, he became President of the University of Idaho, and from there was called to the Chancellorship of the University of Kansas.

Our whole system of democratic education is threatened when it is invaded

Number I

by politics. This is not merely the concern of Kansas, it is the concern of the whole American people. The very charge of insubordination which the Governor brings against the Chancellor is an assertion of political control over education which ought to be resented everywhere in America. If this incident results in depriving the Kansas State Board of Administration of its power or changing the character of the Board, Governor Davis may have unwittingly done the State a good turn.

North Carolina's Fine Example

N

ORTH CAROLINA is now appropriat

ing for Negro education nearly four million dollars a year, a sum greater than the State expended for its entire educational programme, white and colored, in any year prior to 1910. This was the startling statement made by Professor N. C. Newbold, of the State Department of Education, at the annual Conference on Negro Education held in Raleigh a few days ago.

During the past four years the State has expended $15,000,000 for the education of its colored citizens, and is preparing to appropriate as much more for this purpose in the four years just ahead, according to Professor Newbold, who heads the department of Negro education. Eleven years ago the total appropriated for this purpose was $225,000 a year. Of the four-year budget $2,200,000 went for higher education. Colored high schools have increased in number from 13 in 1921 to 34 in 1924, and high school students from 1,347 to 5,341.. The number of colored teachers has increased in four years from 3,779 to 5,037. The salaries paid these teachers during the four years aggregate about $7,000,000.

The greatest need for the immediate future, Mr. Newbold declared, is a standard four-year teachers' college, which he thought would be provided by the next Legislature. After that must come a four-year standard college of liberal arts.

Both races, said Mr. Newbold, are coming to realize the need for colored doctors, lawyers, nurses, and other professionally trained leaders. "North Caro

lina has faith in its Negro people," he continued. "It has spent millions for their education, and it believes that there should be one standard for teachers, and not two."

The Conference was attended by the State Superintendent of Education and by many other prominent educators of both races from North Carolina and other States. It was widely and favorably commented on by the press of the State. The Salisbury "Post" thus expressed the general feeling: "All rightthinking people will be not only willing but anxious that the State undertake a bigger and a better programme of help for the Negroes. . . . It must not allow this good work to lag."

Scientists Emergent

A

T the end of 1916 scientific forces in America were ready to launch a tremendous concerted movement with a The field of scientific double objective. The field of scientific research was to be extended until it included all nature. That, of course, was the ideal. The appeal of science was to be broadened until it reached all people. That, again, was the ideal. But some reality on the road toward these ideals was to be attained, and a committee of one hundred eminent scientists, from the various groups composing the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was appointed to work out the programme of attainment.

Science was not taken up at the end of the war, nor at the meeting following, nor at the one following that. Only just now, at the meeting of the Association being held in Washington as this issue of The Outlook goes to press, have the hands that rough-shaped the thing gone back to their molding.

Of the one hundred men who composed the committee at the outset, seventy-nine are left. Twenty-one new names have been added. How the programme will be carried out, how far toward the ideal the actual will reach, how much further nature will yield to research, and how deeply humanity in the mass can be interested in scientific achievement these things are for the future.

But it is good to know that after almost eight years the war is so nearly enough over that some of the larger of peace-time enterprises can be resumed. Perhaps Americans, who suffered comparatively little, may be reminded by this of the larger sufferings of some other nations and be made by that reminder somewhat more sympathetic toward a slower recovery.

As to the proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the scores of specialized scientific groups of which it is composed, The Outlook hopes to say more in another issue.

With the spring of 1917 came Ameri- Why Not a War of Exterminaupon the Typhoid Germ?

can participation in the World War. Famed scientist and foot soldier alike sought no longer the land of heart's desire, but turned their diverse talents, the one his breast and the other his brain, toward the bristle of German bayonets.

The great programme of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was abandoned. The men into whose hands it had been intrusted turned away from it lovingly, perhaps reluctantly, as the farmer boy left his whitening field of wheat, as the novelist said farewell to his story just ripening to its climax.

The war was over in nineteen months, but the farm boy did not go immediately back to his wheat field nor the novelist to his tale. The great deeps of human nature were profoundly moved by the war winds of those nineteen months. In the main, it was beyond the power of man to go straight back to the work he had left.

So the programme of the American Association for the Advancement of

tion

E

WE

germ.

again have with us conspicuously the oyster and the typhoid Unlike Mark Twain's comment upon the weather and our failure "to do anything about it," the present situation is entirely man-made. With man alone lies the possibility and responsibility for correction. How? Man cannot by taking thought add one cubit to his stature, but he can by individual thoughts and organized public action outlaw the typhoid germ, and ultimately exterminate it. We already have sufficient biological knowledge for marking out the course of procedure. The germ is kept alive by only a few factors: (a) human personal carelessness in typhoid cases; (b) lack of knowledge and of personal responsibility on the part of the public and of municipal and State legislative bodies, and of executive officers; (c) lack of correlation between the engineering and the biological sciences.

Since there is no possible chance for the continued existence of typhoid other

than the escape of typhoid germs from a typhoid patient or carrier, is it not of prime consequence that a degree of sanitary control more rigid than now exists should be maintained around each case of typhoid to prevent the escape of typhoid germs? Here the responsibility is concentrated primarily on the individual, be it the patient, even before he becomes a known victim of typhoid, a "walking case," or the doctor, nurse, or person in charge of the patient. The prime need is impressive. It is for thorough instruction as to the facts of the disease and as to personal responsibility, so that the patient shall not after convalescence and apparent recovery become a public menace by spreading the typhoid in an endless chain system.

The

The final step is the development of a better correlation between the biological sciences and engineering science. citizen who dumps sewage or even an obnoxious smell into his neighbor's yard is promptly and effectively estopped. The sanitary engineer may do a similar thing on a grand scale, with the consent of municipal and State authorities, and be hailed as a public benefactor.

Is it not time that the public awaken to certain economic iniquities incidental to some present methods of sewage disposal? Too many engineers still believe that public watercourses and the ocean are providential and naturally legitimate places for sewage disposal.

What is the direct result? Sewage, instead of liquefying through oxidation and nitrification as on land, on reaching salt water precipitates as a slimy, putrefying sludge, long persisting, and slowly emanating poisonous compounds. In brackish water the organic sewage comes into contact with various mollusks, among numerous other organisms. Some of the disease-producing sewage-borne bacteria are by them ingested, and may live within the digestive tract of the mollusk for a longer period than they would if they had not been filtered out of the water by the mollusk.

What is the economic, apart from the serious sanitary effect? Contrary to the general conception, the entire ocean is not prolific of fishes and shell-fishes directly valuable for human food. Such are practically limited to the shallow waters surrounding the continents, relatively a very restricted area, but under natural conditions prodigously productive from an economic point of view for the production of human food, the most. valuable, acre for acre, of any lands upon

the globe. This value is greatly enhanced by proximity to a great market, like New York, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco. Yet we proceed deliberately not only to destroy the natural productive capacity of this area by the discharge of waste oils, but, worse, to make it a positive menace to public health by using it as a dumping-place for sewage and similar wastes. We do this because, offhand, it appears "easiest and cheapest."

Our public policy still permits, but cannot justify, such procedure. The oyster, though by nature pre-eminently a clean feeder, is made "the goat." Oyster growers alone are powerless to meet the situation. Their investments are being wiped out, the public equity is ruined, public health is put in jeopardy, and will remain so until every State takes action to regulate and to control the disposal of raw sewage both at each individual source and in municipal aggregates.

In our present legalized practices of disposal of raw sewage we spend millions of dollars in engineering feats, but incur thereby a perennial economic loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in wastage of human food supplies and human life. The blame is on every State legislator who longer permits the introduction of raw sewage, oils, and similar substances into public waters. There only is the complete answer.

Filterable Viri

RID, temporarily at least, of foot-and

mouth disease, the scientists of the United States Bureau of Animal Industry find themselves confronted with another disease, this time of fowls, quite as virulent, quite as difficult to deal with, and much more widespread than footand-mouth disease has ever been in the United States. It is fowl pest or European chicken plague. There are said to be at least eighteen infection spots in ten Middle Western States. Fowls have been dying in tremendous numbers in transit, and some of the large cities are in a panic of fear over the arrival of dead fowls in markets, and, particularly in New York City, the eating even of eggs is looked upon with suspicion. This is revealed by letters received by the Bureau of Animal Industry. In fact, the disease is not communicable to human beings.

New York has placed an embargo upon the ten States known to be infected. California also has, quarantined against

these States. Meanwhile the disease spreads, threatening an industry which has a turnover of more than a billion dollars a year, and the Department of Agriculture has had no money with which to fight it by quarantine. Finally, however, an appropriation of $100,000 was put through for this purpose.

Nothing is known of curative measures. The remedy, if there is one, must

P. & A. Photos

New York City inspectors examining poultry in the cars

be by suppression. About all that is known is that it is the result of what pathologists call a filterable virus, much like that of foot-and-mouth disease of cattle.

Something is to be attempted, at last, toward the discovery of a cure for the latter disease. The Outlook called attention some weeks ago to the fact that the impossibility of preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease is such that the Secretary of Agriculture has steadfastly Secretary of Agriculture has steadfastly refused permission to experiment with it in the United States. Every outbreak has been controlled by ruthless destruction of infected animals. Dr. John R.

Mohler, Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, has now asked permission of the Secretary to send three scientists to some foreign country where foot-andmouth disease is already widely prevalent, there to carry on experiments looking to the discovery of a cure.

Building to Starve the Rat

A

VESSEL came into New Orleans recently, and two days later a man on board fell ill with bubonic plague. The Public Health Service fumigated the ship, took out thirty-nine dead rats, and found nine of them plague-infected. This little incident lends point to an inquiry as to what the United States is doing to get rid of rats.

In an official way, the United States is fighting the rat persistently and intelligently. It has spread the word in numerous pamphlets that this country has probably as many rats as human inhabitants, and that the rats yearly destroy about as much as the work of two hundred thousand men would produce. The Bureau of Biological Survey in its bulletins has told people just how to poison rats, to lure them with fried bacon. toasted cheese, and like delicacies into the guillotine trap, and, best of all, how to make buildings rat-proof by means of cement bases. It has sent out movingpicture films and posters showing the rat at his worst. Far from stopping at mere precept, it has pitched in and lent its experts to cities, like Little Rock, that are organizing rat drives.

In spite of years of well-directed work. it does not appear that the numbers of rats have been generally or permanently thinned. The Government hunters have had notable success in reducing the numbers of the larger predatory beasts, the wolves and mountain lions, but the rat still holds his own. The trouble is that he breeds faster than sporadic and local efforts can kill him off. It has been figured that a single pair of rats could produce a posterity of over three hundred and fifty millions in the course of three years. One might almost as well hope to exterminate mosquitoes or, microbes by trapping them as to conquer so prolific a creature as the rat by any plan of campaign that merely slays.

The Government authorities believe none the less that our most harmful predatory animal can be virtually made to cease from troubling if his human victims will but take the pains to shut off his places of refuge and his sources of supply. Lining the bases of several mill