our young people of to-day so that they may become the leaders of the New York of the future? The young people themselves are answering that question. It is their answer to that question that causes ten thousand of them after their day's work to crowd into the evening high schools, where they are toiling away at their commercial studies, familiarizing themselves with literature, making themselves acquainted with foreign languages, studying mathematics. And in doing all these things they are acquiring the

in order that the Committee might obtain information as to the kind of work, if any, each one was doing, what wage he was receiving, whether he was satisfied with his work and his pay, and as to other details.

"By an examination of these cards it was found that twenty-eight students were out of employment," the report on the experiment reads. "During the first week in January every one of this number who was found in his place at 7:30, the hour for opening, when he was sent for by the committee having the matter

ment.

"Lists were made of young persons who seemed to deserve better employment than that in which they were engaged. One boy, son of a widow, graduate of an elementary school, an attendant at the evening school for two terms with a good record, having ambitions to enter a publishing house, was employed at $3.50 per week in a package delivery house. place was secured for him with a stationer at $5 per week, with assurances of an opportunity to learn a trade.

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A young man who had secured a certificate as a typewriter was employed as a packer at $9 per week, where there seemed no prospect for advancement. A position as stenographer was secured for him at $15 per week.

"A boy seventeen years old, who held a certificate in geometry and algebra, and who was engaged in a small real estate office at $5 per week, was placed in an insurance office at $7.50 per week, with promises of an increase of $5 per month every six months.

"In one week's work the Committee was enabled to add to the earning power of the students of the school $59 per week. It means more than $3,000 per year, because the students who were aided were helped to places where they could use their best powers."

As chairman of the Committee on Incentives of the Students' Aid Committee, Mr. Weaver sometimes hands his pupils in the evening schools tracts like the following, which is headed "Does an Education Pay?" with problems to be solved in connection with them :

The father was a gray-haired mechanic. I first met him at a summer boarding-house. He was somewhat of a fisherman. So was I. For several days we sat together on the sunny bank of a quiet stream waiting for the fish that rarely came. We became well acquainted. He had landed in this country at the age of fifteen and began to work in a shop at two dollars a week. He learned to speak English and later he learned to write. He also learned a trade, and had fairly steady work with good pay. He could give his sons what advantages they desired, but he let them choose their own future. His wife was a careful housekeeper, and from her account books he made me a statement of the cost and earnings of his four boys. He estimated that it costs a father two thousand dollars to

William left school at the age of fourteen and secured a place in an office. He was promoted from time to time until he was at the head of one of the departments. His commercial training he received at the evening schools.

Maurice left school at fourteen and began work in an office; later he served an apprenticeship with a mechanic, and has now been working at his trade for seven years.

Fred entered the central grammar school and continued in school until he was seventeen, after which he received some special training in the evening classes of Cooper Institute. He went to work in the office of a contractor and builder, and later he became a superintendent of construction.

Albert prepared for college in the high school, entered a professional school, and began the practice of his profession at the age of twenty-two, first as an employee of a corporation, and four years later he started out as a private practitioner.

The following table gives the earnings of each up to the age of 30:

30.

560 832 1,060 1,650 2,200

One can believe that the figuring out of the problems that follow would fix very definitely in a young man's mind the fact that an education does pay. These are the problems:

1. From the age of 26 to the age of 30 what was the average increase per annum for each of the four boys? At the same yearly rate of increase what would be the yearly income of each at 40 years of age?

2. Supposing at the age of 30 each man would spend 10% of his income for his summer vacation, write a composition on what kind of a trip each could have.

3. If each of the four brothers at the age of 30 would pay 20% of his income for rent, what kind of a home could each have? Describe a house in your neighborhood which each one could rent.

4. Supposing that their incomes would remain the same as at 30, how much would the total earnings of each be at 40 and at 50 years of age?

"There are in New York City to-day," says Mr. Weaver, "thousands of young

The sums with the minus sign indicate the cost of education in years before earnings began.

people who have been trained to high ideals in the homes of self-sacrificing parents, who have deserved and received considerate treatment in the schools, and who have enjoyed the respect and esteem of their youthful associates, who have afterward gone out to earn their own living in those occupations which are usually open to young people, the workers in which are for the most part unorganized and unprotected. Too frequently these young people have been compelled to wander around for days in an aimless search for employment; they have often been made to believe that they were worth nothing; they have been persuaded to accept places at pitiful wages with promises of advancement, in which they have afterward learned that there were never any prospects of advancement; they have outgrown places in which there was no special skill or knowledge to be acquired, from which they were turned out without faith either in themselves or in their fellow-men, or belief in the existence of a sense of fairness or justice in society.

"However well equipped the barks in which the youthful sailors launch out in the troublesome seas of commercial and industrial life may be, the chances are against them unless they are provided with sailing directions. Since society must in some way or other care for the disheartened, the broken-spirited, and the ruined, it might be well for society to provide the sailing directions. The schools should be prepared to give these necessary directions to those of their students who are ready to leave them and those who are compelled to leave. The managers of the schools have an intimate knowledge of the qualifications and capabilities of the young men who pass out from their care. This intimate knowledge is of value to the employer. It ought to be made available to him. If this knowledge is available to the employer, he will be able to save the time which is now required to reply to applicants for places and to interview those who respond to his advertisements for help. It will enable him to secure those who are most likely to possess the special training or aptitudes which his service demands.

"The employers of this rapidly growing city need all the young people who go out

from the schools. In working out a plan to enable deserving young people to make immediate connections with suitable, profitable, and promising employments, the schools will be able to save for education the maximum of the child's time, to minimize to the students the possibilities of vocational misfits, and to reduce to the employers the loss of time that results from the employment of incompetents for probationary periods.

"The general adoption of such a plan will bring about the organization of edu cational forces, the training shops of factories, the offices of the commercial houses of the city, into a vocational university of the highest type without materially increasing the present outlay for education. There should be in every day and evening high school, and in every college and fitting school, one specially well informed teacher with a proper allowance of time to attend to this work; to have accommodations for holding conferences with students and groups of students, and proper facilities for keeping systematic records of the industrial and commercial careers of those who go out from the school."

As tending to bring about mutually advantageous co-operation between the schools and commercial and industrial institutions, Mr. Weaver has already made a proposition to the bankers and the insurance companies. Many of the schoolboys who enter employment as messengers and errand-boys, for instance, are not educationally fitted for higher positions, and not all of them are willing to continue their studies at the night schools, arguing that they are entitled to their evenings for amusement and recreation. Mr. Weaver's suggestion to the bankers and insurance men is that they allow these employees the time from three to five o'clock one or two days each week, in order that they may attend schools in convenient parts of the city, where they will receive instruction in the higher branches of banking and insurance from teachers of the High School of Commerce.

A vocation bureau in connection with the school is not an entirely novel proposition, although the one of which Mr. Weaver will be the head is the first to be established as an integral part of a public school system.

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OST people take it for granted that the question of superstitions is neither a " live issue" nor one that is open to discussion. They declare, in effect:

"What is there that can be said about superstitions except to condemn them? Is it not a universally acknowledged fact that superstition has been one of the greatest curses of mankind? Has it not been the means of sacrificing countless lives, parting husbands and wives, parents and children, and filling jails and madhouses with its victims? Think of the cruel wars, the merciless persecutions, the terrible delusions, it has engendered! Moreover, at this late day, in this twentieth century of knowledge and enlightenment, why bring up the subject of superstition at all? To-day only the uncivilized and the uneducated are superstitious."

This unquestionably represents a pretty general attitude, but an attitude based on two erroneous premises. The first is, that superstition always has been, and always will be, an unmixed evil. The second, that it cannot survive the progress of science and education. It may be a demonstrable fact that civilized communities no longer collectively stand in awe of the evil eye, hang witches, or tremble before practitioners of magic. It is equally demonstrable, however, that large numbers of individuals in such communities

men and women who pass as people of education-retain a lively faith in even the most absurd among the superstitions of their ancestors; as shown, for instance, by the Christian Scientist's dread of malicious animal magnetism and by the golden harvest reaped in every American city by fashionable fortune-tellers. And, even where such extravagances are absent, distinct traces of superstition are to be found in persons of the highest culture and refinement. In truth, we are all of us-or almost all of us-more or less superstitious. As Mr. Owen Wister, putting the words into the mouth of one of the characters of his notable novel "The Virginian," has so aptly phrased it:

"I expect in every man you'd call sensible there's a little boy sleepin'-the little kid that onced was-that still keeps his fear of the dark."

Three or four years ago-to be exact, on July 15, 1907-there was issued by the University of California a document which, it is to be feared, has not enjoyed a wide circulation, but which makes exceedingly interesting and not unimportant reading. It is a report by Mr. Fletcher B. Dresslar detailing the results of what may be called a census of superstitions.

On the attitude described above helpful light is thrown by Mr. Dresslar's census of superstitions. His object was to gain an idea of how far education has really suc