many districts will adopt it during the next two years. The practicability and
success of it can thus be demonstrated and compulsory attendance, stimulated
by these successful examples, will, I believe, spread like a blessed contagion
in a few years over the entire State.

improvement of Teachers and Increase of Teachers' Salaries. — "Without
the vitalizing touch of a properly qualitied teacher, bouses, grounds and
ecjuipmeut are largely dead mechanism. It is tlic teacher that breathes the
breath of life into the school. Better schools are impossible without better
teachers. Better teachers are impossible without better education, better
training, and better opportunities for them to obtain such education and train-
ing. Better education and better training and the utilization of better oppor-
tunities for these liy teachers are impossible without better pay for teachers.
Ileason as we ujay about it, gush as we may about the nobility of the work
and the glorious rewards of it hereafter, back of this question of better
teachers must still lie the cold business question of better pay.

"The average salary of rural white teachers in North Carolina in lOOS
was .$32.24 ; the average salary of colored teachers was .$22.48 ; the average
length of the rural school term was S!i.2 days for white and S2.1 days for col-
ored ; making the average annual salary of rural white teachers in North Caro-
lina, therefore, $143.84 and the average annual salary of rural colored teachers
$02.35. For such meager salaries men and women cannot afford to put them-
selves into the long and expensive training necessary for the best equipment
for this delicate and ditllcult work of teaching. The State may supply the
best opportunities that the age affords for the training of the teachers, but,
as lung as the rank and tile of them receive such )neager salaries, these
opportunities will be beyond their reach and they must inevitably divide
their attention between the service of two masters to make even a bare
living. As long as they must work at some other business for six or eight
months of the year, and at the business of school-teaching for only four
or live months, they can scarcely hope to become professional and masterful
teachers. The teacher who does something else eight months of the year for
a living and teaches school four months of the. year for extra money nmst
contiime to be more of something else than of a teacher.

"With short school terms, small salaries, poor schoolhouses, and other con-
ditions adverse to success, we cannot hope to command and retain first-class
talent in this business of teaching the rural school, however good or however
accessible the opportunities for improving teachers may be made. We must.
In the outset, face the cold business truth that, as the South conies more and
more rapidly into her industrial and agricultural heritage, and the channels



I



32 DocujEEXT Xo. .'!. [Sossiou

of profitable emijloymeut uiultiply, the best men and women in the profession
of teaching cannot be retained in' it, and little inducement will be offered to
other men and women of ambition, ability and promise to enter it unless the
compensation for the teacher's service is made somewhat commensurate with
that offered in other fields of labor. As long as the annual salary paid the
teacher who works uiion the immortal stuff of mind and soul is less than that
paid the rudest workers in wood and iron, less than that paid the man that
shoes your horse or plows your corn or paints your house or keeps your jail,
the best talent cannot be secured and kept in the teaching profession — the
teaching profession must continue to be made in many instances but a stepping-
stone to more profitable employments or a means of pensioning inellicieut and
needy mediocrity.

"The first step, then, in the direction of improvement of teachers is an
Increase in the salary of teachers so as to make it worth the while of capable
men and women to enter the profession of teaching, to remain in it, to put
themselves in training for it, and to avail themselves of the opportunity
offered for improvement. An increase in the monthly compensation and an
increase in the annual school term are the only two ways of increasing the
teacher's salary. The only means of increasing the compensation and the
school term is by increasing the available school funds for each school. The
only practical means of doing this under present conditions are consolidation
and local taxation.

"That the counties and districts that pay the best salaries secure, as a
rule, the best teachers, is the best evidence that this question of better teachers
is largely a question of better salaries. With the growth of ejiucational senti-
ment and enthusiasm the demand for better teachers has grown, but every
community that demands a better teacher ought to remember that the de-
mand is unreasonable and unlikely to be met unless the means for better pay
be provided by the community.

"The raising of the standard of examination and gradation of teachers will
be ineffective, and perhaps unfair, unless it is accompanied by a corre-
sponding increase in the wages of teachers. Of what avail will it be to
raise the requirements without raising the compensation, when even now,
with the present low standard of qualifications, it is almost impossible in
many counties to get enough teachers to teach the schools, and when even
now the same qualifications will command much better compensation in
almost any other vocation? The logical result of raising the standard of
examination and gradation without raising the prices paid would be to de-
crease the supply of teachers and render it practically impossible to supply
the schools with teachers. An increase in the requirements for teaching, a
multiplication of the opportunities for the improvement of teachers, and a
mandatory requirement of teachers to avail themselves of these opportuni-
ties, must in all reason and fairness be accompanied by a corresponding in-
crease in salary. Better work deserves and commands better pay."

The increase in teachers' salaries during the past ten years has not been
at all commensurate with the increase in living expenses, and with the
increase in salaries and wages of those engaged in other professions and
callings. In considering this question of the salary of the teacher, it must
be remembered that the teacher must live twelve months in the year, even
though he receives salary for only four or five or six months. The financial
demands upon the teachers must also be remembered. They must live and



I'JOIt.] Docu.MEXT No. 3. 33

dress well iu order to commaud the respect of the children and the patrons.
To maintain their professional growth and increase the effectiveness of their
work, they must spend a consideralile part of their salary for special courses
of work in summer schools and institutes, and for the purchase of profes-
."ional books and magazines. It must be remembered, also, that teachers must
look forward to the years when it will be impossible for them to teach, for.
as they grow old. they become less efficient for the arduous work of the school.
Their salaries, therefore, should be sufficient to lay aside something for old
age. as no pensions are provided for teachers. Finally, it should be remem-
bered that in a republic the intelligence, morality, power, effectiveness, and
earning capacity of the common people are dependent largely upon the work of
the teachers of the public schools, and that, therefore, their work is of the
most vital importance and should command a salary commensurate with its
importance. Unless jve can bring our people to a realization of these truths
and thereby create a public sentiment and a public demand for better salaries
for better teachers, the ranks of the rural school teachers will continue to
be tilled with many untrained, incompetent, inexperienced persons, using
this holiest of callings as a mere stepping-stone to some other profession or
calling, with mere tyros without seriou.s purpose, teaching for a short time
simply to make a support until something better turns up. There will con-
tinue to be a dearth of men. because they can command better salaries for
almost anything, even for breaking rocks on the road, than for teaching rural
schools a few months in the year. There will continue to be a dearth of
trained and experienced women of power, because such women can now easily
connnaiid f.ir lietter salaries in other callings open to women, and almost any
woman can command a larger annual salary for measuring calico and selling
tmttons than for training minds, inspiring souls and forming characters in
the rtiral schools. The situation is serious. The demand for good teachers,
and especially for good male teachers, is greatly in excess of the supply,
because the salaries paid will not command and retain such teachers. Let us
wage a campaign from mountain to sea, through press and public speech, for
the education of public sentiment to an appreciation of the teacher's work
and to an insistent demand for better compensation for that work.

Improvement of County Institutes and Summer Schools. — "In the mean-
time, some means must lio found for placing at small expense within easy
reach of the rank and tile of the teachers the best possible opportunities for
improvement under present conditions. These opportunities must lie carried to
the teachers. They cannot afford to go far nor to spend much money to get
them. I am satisfied, therefore, that the county institute, the county teachers'
association, and the summer school are at present the only practical means of
reaching and helping the ma.iority of the jioorly paid rural public school teach-
ers of the State. Those institutes should he a combination of an institute and
a summer scliool. affording the teachers an opportunity to increase their knowl-
e<lge of the jubjects taught and to learn by practical talks and object lessons
better wa.vs of teaching them. They should cnntimie not less than two weeks
nor more than a month. They should be held iu every county at least once in
two years, and attendance upon them should be, as now, compulsory.

"Heretofore the work of these institutes has been desultory. There has
been no systematic or uniform plan of work. There has been no progressive
and continuous development in the work. The institutes have been conducted



34 DocuMEXT N^o. 3. [Session

by different teucUers in different ways in different counties eacli year, some-
times conducted by men and women without experience or special fitness
for such worli, generally conducted by teachers with whom this work is a
mere incident to their regular work, adopted as a means of supplementing
their salaries during the vacation months. Four or five thousand dollars are
spent annually by the counties in this desultory work. Section 4107 of the
School Law now vests in the State Superintendent the power to appoint the
institute conductors and provides for the appropriation of not more than two
hundred and fifty dollars by each county for institute work. If this section
were amended so as to require each county to appropriate at least two hundred
dollars for a county iu.stitute and summer school once in two years, the State
Superintendent has in mind a plan l)y which he could easily organize this
institute and summer school work upon such a basis as would enable him to
employ trained men and women for it.

"Under this plan the work could be organized in such a way as to supple-
ment and give effectiveness to the professional work carried on through the
manuals ior teachers, issued as bulletins from time to time by the State
Department of Public Instruction. A systematic, progressive course of insti-
tute work could be arranged and put into successful execution whereby the
teachers would receive credit for the work done each year, and the same
teachers, after having completed one year's work, would not be required to
go over the same ground in the next institute. The successful completion of
the entire course of two or three years of institute and summer school work
might lead to the issuance of longer term certificates valid in other counties
of the State, and possibly to excusing from future compulsory attendance upon
county institutes and summer schools. In this way definiteness and direction
could be given to this work, greater incentive would be given the teachers
to attend and greater benefits in every way would be derived by attendance.
Much less difficulty, I have no doubt, would be experienced in securing attend-
ance, and there would be much less complaint about compulsory attendance.

"Tender this plan the institute and summer school work would cost but little
more than it now costs. Much more effective institutes and summer schools,
with much more eflScient conductors, would be held in every county of the
State for a longer term at least once in two years at a biennial expense
of about two hundred dollars to the county. Not one cent of State appro-
priation would be necessary. The only change in the School Law necessary to
secure this great improvement in the institute and summer school work
would be a change of section 4167 thereof so as to make the appropriation of
two hundred dollars by each county for institute and summer school work
mandatory once in two years instead of permissive, as at present.

"Other means of placing the opportunities of improvement within easy reach
of the rank and file of the teachers are the manuals on teaching the different
subjects issued as bulletins from the Department of Public Instruction, county
teachers' associations, and a State Teachers' Reading Circle. The work of
these should be correlated with the work of the county institutes and summer
schools. In the county associations, and in the institutes, and in the examina-
tions for teacliers' certificates, the teachers could be held responsible for the
work outlined in the teachers' manuals and in the course of study sent out
beforehand for the county institute, and in this way could be somewhat pre-
pared beforehand for the work of the institute. In this way a competent
County Superintendent, whose salary justified his giving his time to the



1!I09.] Document Xo. 3. ;35

work, could carry on all the year the same sort of work in teaeher-traluing
as is carried on by a competent superintendent of a town or city system of
schools, and the institute when it came would but enlarge and give effective-
ness and better direction to his work. As suggested above, teachers could be
incitetl and stimulated to carry on the work by being held responsible for it
in the examinations and institutes, and by having credit given for it in these
examinations and in longer term certificates valid in other counties."

By the addition of $1,200 to the amount now paid for salary and expenses
of a superintendent of the three colored normal schools, which position has
been made vacant by the death of the former Superintendent, Prof. John
Duckett, a man of the best professional training and experience could be em-
ployed as general superintendent and inspector of the entire teacher-training
work of the State. Such a man could organize, direct and supervise the entire
work of the county teachers" institutes and of the county teachers' associa-
tions. In co-operation with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction,
he could select carefully the force of institute conductors for summer work,
hold conferences with these for unifying and systematizing their work and
aid them in many ways in it. He could be of invaluable assistance to the
County Superuitendents in directing and systematizing the work of the county
teachers' associations, preparing and issuing, through the Department of Pub-
lic Instruction, from time to time, professional bulletins for the direction and
stimulation of all the professional home study and training of the rank and
file of the rural teachers. He could be of invaluable assistance to the normal
schools and the Xormal College, in aiding greatly to correlate their work and
keep it in close touch with the work of the county institutes and teachers'
associations and with the needs of the country teachers. In other words, he
would be a most valuable connecting link between all the parts of the teacher-
training work of the State from bottom to top.

I have reconmiended elsewhere that this additional $1,200 can easily be
provided without additional appropriation by authorizing the State Board of
Education to deduct it from the first hundred thousand dollars appropriated
by the State for the public schools. The loss of this would scarcely be felt liy
.■my county, l)eing an average of only about .$12 to the county : and the ben-
efits of It would be shared by the County Superintendent and all the teachers
of every county.

County Supervision. — "As pointed out in the first part of this report, there
li;is been ni.-irked improvement in county supervision. The average salary
of the County Superintendent has been more than doubled since 1001. The
Superintendents in nearly all the counties of the State are devoting more
time to the work than ever before, but there is still much work to be done
before county supervision can be made as efficient as it should be. The more
I learn of the educational work of the State in the discharge of my official
duties and through my visitations and field work, the more clearly I see that
the re:il strategic point in all this work to-day is the County Superintendent.
I'pon this subject I beg to Muote from my annual address to the State Associa-
tion of County Superintendents delivered November 11, 1903: "The work of
the State Superintendent must be done and his plans executed largely through
the County Superintendent. The work of the County I'.oard of Education
must be carried on and its i)lans executed largely through the County Superin-
tendent. The work of the School Committeemen will not be done properly
without the stimulation and direction of the County Superintendent. No



3C DocuMEMT 'No. 3. [Session

proper standard of qualifications for teachers cau be maintained and en-
forced except by the County Superintendent. No esprit de corps among the
teachers can be awalcened and sustained save by a County Superintendent in
whom it dwells. Xo local and permanent plans for the improvement of public
school teachers through county teachers' associations, summer institutes and
schools, township meetings, etc., can be set on foot and successfully carried
out save under the leadership of an energetic County Superintendent. All
campaigns for the education of public sentiment on educational questions and
for the advancement of the work of public education along all needful lines
are doomed to failure or, at least, to only partial and temporary success
without the active help and direction of a County Superintendent knowing his
people, knowing the conditions and needs of his county, knowing something of
the prejudices and preferences of the different communities, endowed with
tact, wisdom, common sense, character, grit, and some ability to get along
with folks, and enjoying the confidence of teachers, officers, children, and
patrons. Upon the County Superintendent mainly nnist depend the bringing
together of all those forces in the county — public and private, moral and
religious, business and professional — that may be utilized for the advancement
of the educational work of the county and for the awakening of an educational
interest among all classes of people, irrespective of poverty or wealth, religion
or politics. This work of educating the children of all the people is too great a
task to be performed by any part of the people. No real county system, com-
posed of a large number of separate schools unified and correlated in their
work, each pursuing a properly arranged and wisely planned course of study
in the subjects required, and the whole system fitting into its proper place in
a great State system, can ever be worked out save through the aid .and under
the direction of a County Superintendent with an adequate conception of his
work and with an ability to do it."

"Such a work requires for its successful execution a man of mind and
heart and soul, a gentleman, a man of common sense, tact, energy, consecrated
purpose, education, special training, and business ability — a man who can give
all his time and thought and energy to the work. You cannot command the
services of such a man in any business without paying him a living salary, for
such men are in great demand for any work. May we not hope, therefore,
that at no distant day the salary attached to so important an oHice may be
sufficient in every county to employ trained and competent men for all their
time, to unfetter the earnest, competent men already engaged in the work so
that they may have a chance to do their best work and show what is in them,
and to justify men in the coming years in placing themselves in special train-
ing for this special work?

"It is noticeable and significant that educational progress along all lines is
more rapid in those counties in which competent Superintendents have been
put into the field for all their time, and that in almost every county in which
this has been done the school fund has been increased by local taxation and
by economical management of the finances, looking carefully after the sources
of income, much more than the increase in the salar.v of the Superintendent.
For example, in Guilford County, the Superintendent's salary was increased
.$1,000 a year, and during the first year of his administration, largely through
his efforts, the annual school fund was increased by local taxation alone
.$7,745. In Pitt County the efficient Superintendent was put into tlie field for
his entire time at increased salary, and already the annual increase in the



1909.] Document Ko. 3. 37

school fund from local taxation, secured luaiuly through his activity, is much
more than the increase in his salary, to say nothing of the remarkable increase
in the efficiency of the entire county system of schools resulting from his more
efficient worli. Similar evidence could be given about other counties. You
cannot make a success of any great business like this business of education
without a man at its head devoting all his time, thought and energy to it.
Wherever this is the case the educational work of the county is moving,
wherever it is uot the case the work is lagging. You cannot do anything
worth doing in the world without a man. It is the highest economy to put
money into a man."

More Money and How to Get It. — For all this work j'et to be done in the
way of building and improving schoolhouses and grounds, lengthening the
school term, increasing the salaries of teachers and County Superintendents,
providing high-school instruction, etc., more money must, of course, be pro-
vided. Two ways of providing this money may be suggested :

1. The adoption and enforcement of some plan for getting taxable prop-
erty on the tax boolvs and assessing it at its real value, or something near its
real value. An examination of the tables of the statistical reports in this
volume showing the school funds raised in each county from the property tax
of eighteen cents on the hundred dollars and of the list of counties asking aid
from the special State appropriation for a four-months school term, and the
amounts received by these counties from this appropriation, will convince any
reasonable man, I think, that there is something wrong in the method of
assessing the value of property. Fifty- four counties now receive aid in amounts
varying from $95.25 to $4,462.99 for a four-months school term. Upon any
reasonable and uniform valuation of property, many of these counties would
have money enough for a four-months school term without any aid from the
special State appropriation, and the others would need much less from this
source. Much of this special appropriation could then be available for other
needed purposes in strengthening the public school system. To one who has
traveled through many of these counties and observed their prosperity and
rapidly increasing wealth, it is self-evident that there is something wrong in
the method of assessing property, when counties like Cleveland, Cumberland,
and a number of others that might be mentioned, fail to receive from an
eighteen cents property tax enough money for a four-months school term
at the present low salaries of teachers. Upon a correct valuation of property,
of course, the school fund derived from this eighteen cents property tax would