p. 16 | A Slim Basis.-

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1901

A Slim Basis.—

William T. Harris, U. S. Commissioner of Education, predicts thru the Congregationalist in the coming half century a high-school enrolment of 20,000 in the million population as against 8,000 in the million population at present. He hopes for this thru the increase in the production of wealth, which is about at the rate of 60 cents a day now. At the end of the twentieth century he expects it to be at the rate of $2.50 a day. “This,” he tells us, “means wealth for the average of the people.” But what hope is there that the average of the people will get it? According to more rapidly increasing tendencies, the wealth is flowing into the hands of the few away from “the average of the people.” More than this, city growth at the beginning of the century was but 3 per cent. of the population; in 1900 it is 33 per cent., and with the city comes vast increase of slum and hoodlum population. It is all well to talk of educating these elements out of themselves, but it requires more than education to do it. The education to be effective in reform must have more than wealth behind it; it must be in the truest sense Christian.