perhaps dishonest. The free use of conditions is unfair to the preparatory school, by withdrawing the student before he is through with its course. The acceptance of students on conditions from schools that cannot fully meet the requirements, is unjust to those that do so, while the student may be overloaded and the college deprived of the opportunity to do its best for him. The committee 5. Execution of Recommendations. recognizes that in dealing with all of these questions, the independence of each college must be respected, and that the remedy for incidental evils, heretofore resulting from such independence, must be left to the free initiative of such colleges as recognize the gains possible in the direction of uniformity and co-operation. The committee, therefore, advises that the Society appoint a standing committee on Admission to Engineering Colleges, to be charged with the execution of the recommendations following: (a) The formulation, with due regard to the interests of non-engineering colleges, of a sufficiently definite outline of work in each of the subjects named on page 166, so that preparation in any subject shall be available for any college requiring that subject. In many subjects this formulation should provide for a minimum and a maximum requirement, the latter always including the former. This qualitative uniformity within the above list would be an enormous gain, and should, in the opinion of the committee, meet all legitimate demands of the colleges and all just complaints of the schools. The practicability of such a method has been shown in the work of the Commission of Col leges in New England, particularly in English. (b) That the formulation of requirements by this committee be sent to each engineering college, with an invitation to consider it carefully in issuing its statement of requirements. (c) That the formulation of principles that should govern admission by certificate, as found on page 170, be also sent to each college for consideration in defining its requirements. (d) That to all colleges whose requirements correspond with sufficient closeness, the committee recommends co-operation by interchange of evidences of preparation. (e) That the standing committee report annually to the Society as to changes in requirements for admission to engineering colleges. Distribution of this Report. The committee further recommends that a copy of this report be sent to all schools and colleges from which information has been received. Respectfully submitted, F. O. MARVIN, MANSFIELD MERRIMAN, J. P. JACKSON, THE CONSERVATION OF GOVERNMENT ENERGY THROUGH EDUCATION AND RESEARCH. BY C. W. HALL, Dean of College of Engineering, Metallurgy and Mechanic Arts, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. The State has the right to educate her citizens. No matter in what social sphere they move or what occupation engages them, whether they live in the country or inhabit a city, the State can command all her citizens to acquire an education. In this country, since the people are the government, the proposition becomes: the people have the right to educate themselves. Considering education from the standpoint of the State, it is asserted, "The State must educate because intelligence is essential to the existence of the State." This proposition may be unsatisfactory until the term intelligence is defined. The schoolmaster is not necessary in order to rear a sturdy and intelligent yoemanry. The history of early New England refutes such a proposition; Virginia during her early years is another refutation; Pennsylvania another. Again, there may be a great and fundamental difference of opinion as to what the elements of intelligence are and whether they are to be gleaned from the reading book, the catechism or the manual of arms. Intelligence, after all, means merely some kind of intelligence, and the kind stands as the measure of the idea in the mind contemplating it. There are persons who would stoutly maintain that the State ought not to exist. Such persons have no weight of influence in ( 174 ) the Anglo-Saxon world. So it is time to advance beyond that position and take a bolder and stronger one based on the following three propositions: 1. Education must be public because culture is the chief and paramount business and interest of civilized men. 2. The education of the whole people is so great and costly an undertaking that private resources alone cannot compass it. 3. The agencies to be employed are so vast and multifarious that they can be organized only by the supreme authority. On these propositions the whole question is removed from the police station to the forum of statesmanship. The education of the people has been a prominent and growing idea in this country from the organization of the earliest colonial governments. Common schools have been built up and uninterruptedly sustained, not as something for the masses, elementary, but as schools where every citizen in common with his fellows could have free and full opportunity to make as much of himself as his capacity and capability would allow. Under the American conception, the State is constituted of the individual I's within it. The citizen can say: "Since I am of the State it is my right as a citizen to receive and work into my fibre all the State can give, because the State has a right to me; to my goods, my service, and, if need be, to my life itself. If my highest service, the sacrifice of life, be required, I ought to make that service of the highest possible value." With all the increasing complexities of modern life there is a steadily advancing standard of equipment required of every man designing to fill any position of official responsibility and trust. The brilliant practitioners of one hundred years ago would find themselves sadly behind, among the regiments of average physi cians of to-day; the foremost lawyers of that day would find themselves quite unable to protect their clients in the present decade. It is so with every other field of State service; hence the opinion is inevitable that it is the State's duty to qualify its citizens to discharge the duties of high citizenship, resting assured that those duties will have no limit short of the necessity of the State itself. This position is not a new one. It is simply the advanced ground on which educators are now standing. It has been reached under the simple laws of development which we find rooted in the district school system of the continent. There are seen, as one looks along the steps of progress since schools were established by the early colonists, three stages of advance; they may be called the three educational ideals: 1. The Colonial ideal. Under this ideal learning was a sacred trust to be administered for the highest interests of God and man; hence the whole force of education was expended on the support of religion and the moral education of society. 2. The Federal ideal. In the words of the Ordinance of 1787, "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged. 3. The Economic ideal. This ideal is formulated in the now immortal Morrill bill of 1862 which ex |