The course in the Commercial Department for the first year is the same as that in the Classical, Phonography, however, being substituted for Latin in this year. During the following two years of the course Latin and Greek are dropped and the following studies pursued:

I will not take up these studies in detail, nor speak to you of a system of study so well known. The various teachers and professors from the Catholic colleges of the country who are present will bear witness to the general fitness of the youth from the Academy, the youth who have entered their institutions with the hall mark of the Christian Brothers upon them, and who have come thence to reflect honor upon their Church and its institutions by their lives as clergymen, as professional men, and as business

men.

A tuition fee of thirty dollars a year is charged each pupil, while text books, of course, are not free. Many of the students secure employment during the afternoons and on Saturdays and are thus enabled to gratify their longing for an education not otherwise within their reach.

The students have varying plans for the future; some of course have already been blessed with a call to the religious life, while the remainder intend to follow, for the most part, the different professions. They come to the Academy from the homes of their parents, who are, for the greater part, of the class obliged to toil and labor for the necessities of life, and upon whom the small amount charged for tuition is oftentimes a burden. Yet there is no complaint from these fathers and mothers; it is a choice between the public high school and that of the Church, and nobly is the selection made. Many would like to patronize the Catholic boarding school, but this is for them only a vision they cannot see it fulfilled. Many boys are aided in their course, not only by their own labors as I noted above, but also by the pastors,

some of whom have established scholarships for the leaders of their parochial schools, while others have endeavored to develop an already budding call to a higher walk of life. One parish, the Cathedral, continues the work of the parochial school by sending free of cost its school graduates to the Academy for the full coursein either department. We would like to see this plan developed throughout our city and diocese, and we hope the pastors will find some similar means of extending their aid to the boys who have already completed a course in the parochial schools.

The statistics of the Classical Department alone for the past school year show 10 pupils enrolled in the fourth year class, 19 in the third year, 39 in the second year, and 60 in the first year, or a total of 128. At the end of the year there were 128. Three of those who left the department took up Commercial studies, one entered a preparatory school connected with a Catholic college, two did not appear after enrollment, two secured employment in the city. The oldest member of the graduating class was 20, the youngest was 16, the average age being 18. In the entering class the youngest boy was 13, the oldest 21, the average age of this class being 15. While this last average appears to be somewhat greater than one would expect, yet it must be remembered that many Catholic boys turn towards a profession after taking a course in a business college, or after some years of employment. I may remark that of the 28 youngest boys entering the first year class only five came from the public schools. The oldest bov in this class came from a commercial college; of four in this class aged 18 two came from a public school, while another had been graduated from the Commercial Department of the Academy in the June previous.

The work of the students, estimated in percentages, is posted upon a bulletin in the main corridor of the Academy, while a special list of "honor" students is also hung in a public place. Each boy knows his standing, the ambitious are gratified, the slothful are stirred, while the dull — but diligent - pupil knows from his teachers that the top place in that list will yet be his if he but persevere.

Thus, in brief, I hope, have I called your attention to a Catholic High School of the modern type, a school wherein boys are fitted for life, not for college alone, a school in which religion accompanies science, an institution which continues the work of over a third of a century in sending forth boys destined to do great things for God and country, and which will, in all human probability, continue until the end, its work of a Catholic High School.

The Need of Higher Catholic Education for the

Catholic Body.

REV. JAMES. J. CONWAY, S. J., ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS, MO. In view of the object of this paper, which is to set forth the nature of the need of a higher Catholic education for the Catholic body, and to suggest some provisions for supplying this need; I do not believe that it would prove at all profitable to first establish the actual existence of such a need, for I think that it is pretty generally admitted that such a need truly exists, and that it has for its source the moral, educational and social disadvantages under which the Catholic body is at present laboring, without the equipment of a higher Catholic education.

Assuming, therefore, that the need is evident, I shall briefly call your attention (1) to the character of the higher education that is called for to supply it, and (2) to the equipment in our educational system which to me seems necessary for imparting this higher education to the Catholic body.

Before, therefore, taking up either point, it will further matters considerably to determine what we here understand by the Catholic body. There are several possible meanings of the term. In any use of the word, we understand, of course, the lay body of the Church. When, however, there is a question of higher Catholic education, some divide this body into the educated and the ignorant class. Higher Catholic education, we are told, is for the educated, not for the ignorant class of Catholics. Others divide all Catholics into a leisure class and a busy class. Higher education, according to this distinction, is for the leisure class, not for the busy class. Others again, see in the great Catholic body, professional folks, business people, and wage-earners. Catholics in the professions and the Catholic business body do, we are told, sadly need advanced Catholic studies, but the working people are far better off without this higher education. Finally, the Catholic lay body, as some see it, is made up of people of influence and

the unimportant crowd the aristoi and the hoi polloi. We must polish up our elite a little more, we are told, but we need never mind the masses. They have the catechism and the Sunday school, and that is all the Catholic education they will ever need.

Now I have no fault to find with these views. They are all taken from intelligible standpoints. But it seems to me that the Catholic body we here speak of, is, and ought to be more miscellaneous. It is, as I look at it, any class of Catholics who need a more complete Catholic education to fit them for the conditions of modern society, whether they enjoy a liberal education or do not, whether they are people of leisure, belong to the professions, exert a social influence, or are simply busy people of the crowd who have to toil and moil for a livelihood side by side with unbelievers, scoffers and critics. For the need of a higher Catholic education is not founded in the distinction of classes and avocations among Catholics. It is essentially determined by the call for an adequate equipment of Catholics, as Catholics, against the social, moral and doctrinal evils which in the present constitution of American society are a serious menace to the faith, morals and piety of every class of our Catholic people. By the Catholic body, therefore, I mean, in this paper, the rank and file of Catholic men and women whose destiny in life it is to be made representatives of their Church in the midst of a hostile world, to form Catholic public opinion, and to do daily service in the field and on the firing line between Catholicity and all forms of non-Catholic error and misrepresentation.

Now for the Catholic body so described, there exists, we all, I think, admit, a need of higher Catholic education. The question is, in what shall it consist. In answering this question, I want to say that I do not fully accept the usual definition of education. Education is, in its usual sense, the due and effective cultivation or formation of all our mental faculties. This cultivation and formation may be, and I believe is, the physical outcome and result of the process of education. But it is by no means the sum of education, or even the controlling function in the work of education. This function is far more emphatically the imparting of speculative and practical truth. This is at least, the chief office of Catholic education, as I understand it. Now in as

far as education consists in the due evolution of the rational faculties, I, for one, do not believe that there exists, in this country at least, any more need of higher education for Catholics than for any other class of American citizens. At least I do not admit that there exists any need of such an education which is not yearly more and more efficiently provided for by those who are carrying on the work of Catholic education in this country. It is true that, in most cases, if not indeed in every case, the education of Catholics in this country in merely secular knowledge, is not imparted with the same copious resource and with the same amplitude of material equipment as this same education is imparted to non-Catholics. But the zeal and industry of our institutions, and the generosity of the faithful have more than compensated for this yearly lessening discrepancy.

But there is, I do contend, a very far reaching need of a more extensive and thorough knowledge of speculative and practical Catholic truth among even otherwise highly educated Catholic people. Personally, I have come to this conclusion from. observations which any one of us can make, if he will just pause to contemplate the situation. For, to narrow our study down to the product of our institutions, we are yearly turning out of our colleges and academies, men and women with a keen relish for and a lively interest in the questions of the day; men and women who, at a very early stage, are brought into the closest contact with politics, philanthropy, religion, ethics, and who are put face to face with all the disturbed and distorted questions of history, . philosophy, literature and science. For it is in these fields and in these departments of human thought and activity, that all the serious world movements of today are taking place.

Now is our Catholic body, even with the excellent liberal training we give our men and women, able to take care of itself in the midst of these movements? Is it able to cope successfully with the questions, the problems, and the situations arising daily in these fields and departments of human activity and modern thought? Is it able to preserve itself against indifference, liberalism, leakage and confusion? Is it a power or weakness in the hands of the Church? Is it a light to the world around it sitting in darkness? For our Catholic people have a twofold mission in modern so