The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., November 01, 1922, Page 9, Image 9

THE WESTERN AMERICAN
November, 1922
teacher can attain to any full perform­
ance of the task of American education.
For lack of this no learning, no skill in
method, no brilliance of personality will
compensate: nay in some cases these
may render the actual results positively
injurious to the cause of fostering the
genuine American spirit. It matters lit­
tle what branch of the curriculum that
German schoolmaster was teaching: his
“Now listen to me!” was the real les­
ion. Regardless of the branch under
consideration, the American teacher who
says “Now think clearly, honestly, fairly,
Resolutely, modestly, and do not fear to
stand by your conclusions”—is cultivat­
ing American intelligence.
I But how shall we educate for politics
in America? How did we make war?
We mobolized the whole country, and
first of all, the country’s brains and
hearts. So we shall educate for poli­
tics and for the America that is in the
making. Of course the mobolization is
well under way: this great convention
is part and parcel of it; so is the hon­
est and earnest work of every teacher
in every schoolroom, and the sincere
and devoted services of every school
trustee, and every citizen who contrib­
utes to educational progress, by voice
or act. A democracy must educate all
its citizens, and the job is big enough
to task the energies of all. Just as we
pooled the brains of the country to win
the war, we must pool the brains of the
country to educate for democracy.
■ Education is everybody’s job, just as
9
is heath, or religion, or government:
yet the teacher is the critical point,
quite as much as the physician and min­
ister and statesman are in their field.
What are we going to do about mobo-
lizing brains at the critical point? The
worst feature in the present situation
is not the injustice and hardship in­
flicted upon those in the profession: it
is the hopeless inability of the schools
to bid for the first-class brains. As
things are the big-brained and high-
powered individuals in the teaching pro­
fession are kept in it only by a spirit­
ual force of love for the work and de­
votion to the cause. In financial re­
wards the “business man” looks down
from a dizzy height on the teacher: in
prestige the teacher is far behind the
lawyer, the engineer, the physician, the
politician.
marily, form the justification for higher
compensation; but the very life of the
Republic and the perpetuity and per­
fection of that freedom of which Amer­
ica is the supreme champion.
Financially our demands are modest:
we do not wish (to give up the joy of
laboring mainly for spiritual rewards,
but for the dignity of the profession we
demand everything. Our business is
the most important: we are through for­
ever, I trust, with ducking and depre­
cating; we are forever done with ex­
cuses or apologies or evasions about
being teachers. We will stand up and
look the world in the eye: we will say
to the lawyer, the physician, the en­
gineer, the “business man”—too long
America’s “little tin god”—“Our job is
more important than yours!” And if
he hesitates to admit it, we shall simply
Financially the demands of the point to his children committed to our
teacher are modest, and will probably al­ care, upon whose very souls and des­
ways be so: he asks for a compensation tinies we are supposed to work. But
which will maintain him and his fam­ we ourselves: we shall be very humble
ily in decency and reasonable comfort in the presence of these children, who
and enable him to provide against sick­ represent, said the Great Teacher, the
ness and incapacity, and to accumulate very Kingdom of Heaven.
Incidentally, and aside, for ourselves
a reasonable competence for his own
as
teachers, it is up to us to master
old age and the support of his wife and
children after his death. How long, oh our job better if we expect the same
how long shall it be, before the Repub­ prestige as the engineer, the physician,
lic awakes to the tragic folly of default­ the lawyer, even the business man now
ing on this demand of modest necessity? enjoy. The sugar maker determines
How long before the nation awakes to the chemical composition of every sin­
its own intolerable loss through its own gle car of limestone that comes to the
blind ineptitude ?
Not the teacher’s factory, because nothing less than this
(Continued on page 32)
welfare or comfort or happiness, pri­
A Conservative Custodian
A WORD OF APPRECIATION
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This month the Hibernia Commercial and Savings Bank enters upon its thirty-first year
of business in Portland. The year just ended was the greatest in our history in volume of
business done. The same has been true of nearly every year in the past.
The outstanding feature of this bank’s career is this steady, unremitting, year-by-year
growth. Even for the three-year period ending December, 1921—a period when shrinkage
of bank deposits was general throughout the country—our deposits increased 22 per cent.
Thirty years ago a small office at Third and Stark Streets served us. Deposits amounted
to $14,900. The Hibernia Commercial and Savings Bank of today is a modern financial
institution doing a general banking business under five distinct departments. Deposits at
the last call, September 15th, amounted to $5,313,761.00. We now have over 18,500 com-
mercial and savings accounts.
The bank’s healthy and steady growth, in view of the conservative policy that guides
it in all its affairs, is very gratifying to the officers and directors.
They wish at this time to express their appreciation of the confidence shown in this
bank and to assure their friends and patrons of their determination to justify in the future
as in the past, this bank’s reputation as a conservative custodian.
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HIBERNIA
and^SAVINGS
BANK
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