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practically impossible as steam-coils are ordinarily used. But when steam-coils are placed in a furnace-chamber and the air is heated by flowing over these coils before it enters the room, the method becomes a very good one. A furnace, if rightly constructed and rightly used, is a very good means of heating a school-building, because it assists in ventilation. Nearly all the furnaces I have examined are very objectionable, because they are too small and have too little radiating surface to heat the necessary amount of air unless they are excessively heated. It is simply impossible that air heated by passing over such red-hot surface should be healthful. The object aimed at should be to introduce a large volume of air moderately heated, and not a small quantity of air excessively heated. To this end the furnaces should be of large size, with a large amount of heating-surface kept moderately heated, and the access of pure air to the furnace and its passage thence to the schoolroom should be abundant. The air of our school-rooms is almost uniformly too dry. *The influence of excessively dry air on the naturally moist mucous surfaces is injurious: the nostrils become dry and irritable and a tendency to catarrh is established. The influence of too dry air on the eye is also injurious, from the unnatural drying of the normal secretions for moistening the eye.

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Rev. Daniel Leach, superintendent of schools in Providence, R. I., writes: "I was rejoiced to hear that the Michigan State Medical Society had taken up the subject of ventilating and warming school-houses. There is no subject connected with the cause of education so important and none that has been so neglected. I have given attention to the subject for more than twenty years, and I firmly believe, from careful observation, that very many cases of consumption, heart-disease, and kindred diseases have had their origin in the foul air that is breathed in school-rooms and other crowded places." I might fill pages with quotations from medical authorities to show how intimate is the relation between tubercular diseases and foul air. But these diseases of degraded tissues are only one class in a score of diseases caused by breathing foul air. The limit of impurity in air as affected by respiration should not exceed the presence of 8 parts of carbonic acid in 10,000 of air. Many place the limit lower than 8 parts; it certainly should never be higher. Persons may, and do, live in an atmosphere less pure, but it is at the expense of present and future vitality. Sickness must be viewed, not solely as involving the suffering and danger of the patient, but also as a loss to the State. This consideration bears with especial force upon the sanitary condition of the young, because they are peculiarly liable to the action of depressing causes. The State is rich and strong in its healthy men and women and is impoverished by its weak and sickly ones. In laying our hands upon the sanitary condition of our public schools, we touch the very fountains of the prosperity of the Commonwealth.

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To preserve the air of a room in such state of purity that the carbonic acid shall never exceed 8 parts in 10,000 of air, 2,000 cubic feet of air must be admitted every hour for each person in the room. In a room 30 by 30 by 12, and containing 36 persons, 72,000 cubic feet of air an hour must be introduced, and the entire air of the room changed six times an hour. If we allow ten square inches of sectional area in ventilating shaft for each person, this number of scholars would require a ventilating shaft 19 by 19 inches; the air must move through it at the rate of 5 miles an hour; if the shaft is 20 feet long it will require a permanent elevation of temperature 15° above outside air. I consider it very desirable to ventilate from the floor-level; not because the air is fouler at that level than at the ceiling, but because, being equally foul, it is colder than air near the ceiling, and therefore less fitted for the comfort and health of the occupants of the room, and also because the strong tendency to accumulate a lake of cold air at the floor can usually be obviated in no other way. It is not a matter of indifference whence the air is withdrawn at the floor-level. It should be withdrawn at many points in the body of the room, by openings into foul-air-ducts beneath the floor. The experiment performed in a school in Kalamazoo, of gathering the air for analysis during recess, while the scholars stood around me in a dense throng to witness the operation, this air, containing a large excess of carbonic acid, shows the necessity of withdrawing the air from those portions of the room where the scholars most congregate. If the spaces between the floor-joists are all made foul-airducts, it would be a matter of very small expense to ventilate from as many points in the room as we desire. In my opinion, no ventilation is good which requires the opening of doors and windows at any time. Window-ventilation is better than no ventilation, but it is not good ventilation. Ventilation should, as

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far as possible, be automatic, and should be beyond the control of every one except the person who has it in charge. This self-acting ventilation may best be secured by combining the ventilating-system with the the warming-apparatus, so that the active condition of the warming-apparatus shall necessitate an active ventilation. The air-ducts should be abundant, but should be kept out of sight. The most natural and economical position for the foul-air-ducts is the space beneath the floor between the joists. These can all be connected with the ventilating-shaft by having

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the joists all lead toward the shaft and the spaces all connected with the shaft. The ventilating-shaft should be well constructed, so as to be air-tight, if possible. As ordinarily constructed they are very porous, so that a large portion of the air discharged at their top is not derived from the rooms to be ventilated, so that a brisk current may be found issuing from the top of the shaft, while no no corresponding current enters at the bottom. The shaft should be placed entirely within the building-in its center, if practicable. T. estimate the size of the shaft I have taken the estimate adopted for ventilation in the barracks of the British army, viz, ten square inches of sectional space in the shaft for each person. In the center of the shaft I would place the pipe to convey away the smoke from the furnace, and thus utilize the waste heat to warm the shaft. In order that each room may receive its own share of ventilation and to prevent the foul air of one room from being driven into another room when high winds prevail, I would divide the shaft-space outside the smoke-pipe into two or four shafts, by having sheetiron plates passing from the whole length of the smoke-pipe radially, till they strike the sides of the shaft. Each one of these shafts may be devoted to ventilating one room or floor. The inlet-ducts to admit fresh air, whether hot or cold, should have the same sectional area as the educt-pipes for foul air, viz, ten square inches for each person. The practice is altogether too common of making the registers for admitting warm air much smaller than this and of admitting the air at a very high temperature, i. e., a small amount of very hot air instead of a large amount of warm air. A proper temperature as the first condition of mental activity and the removal of carbonic acid, which "lowers the vitality and kills with indefinite warning," are essential conditions for the development of the nation. We have abolished the choking of our worst criminals by the hangman's rope, let us abolish the strangling of the innocent children by viewless ropes of poisoned air.

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WOMEN AS SCHOOL-OFFICERS.

The difficulty experienced in finding fully-educated men for the various departments of school-work has for some years past led to an engagement of women in this work. In the Northern States, Indiana and Missouri alone excepted, the number of female teachers greatly exceeds that of males. The ability and intelligence which many of these display, combined with a delicate tact in management, bave induced in several quarters the idea of employing women in the higher offices of government: for example, as school-visitors, members of school-committees, and county-superintendents. The New Hampshire legislature, by an act in 1872, authorized the election of them to the prudential committees of districts or school-committees of cities or towns within the State. The State-reports of both Connecticut and Rhode Island for 1873 decidedly advocate the employment of them as school-visitors on the ground of their special fitness for the office, as well as on the ground that cultivated women are more frequently available for the performance of such duty than equally cultivated men. The people of Massachusetts, under the same impression, have lately employed women in their school-committees. Lynn and Concord both have ladies so engaged. In the latter place a daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson has been for several years on the committee, and is said to have done valuable service. In Brookline the school-committee itself has constituted an advisory board of ladies, by whom much of the work of the committee has been done. At the last election of school-officers in Massachusetts four ladies were chosen members of the school-committee of Boston and several others in the western portion of the State; and the Springfield Republican, generally well informed on such points, expresses the decided judgment that many more will be elected in another year.

When such movements occur in conservative New England, they may naturally be looked for also in the flexible and sometimes impulsive West. Accordingly the twenty-eighth general assembly of Illinois declared by law that any woman, married or single, might be elected to school-office, if over 21 years of age and possessed of the qualifications prescribed for men. Under this law 34 ladies in thirty counties ran for the office of county-superintendent in 1873, and of these 11 were elected. In Iowa, under a similar provision, 9 ladies came upon the superintendent-list and in Kansas 3. In Michigan the recently-revised State-constitution provides for the admission of

women to any school-office and in the constitutional convention of Ohio the majority of the committee on education have reported a kindred provision for adoption. Pennsylvania has moved in the same direction, her just-adopted constitution making women eligible to any office of control or management under the school-laws of the State. As officers of colleges, also, women are beginning to appear. The new Boston university, as elsewhere noted, has opened its chairs to them, and two ladies already act as instructors in the school of medicine. Vassar, besides a lady principal, has numerous ladies on its staff of instruction, one of whom is eminent in the scientific world. St Lawrence University presents one on its faculty-list in the chair of French and as assistant instructor in Latin. Antioch College has a lady professor of mathematics; the Ladies' College at Evanston, Ill., like Vassar, a lady principal; and the University of Missouri four ladies as instructors in languages and mathematics, one of whom, recently returned from Europe, is said to have been appointed professor of French and German.

It is, perhaps, too early yet for the expression of decided judgments as to the expe. diency or inexpediency of this elevation of women to school-offices. Experience only can fully decide such points. The fact that they are coming to be so employed is presented as an interesting phase of existing educational experiments, and the hope may be indulged that their quick perceptions and instructive tact will enable them to justify their election to offices of higher power and influence. In Dayton, Ohio, where they have been employed during the past year as principals of public schools, the city-superintendent says that the results have "more than justified the change. Instead of the insubordination and disorder predicted, there has been improved order. Details of school-man. agement have been attended to with scrupulous care. Subordinate teachers have yielded the respect due to the position of the lady principals, and notwithstanding the fact that these principals have for the first time taught the subjects of the highest grade, attending also to the general order of the building, the teaching has been as thorough as in former years." A kindred testimony comes from Cleveland. If it be given elsewhere, an increase of women as school-officers is sure.

THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

Educators, like all other workers in the field of modern civilization, must make use of facts for their guidance. Mere speculative theories have been too much followed heretofore in all subjects connected with education, and in none more than in that having reference to the position of woman as scholar, teacher, and worker. A gross conservatism on one side has naturally given rise to immoderate theory on the other. It is only by a philosophical study of accumulated facts and human experience that society can arrive at any judicious modification of woman's education and occupation or correct what is false in any of the numerous theories and plans proposed for her benefit. Should the fact of sex make any difference in the relation of individuals to education either as trainer or trained? In the education of the young has one sex any work to do which the other sex cannot equally well perform, and are the children in our schools trained actually so different, on account of the difference of sex, as to render modifications in their respective trainings necessary? Are the essential duties of life different for each sex; and, if so, what correspondences and differences must be made in their respective physical and moral training? These questions at the very threshold of this inquiry point to vast fields of thought. Nothing can be more useful for the progress of human society than their judicious discussion; nothing more harmful than vague declamation and passionate rhapsody. Every community after learning the general facts must take into consideration its own special circumstances. Of these the preponderance in number of one sex over another is the most powerful in effect. The following statistics respecting the populations of certain European countries show in. stances where the females are in excess:

Name of State or Territory.

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Summary of populations in countries in which women are in excess of the men.

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Female.

A similar excess of the female population as existing in certain parts of our own country is exhibited in the following table:

Summary of populations of States in which women are in excess of the men.

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On the other hand the other States and Territories of our Union present an excess of males over females as shown in the following table. It will be observed that our country as a whole has conditions of population directly opposite to those present in Great Britain, Sweden and Prussia, there being 19,493,565 males and 19,064,806 females, or an excess of 428,759 males; in other words, an excess of 11 males in every 1,000 of the population.

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Name of State or Territory.

Summary of populations of the States and Territories in which men are in excess of women.

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The recent establishment of our political communities, the manner of their settlement, and other causes have produced this latter condition; and these causes have modified the education, the labor, and the position of woman in a corresponding degree. These conditions in every community act in some degree on other communities. Other elements of great importance are the physical conditions under which the races inhabiting our country live. So powerful are these that, two hundred and fifty years after the first white settlements on our Atlantic coast, our climate, our food, our habitations, our customs, and our physique are markedly different from those of any one country in Europe. Our political theories and institutions have helped to intensify. the conditions out of which they arose. These conditions of life-social, political, and physical-have acted with double intensity in modifying the physical and mental conditions of the American woman. These modifications are too self-evident in some respects to need recapitulation here. But the deterioration in the health of Caucasian women is so alarming in its extent and in its consequences, present and potential, that I feel it necessary to record some important facts respecting it.

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