Show TO CANNOT AFFORD no community can afford be it evi er io so heavily burdened and hard pres tied aed in other respects to make any radical cut in the legitimate cost ot of Us its childrens education prodigality in expenditure waste and gance in any direction may well be curtailed and drastically but before the pruning knife Is applied to the school system people will do well to find out precisely what expense it Is proposed to trim afi off what part of th the e work it is proposed to cut down the development of the educational system in a community Is not a sudden growth it represents at least decades of outlay and effort forever Mo rever when in a healthy condition it Is a great and constantly expanding or organization to wound it by deep and desperate slashes Is to paralyze its efficiency imperil its existence and impoverish the whole community life economies as the word Is usually employed cannot be enforced ditl respect to education in the same way that they are enforced against other public expenditures it the comman itys finances make it necessary or advisable vi it can deter defer lor for a year or two some of the less indispensable public improvements just as in your privates private affairs affair s you reduce or deter defer your outlay tor for personal indulgences till money is more plentiful but this cannot be done iu in the matter of education in the other cases a year or two of 0 deferred expansion way may not make much difference in education a single seasons retrogression makes a gigantic difference here we are dealing with the minds and bodies of children t the 1 I e citizens of tomorrow and even a brief brie f period of neglect may be enough to cripple a whole generation when talking therefore of budgets and burdens expenditures and economies this serious thought must be kept in mind no lesson has been more impressively taught by the worlds experiences in the last fateful ten years than that not only the foundation of national prosperity but oven even the foundation of national worth and is the education of the people the result of this lesson is seen in the unparalleled procession ot of youth towards the schoolhouses and the institutions of higher learning to divert or discourage this stream would be suicidal instead it should be welcomed enlarged stimulated even these higher institutions where the idea still persists that tuition fees must be raised to the point where the student shall pay exactly what it costs to educate him are deliberately undermining democracy and destroying the doctrine of equality of opportunity by closing the dollege college doors to the poor and opening them to the rich doing what they can to make education not a matter of brains but a matter of 1 money it Is a wrong and an unsafe principle and has no place in tile the american scheme of things much as the country in all its parts may be spending on education it cannot afford to spend a dollar less it ment is to mean the least deterioration in efficiency or the slightest closing clasing ot of the door ot opportunity to the youth ot of the land |