His father and mother, both natives of Bavaria, came to America in 1843 and 1844, and were married at Baltimore in the latter year. Their second home was Belleville, Illinois, where the boy was born June 1, 1854. Two years afterwards they moved again, to St. Paul, and in this young capital the father’s social and political activity made him member of the common council and of the school-board, United States assessor, one of Minnesota’s Presidential electors, and a speaker (in German) in the Greeley campaign of 1872. Carl was educated in the public schools, and took one year of the high school course, but then discontinued his studies to enter a bank as office boy. Four years later he had advanced to the position of general bookkeeper and assistant teller. In April of 1875 he was employed as teacher of gymnastics by the St. Paul _Turnverein_, and the next autumn decided to fit himself further for the work by attending the Normal School of the _Turnerbund_, which had just been transferred to Milwaukee. The four-months’ course there was completed early in 1876, and for most of the decade following he was actively engaged in the practice of his new profession in various western societies—at South Bend, Indiana (1876-1877), Louisville, Kentucky (1877-1882), Terre Haute, Indiana (1882-1883), St. Paul again (1883-1884), and finally in the _Socialer Turnverein_ of Kansas City, Missouri, beginning in January of 1885. [Illustration: FIG. 83.—Carl Betz (1854-1898).] At a meeting of the Kansas City Teachers’ Institute on May 2, 1885, Mr. Betz was present with a class of a dozen girls and led them in a series of exercises with wands and Indian clubs which excited much interest. In the discussion that followed, the need of some sort of physical education in the schools was generally recognized. He assured the teachers that he could work out a plan which might be successfully introduced, and a motion was carried requesting him to do so. The result was a little pamphlet of eighteen pages, published by the _Socialer Turnverein_. The next October the School Board accepted his proposal to conduct gymnastic exercises in the public schools for three months without pay. Before the end of that period, however, on December 5, 1885, they appointed him director of physical training, and thus he was launched upon the career which ended only with his death, on April 28, 1898. During the last two years of his life he was also supervisor of music in the city schools. The executive committee of the _Turnerbund_ made him a member of the committee which represented the German-American gymnastic societies at the second meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education (November 26, 1886, in Brooklyn), but the paper which he presented there, on the introduction of gymnastics into the public schools, does not appear in the published _Proceedings_ of that year. Another, read at the sixth annual meeting (April 4, 1891, in Boston)