Germany and Turkey used the power of the school wrongly, of course, but they demonstrated what can be done with it. It is as great a force for weal as it is for woe, and America has thus far used it for the doing of good things rather than evil. The possibilities of education in either direction are practically boundless. When one speaks of the public school system, he speaks really of an army of teachers. A school has buildings and books, but it is really made and determined by the teacher. One may have a school without either a building or a book, but he cannot have one without a teacher. The nation cannot recognize its obligation to the teacher too soon or too completely. He has never received his just due, and the time has come when we need to take an inventory of the service he has rendered and reward him in some fair proportion to it. What we do for him we really do for the country and its future. Some Overlooked Compensations in Teaching (1920) The economic aspect of the teaching profession has never been encouraging. It was least so at the close of the recent great war. In 1918 we were paying our male teachers the munificent wage of $82.35 per month for the six to nine months of the year during which they were employed. During the same period, our female teachers were getting an average of $64.72. The natural consequence of such a situation was a shortage of teachers. A report of the Federal Bureau of Education indicated that the shortage in 1918 was not less than 30,000. About 87,500 new recruits are needed annually for the rural schools alone. In 1916 we graduated less than one-third of that number from all our teacher-training institutions together. In former days a young man was usually delighted to obtain a position on a college faculty. Recently a senior in a state university was offered a position in the Chemistry department and refused it, on the ground that it might tie him up to the teaching profession and thus commit him to poverty. This attitude is not one of utter selfishness on the part of young people. Most of them are willing to serve their day, and allow the reward to be a secondary consideration. They feel, however, that they have a right to physical comfort while they do serve. They realize that the standards of the profession are high in every way, and they feel that such exacting requirements warrant good pay. They are right; yet there are certain aspects of the teaching profession which they should not overlook. It involves less pay than it should, but it also involves certain compensations, some of which are very valuable and some of which are priceless. It places in the hands of those who choose it privileges which many of the rich would gladly give their gold to obtain. It brings within the scope of their experience things which many men, otherwise successful, have been disappointed in not possessing.