1. A teacher is expected from the first month of work to be self-supporting and to live in a manner befitting the dignity of the profession. Not simply a bare subsistence, but refined recreation and continued culture as well as freedom from economic anxiety about the future are essential to the discharge of the teacher’s high duties. On what sum can a young person in New York secure these advantages? That sum must fix the minimum paid even though stark necessity would force sufficient unfortunates to accept less, temporarily, if less were offered. For some years the New York minimum has been $600 for the first year, an amount, as I shall show later, admitted to be inadequate at present. 2. Normally, by added experience, a teacher for several years becomes more valuable year by year. Therefore an annual increase of salary is granted automatically, falling like the rain upon the just and the unjust, except that the eighth and thirteenth increments are given only upon satisfactory reports of the teacher’s work. In practice the increment is hardly ever withheld. But no attempt is made to determine at what age a teacher reaches maximum efficiency. Maximum salary for grade work in the elementary schools is reached by women in 16 years and by men in 12 years, not because the men reach their maximum efficiency more rapidly than women, but because a more rapid advance to their highest salary has been judged necessary to hold them in the profession. Probably most men and women are as efficient after five or six years’ service as they ever become for grade work. 3. A minimum qualification of scholarship, character and experience is set for all teachers, but the minimum for a teacher of the graduating class in the elementary schools is higher than for the lower grades and for the high schools higher than for the graduating class. Therefore the salaries for these upper positions are also higher. Even if additional academic preparation be not requisite for teaching higher grades, it is desirable to have some “plums” in the schools, that can be given to the pick of the staff for encouragement. Some breaks in the monotony of equal pay for equal age stimulate a body of workers to do their best in competition for the “plums.” Therefore extra emoluments have been given to teachers of the seventh and eight years. 4. Further, the greater the responsibility the higher the pay. Principals are paid more than class teachers, superintendents more than principals.