losis Association to establish thirty-six clinic centers which reach every section of the state. It has provided for eleven full time public health nurses, for case finding, clinic work, and instructive work in the homes or wherever else needed. 211 diagnostic clinics have been held during last year. A total of 5,865 examinations were made at clinics during the year. 17,682 home visits were made by county nurses during last year. 29,475 pieces of educational literature on Tuberculosis were distributed. Lectures were held during the summer semester of our state normal schools and much additional educational work was accomplished through pictures, lectures and newspapers.

that you remember that these little symbols mean health happiness and often life, itself, to many people. The money that is raised in New Hampshire, through the sale of these Christmas seals, is spent in our own state for the benefit of our own people.

Your money has enabled the Tubercu

In New Hampshire in 1918 there were 470 deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis. This number has been reduced to 306 deaths in less than four years.

The seal this year carries with it, the spirit of Christmas. It shows a little child sitting before an open fireplace, seeing in the flames a picture of Santa Claus. Let us be generous givers.

loss has been equalled by the industrial gain and the population has neither increased nor decreased.

Towns which depend upon summer visitors have lost in agriculture and have shown waves of gain and loss. This development has been since 1869. Experience has shown that it is difficult to make schools purposeful and effective in summer towns as the artificial life of the summer reacts unfavorably upon the children.

Certain of our towns are being transformed from independent farms into country estates. When this occurs and estates are in the hands of caretakers children are few and the town gains largely in wealth but loses in present and potential population.

In a considerable number of towns with good agricultural possibilities, the movement toward depopulation has slackened or stopped and there has been a slight increase shown by the census of 1910 and 1920. This may indicate a turning of the tide.

Causes of Depopulation

This survey enumerated four specific causes of New Hampshire's rural loss. 1. INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

In 1820 the great body of New England men were farmers or were engaged in rendering service to farmers. Farming operations were at this time simple. In 1850 every occupation and every process had been modified by modern machinery. The price of labor rose rapidly and small rocky farms which could produce abundantly with cheap labor could no longer be worked with profit.

2. WESTWARD EMIGRATION.

The years 1840 to 1860 were those of a great westward migration during which thousands of New Hampshire men followed the advice of our Horace Greeley, "Go west, young man." 3. THE CIVIL WAR.

Own

Rural New Hampshire volunteered with ready patriotism at the opening of

the war between the states. Rural New Hampshire suffered from the volunteer system. A large number who escaped military service were those of little patriotism and of small vision.

4. THE SCHOOLS.

Since 1870 it is probable that the schools have done more to depopulate rural New England than any other single agent. This is because they have been city schools transferred to the country. They have refrained from teaching agriculture, rural life and rural living and have turned all of their courses cityward. If high schools, they have urged all boys to college and, if colleges, have urged all to the professions. If lower schools, they have emphasized the arts of the clerk and the trader rather than those of the producer. As a result, pupils of the lower rural schools have gone to the cities for commonplace clerical and mercantile positions and pupils of the higher schools to the cities to secure professional advance or wealth.

The field study which was to determine the possibilities of repopulating the towns followed this plan. It determined the acreage of the towns and the number of acres at present arable. It made a survey of the soil and considered desirable types of farming, kinds of crops and size of profitable farms. It made an estimate of the number of families and of persons who might be supported from the farms. With this, it studied the transportation and market

facilities to see their effect on the fall of population. It reached the following conclusions in regard to the pres

ent situation.

"We find that the rural area would, at a conservative estimate, furnish a livelihood for over sixty per cent. more population than now finds its home there.

We find that the transportation facilities are good, that it cannot successfully be maintained that railroad building has crippled towns, that towns off the line of railroad have on the whole

done as well as towns on the line, except where the railroad had given an impetus to industrial development in

some towns.

It appears that the demands of the home market are far in excess of the home supply. In the end, the non-rural consumer is paying for his supplies, cost of production and ordinary cost of distribution plus a high differential freight rate due to imports from a distance.

Accordingly, it seems clear that there have been other than economic causes in the decline of population, and that other than economic causes are now operative in keeping population down.

We know that poor school facilities actually do operate to deter people with children from taking up farm lands and that similarly there is still a steady, though not large, emigration in search. of better schools.

It has further been shown that the influence of higher education has certainly operated to strip the rural area of its strongest leadership, and that on the other hand an higher education adapted to the rural area can operate to check this type of selection and elimination.

It seems clear, therefore, first, that good elementary and high schools will inevitably do much to check further stripping of the countryside of its best material and will make it possible for men with families to return to the land; and, second, that an education adapted to the interpretation of country problems will furnish the only capital upon which rural people can depend for constantly adapting themselves to a constantly changing social and economic environ

ment.

Finally, if we undertake on a large scale to build a public school system adequate for the needs of the rural area, we are sure that we are not building nor attempting to build on an impossible economic foundation. And that is the question which the whole investigation was intended primarily to answer.”

It is worth while for those who are interested in New Hampshire's future

to review the educational changes which the last five years have seen in rural New Hampshire. To a considerable extent the state has been able to remove the handicap which has restrained children in rural districts. In this period expert supervision has been extended so that it is effective in remote towns as in wealthy cities. The country and the city superintendents are equally competent and well paid.

During this period the school year for country schools has been extended and is now uniform throughout the state. In this time the average school year has been lengthened by two weeks and the attendance of school pupils increased by 2%. In 1918, 924 rural and village schools and 6,495 pupils in poor towns. had a school year which was from two to sixteen weeks shorter than in more fortunate places. Last year in the entire state but twelve small schools, with an enrollment of 134 pupils, failed to remain open for the full thirty-six weeks.

These years have seen the remodeling of 80% of rural school buildings and state wide extension of the physical welfare of pupils through the services of nurses and physicians.

During these years the number of normal school graduates employed in the elementary schools has increased from 44% to 55% of the whole and there has come the practical elimination of teachers with neither experience nor training.

In the same years the enrollment of regular students at the normal schools has increased from 240 to 608.

Through the state policy of aid to impoverished districts, these gains have been made possible without an abnormal cost for schools in any of the school districts.

There is abundant evidence that these changes have checked the movement of population away from some of our rural towns. The improvement of the schools is but one step, however, in the development of the state for its possible future.

NE of the most interesting and helpful institutions affecting the life and thought of our state is the New Hampshire Civic Association which practices a policy of inviting able advocates of different view points on public questions to address them. In the opinion of many the crowning achievement of the Association's work thus far was reached on November 16th when in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce of Manchester some 250 of the most intelligent men and women of our commonwealth listened to an argument in favor of the League of Nations by John H. Clarke of Ohio, exJustice of the United States Supreme Court. It was only a few months ago that Senator Borah of Idaho presented a masterly discourse to a group opposing the League.

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American public life has never lacked able orators. It is today replete with clear thinkers who hold their audiences more by the forcefulness of their reasoning than by the attractiveness of their speech. There is another numerous class of exceptionally fluent speakers whose eloquence alone is sufficient to command an audience irrespective of the subject matter of their discourse. It is however, rare indeed that we are privileged to hear a statesman who has not only an orator's command of language combined with a jurist's clarity of argument, but who surpasses both of these attributes by a certain tremendous earnestness and devotion to his cause which injects. a great spiritual power into his plea and causes him to be transformed in the eyes of his fellows into a crusader with a flaming sword. Such was the appeal of Justice Clarke.

Snow white hair, features so clear cut and regular as to resemble the finely chiseled countenance of a statue,

and a pirecing straight forward glance from the blue eyes deep set under level brows-it is little wonder that Justice Clarke is one who can impress himself deeply in the memories of those with whom he comes in contact. Added to this appearance, the mellow tones of a fine voice which in climatic points of his utterance, thrilled with a great passion which could never be falsely assumed, made an impression never to be forgotten.

It is a matter of general knowledge that Justice Clarke resigned his seat on the Supreme Bench of our country some months ago that he might devote his entire time and energy in urging the United States to become a member of the League of Nations. In his opening statement he explained his position by saying, "I wish you all to know that I am not a public speaker for pay. My views on this great question are not in the market at any price. I would like you to know that I am not here to forward the cause of any party or to cultivate any private ambitions. I have had all the honor that I covet in this life and laid it down because I felt I saw in this cause the opportunity of greater service."

As a prelude to his analysis of the League the speaker drew a vivid picture of the greatest curse of civilization, namely-War. He showed that although we are prone to boast that the last one hundred and fifty years has been a period of great progress in the world, statesmanship has stood still, and nations to-day are settling their differences in cisely the same way that they settled them generations ago. "But," said the judge, "though statesmanship has stood still, war has not stood still!” From that remark he proceeded to show to what deadly extremes modern science has brought warfare and

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