The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-03-17
THEY ALL TAKE A SHY AT 1T.


The labors of the chamber of COM
merce and it's committees over the
question Of support for the public
schools is calculated to excite infinite
pity and call for infinite patience. Here
are a number of excellent ana we'll
meaning gentlemen who apply to a
public business a principle to which
they would not have the patience to
listen for one moment if announced
with regard to their own private af-
fairs. There may be nothing requiring
positive genius in the conduct of q job
bling house or a factory or a freight
business, or even in the manipulation of
real estate and loans; but there is
great deal to be learned about any one
of them. If the principal of one Of our
public schools, or the superintendent
himself, were to walk down calmly to
the wholesale district some Monday
morning, enter a big establishment, say
to the senior member, I am convinced
that you could run your business to
L
to tell you how; and then actually,
either on the spot or after a day or
two of looking about, proceed to go into
detail and tell him how much he might
save by changing his methods of trade
and allowing larger or smaller dis
counts on orders, and lecture him
learnedly on a particular quality of
materials, he would be ousted for his
impertinence with more haste than
ceremony.
This is just what the chamber of
commerce has been doing with the
school work, which is more complex.
scientific and specialized than almost
any other work in this city. Stimu-
lated by this example, there is not a
political hanger-on about the city hall.
not dummy who holds down the Of
flee chair in any part of that building
and hypnotizes himself with thoughts
Of his own Importance, who cannot tell
you glibly how the schools ought to be
changed and what lots Of money you
might save. Think of this chamber of
commerce committee knowing nothing
on earth about the business of en-
ploying teachers, their salaries and
their duties, save what it gained in
this cursory examination, telling us
just how the thing should be done.
But this is not a marker to Mr.. Nc
Cardy. a monument himself to the
value of a genteel education, and Mr..
Doran, than whom, probably, no more
intellectual or cultured man exists,
firing off their mental vacuities on the
same subject. Mr.. McCardy thinks
kindergartens are expensive, and does
not like it that the members of the
school board should object to the in
sulting replies which he makes to their
inquiries about their own business.
When Mr.. Doran swung his tomahawk,
however, he took the whole scalp.
Doran on education is a spectacle for
gods and men to gaze at. He is sure
that big saving can be made but
the only. positive suggestion in that
pervisors; and Mr. Doran's own Ian
gUage shows that he has no more
knowledge and no more capacity for
knowing what a supervisor does than
one of the desks in school room itself
AS, indeed, why should he?
So we go on, with everybody trying
to be cook, and the broth showing lit
tie SAVIOR and getting badly burned,
and those whose hearts and souls are
really in school work saddened and
of the times alone, not even by the
scarcity of Intelligent comprehension,
but by the fact that the school question
has got down, in this community. to
where anybody can have a shy at it.
Well may the friends of the schools
repeat, when McCardy and Doran get
on the war path, the melancholy plant
OF the unlucky soldier who said that
he was as ready to take his chances
of being shot as the next man, but he
die not enlist to be kicked to death by
a mule.
TARDY JUSTICE
The Republicans, who were low
enough to abuse Mr.. Cleveland through
his entire administration for policies