The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-27
REV. MIR. LUCKEY FAYORS INCREASE Says Importance of School Teachers is Not
 Realized.
WARNS 'GAINST STRIKE
Salary is Not the Main Question Presented to
 Public.

| Rev Frank R. Luckey, pastor Of the Humphrey Street Congregational church. in q sermon preached before his parishioners yesterday morning. gave his opinion on the campaign be- ing waged by the teachers of the city for an increase in pay. His opinion as to the increase was favorable to the present movement of the teachers, but he said little about it, devoting most of his time to the importance of the teachers in our American life and cau- tioning them as to their method of pro- cedure. His subject was, Our Public Schools and Our National Life, and he took his text from the tenth verse of the sixth chapter of St. Pauls sec- ond epistle to the Corinthians: "As poor, yet making many rich MT. Luckey said;
 The salary question as related to our public school teachers has had front place on our city programme for some weeks now, but it is doubtful whether our citizens are yet awake to the real question involved, for the salary Ques- tion, important and exciting though it be, is, after all, merely temporary and incidental, phase of the real question. If we as citizens were alive to the de- gree we ought to be, to the potentiali- ties hidden in the common schools of our land, to the kind of curriculum, to the physical equipment, and last, but first in importance, the teaching force. \ the salary question would care for it. self. Therefore, we shall best serve the cause, not only of the teachers with whom we deeply sympathize in their effort after a better wage but of the superintendent, supervising princi- pals and general public, by an endeav- Tor to arouse public opinion to the actu- al question, beside which all other mat N ters are trivial, | e, the making of the United States, and the part our corl- mon schools are to play in the process: M That, we repeat, is the aspect of this agitation for better salaries for the
 teachers, to which the nation has yet to be awakened.
 Passing, then, through this debated
 question of better wage for our
 teaching force, let us face the real facts of the position The United States of America. our present and fu
 ture national life, is being mentally and morally born, after the home,
 which is always and everywhere the
 greatest formative influence in any na-
 tion's life, in our public schools Side
 by side with the church, with only
 portion of our population in it's sanctu-
 aries, meeting at intervals; side by side
 with our colleges and universities with
 only portion of our population within
 their walls, and for a small space of
 time; side by side with these teaching |. institutions, stand our public schools, extensive with the extensiveness of the. entire youthful population of the na-
 tion, subject to no ebb and flow of l church or college popularity, with prac-
 tically no absentees meeting by cor-
 pusion not for one day in the week
 only, but almost every day, occupying . for long term of years practically the
 whole mind of the pupil. When Secre-
 tary Root said in his first Dodge lec-
 ture on "Citizenship" that the great
 est and most useful educational pro- a cess OCCuIS III lilG OllltOQ5 CIdlrS OlissE
 in four years, when some fifteen mil- $ lion people are concerned in reading
 and hearing about difficult problems of
 government" did he forget our public- 5 school system, where, not once in four l years, but for long term of years, the ' greatest and what may yet be the most useful educational process oc- CUTS?
 No far-sighted man doubts the greatness and usefulness of the educa- e tional process that occurs in our churches, our colleges and universities l and system of libraries our national : holidays and monuments, our press our national elections and the ques- tions of national moment which arise o from time to time, but, after the home,
 stands our public-school system the e paramount educational process of our
 nation. Why? For here you have
 practically the entire juvenile popula-
 tion of the nation, meeting almost
 every day in the week for a long term
 of years, with the authority of the state to back up the instruction given it. To
 our mind 1t should not be permitted to
 leave at fourteen. In this respect our