Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-04-15
THE TEACHERS SALARY
QUESTION IN ENGLAND
II Is as Acute There as in the univer-
sity. Of Pennsylvania and the
Local Schools

VHAT the payment of inadequate salaries
Il to university professors and school tench
ers is not peculiar to Philadelphia or to
the United States is made manifest by II
discussion in the Manchester Guardian of
the sad state in which the British university
professors have been left by the war. The
purchasing power Of the income of n pro
fessor has been cut in half by the increased
burden of taxation and by the increased cost
of all the necessnries Of life. The Guardian
speaks particularly Of the case of Man
chester University, which. like the Uni
versity of Pennsylvania, is inadequately Gu
dowed and dependent on tho fees paid by
students. No professor has yet resigned
as protest against the low pay of his
assistants. as DR.. j. Russell Smith, of our
own university, has recently done. But
there is no telling what may happen. Fol
lowing is what the Guardian has to say
under the title of The University Crisis"
TT Is so common and so bad practice to
Apreach economy in general and expenditure
on any particular thing you care about that
one is slow to propose any new or additional
public expenditure whatever just now. 1t
must be desperately needed in order to
justify itself at n time when our national
solvency is in extreme danger. Still we
must at any rate keep bare life and health,
physical and mental, in the nation if we can,
and to do this We must deliver our uni
Yersites from tho state of scmistarvation
in which the war has left them. The diff
Guilty, of course. is. most severe in the
younger and less richly endowed universities,
like our own in Manchester. and n statement
which we published Il few days ngo shows
how great the need is.
To a great extent these universities de-
pended for their pre- war income upon fees,
and the greater part of these fees vanished
with the students. actual or possible, who
went to the war. OF course this source of
income will revive. but it was never adequate
in itself and, while the supply has been
cut off for years, large proportion of pre-
war expenses have run on. Some, such as
taxes, have increased.
MOST of the able bodied Junior teachers
A'4 at all the universities became officers
early iu the war. and the senior members Of
teaching stats have pretty generally been
Overworkcd ever since on n combination of
their ordinary duties with various kinds of
special war work And now all the sur
viyors, whatever they have done since the
summer of 1914, find their real incomes cut
down by n good half. That is to say. when
you take into account the increase in tax
alton and also the increase in all the cx-
penses Of living, a professor or assistant
now receives in return for his labor not
more than half the purchasing power which
his appointment brought to him before the
war.
UNIVERSITY teachers were never we'll
~ paid. 1t has always been the regular
thing for the most famous and distinguished
nrOfpSsorS to lpsS fhop tha hood mn
of any well known public school. During
the war many teachers in our universities
have earned higher pay as temporary officers
than they ever got in their professional
lives.
wartime munition worker who only
made as much money as many university
lecturers and demonstrators do would have
thought himself extremely illused. In sci
ence especially capable teacher who sticks
to university teaching must often be re-
markably disntercsted man, so great is the
contrast between the money rewards of
teaching and those of the industrial appli-
cation of advanced scientific knowledge.
That was the state of things even before
the war. The war has made it much worse
While almost every skilled or unslilled
workman has received considerable increases
of wages war bonuses to meet the in
creased cost of living, the university teach
er's fixed income has been unchanged at
the best. At the worst it has partly dis
appeared with students fees. In either
case more and more of it has been taken
directly in, taxes. And no incidental COM
.pensation has come in the form of Indirect
'proiteering. The deluge of borrowed money
with which the spending departments of the
state have saturated so much thirsty soil
and more lightly irrigated SO much more has
never splashed a university.
OVERWORKED, underpaid. the teaching
" staffs of universities are now about to
be asked to do more work than ever they did
BY wise increase of its expenditure on
school education the government has very
rightly made it certain that the demand for
university education will be much increased
1t was quite time.
War, like peace, has shown that educa-
tion is the most practical thing in the
world, and that you can no more fight your
enemy successfully with the unframed brain
than you can bend the forces of nature to
your will. One of the most admirable and
invaluable new types prominent in the war
was to be found among those Temporary
officers Of artillery and engineers whose edu =
cation had been received in municipal ele-
mcntary and secondary schools and in the
science faculties of the new universities.
Many of them brought to their emergency
business Of war most impressive combina
ton of the acquired scientific habit of mind
with the plain Engishman's habit Of judging
everything in the light of practice.
A university training had turned the raw
material of good privates into inestimably
useful officers. And, now that the war is
over and a changed industrial world has
hequn in which labor will eysct so rf,U a