This plain argument of economy was given impetus in the resolution unanimously adopted by the first national conference on teacher training for rural schools, at Chicago, September 26, 1914: "As a ready and practical means of saving public expense

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we favor the use of all public-school buildings as centers for voting."

IT IS WORTHY.

Hope of orderly progress for the race chiefly centers in the intelligent use of the ballot. The polling place is the primary capitol in a republic. In comparison with it the city hall, the statehouse, the

FIG. 3.-The present location of the ballot box in Sauk City, Wis. Election scene.

Capitol at Washington are secondary capitols. The polling place should have the most nobly significant housing the community can give. The public-school building affords this housing.

IT IS APPROPRIATE.

Elections, whether for the selection of men or the decision of measures, are primarily examinations of public intelligence. Schools are the logical and natural places for the periodic testings of the common mentality. The voting machine or ballot box should be kept in the schoolhouse as the symbol of efficiency in self-government-the examining instrument of the electorate's judgment and good sense.

IT IS CONVENIENT.

The public schoolhouses are so distributed as to be easily reached by all the children of each district. The distance children go each day, adults may readily go to vote. A strange disparity has existed between urban and rural communities in the size of voting precincts as compared with school districts. As a rule, in the city there are more voting precincts than school districts. In the country generally the opposite condition exists. In general, the voting population of any community is about the same as the number of children of school age. The building that is large enough to accommodate the children is likely to be adequate for the use of the voters.

IT IS PERMANENT.

The storing of the voting apparatus in a cellar, loft, or shed, excepting at election times, suggests an intermittent and occasional democracy, as though the people were in authority for only a day or two each year. The continuing presence of the voting instrument, permanently installed in the community capitol, proclaims the continuing authority and responsibility of the citizens.

IT IS EDUCATIVE.

In Milwaukee, Wis., the question whether the public schoolhouses should be used as the polling places was referred to the school principals. Their vote was unanimously in favor of it. They recognized that this use of the school buildings would be a positive and practical aid in the most important service of the public schools at the civic training places of youth. This fundamental benefit, which is vividly set forth in the statement of Principal Buckley, was declared as of importance second only to the economy of the plan, in the resolution. adopted by the National Conference on Teacher Training: "As a ready and practical means of saving public expense, and at the same time vitalizing the service of the public schools in civic education, we favor the use of all public school buildings for voting."

IT IS SIMPLIFYING.

Not infrequently citizens fail to vote at primaries and even at elections because they do not know the location of the polling place. Everybody knows the location of the public schoolhouse in his district. Moreover, making the voting precinct and the public school district identical does away with the confusion that arises from having two units of neighborhood; a confusion in part responsible for the failure to visualize and appreciate the neighborhood, the group unit in society next in importance to the family.

IT IS UNIFYING.

Not all the citizens in every public school district send their children to the public school. There are parochial or private schools. But there is no parochial or private ballot box, and when this alluniting instrument is permanently established in the schoolhouse, it makes plain the fact that with the adult civic uses of this public building the distinctions that cause the separate instruction of children have nothing whatever to do.

The general establishment of the public schoolhouse as the polling place not only makes of this neighborhood building a substantial and ever-present reminder of the common responsibility and opportunity,

FIG. 4.-Election day scene in a public schoolhouse, Grand Rapids, Mich. houses of Grand Rapids have been used for many years as voting centers.

The school

the uniting civic bond that unites in one membership all citizens without respect to difference of religious or other opinion, but it also visualizes and emphasizes the identity of the civic bond within various sorts of communities, whether rich or poor, urban or rural. To make the common schoolhouse the polling place everywhere is to make a monumental declaration of the community of civic interest that transcends all our disunities.

IT BELONGS WITH THE CIVIC-FORUM USE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLHOUSE.

Where the citizens of any community in Wisconsin organize themselves into a district or neighborhood assembly to use the schoolhouse for the free discussion of public questions, the law directs public

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school boards to "provide, free of charge, light, heat, and janitor service, where necessary," and to "make such other provisions as may be necessary for the free and convenient use of such building" for the periodical meetings of this community association. In pursuance of this statute, neighborhood or district assemblies-deliberative organizations which regard every citizen 21 years of age or over residing in the district as a member-have been formed in more than 200 communities in Wisconsin. This movement is spreading rapidly throughout other parts of the country. For the citizens to assemble in the schoolhouse for deliberation and then go to another place to vote is not more absurd than it would be for aldermen to meet for discussion in the city hall and then go to some other building to cast their vote.

THE SCHOOL, PRINCIPAL AS COMMUNITY SECRETARY.

Combined with the movement for the adult civic use of the public schoolhouses as polling places and as headquarters of deliberative assembly in many places is the movement to authorize the school principal or some one associated with him to serve not only over the children as supervisor of their instruction but also under the adult citizens as community clerk or secretary. In some communities this movement is taking the form of combining the office of village clerk with that of the school principal; in others it is taking the form of adding responsibility for service as organizing and executive secretary of the citizens' assembly to the present official responsibility of the school principal.

According to information received by the bureau of civic and social center development of the University of Wisconsin, the school principals at Algoma, Alma Center, Oostburg, De Forest, Iron Belt, Lublin, Medford, Muscoda, and Newburg were last year elected or appointed to serve as voting or village clerks. In Milwaukee, Superior, Kenosha, Neillsville, Sauk City, and Osseo the school principal or some one associated with him and responsible to the school board has been made definitely responsible for civic secretarial service.

If the school principal or some one associated with him is to be authorized to serve as clerk of citizenship-expression in voting or as secretary of citizenship-expression in deliberation, or as both, which seems to be the tendency, it is logical that the building in which he is engaged to serve the community on other days should be used when he serves the citizens in their voting.

PART OF THE PROGRAM OF CITIZENSHIP ORGANIZATION.

The installation in each public schoolhouse of the voting machine or ballot box, the official primary instrument for answering public questions, is the first step in practical physical adjustment toward

"finding the real meaning of democracy," as this program is formulated by President Wilson: "Citizens going to school to one another in the common schoolhouses to understand and answer public questions, as hitherto only representatives of the citizens have gone to school to one another in the buildings provided for them." The use of the public schoolhouses for voting is thus a basic part of the community-center program which the President has declared to mean "the recovery of the constructive and creative genius of the American people." Indorsement of the use of the public schoolhouse for voting is thus given by ex-President Roosevelt, along with his declaration for its use as the community forum for civic assembly: "Every schoolhouse should be the polling place of its district. The schoolhouse ought to be the senate chamber of the people, where men and

women come together, not as partisans, but as neighboring citizens. to hear the claims of all candidates and choose between them and to discuss and decide public issues." The designation of each public schoolhouse as the voting center of its district is coupled with its use as community headquarters for organized discussion in the program which ex-President Taft characterizes as "not only good civic organization but also good business."

Indorsements of the proposition that the public schoolhouse should be used as the polling place, as a distinct proposition apart from other civic uses of the schoolhouse, might be multiplied; but the most earnest indorsement of this plan comes from those statesmen and students of public welfare who see in it an integral part of the movement for the self-organization of the voting body into one deliberative body, the program which "goes to the heart of the whole American problem."