THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
VOLUME III
JANUARY, 1898 NUMBER4
THE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. II.
ALL industries, hotels, and even the schools, are let to contract- ors. The adult teachers have no authority whatever, cannot punish for failure in lessons; they are simply advisors and attend- ants. Some enterprising citizen, for example, will take a con- tract to prepare a history of the War of the Revolution at a certain sum of money. The history must be accurate in all points, grammatically and legibly written, and bound for pres- ervation. The contractor is fined on all defects in his work. He hires assistants and divides the field according to the capa- cities of his employes. The little company engaged on this particular work then ransack all the books, magazines, and cyclopedias to be found in the library of the Republic. And so this one contract^ become-* .1 si hool in history, reading. writing t punctuation, and self-reliant research. Similar methods are followed in all the branches. The bank cashier lets contracts for sums in arithmetic based on his dealings \\itli custonu -i>. Maps and surveys are bargained for, and the entire range of learning ' s reduced to a mercantile basis. As a result the out- side visitor is amazed both at the fund of knowledge gained by the von: IK! the bombardment of questions aimed at him
concerning all the subjects \\heh they are studying. The motive of all this is, first, the necessity of earnin for food
and shelter, and, second, the desire to excel and become an,
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