despite sound bodies, are dependents, contributing nothing to the
resources of society, but constantly preying upon those resources. There
are in our country not fewer than one hundred thousand tramps, and by
some the number has been estimated at a half-million. If this vast army
of dependents could be transferred to the ranks of producers, tilling
our fields, harvesting our crops, constructing our highways of travel,
redeeming our waste places, and beautifying our streams, life would be
far more agreeable both for them and for the rest of our people. They
would become self-supporting and so would win self-respect; they would
subtract their number from the number of those who live at public
expense; and they would make contributions to the general store. They
would thus relieve society of the incubus of their dependence, and
largely increase the number of our people who are self-supporting.

=Some contrasts.=--We are making some progress in the line of thrift
through our school savings and postal savings, but we have not yet
attained to a national conception of thrift as an element of patriotism.
This is one of the large yet inspiring privileges of the vitalized
school. Thrift is so intimately identified with life that they naturally
combine in our thinking, and we have only to reach the conception that
our mode of life is the measure of our patriotism in order to realize
that thrift and patriotism are in large measure identical. The
industrious, frugal, thrifty man is patriotic; the unthrifty, lazy,
shiftless man is unpatriotic. The one ennobles and honors his country;
the other dishonors and degrades his country.

=Conclusion.=--If the foregoing conclusions are valid, and to every
thoughtful person they must seem well-nigh axiomatic, then the school
has a wide field of usefulness in the way of inculcating a loftier and
broader conception of patriotism. The teacher who worthily fills her