machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools.  It is so in almost every field of labor where efficiency has been introduced.  Now the books to be read are the tools in the teaching of reading.  In a former day when a mastery of the mechanics of reading was all that seemed to be needed, the privately purchased textbook could suffice.  In our day when other ends are set up beyond and above those of former days, a far more elaborate and expensive equipment is required.  The city must now supply the educational tools.  It is well to face this issue candidly and to state the facts plainly.  Relative failure can be the only possible lot of reluctant communities.  They can count on it with the same assurance as that of a manufacturer of shoes who attempts to employ the methods of former days in competition with modern methods.

In this city the expenditures for supplementary textbooks have amounted to something more than $31,000 in the past 10 years.  Approximately one-third of this sum was spent in the first seven years of the decade and more than $20,000 in the past three years.  This indicates the rapid advance in this direction made under the present school administration but the supply of books still falls far short of the needs of the schools.  A fair start has been made but nothing should be permitted to obstruct rapid progress in this direction.

SPELLING

Cleveland has set apart an average amount of program time for spelling.  Possibly the study might more accurately be called word-study, since it aims also at training for pronunciation, syllabification, vocabulary extension, and etymology.  Since much of the reading time is given to similar word-study, the figures presented in Table 4 are really too small to represent actual practice in Cleveland.

Table 4.—­Time given to spelling
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| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|-----------------------|------------------------
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
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1 | 47 | 54 | 6.5 | 6.3
2 | 63 | 66 | 7.2 | 7.3
3 | 79 | 73 | 9.0 | 8.0
4 | 63 | 67 | 7.1 | 6.9
5 | 51 | 61 | 5.7 | 6.3
6 | 47 | 58 | 5.4 | 5.9
7 | 47 | 52 | 5.4 | 5.3
8 | 47 | 51 | 5.4 | 5.1
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Total | 444 | 482 | 6.5 | 6.4
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The general plan of the course is indicated in the syllabus: 

“Two words are made prominent in each lesson.  Their pronunciation, division into syllables, derivation, phonetic properties, oral and written spelling and meaning, are all to be made clear to pupils.