It is significant that the number of teachers who are in training in our normal schools has decreased in the past twelve or fifteen years from three thousand to two thousand, while the number of students in colleges and technical schools has increased.  The people of the Commonwealth cannot support the Government unless the Government supports them.

The condition which was described by the teacher of Queen Elizabeth, that greater compensation is paid for the unimportant things than is paid for training the intellectual abilities of our youth, might exist in the sixteenth century, but it ought not to exist in the twentieth century.

Fortunately for us, the sterling character of teachers of all kinds has kept them at their task even though we have failed to show them due appreciation, and up to the present time the public has suffered little.

But unless a change is made and a new policy adopted, the cause of education will break down.  It will either become a trade for those little fitted for it or be abandoned altogether, instead of remaining the noblest profession, which it has been and ought to be.

There are some things that are fundamental.  In the sixteenth century the voice of the people was little heard.  If the sovereign had wisdom, that might suffice.  But in the twentieth century the people are sovereign.  What they think determines every question of civilization.  Unless they are well trained, well informed, and well instructed, unless a proper value is put on knowledge and wisdom, the value of all material things will be lost.

There is now no pains too great, no cost too high, to prevent or diminish the duty enjoined by the Constitution of the Commonwealth that wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, be generally diffused among the body of the people.

This important subject ought to be considered and a remedy provided at the special session of the General Court.

XLII

STATEMENT TO THE PRESS

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1919

My thanks are due to the millions of my fellow citizens of Massachusetts.  I offer them freely, without undertaking to specify, to all who have supported the great cause of the supremacy of the law.  The heart of the people has proven again sound and true.  No misrepresentation has blinded them, no sophistry has turned them.  They have listened to the truth and followed it.  They have again disappointed those who distrusted them.  They have turned away from those who sought to play upon their selfishness.  They have justified those who trusted them.  They have justified America.  The attempt to appeal to class prejudice has failed.  The men of Massachusetts are not labor men, or policemen, or union men, or poor men, or rich men, or any other class of men first; they are Americans first.  The wage-earners have