JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
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deal more than mine. You say "the kind of young men.. .who will look beyond the dollar sign t o find other compensations." I am afraid they cannot look beyond, when they find the dollar sign and other compensations in industry. I disagree with your statement that comparisons are fruitless. I think that if people in your position and people in business insisted on and implemented efforts t o give high-school teachers an economic level a t least as high as people of their age and experience have in industry, other blessings would follow. Your last paragraph is interesting. The important part we play has already been acknowledged, professionally and socially. We get pleas from foundations, colleges, and industries every single day t o cooperate with them in putting boys and girls into industry. They come to us. All these people feel that we are uniquely equipped for our job. But the larger pay check is what we desperately need NOW. You say it may be longer in coming. That's where your reasoning is backward. I t should befirst. We all used to be ~ r o u dof our work and standine. But our morale righi now is a t its lowest ebb. f e cannot in conscience advise young men and women to go into teaching, because we cannot answer the unanswerable argument as to why these young men and women have to wait for a living, when they can get a living plus in industrial life. No amount of blah-blahing abont other compensations can sidestep this issue. You carefully approach the subject (we deserve more money, etc.) but shy off it as soon as you get near. When Genera1 Electric needs engineers badly, it pays them well. When the country needs more teachers it promises them other compensations. I would still like to be able to do other things besides sitting a t home and looking a t television. And don't tell me I can go to a mnseum. BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
LEONLITTELL
To the Editor: To the Editor: Your editorial in the February issue was interesting, I have read with great interest the report by Leonard but I am afraid you put the cart before the horse. I A. Ford of State Teachers College, Mankato, Minnehave been teaching chemistry a t the Thomas Jefferson sota, on "The science fair in southern Minnesota" (J. High School for 28 years (after seven years of labora- CHEM.EDUC.,31,152 (1954)). This programislaudable tory and plant experience). I am now 57 years old and highly commendable and deserves all possible and desperately trying to maintain a home and a son in support. We here in California do the job on a grander college on the magnificent take-home pay of 8 8 5 a scale and I can think of no enterprise among school month. (Don't let the book salary of $6500 mislead kids more deserving of recognition. Last year I had you.) And this is New York I am living in. Needless the good fortune to judge the Science Fair a t the Los to say, I work on extra jobs, my wife works, and my son Angeles County Museum and I was stirred by the exworks. And still I have t o give up my house and my perience. The exhibitors were school kids from grades subscription t o the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION 7 through 12. The more than 200 exhibits on display (to which I have subscribed since 1926). In 1939 my demonstrated facts and theories and phenomena take-home pay was 8 5 2 a month. throughout the gamut of science. The skill and inI have in the past put some of my outstanding stu- genuity and imagination of these youngsters stirred dents into the field, but practically all of them are in me. The work was all their own; the ideas were their industry. And their take-home pay comes to a good own; the imagination was their own. As a judge I
