under such unusual conditions and by such unusual means should be in various stages of educational advancement. At the close of December, 1923, the student-beneficiaries who were using their awards for educational purposes were distributed in schools as shown below in Table I.

TABLE I.

In elementary and high schools.....

3

In colleges, technical, and trade schools.36

In addition, 54 students' cases were pending or had been temporarily discontinued. Several of the students whose cases were pending were then in elementary and high schools but had not drawn upon their awards for educational purposes and were not, therefore, included in the Table above. Thus it will be noted that the Commission is called upon to handle the educational problems of nearly one hunded students yearly who are of various ages and stages of educational advancement and who are in almost every type of educational institution.

There are also the cases of persons who are at work and wish to take advantage of their awards and resume their courses in school; many times such cases require more attention than those of students already in school. In the twenty years that the Fund has existed, 147 persons have had to give up their educational plans-some because of pure indolence and unwillingness to make the necessary efforts to complete courses of study fitting them for active participation in some trade or profession, others because of family conditions over which they and the Commission had no control, and a few others because of sheer dishonesty in the use of the funds advanced them for their educational expenses by the Commission. Even in these last-named cases the Commission was tolerant and tried to help them further, only to have the dishonest acts repeated. But 116 students in the same twenty years successfully completed their courses of instruction and went out into the world better prepared to earn their living than they would have been without the Commission assist

ance, for it grants pecuniary awards only to those whose means do not permit them to attend higher institutions of learning.

Bearing in mind that the Commission's efforts to assist educationally a number of its beneficiaries represent but one of its many forms of aid to those whom it recognizes for acts of heroism and that it cannot, therefore, deal with its studentbeneficiaries in such a thoroughly professional manner as a vocational counselor in a high school, or a principal, or a college dean, it should be noted how far it does go to provide its beneficiaries with intelligent educational and vocational guidance.

It has always handled each case as an individual case, for it has no blanket methods. It has set up three definite aims, as follows: (1) to help persons who have had to leave the elementary or high school before completing their courses to return and complete at least the equivalent of a high-school course, assisting financially those unable to return without such aid; (2) to provide pecuniary assistance for those students whose school work indicates promise of success in technical or trade work to take up those courses for which they seem to be fitted, both scholastically and temperamentally; and (3) to send to liberal-arts colleges those students who have done well in all their high school studies but who have not shown an interest in a particular vocation and in whom it has not been able to develop even a tentative vocational aim. The Commission keeps in close touch with its students' progress and success in their studies, for the interest of the school officials in the progress and welfare of the students is always sought in an endeavor to check up on the students' activities scholastically and otherwise and in an effort to ascertain the students' fitness for particular kinds of work.

Problems arise, of course, from the great diversity of ages and the previous training of the students, their home conditions, and their own wishes in the matter of further education. Many of the students who became beneficiaries during their high school courses had already begun work in partic

ular curriculums such as the Commercial, or Scientific, or General, and are, therefore, not prepared or being prepared for college entrance. Indeed, though many are plainly bright enough to do good work in college, they are handicapped by their lack of training preparatory for admission to college. The amount of the educational awards, usually $1600, makes college courses possible when the Commission's aid is supplemented by that of the parents or the students themselves. Many students want to change their courses immediately to the College-preparatory when they receive word of their being granted educational awards.

On the other hand there are many students who, because of lack of finances, have never even considered a college course or, for that matter, carrying their educations beyond graduation from high school; and they have no definite ideas of what they want to do when they graduate. It then becomes a very real problem to arouse within such a distinct vocational aim, not necessarily narrow in looking to the years just ahead but broad in considering the whole future of the students. Then, too, the matter of distance from the office of the Commission in Pittsburgh makes wholly satisfactory handling of some of these puzzling cases extremely difficult; for most of the work must be carried on by correspondence. It must be remembered that these students live in all parts of this country, Canada, and Newfoundland, and that they attend schools ranging in size from a little one-room rural school in Maine to a large comprehensive high school in a city like Los Angeles, or St. Louis, or Boston. And finally it becomes a problem to keep always in as close touch with these students as it desires, to counsel them wisely when they become discouraged and threaten to drop out of school and go to workfor there are many for whom the acquiring of an education is attended by real hardship and sacrifice to stimulate them to greater effort, to commend or to admonish as may be necessary, to keep accurate records of their marks and educational progress by grades each term or semester, to see to it that the studies they take are appropriate or needed for

the courses they intend to pursue in the next higher institutions they will enter, to keep them furnished with sufficient funds to meet their educational expenses, and to insist that they account properly and accurately for their expenditures from the funds furnished them.

To carry out its purposes and thereby solve satisfactorily these problems, the Commission, through the Manager of the Fund, corresponds directly with the student-beneficiaries to secure as much information as possible concerning their educational situations and the circumstances relating thereto. By means of questions concerning the studies liked and disliked and the reasons for their preferences, the kinds of work preferred and especially the actual experience of each student in any kind of work, how well the work was liked, the success achieved in it and why it was given up, an idea of the students' natural likes is obtained. They are questioned regarding the recreation they enjoy and the sports they regularly engage in; and they are asked to tell frankly what their ambitions are, the reasons leading them to choose particular vocations, what they consider the duties of those vocations to be, the qualities necessary for success in them, whether they believe they have those qualities, and on what they base their

answers.

The Commission also tries to ascertain whether its students have special opportunities to enter particular vocations advantageously. It has tried, in the cases of the younger beneficiaries, having them write themes on assigned topics in order to learn something of their ability to express themselves and to develop in them interest in the vocational activities going on about them. It does not consider it essential or necessarily desirable that a student cling to the vocation first selected but rather that the student begin to pay conscious attention to some vocation, its requirements for success, its rewards, etc. Frequently by these means a student will incidentally learn of some other vocation more suited to his tastes and abilities. All of this helps to acquaint the student with what is demanded of prospective workers, whether in

the trades or professions, so that he is not wholly unprepared when he enters high school or approaches graduation from it, as the case may be, to make a reasonably intelligent preliminary choice.

Whenever it appears that students have only vague ideas regarding the vocations they say they are interested in-and this is often the case-the Commission furnishes them with the titles of books and articles pertaining to those vocations and seeks to put the students in touch with as much information as possible concerning them. It occasionally asks them to write resumés of the articles read. This takes time and patience; but thus far the results achieved lead the Commission to believe that, since its activities must of necessity be confined largely to correspondence, it is the best method to follow. Of course it courts questions from the students and volunteers its advice and gives them useful information concerning courses, subjects, etc.; for it aims to produce as close, intimate, and friendly relations as possible.

While it is thus developing helpful information from the beneficiaries to guide it in its intelligent handling of each student's case, it also communicates with the education institution that that student is attending or has attended and secures just as complete a record of him scholastically and socially as the staff of the institution can furnish. That record ordinarily includes the student's marks in each subject each term of each school year, the name of the course pursued, the credits earned towards graduation and the number required for graduation, and the marking scale so as to judge the quality of the student's work. It also includes the principal's and the teachers' individual estimates of the student's abilities and limitations as they have observed them, his personal habits, appearance, his attitude towards his school work, the extra-curricular activities engaged in, and, in the cases of high school students, his probable success in college or trade work.

But this is not all. Each year a special agent who assists the Manager of the Fund in the detailed handling of these