Daily Press

TEACHERS AND THE MARRYING HABIT.

The habit of marrying which seems to have become one of the fixed tenets of a large proportion of the female school teachers in the West is causing a good deal of worry among the members of school boards, especially in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. In those three States alone a shortage of a thousand teachers will have taken place when school opens at the end of the vacation season.

In Nebraska the school teachers are reported as getting married at a rate unknown to the last three decades, and there is a demand already for 100 teachers, with the want list growing. In Iowa the total shortage for the State is placed at 400 country positions.

Those who are feeling the pinch of the situation are inclined to blame President Roosevelt for the unsatisfactory condition of affairs. They say that his gospel of anti-race suicide, and of the large family as a patriotic distinction, with the glorification of motherhood to an extent hitherto unknown, has obtained eager acceptance among the people of the west with whom he has been so potent a prophet.

If this sort of thing keeps up it may be necessary for the school boards to increase salaries until the profession of teaching will appeal to men. Under present wages the few men regard teaching simply as a makeshift to enable them to pay board and secure clothing until some attractive young fellow comes along and offers to take those burdensome cares off frail shoulders. One can hardly blame them for refusing to regard teaching as a pleasing life-time profession. It is a hard and onerous life and now has not even the compensating advantage of living salaries.

A correspondent writes to the New York Herald a communication in which he remarks that a good wife is heaven's best gift to man, his angel and minister of graces innumerable, his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels: her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life: her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his cares, and her prayers the ablest advocates of heaven's blessings on his head. Undoubtedly.

But even this paragon of god-like virtues frequently is misjudged and unappreciated if one may judge by the mighty actions of reprobate husbands to say nothing of the charges and counter-charges made in nearly every divorce suit.