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 schools?

J: Oh, yes. I think that citizens' participation is very important, so we needed to get
 citizen participation. That is a problem that arises with consolidation. The only
 way you can get that, pretty much, is to form these committees.
C: Do you have a book on that subject?

J: Yes, there is one here, but I do not see it. I cannot place my hands on it. It is
 somewhere, I know. They have that at the state Department of Education. [It
 contains information on] certain changes and profiles of Florida school districts.
 I did not have anything to do with it. You can find the copies in the library, I
 think. I will let you keep that, if you are interested. There might be some things
 in it that you would be interested in.

C: Yes, I am sure. I know this one will be very interesting.

J: And there are other profiles; there are more of them. There were several
 publications on that.

 We called together the representatives from the state education associations,
 local school systems, and state departments of educations of fourteen southern
 and border states. It said [that Florida had] one-quarter of the nation's children
 to educate, one-sixth of the nation's wealth (tax-paying ability), and one-eighth of
 the nation's school income. We had one-sixth of the wealth, but only one-eighth
 of the income, according to an index of tax-paying ability. We called them
 together for a week's conference in Daytona. Morphet served as executive
 secretary of the conference, and I as assistant executive secretary for a good
 many years, until 1949. We called them together first in 1939, when we met at
 Daytona Beach. We decided ways to develop and improve education in the
 South. The conferences met for two weeks. From then on, we met one week
 each year in Daytona the first of June, just after school was out. We worked to
 promote the development of education throughout the South.

 After Morphet went to California, I became executive secretary of that
 conference. It continued to operate even after 1970, and I continued as
 chairman of that Southern States Work Conference until I retired in 1971. Then
 Truman Pearce took over as chairman. It just recently had its last meeting; they
 decided it had served its purpose and usefulness. But that conference lasted
 forty years. Southern people have a tendency to work together. We published
 bulletins on various subjects, but this was sort of an overall bulletin that was
 published shortly after World War II, when I was still in the army. I was on the
 executive committee.

 You may look at the index to gather the types of things we were interested in: