at Washington. In 1890 John W. Hoyt, first President of the University of Wyoming, revived the agitation. President Andrew D. White of Cornell, President Edmund J. James of Illinois, and other equally prominent educators have worked for such an institution. It has been endorsed by the National Association of State Universities and by the National Educational Association. The legislatures of Western States have petitioned for it. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Grant, Hayes, and later Presidents have urged it upon Congress, and Committees of the Senate and House have reported favorably. But, as President James of Illinois remarked: "Private institutions, religious and secular, have opposed, thus far successfully, the movement." Western opinion has been disposed to ascribe this opposition to the Eastern universities, which grew out of colleges modeled after the private schools of England. The West drew its inspiration from German and French sources and has come to regard all education, from the elementary to the graduate school, as a public function. From this point of view the educational system appears to need a national university to complete its symmetry.

A dream may be fulfilled in various ways. The national university foreseen by Washington is still in the future. But the large endowed universities in the East fulfill Washington's ideal by drawing together students from all parts of the United States. The proportion of American students now going abroad for their education is not great enough to endanger the national ideals. Furthermore the Federal Government is carrying on many of the functions of such an institution in a way that would have pleased Washington and shocked Jefferson. Some sixty million dollars of national funds are now appropriated annually for agricultural education and experimentation, for the naval and military academies, for Indian schools, and for departments that are largely occupied with scientific research and the diffusion of knowledge, such as the Bureaus of Education, Ethnology, Mines, Fisheries, Standards, the Library of Congress, Naval Observatory, Public Health Service, National Museum, Zoölogical Park, Smithsonian Institution, and the Coast and Geodetic Survey.

CHAPTER VIII

SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC

...

Be it remembered that Uncle Sam is an undoubted friend of public education, although so sadly deficient in his own. It was, therefore, democratically believed, and loudly insisted on, that as the State had freely received, it should freely give; and that “larnin, even the most powerfullest highest larnin,” should at once be bestowed on everybody! and without a farthing's expense! - Baynard Rush Hall (1824).

It is impossible to understand anything about the American schools of the early half of the nineteenth century without bearing in mind the political conditions and ideals which determined their organization, standard, course of study, equipment, textbooks, and administration. The political revolution which abolished the colonial tie with Great Britain abolished also the colonial habit of mind and forced the American people henceforth to find in their own institutions the stimulus to popular education instead of depending upon the example of the mother country.

The still more important peaceful revolution

which subsequently abolished property qualifications for the suffrage in the various States and made most offices within the gift of the people directly elective had also an influence on the schools of America. [In the first place, it gave a

stimulus to the ideal of universal education, because, if all men were to be voters, the commonwealth must see that all children were instructed, unless it desired that illiterates should direct the destinies of the nation. Public schools, desirable in colonial days, became imperative in a wholly self-governing democracy. Another by-product of democracy, less of an unmixed blessing than the sentiment in favor of universal education, was the district school system, which originated in Massachusetts and Connecticut and was copied in most of the States of the Union. A "district" was the neighborhood around a public school, and there were usually several such districts in each "town," although some towns were never subdivided. The school district is the smallest and therefore, from a democratic standpoint, the most important of political divisions. Its size is determined by the length of the children's legs, for it must be within walking distance of most of the pupils, not much over a mile. The school district averaged about

four square miles in area, and the number of pupils ranged from half a dozen to fifty or more. As the means of transportation improved, the district expanded into the township and county with State supervision and national aid, until now we have rural county high schools to which the pupils are brought in free motor omnibuses. The money raised by the town school tax was distributed among the districts in various ways—according to the population, the number of children of school age, or the amount paid by the district in taxes, or on a basis of equality. In 1827 a Massachusetts law empowered district committeemen to care for the school property and select the teacher. This act, according to one writer, represented "the high-water mark of modern democracy, and the low-water mark of the public school system." It meant the passing of school.control from the expert and the official to the parent and the neighbor.

The faults of the district school system are obvious. If a self-made man has a hard struggle to get an education, so has a self-made community. Nothing could be introduced into the curriculum that the district did not regard as "practical," and this usually meant only the three R's and spelling, grammar, and geography. Novel methods were