ture for education absolutely dwarfs in comparison all other expenditures. The damage which the State has sustained in past years from a failure to present to the public mind the importance of the school in a financial and practical as well as a moral and social light is incalculable. But still the stubborn fact remained that 49 per cent of the children of the State between 4 and 18 are yet absent from the public schools.

The report of the board in 1861, of which Governor Erastus Fuller was chairman, though issued under the shadow of the opening civil war, is a cheerful and even inspiring document. The secretary devotes a large space to the discussion of the religious question in the schools, which had been forced upon the board by the attitude of certain extremists of several denominations. He defends the American policy of Christian training through the organization of genuine religious morality, founded on love to God, into the discipline, methods of instruction, and entire atmosphere of the schoolroom, and from this and the "daily walk and conversation" brings practical testimony to that watchful, parental control that far better than formal catechising builds up the true manhood and womanhood of the child.

Here we may well pause in the record of the common school in Verinont during a period of more than a century of its history as colony and Commonwealth. In no member of the New England group of States had the people's school to contend against such odds for a favorable recognition. Without commerce or manufactures, with no populous cities, for one hundred years a border land of hardship and peril, coming up to the full enjoyment of statehood through perpetual conflict, sparsely populated, with a severe climate, the State could only grope its way toward the establishment of an effective system of education by slow and cautious steps. But at last the battle was won. In 1862, it was by the persistent effort of the United States Senator from Vermont, Hon. Justin S. Morrill, that the beneficent law for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges in all the States, subsidized by the gift of public lands from the National Government, emphasized by important additional legislation in 1890, was passed, the former statute during the existence of the civil war, and the lands appropriated for the seceding States religiously held by the United States Government until their acceptance after the peace of 1865.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

During the first generation of its colonial life New Hampshire, like Maine, was an outlying district of Massachusetts, and shared in the earliest movements of the Bay State colony for the education of all the children. "Brother Philemon Purmont," who was appointed the first public schoolmaster of Boston, and Mr. Maud, who actually held the position, both at a later date emigrated to New Hampshire and were known as influential clergymen and educators in the new plantations. But the educational movement lingered as through all the northern

outlying realm of New England, and it was ten years from the inauguration of the great revival, through the appointment of Horace Mann as the first secretary of the Massachusetts board of education, that the legislature of New Hampshire, after an agitation begun in 1844, under the lead of the governor, on July 10, 1846, passed a revised school law, including the appointment of Mr. Charles B. Haddock as the commissioner of common schools. Mr. Haddock was a professor of Dartmouth College and a nephew of Daniel Webster. He traveled 300 miles in his own carriage during the year of his service.

The first report of the commissioner at the session of the legislature in 1847 bore ample testimony to the fact that this forward movement in education was regarded even by its responsible friends as an "experiment." Commissioner Haddock introduces himself in his new capacity with profuse explanations and warnings against the danger of great expectations from the new departure. He pleads for at least a five years' trial before the popular verdict is made up, and he reminds his constituents of the profound truth that, after all, commissioners and committees are only agents.

The work is the work of the people themselves. This is one of its most beautiful features. It makes our education an education for the fathers and mothers as well as the children. The teacher learns as fast as the pupil; the parent is elevated by every effort to raise his children in the world. A community engaged in improving their schools improves with them. There is nothing so liberalizing and ennobling, nothing so likely to purify the morals and enlarge the intelligence of the men and women of the State as a general, hearty, enlightened interest in the mental and moral culture of the young. * It is [he continues] a remarkable fact that after more than two hundred years of experience the legislatures of the New England States should be engaged in experiments for improving the schools.

*

The spirit of the great revival was abroad, and the "Granite State,” after its own deliberate and persistent style of doing good things, had joined the procession. At this period, in the organization of the common school, New Hampshire did not essentially differ from the other New England States.

Each town is divided into districts. Each district, with a distinct organization and appropriate officers, has within certain limits an independent jurisdiction. In this way the immediate care of the young, even while they are under the instruction of the State, 18 committed to their natural advisers and guardians, their own parents and friends. In any district having fifty scholars the school may be divided into two or more divisions, thus securing the beginning of a system of gradation. Two or more contiguous districts may unite to maintain a common high school which may even prepare youth for the university.

A hundred dollars for every equal sum of the public taxes apportioned to a town was to be assessed upon it annually for the support of the schools. Additional sums might be raised without limit. Five per cent of its school money might be appropriated by each town for the support of a teachers' institute at some convenient place within the county to continue from ten days to four weeks with practice in a daily model school.

ED 98-27

The public officials required were a district prudential committee not exceeding three persons, a town superintending committee of not less than three nor more than five, and a State commissioner, the two former elected by the district and the town, and the last appointed by the governor and council. The commissioner was required to spend at least twenty weeks in the different counties of the State each year in general school work. No teacher could receive pay unless he had reported the statistics of his school to the supervising committee of the town, who must make a general report in town meeting, which was to be forwarded to the State commissioner before April 1 each year. No town could receive its portion of the State literary fund that had not complied with this requirement.

For some of the most important features of this law the State was indebted to Daniel Oliver, the chairman of the committee on education, by which the school law of 1827 was reported to the house; to Joel Piper,(?) Samuel D. Bill, and Charles James Fox, who drafted the revised school law of 1842, and especially to Hon. Salma Hale, chairman of the legislative committee of education in 1844 and the father of the new law of 1846. In the opinion of the commissioner:

A board of education like that of Massachusetts would, not improbably, interfere too much with those notions of freedom in such matters which have prevailed in New Hampshire from the first, and which, whatever inconveniences may sometimes result from them, we should not willingly see abridged or offended.

He refers also to the "moral and Christian tone of the constitution and the law, evidenced by the adoption by the constitution of New Hampshire of the clause concerning the moral and religious training of children and youth in the common schools.

With these preliminaries the new commissioner launches out into a report substantially like all similar documents presented to the legis lature and the public in the New England States during the first twenty years of the great movement for school reform. We read the same description of poor schoolhouses, incompetent teachers, a bewildering variety of text-books, popular independence, etc., as everywhere during this period. There was probably little difference in the condition of communities similarly situated through New England in this respect during these years of the reorganization of the school system. The southern counties of New Hampshire, by far the most populous, and half a dozen cities of the State were, of course, farther along than the great mountain world in the north, buried in snows and vexed with storms during the long winter, still with a sparse population hardly raised from the conflicts and hardships of the pioneer life of Daniel Webster's boyhood.

Here, as everywhere, the commissioner reports that the best results have been obtained by the personal visits of himself and distinguished public men to the people assembled in convention, where an American community can exercise its dearest prerogative in "talking back” and

"talking the thing over" till it is finally talked into shape. A circular was also directed to many teachers of the State, generally republished in the newspapers, and in some cases given to every pupil in the schools. The most potent educational influence to-day, as fifty years ago, in any American community is a man or woman fitted by genius, culture, and of self-sacrificing spirit, for a true ministry of education, set agoing through the length and breadth of the land.

ance.

In 1848 there were about 2,300 school districts in New Hampshire and 75,000 pupils enrolled in the schools, 55,000 only in regular attendThe average length of the winter schools was nine weeks, and the average wages of male teachers, exclusive of board, $13.50 and of females $5.65 per month. The entire annual cost of popular education was $120,000. The inevitable appendix contains an abstract of the most notable reports from local authorities, and as usual contains the most important portion of the entire document.

By 1849 the change of administration, everywhere noticeable outside of Massachusetts and Connecticut, had occurred and the State report for two years was made by the Rev. Richard S. Rust. But it is only "the old, old story," told by another preacher according to his special power of calling public attention to defects in an educational system so deeply rooted in the habits and ideas of the people that any reasonable expectation of reform seemed to include the work of a generation. The new commissioner dilates especially on, 1. The branches of education adapted to the present conditions of our district schools, and the order of their introduction. 2. The preparation of the teachers for their work, and the instrumentalities for its accomplishment. The whole amount received for the schools for the year 1849 was $174,517.66, a gain upon the previous year of $15,000.

The year 1851 introduces us to still another State official in the person of John Q. Woods, secretary of the board of education. A State board of education had been established, consisting of the county commissioners of education. The change was doubtless a surrender to the spirit of independence which revolted at the idea of power concentrated in a State superintendent of common schools acting without the "advice and consent" of a body near the county and township committees. The careful way in which the new board approaches the sensitive topic of recommending a uniform course of text-books is a proof of its probable inefficiency. It writes, "a pretty general uniformity of books was considered very desirable, and at the same time it was thought very undesirable to recommend any book that might prove unsatisfactory. A medium course was adopted, to recommend now to the common schools of the State only those books upon which all could agree and of whose superior excellence there could be no doubt." A committee of five on methods of instruction, school government, and discipline, through their chairman, the secretary of the board, favors us with a few pages of eloquent generalities, the pith of which

may be found in the suggestion that the way to govern the schools and especially to "abate whispering, with its frightful train of evils," is "by the people of the district, acting in their collective capacity of a corporation!"

The democratic idea of "rotation in office" was adopted by the new double-barreled board of county commissioners acting as a State board of education. The report for 1851 was signed by the ten county commissioners, with Mr. Hall Roberts as secretary. This was a very successful method of showing "how not to do it," since no county commissioner could be expected during his brief term of office to obtain any very complete impression of the general situation or to acquire any general power to influence the legislature or the people. With the exception of a small increase in the wages of teachers and a gain of $10,000 in the general school appropriations, there seems to have been no perceptible improvement in the situation.

In 1853 Mr. Hall Roberts again received the office of secretary of the State board. The usual discussion of educational affairs appears in the report for this year, with the statement that "statistics show that the scholars in the public schools of the State are absent, on an average, one-fourth of the time." The "average time" was nine and onehalf to nine and three-fourths weeks for summer and winter, nineteen weeks in the year. The general expenditure was slowly increasing$205,402.60, a gain of $15,476 for one year.

No more impressive commentary on the noted saying of Washington concerning the old-time confederation of States, "Influence is not gov ernment," could be made than the doings of this New Hampshire board of education, consisting of a group of ten gentlemen who, if faithful and competent, must have been so occupied by the duties of their local county commissionership that their knowledge and ability to impress the people of the whole Commonwealth would have been of little account. A well-written annual report, dealing with general propositions and, at best, containing their observations and performances in their local spheres, would represent "influence" reduced to its lowest terms. Mr. Hall Roberts was retained for another year as general secretary of the board, as his position representing the capital city and county made it convenient. But nothing occurred in school legislation in this year to greatly encourage the friends of education. Of course, in a State like New Hampshire, whose people could hardly by any public abuse or neglect fall into the "barbarism of ignorance," there would be inevitably a gradual improvement. For in every locality enterprising and self-sacrificing friends of better schooling would more or less impress themselves upon the people. But the principal gain through all these years seems to have been a growing sense of the inefficiency of the extreme local type of school administration, which virtually placed the educational affairs of an American Commonwealth in the power of 2,000 district debating societies, whose perpetual