Part 232

"It is estimated that in 1840 the proportion of college students to the entire population in the United States was 1 to 1,540; in 1860, 1 to 2,012; in 1870,1 to 2,546; in 1880, 1 to 1,840; and in 1886, 1 to about 1,400, Estimating all our combined efforts in favor of higher education, we fall far short of some of the countries of the Old World."

_F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher Education in the United States (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information, 1890, number 1), page 36._

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1844-1876. Canada. Ontario School System.

"From the earliest settlement of Ontario, schools were established as the wants of the inhabitants required. The Legislature soon recognized the needs of the country, and made grants of land and money in aid of elementary, secondary, and superior education. Statutes were passed from time to time for the purpose of opening schools to meet the demands of the people. The sparsely settled condition of the Province delayed for a while the organization of the system. It was not until 1844 that the elementary schools were put on a comprehensive basis. In that year the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, LL. D., was appointed Chief Superintendent of Education, and the report which he presented to the House of Assembly sketched in an able manner the main features of the system of which he was the distinguished founder, and of which he continued for thirty-three years to be the efficient administrator. In 1876 the office of chief superintendent was abolished, and the schools of the Province placed under the control of a member of the Government with the title of Minister of Education. … The system of education in Ontario may be said to combine the best features of the systems of several countries. To the Old World it is indebted for a large measure of its stability, uniformity and centralization; to the older settled parts of the New World for its popular nature, its flexibility and its democratic principles which have given, wherever desirable, local control and individual responsibility. From the State of New York we have borrowed the machinery of our school; from Massachusetts the principle of local taxation; from Ireland our first series of text books; from Scotland the co-operation of parents with the teacher, in upholding his authority; from Germany the system of Normal Schools and the Kindergarten; and from the United States generally the non-denominational character of elementary, secondary, and university education. Ontario may claim to have some features of her system that are largely her own. Among them may be mentioned a division of state and municipal authority on a judicious basis; clear lines separating the function of the University from that of the High Schools, and the function of the High Schools from that of the Public or elementary schools; a uniform course of study; all High and Public Schools in the hands of professionally trained teachers; no person eligible to the position of inspector who does not hold the highest grade of a teacher's certificate, and who has not had years of experience as a teacher; inspectors removable if inefficient, but not subject to removal by popular vote; the examinations of teachers under Provincial instead of local control; the acceptance of a common matriculation examination for admission to the Universities and to the learned professions; a uniform series of text books for the whole Province; the almost entire absence of party politics in the manner in which school boards, inspectors and teachers discharge their duties; the system national instead of sectarian, but affording under constitutional guarantees and limitations protection to Roman Catholic and Protestant Separate Schools and denominational Universities."

_J. Millar, Educational System of the Province of Ontario._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1862. The United States. Land-grant for industrial Colleges.

"Next to the Ordinance of 1787, the Congressional grant of 1862 is the most important educational enactment in America. … By this gift forty-eight colleges and universities have received aid, at least to the extent of the Congressional grant; thirty-three of these, at least, have been called into existence by means of this act. In thirteen States the proceeds of the land scrip were devoted to institutions already in existence. The amount received from the sales of land scrip from twenty-four of these States aggregates the sum of $13,930,456, with land remaining unsold estimated at nearly two millions of dollars. These same institutions have received State endowments amounting to over eight million dollars. The origin of this gift must be sought in local communities. In this country all ideas of national education have arisen from those States that have felt the need of local institutions for the education of youth. In certain sections of the Union, particularly the North and West, where agriculture was one of the chief industries, it was felt that the old classical schools were not broad enough to cover all the wants of education represented by growing industries. There was consequently a revulsion from these schools toward the industrial and practical side of education. Evidences of this movement are seen in the attempts in different States to found agricultural, technical, and industrial schools. These ideas found their way into Congress, and a bill was introduced in 1858, which provided for the endowment of colleges for the teaching of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The bill was introduced by Honorable Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; it was passed by a small majority, and was vetoed by President Buchanan. In 1862 the bill was again presented with slight changes, passed and signed, and became a law July 2, 1862. … It stipulated to grant to each State thirty thousand acres of land for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the States were respectively entitled by the census of 1860, for the purpose of endowing 'at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the Legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.' … From this proposition all sorts of schools sprang up, according to the local conception of the law and local demands. It was thought by some that boys were to be taught agriculture by working on a farm, and purely agricultural schools were founded with the mechanical arts attached. In other States classical schools of the stereotyped order were established, with more or less science; and, again, the endowment in others was devoted to scientific departments. The instruction of the farm and the teaching of pure agriculture have not succeeded in general, while the schools that have made prominent those studies relating to agriculture and the mechanic arts, upon the whole, have succeeded best. … In several instances the managers of the land scrip have understood that by this provision the State could not locate the land within the borders of another State, but its assignees could thus locate lands, not more than one million acres in any one State. By considering this question, the New York land scrip was bought by Ezra Cornell, and located by him for the college in valuable lands in the State of Wisconsin, and thus the fund was augmented. However, the majority of the States sold their land at a sacrifice, frequently for less than half its value. There was a lull in the land market during the Civil War, and this cause, together with the lack of attention in many States, sacrificed the gift of the Federal Government. The sales ranged all the way from fifty cents to seven dollars per acre, as the average price for each State."

_F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher Education (United States Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information, 1890, number 1), pages 47-49._

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1862-1886. New York. Cornell University.

"On the second of July, 1862, … [President Lincoln] signed the act of congress, donating public lands for the establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. This act had been introduced into congress by the Honorable Justin S. Morrill. … The Morrill act provided for a donation of public land to the several states, each state to receive thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative it sent to congress. States not containing within their own borders public land subject to sale at private entry received land scrip instead. But this land scrip the recipient states were not allowed to locate within the limits of any other state or of any territory of the United States. The act laconically directed 'said scrip to be sold by said states.' The proceeds of the sale, whether of land or scrip, in each state were to form a perpetual fund. … In the execution of this trust the State of New York was hampered by great and almost insuperable obstacles. For its distributive share it received land scrip to the amount of nine hundred and ninety thousand acres. The munificence of the endowment awakened the cupidity of a multitude of clamorous and strangely unexpected claimants. … If the princely domain granted to the State of New York by congress was not divided and frittered away, we owe it in great measure to the foresight, the energy, and the splendid courage of a few generous spirits in the legislature of whom none commanded greater respect or exercised more influence than Senator Andrew Dickson White, the gentleman who afterwards became first president of Cornell University. … But the all-compelling force which prevented the dispersion and dissipation of the bounty of congress was the generous heart of Ezra Cornell. While rival institutions clamored for a division of the 'spoils,' and political tricksters played their base and desperate game, this man thought only of the highest good of the State of New York, which he loved with the ardor of a patriot and was yet to serve with the heroism of a martyr. … When the legislature of the State of New York was called upon to make some disposition of the congressional grant, Ezra Cornell sat in the senate. … Of his minor legislative achievements I shall not speak. One act, however, has made his name as immortal as the state it glorified. By a gift of half a million dollars (a vast sum in 1865, the last year of the war!) he rescued for the higher education of New York the undivided grant of congress; and with the united endowments he induced the legislature to establish, not merely a college of applied science but a great modern university—'an institution,' according to his own admirable definition, 'where any person can find instruction in any study.' It was a high and daring aspiration to crown the educational system of our imperial state with an organ of universal knowledge, a nursery of every science and of all scholarship, an instrument of liberal culture and of practical utility to all classes of our people. This was, however, the end; and to secure it Ezra Cornell added to his original gift new donations of land, of buildings, and of money. … But one danger threatened this latest birth of time. The act of congress donating land scrip required the states to sell it. The markets were immediately glutted. Prices fell. New York was selling at an average price of fifty cents an acre. Her princely domain would bring at this rate less than half a million dollars! Was the splendid donation to issue in such disaster? If it could be held till the war was over, till immigration opened up the Northwest, it would be worth five times five hundred thousand dollars! So at least thought one far-seeing man in the State of New York. And this man of foresight had the heart to conceive, the wisdom to devise, and the courage to execute—he alone in all the states—a plan for saving to his state the future value of the lands donated by congress. Ezra Cornell made that wonderful and dramatic contract with the State of New York! He bound himself to purchase at the rate of sixty cents per acre the entire right of the commonwealth to the scrip, still unsold; and with the scrip, thus purchased by him as an individual he agreed to select and locate the lands it represented, to pay the taxes, to guard against trespasses and defend from fires, to the end that within twenty years when values had appreciated he might sell the land and turn into the treasury of the State of New York for the support of Cornell University the entire net proceeds of the enterprise. Within a few years Ezra Cornell had located over half a million acres of superior pine land in the Northwestern states, principally in Wisconsin. Under bonds to the State of New York to do the state's work he had spent about $600,000 of his own cash to carry out the trust committed to him by the state, when, alas, in the crisis of 1874, fortune and credit sank exhausted and death came to free the martyr-patriot from his bonds. The seven years that followed were the darkest in our history. … Ezra Cornell was our founder; Henry W. Sage followed him as wise masterbuilder. The edifices, chairs and libraries which bear the name of 'Sage' witness to [his] later gifts: but though these now aggregate the princely sum of $1,250,000, [his] management of the university lands has been [his] greatest achievement. From these lands, with which the generosity and foresight of Ezra Cornell endowed the university, there have been netted under [Mr. Sage's] administration, not far short of $4,000,000, with over 100,000 acres still to sell. Ezra Cornell's contract with the state was for twenty years. It expired August 4, 1886, when a ten years' extension was granted by the state. The trust will be closed in 1896."

_J. G. Schurman, Address at Inauguration to the Presidency of Cornell University, November 11, 1892._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1866-1869. The United States. Bureau of Education.

"Educators, political economists, and statesmen felt the need of some central agency by which the general educational statistics of the country could be collected, preserved, condensed, and properly arranged for distribution. This need found expression finally in the action taken at a convention of the superintendence department of the National Educational Association, held at Washington February, 1866, when it was resolved to petition Congress in favor of a National Bureau of Education. … {736} The memorial was presented in the House of Representatives by General Garfield, February 14, 1866, with a bill for the establishment of a National Bureau on essentially the basis the school superintendents had proposed. Both bill and memorial were referred to a committee of seven members. … The bill was reported back from the committee, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute, providing for the creation of a department of education instead of the bureau originally proposed. Thus altered, it was passed by a vote of nearly two to one. In the Senate it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary … who the following winter reported it without amendment and with a recommendation that it pass, which it did on the 1st of March, 1867, receiving on the next day the approval of the President. By the act of July 28, 1868, which took effect June 30, 1869, the Department of Education was abolished, and an Office of Education in the Department of the Interior was established, with the same objects and duties. … The act of March 2, 1867, … established an agency 'for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote the cause of education.' It will be perceived that the chief duty of the office under the law is to act as an educational exchange. Exercising and seeking to exercise no control whatever over its thousands of correspondents, the office occupies a position as the recipient of voluntary information which is unique."

_C. Warren, Answers to Inquiries about the United States Bureau of Education, chapters 2-3._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867. New York. Public Schools made entirely free.

The public schools of the State of New York were not entirely free until 1867. In his report to the Legislature made in February of that year, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Honorable Victor M. Rice, said: "The greatest defect in our school system is, as I have urged in previous reports, the continuance of the rate bill system. Our common schools can never reach their highest degree of usefulness until they shall have been made entirely free. … To meet this public demand, to confer upon the children of the State the blessings of free education, a bill has already been introduced into your honorable body. … The main features of the bill are the provisions to raise, by State tax, a sum about equal to that raised in the districts by rate bills, and to abolish the rate bill system; to facilitate the erection and repair of school houses." The bill referred to was passed at the same session of the Legislature, and in his next succeeding report, Superintendent Rice gave the following account of the law and its immediate effects: "While the general structure of the school law was not disturbed, a material modification was made by the Act (chap. 406, Laws of 1867), which took effect on the first day of October of the same year, and which, among other things, provided for the abolishment of rate-bills, and for increased local and State taxation for school purposes. This was primarily a change in the manner of raising the requisite funds; not an absolute increase of the aggregate amount to be raised. It involved and encouraged such increase, so far as the inhabitants in the several school districts should authorize it, by substituting taxation exclusively on property, for a mixed assessment which, in part, was a tax on attendance. Thus relieved of an old impediment, and supplied with additional power and larger resources, the cause of public instruction, during the last fiscal year, has wrought results unequaled in all the past. … The effect of this amendment has not been confined to the financial policy thereby inaugurated. It is distinctly traceable in lengthened terms of school, in a larger and more uniform attendance, and in more liberal expenditures for school buildings and appliances."

_Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of New York, Annual Report, 1869, pages 5-6._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867. Maryland. Johns Hopkins University.

"By the will of Johns Hopkins, a merchant of Baltimore, the sum of $7,000,000 was devoted to the endowment of a university [chartered in 1867] and a hospital, $3,500,000 being appropriated to each. … To the bequest no burdensome conditions were attached. … Just what this new university was to be proved a very serious question to the trustees. The conditions of Mr. Hopkins's bequest left the determination of this matter open. … A careful investigation led the trustees to believe that there was a growing demand for opportunities to study beyond the ordinary courses of a college or a scientific school, particularly in those branches of learning not included in the schools of law, medicine and theology. Strong evidence of this demand was afforded by the increasing attendance of American students upon the lectures of the German universities, as well as by the number of students who were enrolling themselves at Harvard and Yale for the post-graduate courses. It was therefore determined that the Johns Hopkins should be primarily a university, with advanced courses of lectures and fully equipped laboratories; that the courses should be voluntary, and the teaching not limited to class instruction. The foundation is both old and new. In so far as each feature is borrowed from some older university, where it has been fairly tried and tested, it is old, but at the same time this particular combination of separate features has here been made for the first time. … In the ordinary college course, if a young man happens to be deficient in mathematics, for example, he is either forced to lose any advantage he may possess in Greek or Latin, or else is obliged to take a position in mathematics for which he is unprepared. In the college department of the Johns Hopkins, this disadvantage does not exist; the classifying is specific for each study. The student has also the privilege of pushing forward in any one study as rapidly as he can with advantage; or, on the other hand, in case of illness or of unavoidable interruption, of prolonging the time devoted to the course, so that no part of it shall be omitted. As the studies are elective, it is possible to follow the usual college course if one desires. Seven different courses of study are indicated, any of which leads to the Baccalaureate degree, thus enabling the student to direct and specialize his work. The same standard of matriculation and the same severity of examinations are maintained in all these courses. {737} A student has the privilege of extending his study beyond the regular class work, and he will be credited with all such private and outside study, if his examiners are satisfied of his thoroughness and accuracy."

_S. B. Herrick, The Johns Hopkins University (Scribner's Monthly, December 1879)._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867-1891. The United States. The Peabody Education Fund.