2851 S76d STACIC ANNEX [ Cage | Sprague Jught Text-Books to be Supplied Gratuitously to All Children in the Public Schools ? THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES TOPICS Ifi EDUCATION. NO. 1. Ought Te$-Boolp to be pupplied to all Children in the Public pchool?? A Paper Read at Massachusetts State Teachers' Associ- ation in December, 1878. Supplemented by Remarks before the National Educational Association in July, i88&. By HOMER B. SPRAGUE. PUBLISHED BY S. R. WINCHELL & CO., CHICAGO, ILL. Stack FREE TEXT BOOKS. [Ax the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association, at Wor- cester, Dec. 28, 1878, Messrs. John D. Billings, E. C. Metcalf and Homer B. Sprague were appointed a Committee, with instructions to publish and circulate the following essay.] " Ought Text Books to be Supplied Gratuitously to All Children in the Public Schools? " BY HOMER B. SPRAGUE. (Read at Mass. State Teachers' Ass'n, at Worcester, Mass., Dec. 28, 1878.) I. In the discussion of this question, it is. assumed that education, such as children and youth receive in the public schools, is good for the State, and good for all ; that what- ever be the vocation of the man or woman, in a free commonwealth, it is good to have been well instructed in the fundamental branches, in the rudiments of science, in morals, and in good behavior. But by the census of Massachusetts (1875, Vol. I, pp. 269, 633) it appears that there were in that year 89,994 children in the State, between the ages of five and fifteen, not receiving instruction either at home or in any school. The Massachusetts Board of Education, as cited in the same Census Returns, reported that in the year ending May i, 1875, there were in the State 24,355 children, of school age, who " had not attended school three months " during the year. Though the census returns and the esti- 964207 2 FREE TEXT BOOKS. mates of the Board of Education differ thus widely, they both show an enormous number of children then growing up in ignorance. A week ago, on consulting Col. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, who is re- puted the best authority, the reply was received from him that, in his judgment, not less than fifteen to twenty thou- sand children in Massachusetts, between the ages of five and fifteen, have had no schooling nor equivalent instruc- tion whatever during the year 1878 now closing. To these thousands should be added a very large number who attend school long enough to be registered, but whose stay is so brief that their instruction amounts to nothing or next to nothing". With few exceptions, these twenty or thirty thousand children are living in great poverty. The cost of text-books is one thing that bars the school door against them. It may seem strange that so slight an expense, say from two to six dollars a year, should keep any out of the public schools ; but those who are in the habit of visiting the wretched abodes of the poor, and see how hard it is for many of them to get employment, or earn money enough for the bare necessaries of life, know very well that multitudes of parents cannot pay for their children's books. Of course, it is impossible to ascertain exactly how many are thus kept out of school ; but we may gain some light on this point from the history of the abolition of rate-bills. Rate-bills were a money tax paid for tuition in the public school. Every child, except those excused for extreme poverty, paid for tuition a sum proportioned to the number of days he attended. This rate-bill existed in about half the towns in Connecticut in the year 1867; its amount was limited by law, in grades below the high school, to six dollars a year. From the indefatigable Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Education, Hon. B. FREE TEXT BOOKS. 3 G. Northrop, and his accurate assistant, Rev. J. G. Baird, we learn that the usual amount of the rate-bill, or tuition tax, paid by each child in those schoolswas from two to three dollars. In the year 1868, having the honor to be chairman of the House Committee on Education in the General Assembly of Connecticut, it was the good fortune of the writer of this essay to aid in the complete abolition of that tax, and so removing that apparently slight barrier to school instruction. What was the result ? The official report of the Secre- tary, Dr. Northrop, of the year 1869, shows that the actual increase in school attendance during that year was about six thousand pupils, though there was no per- ceptible increase in the total population of the State. The next year there was another increase of about five thousand. Secretary Northrop, in express terms, attributes this in- crease to the removal of the rate-bill. About eleven thous- and children, then, in Connecticut, prior to 1869, had been kept out of school by the rate-bill, although its average amount did not exceed three dollars a year. ("Reports of Conn. Board of Education, 1869, 1870, 1871, etc.] If the cost of tuition kept eleven thousand Connecticut children out of school, may we not fairly infer that the cost of text- books, which happens to be nearly the same in amount, now keeps very many Massachusetts children out of school ? Is it objected that the experience of Connecticut is peculiar ? Take a very different community California. In 1866, a rate-bill existed in many towns in that State. The amount paid by each child for attendance was, on an average, about twenty-five cents a month, or two dollars and a half during the school year often months. In 1866, the rate-bill was abolished by law in California. The consequent increase in attendance was six and one-half per 4 FREE TEXT BOOKS. cent. In other words, a number equal to ore-sixteenth of the entire school attendance had been debarred from instruction by the slight tax of twenty-five cents a month. [Swett's History of the Public School System of Cali- fornia, p. 44 . and passim .] Is further evidence needed to show that many children are kept away from school by the requirement to pay two or three dollars a year ? Take the State of New York. Five days ago, wishing to ascertain the facts with precision, the writer consulted the highest authority in that State, Hon. S. B. Woolworth, now and for many years past the secretary of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, and whose business it is to know all the facts pertaining to education in that commonwealth. There was received from him, in answer, the following state- ment, under date of " Albany, N. Y., Dec. 24, 1878:" " The rate-bill was abolished by law in New York in the year 1867. The increase in attendance in the public schools, consequent upon this abolition of rate-bills, is estimated at 22,000 the first year, 50,000 the second year, and 78,000 the third year. The average amount of tui- tion, /. ., the average amount of the rate-bill, was perhaps $2.75. (Signed) " S. B. WOOLWORTH." There is no resisting the conclusion from such facts as these. If in California a number equal to one-sixteenth of the whole attendance, if in Connecticut eleven thousand children, if in New York seventy-eight thousand children, all of whom had been growing up in ignorance, were drawn into the public schools by exempting them from the payment of twenty-five or thirty cents a month for tuition, then it is safe to conclude that, of the fifteen or FREE TEXT BOOKS. 5 twenty thousand Massachusetts children who never see the inside of a schoolhouse, and of the five or ten thousand others who attend school just long enough to get their names on the school-roll, (perhaps at some evening school where the work at best is but slight,) there are multitudes who would be likely to be drawn into the public schools by exempting them from the payment of an equal sum for books and stationery. Unless human nature is very different in Massachusetts, several thousands of ignorant boys and girls might thus become intelligent learners, a boon the importance of which it would be difficult to over- estimate. Does any one deny the wide-spread illiteracy in Mas- sachusetts ? There are the census figures of 1875 : " Total number of persons in Massachusetts, above ten years of age, unable to read or write, 77,550; 7,646 of them natives of Massachusetts." And then there is the number, perhaps equally large, of those who are able to read and write, and nothing more groping in the shadowy border-land, and for all practical pui-poses to be classed with the dwellers in the densest ignorance. How beneficent the measure that shall bring many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these benighted ones and their chil- dren within the charmed circle where knowledge shall be poured upon them like the sunshine ! Says Carlyle : " It is not because of his work that I pity the poor man ; we must all work, or steal, howsoever we name our stealing. But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even, earthly, wisdom should visit him, but only, in the haggard dark- ness, like two specters, Fear and Indignation. . . . Alas ! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihi- lated? . . . That one man should die ignorant that had FREE TEXT BOOKS. capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen twenty times a minute, as bv some calculations it does. " II. We come to another argument for free books. If all children are supplied by the public, that supply can be instantaneous. There need be no delay in beginning the lessons. But now there is great delay. These who supply themselves are often slow in getting the books; the matter has to be discussed between parents and children ; various expedients and plans to avoid expense have to be considered. They perhaps have old editions ; or they do not see why a different book should be used this year, or why Greene's Grammar Will not answer the purpose as well as Kerl's, or why John and Mary cannot both use the same arithmetic. Or they forget to buy the books, or cannot find them at the bookstores, or the money is not forthcoming to pay for them. They are weary of perpet- ually buying new books; every removal from one town to another necessitates another outlay for books. The garret is lumbered up with twenty kinds of arithmetics, readers, grammars and geographies, not one being used up. To fully half the parents, the subject of new school-books is an annual, if not a quarterly, nuisance. To the teachers it is still more so. Exactly who are the persons that must be supplied at the public expense is first to be ascertained. Now comes the odious business of prying into the pecuniary condition of parents. Every case of alleged inability or refusal to procure the books must be investigated by the teacher, or by some town officer, or even by both, to prevent the public from being wronged by a parent able to pay, or the worthy, helpless poor from being deprived of books and schooling. This investigation requires a 'power of cross-examination, a FREE TEXT BOOKS. 7 talent of inquisitorial nose-thrusting into other people's affairs, and a judicial soundness, which few possess. All this takes time from the legitimate work of the school. An eminent grammar-school master, whose name com- mands the respect of you all, wrote to me last week as follows: "It is very plain that if the original intent of the law [in regard to supplying books to indigent children] were strictly observed, there is not a grammar master in Boston who would have any time for anything except in- vestigation; and in this he would often utterly fail." But the time spent in such investigation is not the only time lost in the present method. After the books have been allowed or refused by the master and the committee, and when doubtful cases may still be pending, or perhaps have been settled wrongly and with quarreling and bitterness after all this odious work and worry a requisition for the books must be made out, it must be tied carefully in red tape and transmitted to the proper authorities. The order is then acted upon, the bookseller's prices are beaten down to the lowest possible point, the books are bought, sent to the master, stamped or labeled by him with the city mark of property, and finally distributed with care to the school paupers. It is probably safe to say that, in many city schools, from two or three days to two or three weeks of instruction are lost by this vicious system, this artificially- created necessity of drawing a line often very crooked between those able and those unable to furnish their chil- dren with books. Let those who are eager for economy, . as we all ought to be, seek to avoid this waste of the pupils* time, the people's money, and the teacher's energies, over questions that are likely to be disgusting, and ought to be irrelevant. Free books would effect that important saving. III. The present system of supplying but a portion of FREE TEXT BOOKS. the pupils at the public expense tends, in very many schools, to encourage lying and cheating on the part of both parents and children. Within the present month an endeavor has been made to ascertain the facts as to the number supplied with books at the public expense in forty- nine of the grammar-schools of Massachusetts, and there have been received in reply the written statements of forty- eight of the forty-nine principals, showing that there are this year, in those forty-eight schools, twenty-six thousand four hundred pupils, of whom fifteen thousand seven hun- dred and forty-eight are supplied with one or more books at the public expense, as " indigent pupils. " It is perfectly well understood in those schools and communities that the public books are intended for those only who are too poor to buy them. Yet here are sixty per cent, of the parents and children claiming assistance on the ground of extreme poverty ! Does any one suppose that fifteen thousand seven hundred out of twenty-six thousand four hundred are really so poor? Can any one doubt that here are temptations and yieldings to fraud on an extensive scale? Once weaken a man's sense of shame^at receiving alms, and you find yourself confronted by a sturdy beggar. Let some of the community be supplied with books as semi-paupers; the next and almost inevitable step is for the unprincipled, in annually increasing numbers, with shrewd hypocrisy or brazen effrontery, to pretend inability, in order to get what they conceive to be their share of the public property. Among these forty-eight grammar- schools there are three that have an aggregate of two thousand three hundred and ten pupils, and of these there are two thousand two hundred and twenty-five, or over ninety-six per cent., receiving city books as "indigent pupils " ! It is painful to think how many of these there must be, perfectly well able to supply themselves, yet FREE TEXT BOOKS. 9 stealthily or impudently, by necessary implication or by open falsehood, representing themselves as fit objects of public charity. The masters of such schools tell us that parents who pay taxes to the amount of hundreds of dol- lars plead poverty, and encourage their children to make the same pretense, in order to save a few dimes by getting from the city books to which they have neither legal nor moral right. If the teacher or committee-man supplies them liberally and asks no questions, he is popular in his district. And so there are, in the schools of Massachusetts, many thousands of children who, daily and hourly, at school, hold in their hands these supplies, known to have been obtained by fraud, and which, bearing the city label, are a perpetual reminder to such children of the gross imposition practiced by them and their parents. By what sophistry such parents pacify their consciences, or even pride themselves upon outwitting the custodians of the public property, we need not ask ; but imagine for a moment the effect of such a parent's example upon the moral principles of the child the child who is naturally eager to justify the parent's action, to palliate the parent's lie, to applaud the parent's swindle, and who is visibly profiting by the iniquity. Making the books free would discontinue that lesson of successful villainy now taught to so many thousands. By all means let us withdraw that suggestion of the possibility of successful peculation and embezzlement, and stop that contagious moral rottenness which approves, as business smartness, the adroit perver- sion of public trusts to private ends. What right have we to pray " Lead us not into temptation, " so long as this process of plunder, in which the young are compelled to participate, goes on? so long as, before the child's daily observation, is held up this infectious example, confusing his moral perceptions, blunting his conscience, making tO FREE TEXT BOOKS. mockery of the claims of the public, and palpably be- stowing a premium upon hypocrisy ? " I waive the quantum o' the sin, The hazard o' concealin' ; But, ah ! it hardens a' within It petrifies the f eelin'. " IV. Here we may be allowed to speak a brief word for those who are too humble or too feeble to speak for themselves. Indeed, they cannot speak without bringing upon themselves new shame. There are thousands of them in Massachusetts the poor whom we have always with us. Their tender love for their children, their ardent desire to secure for them a better lot than that of their par- ents, prompts the sending of them to the public school. But they have not even money enough for bread and de- cent clothing, and they cannot buy books. Private charity does not supply them, and is totally inadequate to supply them. For 'such, the public schools are not free ; they must make the humiliating confession of utter pov- erty before they can receive the boon of instruction. This undeserved shame is tho price they and their children must pay for education. They recoil from the idea of "coming upon the parish." It is an honorable sentiment, deeply planted in every New England heart this horror at the thought of being reduced to accept public alms. " Paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice " so the helpless poor have been classified in public and private speech from time immemorial. No laceration more cruel to the feelings of a sensitive parent or child can be found. More than once during the past four months I have been made the unwilling witness of the distress of parents who had seen better days, but who now begged me, with tears, to supply their children with public books, FREE TEXT BOOKS. n and to keep concealed the fact of this mortifying depend- ence upon public charity. Is it supposed that they do not feel it, because they say nothing about it ? because they do not parade their grief in the newspapers ? because they do not tell the world of their shame and wretchedness ? They do feel it keenly. Let the supply be free to all, and you visibly lift thousands of heads now bowed with this unmerited disgrace; you visibly lift many thousands of children above the degradation of confessed pauperism. Put them on a level with their more favored companions : they at once become less servile, less abject, more hopeful; they will grow to be manlier men and womanlier women; in time of public danger they will uphold with a stronger arm and a more loving patriotism the hand of the Com- monwealth that has so gently and generously lifted and led them in their hour of weakness. Having thus endeavored to show that a gratuitous sup. ply of text-books to all pupils would probably draw int9 the schools a large number of children now growing up in utter ignorance; that it would avoid the embarrassing and wasteful delay in beginning school-work; that it would re- move the wide-spread and insidious temptation and ex- ample of dishonesty in obtaining public books, and that it would relieve multitudes of sensitive hearts from the cruel humiliation now imposed upon them of accepting public alms as the price of instruction we proceed to notice briefly some objections to such gratuitous supply. ( i ) It may be said that free books would increase the tax upon property. It may be answered that this increase, at most, would be very slight. The actual cost of the books to the community would be less than now. Buy- ing by the quantity, the town or city would be able to 12 FREE TEXT BOOKS. purchase at about half the usual price. Experience shows that the books would be better taken care of than now, and each book would last for years. Habits of wasteful- ness or carelessness in the use of books could be better prevented ; for now the pupil feels that he has a right to disfigure a book, because it is his own. What better text for an earnest and patriotic appeal for care in the treatment of all public property ! In a few years, too, while the increase in taxes would be inappreciable, the increase of skilled labor, the improvement in taste and culture, Ihe greater, prevalence of education and good morals, resulting from the diminution in the numbers of the ignorant, half- pauperized, dangerous classes, would make a residence in Massachusetts more desirable, and property more valuable. What makes this city of Worcester so attractive to intel- ligent people ? Among my earliest recollections is a say- ing of one to whom I owe more than to any other: "I would like to live in Worcester, because they have such good schools there. " Hundreds of families of the high- est character have in all probability been drawn hither by similar considerations, bringing property, enterprise, thrift, taste, culture and moral soundness to this generous Heart of the Commonwealth. " The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand." (2) Is it urged that it is important for pupils to .form habits of self-reliance, self-help, noble pride, disdaining to be recipients of public bounty ? This idea of self-help is eloquently presented by some of the best of men. But what is this consideration to the multitude now kept out of school by the expense ? Self-help and charity thus far ut- terly fail to bring them in. They must be educated, to appreciate education. " First catch your hare," is recog- nized as a sound principle in prospective culinary opera- FREE TEXT BOOKS. 1 tions. First, coax into school yon cannot drive them these twenty or thirty thousand " street Arabs. " Till then the main thing is left undone. Free books will bring in many ; nor will the opportunity of honorable self reliance be lost. Just the opposite. If it seems noble to buy and own text-books now, when all are compelled to do it or plead poverty, how much nobler will it be to buy and own them then, when none shall be compelled. There will be precisely as much opportunity of self-supply as now, and a great deal more merit, because it will be purely volun- tary. A set of text-books at home, owned by the pupil, and another set at school, owned by the public, would often be a positive advantage in study. (3) These considerations sufficiently answer'whatever may need answering in the next objection that a book ought to be bought and paid for, that it may be owned, treasured, loved, tenderly cherished. We honor this sen- timent. Observe that this privilege, instead of being de- stroyed, will still continue, and will be rendered more valu- able by a gratuitous supply. But books, after all, are tools nothing more; means, not ends. Their main value follows, rather than precedes, their purchase. Their worth is not in the paltry sum they cost, but in the precious truths they contain, the hope, light, comfort, inspiration they impart. " But will not a boy love his arithmetic book, because his mother toiled two days to earn the money to pay for it ? " If she blistered her hands by overwork, dimmed her eyes by plying the needle when she ought to have been asleep, suffered hunger or cold to avoid expense, that her child's pride might be spared by paying two dollars for what would have cost the city or town but one the average boy will be quite as likely to hate as to love that book. 14 FREE TEXT BOOKS. (4) Akin to the two preceding objections is the fol- lowing: that pupils value more an education that costs them something, and that, accordingly, the price paid for books will be a constant stimulus to higher, more faithful effort, to better scholarship, and to a nobler life. Again we answer, this leaves the untaught thousands in the Slough of Despond, where they now are. Further, the pecuniary sacrifice made by the poor in getting an education always is greater than that made by the rich. And does not the argument prove too much ? Is it true that the money cost of an education is any true measure of its value ? If so, why not return to rate-bills ? Why not abolish free schools except for paupers ? Is it true that one who pays money for a text-book is thereby inspired to higher scholarship and nobler life ? Then the one who pays a large tuition fee ought to be nobler than one who pays none. Is this so ? Hardly. We have annually in our Girls' High School a number who, residing out of the city limits, pay $117 a year for tuition. They are good girls but no better than the rest. Of six hundred and fifty, one seventh receive city books. Making due allow- ance for household service, the scholarship of the seventh, like their character, compares favorably with that of the students who buy books. And if this were not so in the case of any pupil, her relative inferiority to her classmates might fairly be attributed to the depressing influence upon her of confessed semi-pauperism, quite as much as to the ennobling influence upon them of paying five dollars a year for text -books ! The fifteen hundred students of the New York City Normal College, to whom every book and every kind of material are generously supplied at the public expense, are probably as faithful, as scholarly, and as high-minded as any company of young ladies in any school in the world. It will hardly be claimed that the FREE TEXT BOOKS. 15 spiritual tone, the menial or moral character, or the attain- ments of the girls in private schools, commonly surpass those of the girls in public schools. The reverse is often the case. It is the soul of the teacher, and the faithful work and daily growth that make education precious to the pupil. (5) But it will be urged, lastly, that the public should furnish nothing that the individual can furnish for himself. This objection is based upon the notion that knowledge is the proper luxury of a few; whereas it is the bread of life to all, and the indispensable basis ofjree institutions. If the objection is valid, to be consistent we must abolish all public schools, except for paupers ! But it will be asked, " If books are to be furnished free, where shall we stop ? we shall also be called upon to furnish shoes and coats, and where shall we stop ? We will not supply them with books, for fear we shall find it out duty to supply them with clothing ! " To which it may be answered : Better clothe in purple and fine linen those twenty-five thousand children now growing up in ignorance and vice ; better give them a sumptuous dinner every day; better pay them a good round sum for attendance, than to suffer them to continue longer without instruction. As was said of Slavery, " Let us, if need be, build a bridge of gold for the retreating fiend !" The sooner we come to look upon the intellectual and moral training of all the young, of every human soul,as the highest political wisdom, and the boun- clen duty of the State, the better it will be for individual happiness and for the public security. Let the books, the materials and the stationery, then, like the apparatus, the furniture, the grounds and the buildings, be furnished gratuitously to all. The gross in- 1 6 FREE TEXT BOOKS. consistency, to use no harsher word, of making attendance at school compulsory, as is the case in some states, and not at the same time making text-books free, requiring under penalties the education, yet witholding the means to attain thai education, must be obvious at a glance. It ill becomes an American town or city ; it ill becomes a great, rich, magnanimous commonwealth, to stand, lash in hand, and drive the poor, every few months, to a shameful con- fession of hopeless poverty, as an indispensable step in the acquisition of that very education without which the whole edifice of our free institutions must, sooner or later, go down in fire and blood. FREE TEXT BOOKS. THE MASSACHUSETTS POLICY. [Speech of Homer B. Sprague, President of the University of North Dakota, at the National Educational Association at San Francisco, Cal., July 20, 1888. J The duty has been assigned me of discussing for ten minutes the able and interesting, but radically unsound pa- per of the gentleman from Ohio.* His position would be very strong, were it not very wrong. We differ, I fear, on fundamental principles. Underlying his argument, and cropping out more or less distinctly here and there, if I mistake not, is the old fallacy of a social contract as the foundation of society and government the doctrine that the natural condition of mankind is one of isolation and even of mutual antagonism; that society is an afterthought, a matter of choice, therefore artificial ; that government, too, is a strictly human contrivance springing from compact ; its powers a bundle of concessions wrung from man's ne- cessities ; essentially restrictive, and needing to be watched and restricted in turn lest it encroach upon the reserved rights of individuals; not absolutely but only relatively good, a choice of evils, the lesser of two evils, but always an evil, at best a necessary evil, and so to be reduced to a minimum, or as the maxim runs, " That government is best which governs least. " This theory is forever saying to government, " Laissez faire" u Hands off ! " Carried to its logical conclusion, it would abolish all public schools, except, possibly, for paupers. *Supt. R. W. Stevenson, of Columbns, Ohio. l8 FREE TEXT BOOKS. Against this doctrine and the inferences our friend from Ohio seems to draw from it, I beg to protest. I think he starts wrong ; that there never was any such antecedent condition of isolation or antagonism ; that society is the natural and normal element into which man is born and in which he must live; that the state is society organized, an organism in which all essential parts are mutually helpful, not antagonistic but reciprocally means and ends; that government is the outgrowth of and for society, its divinely appointed right hand and arm, best when it most largely and efficiently promotes the welfare of all. Accordingly, I don't like our friend's continual antithesis of the indivi- dual and the state, the parent and the state, the tax- payer and the state, the family and the state, the peo- ple and the state; as when he says, "Free schools are receiving the support of the state only so far as the people cannot sustain them for themselves, " and, " Both state and individual are deeply interested, therefore the expense and responsibility should be shared by each ; " and again, " The state has done its whole duty when it has done for the family what the family cannot do for itself. " All this is misleading. The people are the state; the individual is an essential part of the government. At the very center of our American system especially, its most vital principle is this: that every man is a voter and every voter a ruler. Every year, in almost every division and sub-division of the body politic, on important questions, the votes of a majority or plurality directly or indirectly determine the issue, shape the policy, make the law. Every ballot aids; a single ballot may be decisive. Busi- ness prosperity or adversity, financial success or ruin, light or heavy taxation, public honor or disgrace, individual ease, peace, comfort, convenience, liberty, reputation, life itself may hang on the decision of the hour. I must not FREE TEXT BOOKS. 19 pause to illustrate; but many of us remember when the very existence of our country trembled in the balance, and a few votes turned the scale deciding that the republic should not be split into fragments, that it should be free and not slave, that the war should be waged to the bitter end, that hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands of millions of dollars were not too great a price to pay for the nation's life. The fact is, every city, town, county, state, the nation itself, is a vast business corporation carrying on many kinds of business, and every voter is a stockholder, a direct- or; and woe to us and to our children if he does not direct wisely ! The vote of John L. Sullivan counts as much as that^of George Washington; Sambo's offsets Franklin's or Solomon's. What community has not suffered from the votes of foolish or ignorant or unprincipled men ? Whose purse lias not been depleted by taxation that was tant- amount to sheer robbery ? Whose cheek has not tingled with shame or indignation at the story of rabbles led to the polls and paid for their votes by bosses and demagogues ? The voters of San Francisco know what I mean. But this is not the only city at the mercy of a voting mob. So it must be until mobs and rabbles cease. There is not power enough in these United States to disfranchise them. It is too late for that. It would be political suicide for any politician to attempt it. Rightly or wrongly the people must rule. How shall they be made to rule rightly ? That is the question of questions, in the pres- ence of which the cost of text-books sinks into utter insig- nificance. There is one means and only one education ! Make every voter intelligent, honest, patriotic. But it must be no ordinary degree of intelligence, no scanty measure of honesty, no faint love of country. The keenest intelletc 2O FREE TEXT BOOKS. to know the right, the strongest grasp of sound principles, the broadest and most minute information, the loftiest in- tegrity, the most genuine hatred of shams and false pre- tences, the warmest and most unselfish patriotism these are indispensable elements in that thorough and many- sided education that shall " fit a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, public and private, of peace an education, not of a few but of the many, not of a majority merely, but of every voter. The high education of every child that is the ideal that should be forever present to the teacher, the school-com- mittee, the legislator, the citizen. In the realization of this ideal will be found the remedy or the antidote for every political and social evil we feel or fear. In propor- tion as we approach it, will be the measure of our political and social blessings. In proportion as we fall short of it, will be the degree of our political and social misfortunes. Let us rise to the grandeur of this conception of the high education of every child. No philosopher may have formulated it; no statesman may have suggested it; no patriot may have demanded it; hardly has poet sung of it or prophet foretold it. Yet it is as certainly implied and involved in the very heart of the American government as the oak is in the acorn. It is the American idea, and it will by and by be realized. How ? It must be through the public schools, not otherwise. The parent cannot impart the education he does not possess. The private school, the Sunday school, the parish school never did and never can sufficiently educate the masses. The public school can educate all. It was established for that very purpose. The first work of every patriot should be to draw into it every child not adequately instructed and trained elsewhere. To that end, every barrier that ex- cludes any worthy pupil should be broken down and FREE TEXT BOOKS. 21 swept away. The cost of text-books is such a harrier, and a formidable one. It is demonstrable that in all pro- bability hundreds of thousands of children in the northern states are so debarred the privileges of the schools; and probably in the whole republic there are not less than a million parents utterly unable to purchase text-books for their children. To all such the school authorities virtually say " Keep your children at home, or, if you send them to school, buy these books ; or confess yourselves paupers, and in that case we will perhaps supply them as a charity." They cannot buy the books, they are too self-respecting to accept an alms' their children will not come to school as paupers. By a refinement of cruelty in some states, atten- dance is compulsory, but no means are provided to spare the laceration of the .feelings of parents hopelessly poor. Thank God, there is one state in which this odious and cruel and un-American distinction, labeling some books as an alms and some children as school-paupers, no longer exists! It pleases 6ur friend from Ohio to be face- tious at the expense of Massachusetts.* He tells us that in Massachusetts they " loan what they have and borrow what they have not." Pray, what else should they loan or borrow? Is it different in Ohio? With a fling at Mas- sachusetts honesty, he tells us that a Massachusetts man borrowed a Bible. He forgot to tell us that Massachusetts *Snpt. Stevenson said among other things the following : "Boards of Educa- tion in Massachusetts shall furnish text-books and supplies free. They are loaned to the children. It is the pride of this state to be in advance of all her sister states. Hhe is nothing if not radical. The children are being trained to buy nothing which they can borrow. A Massachusftts man stopped with an Ohio friend. la the chamber in which he slept was a Bible. When he had gone his Ohio host discovered he had borrowed the Bible. Everybody in Massa- chusetts loans what he has and borrows what he has not. Books in this state are like children well enough to have around, but not profitable to own. Educa- tion is a good thing, but not worth personal effort and sacrifice. Mr. Lowell tells us that " there is one thing better than a cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by. ' The system of free text-books is said to work admirably. How could it be otherwise ? Itr is quite natural to take all we can get ; everyone is pleased, if not grateful, to get something for nothing. When the sons and daughters of Massachusetts come to this land of pnnshine and flowers, they will expect to borrow your orange-groves, grapes, ranches, and gold mines, 22 FREE TEXT BOOKS. trains every child to return punctually what is borrowed. He forgot also to tell us that Massachusetts can borrow on the lowest terms in any money market in the world, because she always pays her debts in letter and spirit. Sir, the first time I " struck " Ohio, I bought Kenan's Life of Jesus, then just issued from the press. It was in Cincin- nati. In two hours an Ohio man stole it from me. I did not, however, after the manner of our friend, impute the theft to the school system of Ohio. I thought it a clear case of piety run mad. "It is the pride of Massachusetts," says our friend, "to be in advance of all her'sister states. She is nothing if not radical," etc. Sir, these sneers at Massachusetts come with an ill grace from any friend of education or of his country. Massachusetts foremost in every good cause, as when her earliest colony established religious liberty at Plymouth in 1620, or when she struck the first heavy blows for civil liberty at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in 1775 ; or when, in 1861, from the brain of the Great Republic, from the far northeast in advance of her sisters, Massachusetts, Minerva-like, clad in complete steel, leaped into the arena at Baltimore and Washington for the freedom of the slave Massachusetts still leads the column, not for liberty alone, but for that education without which liberty cannot live! She it was that orig- inated and established the American system of free schools two and a half centuries ago : that 241 years ago ordained that every town of one hundred householders should maintain a school in which youth could be fitted for the University at Cambridge ; that established the first free high school, the first free normal school, the first free art school, the first school library in every district, the first instruction in drawing in all public schools. And what is the result ? She is a little state; she has almost no natural FREE TEXT BOOKS. 23 resources; no precious gems; no mines of gold, silver, cop- per, lead, iron, or coal; no oil, no gas, little fertile land, no navigable streams; but by the industry, intelligence, thrift, and honest dealing fostered in her public schools, she stands, as she has stood for 100 years, in the very front of American States as regards pecuniary wealth; and if you ask as to intellectual wealth, where in America will you find her equal? where in the world her superior? Here is the birth-place of Franklin and Bancroft and Bry- ant; the homes of Jonathan Edwards and Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes and Whittier and Emerson and Agas- siz and Prescott and Choate and Everett and Webster and Starr King and Phillips and Sumner and Garrison and the Adamses and the Winthrops and Horace Mann and Mary Lyon, and others whose names are conspicuous among the noblest living or the most honored dead. Here, within 75 miles from the center of the state, are Wellesley College and Smith College and Tufts College and the College of the Holy Cross and Williams College and Amherst College, and Holyoke Seminary and Willis- ton Seminary and Phillips Academy, and the Industrial Institute at Worcester and the Institute of Technology at Boston, and the noblest public library in America and the finest Art Museum in America and the largest Conserva- tory of ' Music in the world, and Andover Theological Seminary and Newton Theological Seminary and Cam- bridge Divinity School, and Boston University, and the youngest American university with that prince of educ- ucators, G. Stanley Hall, at its head, and the oldest and greatest of American universities, grand old Harvard ! Yet, perhaps, her proudest pre-eminence, her crowning glory, is the fact that, of all states of the civilized world, she is the first to make her public schools absolutely free. God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! COMPOSITIONS OF H. W. FAIRBANK. VOCAL. My Love, Picture, Sweet and True, 6,000 Copies sold, ... j 40 B^Xt^BSttef'j Two beautiful companion pieces, each, - 35 Song Beside tlie Sea, beauti'ul Song and Chorus, just out- - - 3) On thy Fair Bosom. Silver Lake. Song for Soprano, - - - - - 3o I dreamed I Lay Where Flowers Were Springing. Ballad, - - - 30 Old Folks at Home. Arranged as a Quartette, ... - . 25 Don't Stay after Ten. Serio-comic song and chorus, - - 30 Hail! All Hail! Male quartette, 15 Three >ongs for Lady Voices, Bound together for - - - 10 Lady quartette. ( No. 1. Winter Song. j No. 2. Day Slowly Declining. ( No. 3 Serenade. " Quintette Anthem. "The Lord is My Shepherd." Very pretty. - - 10 INSTRUMENTAL. FOR PIANO. In Remembrance. Mazurka. - ........ 40 T' Amethyst. Valse de Concert, -- ----._. 60 Les Reveries du Pays. (Dreams of Home.) ...... 30 In Memoriam. - - --. - - 30 Andante and Romanza, , - - 30 Idlewild Waltz, ........ 30 FOR CABINET ORGAN. Sad Heart Waltz. (Beautifully Illustrated title pagr),- ... 40 Glad Heart Waltz, .......... 40 Banquet Waltz, ..... - - - 35 Melrose Waltz, - - - - . ..... 10 Also the Popular Cabinet Organ Series. 14,000 already sold. No. 1. Waltz Song. No. 2. Polka Mazurka. No. 3. March. No. 4. Galop. No. 5. Schottische. No. 6. Polonaise. EACH SO CENTS. Is SF) S No. 1. Primary. For Primary Grades only. No. 2. Intermediate, - - Music written mostly in Two Parts No. 3. Grammar School, - - - Music written in Three Parts No. 4. ,High School, - Music written in Four Parts. 50,000 already Sold. Retail Price, IO cents. IN QUANTITIES, - - 1-10 PER DOZEN, POST-PAID. THE" CHURCH SERVICE," A collection of Twelve Pamphlets arranged for Quartette and Chorus Choirs. Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 are suitable for Chorus Choirs. Nos. 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 and 12 are especially adapted to Quartette Choirs. These numbers are to be had at prices ranging from 5 to 20 cents. S. R. WINCHELL & CO , Chicago, 111. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGFTTJ!S THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES LB 2851 S76</