future decline; to prepare competent men to fill the Cabinet, the bench, the bar, and the pulpit." These declarations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, were not empty words. They reveal the spirit of moral earnestness which pervaded teachers and students and which explains undoubtedly the high proportion of forceful characters among the graduates of that early period.

Although the development of the region embraced in the Louisiana purchase belongs to a later period than that of the North-West Territory it has followed for the most part the same course. Missouri shows, indeed, modifying influences from the old French occupation, and Louisiana, both by reason of its earlier history and its geographic position, has had a distinctive history. These two States represent the only portions of the domain purchased in 1803 that were included by name in the census of 1810. At that time the population of Louisiana, which was admitted as a State two years later, was 76,556, and that of Missouri (admitted in 1821) was 20,845. Missouri shared in the advancing population of the NorthWest Territory, as is shown by the fact that it increased from 140,455 inhabitants in 1830 to 682,044 in 1850, an increase of 385 per cent. It is interesting to note here that the act of Congress of 1812, organizing the Territory of Missouri, reiterated the language of the ordinance of 1787 with amplifications, as follows: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being nece sary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be encouraged and provided for from the public lands of the United States in said Territory in such manner as Congress may deem expedient." Subsequently Congress provided that two townships of land in the Territory should be devoted to a university and "one thirty-sixth of the entire public domain, together with saline and swamp lands, to township (nondistrict) schools." The first constitution of the State ratified these provisions, and thus the policy which had been initiated in Ohio was transferred beyond the Mississippi.

It would be impossible at this date to estimate even approximately the money value of the university lands reserved under the ordinance of 1787 and the acts extending its beneficent provision, as State after State was admitted to the Union. Much of the precious endowment, it is well known, was lost by bad management, but this waste does not detract from the importance of the policy, which is to be measured rather by its inspiring influence than by its financial outcome.

The precedent established in 1787 has been followed by Congressional appropriations of much greater value, notably those made under the land-grant act of 1862 and the supplementary acts of 1887 and 1890, and this national policy has been supplemented by extensive grants on the part of the State legislatures. It is this whole princely endowment which must be taken into account when the value of the initial act is in question. @

We are reminded in this consideration of the peculiar character of our Republic, which gives more complex meaning to the term "national" than is suggested merely by relation to the Federal authority. Government with us is a union of State and Federal action, springing from and embodying the will of the people. The extent to which a particular policy is supported by the people is the measure of its claim to be regarded as national. It is indeed true that only measures which emanate from Congress are applicable to the entire country, but so closely interwoven are the States that measures passed by the legislature of one State are often adopted almost simultaneously by other State legislatures, and thus rapidly spread throughout the country. This is so true, in respect to education, that although there is no national system of education in the United States, the expression is current among us and carries to all minds a very definite idea. This interplay of Federal and of State policies in that complex whole which we call

a The total land appropriations under the ordinance of 1787, the act of 1862, and supplementary acts amount to 86,084,879 acres.

"national" has been strikingly shown in the foundation of State universities. State and nation, as we have seen, have united in their endowment, and they appear to be the natural crown of the public schools which, in common with the higher learning, were fostered by grants of land under the ordinance of 1787.

It is a significant fact that coeducation is the policy in every college and university of the North Central and Western divisions of our country that has had the benefit of Congressional land grants. Their uniform action in this respect has made this a distinctive feature of our higher education.

The West is thus distinguished by the unity of higher and elementary education through their common origin in the public bounty. Private agencies shared in the work, but never gained ascendancy, as they did in the older States, hence, while the East led in the work of public education, the West perfected the type. The history of the process as it went on in the several States discloses their interrelations during the formative period of our national life. The constitution of Ohio, adopted in 1802, on its admission to statehood, reiterated the educational clause of the ordinance of 1787, with additional provisions looking to the support of schools by public funds and guarding against denominational intolerance and class distinctions. At first the application of the law was left to private or local initiative, as had been the case in the Massachusetts colonies; but this precarious policy was soon abandoned. In 1806 a school district law was passed; in 1821 a school tax law was carried. Scarcely were these measures secured when the impulse of that extraordinary campaign of education waged by Horace Mann in Massachusetts, spreading westward, swept New York and Ohio into the movement. In 1838, the year after Horace Mann was made secretary of the Massachusetts State board of education, the legislature of Ohio created a State school fund and provided for State supervision of public schools. The experience of the older State was utilized though never slavishly imitated by the younger. It is interesting to note that whereas in this early period the impulse toward progress in public education came from the East, in later years the movement became that of the interchange and intermingling of impulses.

LOCAL CIRCUMSTANCES A DETERMINING FACTOR IN THE CONDUCT OF SCHOOLS.

The pioneer champions of the free-school system-Horace Mann and Henry Barnard in New England, Governor Seward and Rev. Doctor Potter in New York, to name the most notable-had evidently no thought of excluding girls from the public provision for which they labor d. But while they were laying deep foundations in law and public opinion, schools themselves, as they multiplied in the respective States, naturally followed the arrangements with which the people were familiar. The district schools of the New England and Middle States were attended by boys and girls, as the "dame schools" of England had been and the admirable parish schools of Scotland. But as regards high schools, which were of later growth, a different precedent had been established in the Eastern States by the academies and grammar schools founded by private effort in many of the chief places of that section. These were generally separate schools, although a few academies were coeducational. Certain academies for girls-for example, Adams Academy at Derry, N. H. (1823). and Ispswich Academy, Massachusetts (1828)-seem to have been founded with a view to giving girls an education better suited to their requirements than that which had been arranged with special reference to the wants of boys.

As a rule, an exclusive regard to the careers for which boys should be trained meets us in the prospectuses of the early academies and grammar schools. Even where there was an attempted departure from the established classical curriculum, as in the case of Franklin's proposals for the academy in Philadelphia, the overshadowing purpose is the same—to qualify men "to bear magistracies and

execute other public offices of trust," and to qualify “a number of the poorer to act as schoolmasters in the country."

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The series of school laws passed in Ohio between 1806 and 1840 contained in embryo all the essentials of a State school system. The history which they embody was repeated at a later date in Indiana, whose people, less homogeneous than those of Ohio, seemed at first firmly wedded to sectarian schools. Later still it was repeated in Illinois, where the contest over the slavery clause of the ordinance of 1787 long obscured every other provision, and in Michigan, which began its independent existence with a scheme for an organized system of public education. The movement gained momentum as it proceeded, for the farther West it is traced the more rapid seems its development from the initial stage of permissive laws and isolated efforts to that of complete organization and vigorous growth. Thus Colorado, the Centennial State, passed a comprehensive school law the year after its admission, and in six years was able to boast with good reason that in respect to its public school system it was equal to any State in the Union. Indeed, as we follow the development of systems of education beyond the Alleghenies and beyond the Mississippi we can not fail to be impressed with the rapid spread of ideas that were struggling for recognition in older civilizations. Old customs and ingrained prejudices lost their hold on people in this wilderness. They addressed themselves to the problems of their collective life with a vigor of initiative and a readiness of adjustment which are still characteristic of the West and which have marked its contributions to the general educational progress. But in the West, as in the East, the internal conduct of schools was determined by circumstance, and here and there in the early annals of the region instances are even found of separate district schools for the two sexes. Thus under the first ordinance (passed July, 1837) for the establishment of common schools in Cleveland, Ohio, three school districts were formed, and two schools, one for boys and the other for girls, opened in each. This provision followed that of a so-called free school which had been previously opened in Cleveland, but which was free only to poor children. Other examples might be adduced, but the distinction was temporary, and the right or expediency of giving girls equal school advantages with boys seems never to have been questioned as it had been in New England, where at least one town went so far as to decide "to be at no expense for educating girls," and other towns made to them the reluctant concession of an hour before or after the boys' school day or on Thursday, when the boys had half holiday. Discriminations of this kind in the East had, however, nothing to do with the question of coeducation per se. They were due rather to the conviction that nothing should be attempted by public authorities that can be left to private initiative and nothing attempted by the central government that can be left to local authorities. This principle, deeply inwrought in the English polity and still tenaciously adhered to in that motherland, long made itself felt in the educational policies of New England. It was perhaps strengthened by the saving tendency of the people, which extended even to the matter of public expenditure. Says Horace Mann, "I have always observed among our people an exaggeration of ideas on this subject, a feeling in each individual whatever the amount of the tax may be, he will have to pay the whole of it." The disposition to exclude girls from the public schools often betrayed the thrifty desire to keep down the expenses. This was evidently the case in Boston, where the high school for girls, opened in 1825-four years after the English high school for boys was established—became immediately so pɔpular and the pressure for admission so great that the school committee, alarmed at the threatened expenditure, closed the school before the end of the second year.

a From a speech before the State convention of county superintendents of New York in 1846. Randell's History of the Common School System of New York, p. 220.

INFLUENCE OF HIGH SCHOOLS IN PROMOTING COEDUCATION.

Among many influences promoting the spread of coeducation in this country public high schools, because of their universal adoption and liberal support, have undoubtedly been the most powerful. Up to 1850 the schools of this class were few in number. According to Commissioner Harris, 11 were in operation at that date, considering only schools organized distinctively as high schools with from two to four year courses of study; 33 were added in the next ten years, and by 1870 the number had risen to 160. Later years have witnessed a phenomenal increase in the number of these schools, but their policies were settled in this initial period.

Sometimes the high schools developed spontaneously, as it were, from the extension of the lementary programmes. More often they were the outcome of a prolonged campaign like that maintained in Ohio with varying intensity in the decade 1845 to 1855, when prominent citizens, county officers, educators, superintendents of common schools, and goɣernors joined in the endeavor to create a popular sentiment in favor of an efficient system of higher instruction supported by public funds, attracting the patronage of the better classes by the certainty of superior advantages for their children, and opening to the poorest child access to the whole realm of knowledge, not as a charity, but as a right and without humiliating conditions.”

In this period at least nine high schools whose history has been preserved to the present time were established in the State. The Cleveland High School was opened in 1846 as a school for boys only, but within a year girls were admitted, although to a limited curriculum and against the protest of the principal. In 1854 Mr. E. E. White took charge of the school and abolished all restrictions with respect to girls. It was recorded by him as proof of the soundness of his judgment that "the first class of girls permitted to take the full course in mathematics stood considerably higher, on the average, than the boys." The other high schools opened during this period admitted both boys and girls, though in some cases to separate departments. In respect to high schools, as to other organized forms of social activity, Ohio was the pioneer State of the West. Before other communities in this vast region were ready for high schools their maintenance as a necessary part of a public school system had passed beyond all question.

As a rule high schools have followed the course of the elementary schools in admitting both sexes. Where this was not the case from the first-as in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and a few other cities of the Atlantic seaboard-there was generally a struggle before the claim of girls for like provision was recognized.

It is important to remember how far local conditions explain these initial distinctions, because prejudices engendered of custom still lend a coloring to the arguments pro and con whenever the question of coeducation is agitated. The policy was fostered in the West by the conditions of pioneer life and the easy spread of democratic ideas in new and adventurous communities. That there was the lingering spirit of patrician exclusiveness in the eastern preferences for separate high schools is indicated by the contrary attitude in respect to normal schools. The first institution of the latter class in this country-an outcome of the labors of Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and their coworkers in the cause of popular education-was established at Lexington, Mass., in 1839. The school was, indeed, characterized by the vote of the board of education as "a normal school for the qualification of female teachers," but the same vote carried also a second normal school for both sexes, which was opened the following year at Barre. Two years later a third normal school, also coeducational, was opened at Bridgewater, the first class numbering 21 women and 7 men. The movement spread rapidly, preserving in its course the original policy; but the institutions

were identified in the public mind with the common or elementary schools, and it was some time before their true character as professional schools of a high order was recognized and their policies studied for their general interest.

EARLY EFFORTS FOR PROMOTING THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

This survey of influences that were shaping public sentiment with respect to the education of women would be incomplete without reference to the early efforts for promoting in their behalf what was distinctly recognized as higher in contrast with elementary education or special training. The persistent appeals of Mrs. Emma Willard through the press and before the legislature of New York, and the heroic efforts of Mary Lyon in Massachusetts, broke down in centers of commanding influence the notion of woman's limitations, which, like all traditional beliefs, has shown wonderful tenacity. The sanction of a charter for Mount Holyoke Seminary, won by Mary Lyon from the Massachusetts legislature in 1836, and the corresponding triumph of Mrs. Willard, who the following year secured a charter for Troy Female Seminary from the New York legislature, were events of national importance. Both institutions stood for serious work and high standards as against the superficiality of fashionable schools. The public agitations from which they sprung had drawn wide attention to the enterprises, and the seminary movement, like the free school and the normal school movements, spread far beyond the centers in which it arose. A ripple of the movement is noticeable in Georgia in the establishment of Wesleyan Female College at Macon, which was chartered the same year as Mount Holyoke, with authority to confer degrees.

These institutions indirectly promoted coeducation, for as time passed it became evident that their work and aims were incompatible with those of higher education in the college or traditional sense of that expression. They could not command the necessary resources nor students of adequate preparation for forceful college work.

The first college in this country to admit women on the same basis and to the same classes as men was Oberlin College (originally Oberlin Collegiate Institute), founded in 1833 in an isolated district of Ohio. From the outset the new institution stood for so many unpopular ideas, social and theological, that the mere fact of the admission of both sexes excited little attention. Indeed, the original plan of the institution included a special department for women similar in scope to the seminary work, and it was not until 1837 that women were admitted as full collegiate students under the pressure of a normal expansion of the inner life of the institution. The innovation seems to have caused little comment even within the college itself until several years later, when a variety of influences had combined to make coeducation a subject of earnest discussion in many quarters. Oberlin then became a model and exemplar for all colleges that proposed the open door for Before this period arrived the Oberlin experiment was supplemented by the establishment of Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, which was coeducational from the start. The college was opened under the presidency of Horace Mann, although this distinguished educator entertained at the time serious doubts as to the wisdom of coeducation. His attitude in this respect was readily inferred from his inaugural address, and also from a by-law that he sanctioned prohibiting marriages between students during their connection with the college, but in spite of his dubious support of the policy it gained strength from his relation to the new institution. Not the least triumph of Antioch was its complete conversion of its own president to the full support of the new system.

women.

EFFECT OF INDUSTRIAL CHANGES.

The various efforts for the promotion of public education or the upbuilding of private institutions here reviewed were deeply involved with that profound move