body that has control of all institutions empowered to confer degrees. No new institution may be chartered by this council, as the official body is called, unless it has property amounting to $500,000 to be used exclusively in education, has a faculty of six or more regular professors, and requires four years of study for a degree, after certain definite requirements for entrance have been met. While we may not be ready in the South for so high a standard, surely the time is at hand when we are ready for some standard; when we are willing to abandon the chaos of the past and institute some order, some definite principles of existence. Michigan has a requirement for $50,000. This is far short of the standards of New York and Pennsylvania, but a long way in advance of those States that have no standard at all. Some years ago an effort was made in Ohio to secure the enactment of a suitable educational law, but owing to the lukewarm support of some institutions and definite opposition on the part of others the measure failed. More recently still an earnest effort has been made in the same direction in the State of Illinois, but, owing to special opposition from an unexpected quarter, the bill was defeated. The movement is not dead, however, but a new bill will probably be presented at the earliest possible moment. It is interesting to note that the presentation to the Illinois legislature of the bill alluded to was brought about through the action of an educational gathering similar to this. The North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, at a meeting helding in Chicago in 1898, by a unanimous vote, recommended the introduction of an educational bill in the legislature of each State represented in the association. These bills were to provide for the creation of an educational commission in each State which should give no charter to any institution hereafter established as a college or university unless its productive endowment should amount to at least $100,000. The same recommendation was unanimously approved by the State Teachers' Association of Illinois in December, 1898; it was further endorsed by the Chicago Bar Association, the Chicago Medical Society, and other influential organizations.

Would it not be a glorious outcome of our gathering here if we could start a movement of similar nature in all our Southern States? Public opinion is stirring on this question. A number of churches have appointed educational commissions designed to regulate standards and promote uniformity among denominational institutions. Colleges and universities have bound them

selves together into associations with similar aims and purposes. But all these efforts must be largely futile so long as our States confer the same privileges and blessings alike on the evil and the good, giving the highest educational endorsement of great commonwealths even to charlatans and impostors whose chicanery and deception ought to be rewarded with severest punishment. May heaven speed the day when our government shall lend its strong arm, not only to save its citizens from impure coal-oil and low grade fertilizers, but from imposition and deceit in that higher realm where soul life is quickened and the light of truth should ever burn.

EDUCATION IN THE OLD AND IN THE NEW SOUTH.

BY JOHN W. ABERCROMBIE, SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION

Ladies and Gentlemen:

OF ALABAMA.

"Education in the Old and in the New South" is a theme so full of importance and so replete with interest, that anything like a thorough discussion within the time allotted is not possible.

There are people who object to the terms old South and new South, but there was an old South, and there is a new South. There was a South of aristocracy and bondage. That South which was bounded by sectional lines, once traced in fratricidal blood, no longer exists. It has gone to come no more. We would not recall it if we could. We rejoice that it no longer lives save on the pages of history. There is a South, free and loyalindustrious, progressive, prosperous-a new South-the fairest region on the globe-the idol of her people, the pride of Americans, and the admiration of the world.

Of the educational conditions that existed in the old South, few people have a correct knowledge. It is generally thought that we have always occupied in educational matters a conspicuously subordinate position when compared with that section of the country commonly termed the North, but this is an erroneous notion; especially is it untrue in reference to higher education. At the beginning of the war between the States in 1861, only onethird of the citizenship of the United States belonged to the South. Then the South excelled the North in the number of

colleges and college professors, equaled her in the number of students enrolled in academies and colleges and universities, and approximated her in the amount of money expended for higher education.

The war between the States not only devastated the South in the slaughter of men and in the destruction of property, but it greatly retarded her advancement along the line of higher education. In many instances, buildings were demolished and institutions were destroyed. At the close of that momentous struggle, which caused the very foundations of our national governmental structure to tremble in their places, it was necessary for the people of the South to begin anew the work of education in every department. Since that time rapid and wonderful progress has been made, the enrollment in higher institutions has increased more than four hundred per cent., and there are today over forty thousand pupils in those institutions.

The work of the higher institutions speaks for itself. Since the beginning of our national career, men and women educated in Southern institutions have taken equal rank with their fellows from other sections in every vocation and avocation. In war and in peace. Southern valor and Southern thought have lead the van. In each of the States of the South, are found colleges and universities supported in whole or in part by State aid, and in the fields of science, art, literature, education, and statesmanship, their pupils have not been excelled.

The old South neglected technical skill, but within the past two decades great advancement has been made in that direction. Industrial training is given a place in many institutions, public, private, and denominational. Special State appropriations are made for the purpose of establishing and maintaining technical schools. The history of such training in England, Germany, Switzerland, and other countries furnishes conclusive proof that it is an American necessity. It is especially a Southern necessity. The South is naturally superior to European countries in intelligence and productiveness, but along with culture should come training-not only cultivated minds, but trained hands, do we need.

The old South did not awaken to a realization of the truth that industrial trades are as respectable as business and professional callings, that the one requires as high a degree of ability as the other, and that, if, as individuals or as a people, we would

surpass our competitors in skillfulness, we must possess superior skill. The new South stands for that doctrine, and realizes that an education of the eye to see, a training of the hand to do, a teaching of the mind to think, a discipline of the will to execute, is absolutely essential to progress and prosperity in this age of industrial development. During the past twenty years the South has far outstripped other sections of the United States in material growth. Indeed our advancement has been phenomenal. Northern industry and Northern capital have contributed in great measure to this rapid progression.

Institutions for the purpose of teaching scientific agriculture were unknown to the old South. Now every Southern State makes provision for such training. Successful farming is no longer considered possible without a knowledge of chemistry and the nature of soils. Under the influence of the application of science to agricultural pursuits, farms are being decreased in size; the lands are passing into the possession of a greater number of people; crops are being diversified; waste places are being reclaimed; supplies are being raised at home; the volume of exports is being increased; the balance of trade is being transferred to our favor, and we are entering upon an era of unexampled progress.

We have a large number of private and denominational colleges not under State control, that rank with similar institutions in other sections. They have contributed in great measure to the dissemination of learning.

In the matter of common school education the old South did not keep pace with the North. The peculiar conditions that for generations surrounded the people were not conducive to the growth of the free common school idea, nor have conditions since 1865 been favorable to its development. While most, if not all, of the Southern States made efforts to establish and maintain common schools prior to that time, not one of them made any considerable progress. With the close of the war between the States the people entered upon a new life. Three millions of slaves, uneducated and inexperienced in civic affairs, without even a limited knowledge of the means of self-support, were enfranchised-were made equal in governmental affairs with those who, but the day before, were their masters. What a fearful mistake! What a stupendous error! What a crime against civilization! What a travesty on civil government! What a sad com

men.

mentary on the wisdom of those who did it! It was as unfair and as injurious to the slave as it was to his master. The right of suffrage is at once the most precious and the most potent State prerogative ever enjoyed by man. It is a right which cannot be wisely and beneficially exercised when its possessor is steeped in vice, or ignorance, or wickedness, or superstition, because he is then absolutely at the mercy of passion, or prejudice, or designing An ignorant ballot, the result of sudden and unwise and wholesale negro enfranchisement in 1865, is the bane of Southern government today. As a war measure even, such enfranchisement was and is wholly indefensible. The negro should never have been given the privilege of voting until prepared by education to exercise that privilege intelligently and patriotically. But, since the mistake has been made, since he has been clothed with every civic power, there is nothing left to the South but to prepare him for citizenship. A spirit of self-preservation, if not a love for humanity, points this out as the only safe course of action. If education makes a better citizen of the white man, it will make a better citizen of the negro.

After the war, came the disastrously destructive reign of the carpet-bagger, the pernicious influences of whose sojourn among us are still visible and burdensome in the millions of bonded indebtedness which hangs over most of the Southern States. Confronted with unsolved problems and threatening dangers, the roar of arms and the tramp of troops had scarcely died away, when the South, poverty stricken and despondent, entered upon the work of rehabilitation. As the work of destruction was complete, the effort to reconstruct was necessarily all the greater. Right heroically has the task been performed, and in no respect has the South's growth been more rapid and more remarkable than in the development of common school systems. We have caught the inspiration that warmed the hearts of our brethren in other States in other days. We fully realize that, in a government like ours, the preservation of free institutions depends upon the general intelligence of its citizens, and that it is to the government's highest interest, that it is to the people's greatest good, to establish and maintain within the reach of every child the means of securing such instruction as will qualify him for an intelligent discharge of the responsible duties of citizenship. The spirit of educational advancement has broken upon us with invig