"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 labored. 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 curric ulum, 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

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

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 popular 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 clementary 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 governors 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 1816 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 schoo's 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

ment of thought and feeling which had overturned political systems in Europe and infused new social ideals into the minds of all thinking men. The ordinance of 1787 was passed on the eve of the French Revolution, and Oberlin recalls by its charter date the initial steps in public education in the two foreign countries most closely related to the early history of our own. In that year (1833) was passed Guizot's law, the basis of the primary school system of France. In the same year the English Parliament made the first appropriation (£20,000) in aid of popular education. Both measures grew out of the spread of democratic principles as indicated by the increase of popular suffrage; but underlying these political changes was an industrial revolution, which extended also to our own country.

The period from 1830 to 1860, marked, as we have seen, by the growth of the public school system in the eastern and north central divisions of our country, witnessed also the transfer of many industries from the home to factories, thus depriving women of their wonted occupations and thereby diminishing their economic importance. As a consequence, a feeling of unrest rose in the minds of forceful women and gradually affected entire communities. Women of special talent found their way into journalism. Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, who in 1837 became an editorial writer and literary critic for the New York Evening Express, was followed by a brilliant company of women-Mrs. Lydia Child, Margaret Fuller, Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm, Grace Greenwood, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gail Hamilton, to name a few belonging to the earlier years of this period-who aided powerfully in breaking down the traditional notion as to the mental limitations of their sex. Women took courage and began here and there to agitate for other fields of activity. In 1845 Elizabeth Blackwell formed the daring resolution of studying medicine. Around her name clusters a small but remarkable group of women, whose determined spirit opened up the profession to women, with all that it entailed in the way of schools and hospitals for their suitable preparation.

PUBLIC PROVISION FOR NEW EDUCATIONAL DEMANDS.

Of far greater moment than this stirring of individual aspiration was the rising demand for a new order of education- ̈ practical education," to use the common misnomer-which affected the whole industrial world. The relation between the commercial advantages of a people and the special training, scientific and artistic, of its industrial classes was strikingly illustrated by the first international exposition (the Crystal Palace Exposition, London, 1851), which as an educational force has never been surpassed by any succeeding event of the kind. Our own country was not indifferent to the lesson, and in 1862, in the midst of the distractions of civil war, Congress set its seal to the slowly forming purposes of the new industrial era by a measure of wider application and possibly deeper import than the land reservations of 1787. This measure was the land-grant act of 1862, appropriating 10,000,000 acres of land for the endowment of colleges "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."

The effect of this bounty upon the growing interest of woman's education was not the least surprising of its many unforeseen consequences. In the Northwestern States the land grant was generally regarded as a provision upon which women had the same claim as men, and the policy of coeducation, which had already been adopted by the State universities of Iowa and Wisconsin, endowed by the land reservation of 1787, was adopted by the land-grant colleges throughout the West. The successive State universities of that section followed the same course, and thus the entire system of public education in the West presented from the lowest