EQUALIZING THE PER CAPITA.

709 colored people, were devoted to the education of colored children—not a cent collected from the colored people being required to pay the expenses of the State Government. From 1875 to 1882, the per capita accruing to each colored child amounted to from fifty to fifty-five cents.

On the 6th

of August, 1882, the voters of the State ratified an act of the Legislature equalizing the per capita of white and colored children. The following year the common per capita established was one dollar and thirty cents. A sufficient amount was taken from the white fund to equalize the two races.

The General Statutes of 1873 made important and valuable changes in our common-school law. The fundamental idea of State aid supplemented by district taxation, as developed in the Bullock law of 1838, is a striking feature of the General Statutes of 1873. This revision is justly regarded by Dr. Henderson as an advance upon all our previous statutes.

The revision of 1884 is a still greater approach to the goal desired. It contains some admirable provisions, on which the author would be gratified to comment, but the space at his command forbids.

Our system still has many defects. Some of these were pointed out in the report of Professor Joseph D. Pickett, our present State superintendent. A number of his suggestions were adopted by the Legislature of 1884. An able report from the Senate committee on education for that year contributed much to important changes in the law, and to the enhancement of the revenue going to the educational fund. The Senate committee seemed opposed to any increase of State taxation for educational purposes, and so stated in their report.

In his message of 1884, Governor Knott, in alluding to the educational condition of Kentucky, declared that we would look a long time for the golden age, when every child in the State would enjoy good schools at public expense, before it was realized at the present average of one dollar and forty cents per annum to the pupil, unless something was done to supplement it. He thought this could not be expected from State taxation, as he maintained that there was not another State in the Union which contributed such a large proportion of its revenues to the purposes of education.

Whether the State bonus would at present be sufficiently supplemented by district taxation in many parts of the State is a matter of serious doubt. If reliance is to be placed upon the historical facts of our system rather than upon ingenious speculations, then, so far as our limited experience has gone, the facts are against district taxation, as a sufficient aid to bring up our standard of education to the mark required by the demands of the age.

The history of district taxation, as a dependence for the system as it was developed in the laws of 1830-38 and '45, has already been given. It is proper now to add that the revisions of 1852 and 1864 omitted the right of local taxation. It was thus dropped from the Kentucky system for the period of twenty years. It was revived on a small scale in 1865. The

odious rate-bill system appeared somewhat later, in 1870, as a substitute for district taxation. It was not until the rate feature fell, under the severe blows of Mr. Z. F. Smith, that local district taxation, after a long sleep, again reappeared in the General Statutes of 1873.

To summarize the whole matter in a few words, district taxation failed in 1830; reappeared in 1838; was rejected in the revisions of 1845-52 and '64; was restored on a small scale in 1865; disappeared again in 1871, with the rate feature as a substitute; reappeared in 1873; again reappears in 1884, under the more practical form of county taxation, first suggested by Mr. Smith, as a necessary substitute for district taxation.

According to the report of Professor J. D. Pickett, the amount raised in Kentucky by district taxation and voluntary subscription is exceedingly small. The per capita from this source, in 1880, was seventy-nine cents. Nearly two-thirds of this amount were gathered in cities and towns, where it is more than probable that its payment is due to the operations of a corporate government, rather than to voluntary submission to taxation by a district vote of the people.

After forty years' trial of our system, with all the aid we have been able to get from district taxation, the practical result of the whole matter is that Kentucky still stands low on the list of illiteracy, as shown by the educational reports of the United States. In this respect she presents an example of a State not to be imitated, rather than one to be followed. As shown by the first message of Governor Knott, she furnishes to the masses of her children an education worth only one dollar and forty cents per annum, while most of our sister States furnish their children with an education of much greater value. Can the poor children of our State, laboring under these disadvantages, compete successfully with the children of those States, where the education given is worth so much more than that obtained in Kentucky? Can the poor children of the State, with an education only worth one dollar and forty cents per annum, be expected to compete suc cessfully with the children of our wealthy citizens who sometimes give as much as two hundred or three hundred dollars per annum for the education of their sons? These are questions which Kentucky statesmanship has yet to meet and answer, in a manner more satisfactory than has hitherto been done.

When the worst is reached, State conventions have sometimes been the last hope and refuge for improvement in our schools. Two great popular conventions, one at Lexington and another at Frankfort, introduced the common-school system into Kentucky. Another convention of the scholars and educators of the State, assembled at the call of Dr. Breckinridge, in 1852, entered their solemn protest against some of the principles announced in the revision of 1852.

A large popular convention, called together by Judge Wm. M. Beckner, in 1884, gave a strong impulse to the cause of education in Kentucky. It not only aroused public sentiment upon the subject, but called attention

AN INTER-STATE CONVENTION.

711

In

WILLIAM MORGAN BECKNER, of Winchester, was born in Nicholas county, June 19, 1841, of Scotch-Irish and English parents, who early removed from Virginia. His education was in the country schools of Bath and Fleming counties, and at Maysville Seminary. He spent some years in teaching, and read law under Judge E. C. Phister. He located, in 1865, at Winchester, where he has pursued the calling of the law and editing the Clark County Democrat almost constantly since, filling the office of county judge and several others in the meantime. 1880, he was appointed one of three commissioners, by Governor Blackburn, to locate the site for a branch penitentiary, and to report a plan of building and system of gov-. ernment for the institution. The able report was written by Judge Beckner. In 1882, he was also appointed on the State Railroad Commission, with W. B. Machen and D. Howard Smith. He has served some years on the Democratic State Committee; but it is in the work of education that Judge Beckner has most actively distinguished himself, especially of late years. In 1882, he delivered an address before the State Teachers' Association, ably pointing out the insufficiencies of the provisions of the common schools, and urging national aid. In 1883, he was mainly instrumental in calling together and organizing the State convention at Frankfort, to consider the educational wants of the State; and in September of the same year, calling the national convention at Louisville, of which he was president, in like interests, in which twenty-seven States were represented. Judge Beckner took much interest in, and advised upon, the work of redrafting the present school law of Kentucky, so much in advance of any preceding it. In June, 1885, he delivered the annual address for the literary societies of Berea College, where all sexes and colors are admitted on an equal footing. In September after, he read a paper before the Social Science Convention at Saratoga, New York. He was elected and sat as a delegate in the late constitutional convention.

WILLIAM MORGAN BECKNER.

to many important defects in the system. Some of the beneficial results of this movement are to be seen in the revision of 1884.

This meeting at Frankfort resulted in a larger inter-State convention at Louisville, in which many matters of vital importance to education in all parts of the country were considered.

An education worth only one dollar and forty cents, it is believed, will not satisfy the people of Kentucky. Only schools of the very lowest grade can be obtained for this amount. First-class schools should be furnished to the children of the State. The educational convention of Virginia was right when it said: "The public schools must be good; they must be emphatically colleges for the people. If they are not good enough for the rich, they are not fit for the poor. If made as good as the rich desire, wealthy citizens will find no reason to send their children from home for education."

The early plan of collegiate education adopted by Kentucky was the endowment by the State of one university. It was the settled conviction of some of our earliest statesmen that the endowment of more than one college in the State would be an injury to higher education. The grounds of this belief are well stated by Dr. Charles Caldwell, in his discourse on the genius and character of Dr. Holley. His position may be briefly, but imperfectly, stated, as follows:

First-To be in character and efficiency worthy of a State, a university must be supported by all the wealth of the Commonwealth. Divide these means and nothing great can be accomplished. Nothing distinguished can come from a dwarfish school. "Divide and be conquered" has been the banner motto of the greatest soldiers of the world.

Second-When a State is filled with a number of colleges, its scholars are as puny as the institutions they represent, and, to be educated, individuals must go abroad, or educate themselves.

Third-To endow and maintain more than one college produces sectional feelings and local jealousies. A ruinous compromise of interests will be the result, and the entire concern will run into confusion and end in failure. The experiment of a well-endowed State university has never been thoroughly tried in Kentucky. Transylvania University was, for a short time, feebly aided by the State, and even then became the admiration and pride of the West. While Transylvania was allowed to decline for want of sufficient pecuniary aid, other colleges sprang up in different parts of the State, having the advantage of local partialities, and a widely-diffused religious zeal in their favor. The State university was girdled on all sides by rival institutions. Without a sufficient support from the Commonwealth, it could not stand the competition of younger institutions. After a short and checkered career, Transylvania University was transferred to one of the great religious denominations of the State. The story of its rise and fall is fraught with many lessons of value. What benefit will be reaped from these lessons in the future remains to be seen.