and intellectual upheaval of antebellum and inter-bellum discussions, such as the freedom of the slave, the preservation of the Union, and a deeper realization of educational needs, brought about by the Civil War itself and the profound changes which it introduced. In the fifty years since the war, the more than doubling of population, the attempt to assimilate 20,000,000 foreigners, the unparalleled development along a thousand channels in commerce, industry, inventions, arts and sciences - the sudden obtrusion of the needs of the

the United States since 1865, etc.; and Lee S. Pratt, formerly Professor in Park and Knox Colleges.

ignorant but aspiring freedmen, the insistent labor question, the increasing practicality of the American outlook on life and its demands- these and myriads of other startlingly kaleidoscopic changes have compelled educational methods to a corresponding advance. Such progress, at first slow but, with growing confidence, constantly accelerated, is, nevertheless, genuine and is sane and sound in principles and tendencies.

This

It was no chance coincidence, then, but a natural and significant evolution, that at the very beginning of this period, only two years after the close of the Civil War, Congress established a Bureau of Education at Washington under the control of a Commissioner of Education. Bureau has no executive functions, but serves an extremely useful purpose in compiling school statistics and giving a composite, world-wide resumé of information regarding school organization, methods and régime a veritable clearing-house of educational knowledge. State boards, on the other hand, are usually administrative, the scope and character of control varying in different States.

In the midst of the war a still more important step had been taken by Congress in the furtherance of the cause of education, by passing a law which, with land acquired under other similar acts, set aside 67,893,919 acres,

that gave a perpetual endowment of nearly $85,000,000. Large additions to this fund have been made by all the States, so that now the total annual income from public school funds amounts to over $10,000,000.

Another general factor in the way of stimulus and inspiration, as well as the introduction, promotion and unification of new principles and methods, has grown out of the meetings and reports of the National Education Association. In 1870 this useful organization reanimated the work of the National Teachers' Association which had been somewhat interrupted by the war; so that the real usefulness of the later body, whose annual meetings now attract an attendance of from 25,000 to 40,000 teachers, covers the period we are considering, and is an index as well as accelerator of its educational progress.

The centralizing tendency of modern education is shown in many ways, but especially in the power of the city superintendent, and the growth of the

ship high school is also a part of the new order of things, which places the privileges of secondary education secondary education

within the grasp of a larger number of children in a rural community. The greatest practical difficulty in inaugurating these changes was overcome by legal provisions for free transportation, and it has been found that, even with this additional expenditure (averaging about 8 cents a day per pupil), the "township unit " is a saving in expense over that of maintaining the larger number of rural schools. It also insures "better teachers and equipment, better supervision, greater regularity of pupils' attendance, and a better school spirit.

The total number of public schools in the United States in 1910 was 257,851, embracing "every variety of size and circumstance." The total number of pupils in public elementary schools, in the same year, was 16,643,149, of which 10,928,092 were in schools in rural districts or in towns below a population of 4,000. The average attendance for the whole

* See Edwin Grant Dexter, History of Education in the United States, chap. xiii., "The Development of School Organization and Administration" (1904). This work, and A. P. Laurie (ed.), The Teacher's Encyclopædia (7 vols., 1912), Paul Monroe (ed.), Cyclopædia of Education (3 vols., 1911, to be complete in 6 vols.), and John P. Garber, Annals of Educational Progress in 1910 and Current Educational Activities (1912) are especially helpful.

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country is only 70 per cent. of the enrolment, but in cities it is considerably higher, Indianapolis leading with 93 per cent., Dayton following with 90 per cent., and New York and Boston with 89 per cent. The expenditures on public education the same year were nearly $400,000,000, almost two-thirds of which went to elementary schools.

In 1871, in the first report of the Commissioner of Education in which statistics on the subject are included, only 9 States out of 37 reported their public school tax. The total amount of revenue from these States was $27,811,803.88;* this ratio, if carried out, would be expected to go over $100,000,000, but the estimate would be liberal if it should reach half that sum, as, among the States not reporting, was the entire Southern group where educational, as well as political and industrial conditions, were at that time chaotic. Let one make the estimate for 1871 as liberal as he dares, the contrast with the magnificent income, from all sources, for the common schools, of $403,647,289 in 1909, is eloquent. Almost as significant are the two facts that the amount we were spending on our public schools in the latter year was an 86 per cent. increase over 1900, and that the large