womanhood that makes for good citizenship. And even the least approachable of all classes, the intellectual exclusive, revolving in his little circle of narrow university life, was compelled to come forth from his hiding place and in some way, often painfully blundering and unappreciative, contribute his quota to a common schooling in which he only half believed.

And here, for the first time, did the Southern people of the dominant race really begin to learn their new relation to their own colored folk, who within ten years had passed through the distinct conditions of "slave," "contraband," "freedman," and "citizen of the United States and of the several States." More than in any other relation has the South been taught by the Southern common school for its colored children and youth the radical distinction between their old and new time relations. The one was the relation of a parental order of society to a vast population destined to permanent inferiority of rights, condition, and culture by the dictates of nature enforced by the relentless benevolence of irresistible law. The other is the relation of a superior class, in a Christian republic, to the same population-the last people that has stepped over the threshold of civilization; by the act of Providence, indorsed by the will of the nation, confirmed in all the rights and obligations of republican citizenship. This relation, not yet fully understood and only gradually becoming apparent to either race, is nowhere so clearly set forth as in the people's common school. For here the State recognizes the fundamental principle that the public wealth shall be fairly taxed to educate all the children. And since the public wealth is more than half the product of the labor of the masses, the class whose power of organization, direction, and forecast changes the crude result of the labor of millions to the "valuation" of a State, should rightly pay from their abundance for the common education, which is the only assurance of the permanent prosperity of the whole. And, over and above the duty of a superior class in a republic to educate every child as far as possible up to the capacity of independent and self-relying citizenship, towers the grander obligation of a common Christian brotherhood, without which democracy and freedom itself are only new and hopeless arrangements of individuals and classes, doomed by pagan selfishness to a national ruin which is only a question of time.

XCVII.

Third. Another important element in the indirect influence of the common school in these States is the stimulus given to local activity in public affairs. A hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson proclaimed the great advantage of the New England township system of local government as a training school of citizenship. In fact, although the political theories of the South from the beginning have all been in the direction of the decentralization of government and the diffusion of political

activity through local points of administration, the only portion of the country where this theory has been consistently applied has been, from the first, the conduct of public affairs by the whole body of voters, assembled periodically in the town meeting of New England. Neither in the Middle nor Western States has the "town" assumed anything like this importance as an original center of administration, while the county has been exalted beyond anything known in the past or present of the old Northeast. It was one of the many plans of Jefferson in his early manhood to introduce this New England system into Virginia. The plan failed for reasons connected with the whole organization of Southern society. Recently the subject of local government in the South has attracted attention, and investigations and interesting contributions have been made to the subject, especially by the group of young men in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., to whom the South is indebted for valuable essays in the direction of the educational history of the section. In fact, the most practical and vital beginning of local administration in these States has been the establishment of the school district and the appointment of local trustees for its management. These officials, white or colored, are appointed in various ways: by popular election, nomination by the county school board, or the courts, and act under the supervision of the county superintendent, himself under the general supervision of the State board, represented by the State commissioner of education. Here is an excellent opening for local activity in the most important matter of public concern, which should be disconnected with partisan politics, and will be lifted above disturbing influences in proportion as the district board of management is competent and zealous in the performance of its duties; and, although the local school officials in many portions of the South are too often painfully incompetent or negligent, yet enough is done to demonstrate the great importance of these thousands of new centers of political activity in the sixteen Southern States.

The Southern county, unless exceptionally populous, is the weak side of its public system of administration. The people living in it are dispersed through the lonely areas, with small opportunity of communication with the county town. Hundreds of these divisions contain less than 10,000 people; many of them 5,000; often the majority of the people colored laborers or renters of land. The boundless embargo of mud in winter; the unspeakable condition of country roads at all times; the confinement of home work through the busy season; the poverty of multitudes, make any influential relation with county affairs practically impossible save to the favored few. The county court-house is the little "hub" of this domain, often strangely isolated even from neighboring counties. It is easy to be seen how naturally the most concentrated form of human government-a county courthouse ring-controls local affairs, and by its well-known methods wheels about the majority, obedient to its will. The county officials

are the hardest worked and poorest paid men of ability in the Republic. The county judge in Texas, under the law, not only sits on the bench, but performs the duties of county superintendent of schools and two or three minor offices, which in a New England county would be assigned to separate officers, each probably receiving a salary as large as this unfortunate functionary, oppressed by a sort of roving commission to do everything for everybody in an all-outdoor region often half as large as a New England State. Faithful as he may be, of course something must be neglected, and that "something" is too often the superintendence of the public schools, by all odds the most important work to be done. In this situation it can readily be seen what possibilities of usefulness are latent in the school district, polarizing the people around their most precious interest, the schooling of their children; calling to the front the superior men and women of the community (for in some of these States women are competent to hold these offices), and bringing a score of active neighborhoods thus organized in constant communication with the chief town.

XCVIII.

Fourth. Of corresponding value is the graded school for both races, already established in large numbers of these county towns, not only to its own patrons, but to the educational affairs of the whole county. Before the war the Southern States were dotted by these local educational centers, created by the establishment of an academy, locally styled "college," on which sometimes an extensive region depended for education. This institution naturally hugged the court-house, though sometimes located, like the higher college, in the open country, gathering about it the little community built up by itself. But, valuable as were these schools, they only could reach a limited number even of the white population, the remainder of the children gathered in little private groups, sometimes in the poor man's "free school," or under tutorship in the rich man's family. But the establishment of a thorough system of graded public schools in a leading Southern town marks. the dawn of a new educational era for the whole region round about. If successful (and the majority of them are reasonably good and many of them beyond comparison the best schools the country has ever known), they make the place at once an educational center of commanding importance. The majority of the children, in time, become its pupils. Either free or with a small tuition fee an upper class is developed, in which the families desiring to send their children to college can oversee their preparation while living at home. The better sort of superintendents are in the habit of attending summer schools in the North or conducting institute work at home, besides making visits of observation to the great school centers. In this way the best methods of instruction are introduced and the teachers instructed 8819-10

therein by weekly meetings. In some cases a teacher's class for pupils in the higher grades of the school is established. A school library is founded and often becomes an invaluable annex to the school. The more intelligent people of the whole county visit in the rooms, sometimes thronging the schoolhouse, and go home with new ideas of edu cation. A steady current of good families from the country sets in upon the town, often waking up a good-sized real-estate "boom" to meet the demand for new houses. The country teachers visit the school; are often brought in, once a month, at the session of a county association, where they meet the city teachers, form new acquaintances, and go home instructed and encouraged. Many young people, especially young women, attend these schools from outside as the best academy in reach, and especially for learning the superior methods of school instruction, discipline, and organization. In this way the country district school may be supplied with good teachers from the families of its own locality, while it would not be able otherwise to call to its brief term and small salary a competent schoolmaster or mistress.

All these advantages are shared by the colored people. For, although their children are educated in separate schools, they are able, if vigi. lant, to secure a fair proportion of the public education and stand in the same relation to their own people through the county as I have described. And sometimes the colored folk are more zealous and persistent in the support of their schools than their white neighbors are of their own. And whatever may be said to the contrary, I have rarely visited a Southern county, with an average negro population, where these people, by suppressing their church, neighborhood, and family jealousies, working together under the lead of their own best people, combining to build schoolhouses, insisting on competent teachers, saving money to add to their salaries and extend the school term, and, generally, standing by a good school when they have it, could not greatly improve the public facilities for their own children, win to their cause the most substantial white people, and make their district a valuable "object lesson" for the neighboring country.

XCIX.

It is almost impossible that even an expert schoolman from any country outside these sixteen American Southern States should be able to appreciate the significance of the movement by which a Southern village, especially a "county town," slowly disentangles itself from the confusion of educational arrangements in which it was left twenty years ago, and, under the lead of a few resolute and influential citizens, is brought to the critical point of local taxation for the support of a system of graded schools for both races and all classes, free to all, in session nine months in the year, demanding either the remodeling and enlarging of old buildings for temporary occupation or the "bonding" of the

town to build schoolhouses suitable for the new experiment. A Western community that, for half a century, has been working out this system, brought from the old States, subsidized by national gifts of public lands, refreshed by a constant reënforcement of the most vigorous life in the world, with no opposition, save from the clergy of two or three churches wedded to the parochial system; or a New England town that, for two hundred years has been so familiar with the American system that even the ghost of Horace Mann, advertised to lecture in the town hall on education, would not persuade the Browning Club or the Chautauqua Circle to adjourn, have no measures by which to test the profound significance of this movement in a community in South Carolina, the heart of Virginia, or the "Teche country" in Louisiana.

Could I transfer to these pages a full representation of what I have seen and lived with in hundreds of these communities through the past dozen years I might hope to convey a picture of the school itself, more or less faithful and easy enough to be understood. But when, proceeding below the surface, I attempted to convey to an average Northern community a fair impression of the whole state of society out of which this school has fought its way to even its present estate; what that long effort signifies to the whole community, its peculiar, often pathetic meaning to every respectable family of the white population and its prodigious importance to the colored contingent; by what misgivings and apprehensions in the elder and through what strange uplifts of hope, longing, splendid ambitions, and exultations of pride in scores of eager boys and girls, it is environed, as by the semitropical atmosphere of a changeful Southern summer day; how the new "superintendent," often a college graduate of twenty-five, after a vacation tour among the summer "normals" of the North, with a month's glance over the schools of Boston, Washington, or St. Louis, finds himself, on the first day of October, the virtual sovereign of the little city, with a task of teaching a thousand children to live and work together; holds the entire community "at arms' length" while the new experiment is being tried; trains a score of young people who never taught, or old village "schoolmistresses" who know it all, to teach and discipline according to the methods of the new education, as he imparts them in his weekly drill; while the whole county is looking on and all the curious and idle people are making a picnic of his schoolroom; here is a situation so peculiar that it needs either a new sense or a power of " putting one's self in the place" of his neighbor only given by the special grace of God to appreciate it in the fullness of its meaning, not only to that town, county, and State, but to the future of the Republic. But let me describe a characteristic visit to one of these places, such as I have spent eight months in the year for the last twelve years in making. And if the picture includes the separate features of different localities, it will be all the more realistic from the blending of the many local pecul iarities which combine wherever one of these old Southern inland towns