south" and the north where the daughters of the impoverished rich and the ambitious poor can be educated at a rate that will enable thousands of good girls to obtain their great and only chance for education. The next million that goes down that way from Northern benevolence should be given to Bishop Haygood, in whose hands the vanishing surplus of the United States Treasury would have been wisely invested in "the building for the children" of the people of all conditions in these States. It is one of the delusions that still abide in too many minds that the great industrial need of the South is cheap and unskilled labor, the toil of an ignorant peasantry. The desperate need of the South is intelligent labor in the masses, under the leadership of trained commanders of industry, an army that will go forth" conquering and to conquer" into this marvelous world of opportunity.

The white masses of the South need to be brought in range of that system of agencies of the higher American civilization now in operation even in the most remote Northwest, and which are the glory of the more prosperous States. It is impossible to describe the difference in the mental atmosphere in which a bright boy or girl in an average county in South Carolina, Alabama, or Louisiana is brought up and that amid which his cousin lives in Massachusetts, Ohio, or Wisconsin. It is all the difference between living in a country where the whole environment is educational and a country where education is a special thing, and the youth is all the time compelled to push out of his ordinary surroundings to gain it. A free library in every neighborhood, a better class of newspapers, a movement to "add to faith knowledge" in the church-all these, now rapidly coming to the front in the prosperous cities, still wait for their day in the open country. Yet here is the place, almost the only place left in American life, where is yet leisure from engrossing work. Oh, what a boon to us hurried and wearied mortals would be that precious leisure, flowing like a great quiet river through these rural districts of the Southland! Here is the place where all these beautiful and beneficent agencies would be best appreciated by the the children and youth, who would accept them as eagerly as the children of New England fifty years ago, springing to them as to a bounteous feast.

And is not the group of men and women already known who can bring the philosophy of social science down from heaven to abide upon earth, and put into simple statement, in leaflets or short readable tracts, the knowledge that makes for good living and true prosperity? The South is now drugged with the theories of professional politicians. Now the tariff, now the Negro, now the railroad, now the distant millionaire, is paraded up and down as the cause of "agricultural depression," the source of all Southern woes. Now let the social scientists "take an inning," and tell the people what wasteful housekeeping, bad cookery, unskilled labor, unfit dress, ignorance, superstition, shiftlessness, vulgarity, and vice have to do with the undeniable trials of these, with other multitudes of the less favored of our American people. A railroad conductor, with a big head on his shoulders, said to me: "All along this route of 500 miles the people would read tons of leaflets, tracts, anything containing good, sound information and advice on common things. I could distribute all that anybody would give me."

But why go on? Here is a people, not inferior in capacity to any upon earth, of the best original stock, appearing for the first time as a controlling element in sixteen great States of the Republic, in whose hands is the destiny of other millions just introduced to American citizenship. On them will depend the the outcome of Southern affairs for the coming generation more than upon all the rest of the country. What an appeal to the patriotism, the justice, the Christian spirit of the whole American people. But alas for the sin, the shame, and the discouragement which stand between such a people and all that come to them in friendly cooperation. I live all summer in sight of money enough thrown to the dogs and to the devil to place on the ground, in many of these States, the agencies which their own noblest people are all ready to use for the public good. When the great Protestant churches, that still work at cross purposes along the border, learn the wisdom of Christian

statesmanship, close up their ranks, and pour a stream of Northern money into this the most fruitful mission field on earth, there will be more hope of the coming of the kingdom for which their prayers go up day and night before the Lord.

The conviction forces itself upon a careful observer of these States that the time has passed when any set of leaders, any political or ecclesiastical party, can solve the difficult problems now set before them. It is doubtful if the foremost men, North and South, who were once arrayed as enemies in war, can ever see eye to eye," or repose that confidence in each other without which all dealing with matters so delicate involves an ever-recurring exasperation. Napoleon said, "When a great thing is to be done in public affairs, keep away from the leaders and go to the people." "The people" that will finally bring peace, confidence, reconciliation, through all our borders are the children and youth now being trained all over the land for the grandest effort of Christian administration that ever confronted a generation of men. And the Southern children, on whom we are to largely depend, thirty years hence, for this glorious work of reconstruction and reconciliation are the boys and girls of this rising Third Estate and the Negroes, the youthful millions that now swarm this land of the South. The best we can do is to hold things as good as they are, with the hope of making some little headway year by year against sectional prejudice, provincialism, and all the enemies of the new republic. But greater than all other things is the work to which we are called-the education of the head, the hand, and the heart of the twenty millions of Young America. Then, as Thomas Jefferson said, "if we educate the children aright, our descendants will be wiser than we, and many things impossible to us will be easy to them."

VII.

OVERLOOK AND OUTLOOK IN SOUTHERN EDUCATION.

An address delivered at the University of Tennessee, May 12, 1891.

I am aware that he who offers to speak on a subject so vast in itself and so involved in social, political, industrial, and religious questions as the present condition and future prospects of education in the South should present some credentials on his right to demand a hearing. My own conviction of the right so to speak is founded on an eleven years' experience in the journeyings, observations, consultations, and labors in the Southern States implied in what I hope it is not vain to call "a ministry of education." Eleven years ago, after many years of deep interest and connection with the educational life of the North, I heard the call to go over the border and give myself for my remaining years to this ministry. Encouraged by leading authorities, educational and public, including many of the most eminent statesmen in Congress and the national administration, I entered upon this mission.

During the past eleven years I have visited every Southern State, labored in every department of education with special reference to the development of the common school, made large acquaintance with the Southern educational public, and kept myself in close connection with the Southern people of both races and all classes, really living with the children and youth, the young parents and teachers, with constant opportunity of consulting with the leaders of religious, public, and educational affairs. In this way, not so much from superior ability as extensive and unique opportunities of observation, I have obtained an overlook of the educational situation which I believe is nearer the facts of the case than the general impression gathered from the press, the churches, or partial private observation. Such observation goes below the imperfect statistics that figure in the census, or even the brief and often unsatisfactory reports of the State and local educational officials of the South.

In matters educational everything depends on the meaning attached to current terms, the quality of the school and the teacher, and the social environment of the school itself. My estimate of this region of Southern life differs from many estimates which I find in the press or the educational public. I present it as the result of my best effort to obtain a truthful notion of the "lay of the land ;" and I am encouraged by the practical indorsement of my general view by the foremost educational authorities of that section.

With this brief introduction, I now ask your attention to some remarks on the Overlook and Outlook in Southern Education.

In the year 1865, to an outside observer, the whole fabric of Southern education lay prostrate in the appalling wreck, disappointment, and despair of the great American civil war. The majority of leading institutions of learning had been suspended or were only partially at work during the four years of conflict. Buildings had been destroyed or had fallen to decay, students and teachers were in their graves or just emerging from the smoke of battle, endowment funds of every sort had gone the way of all earthly riches, and the impending bitter conflict of politics during the troubled years of reconstruction served to postpone the revival of letters to a far-off generation. To-night, in briefest possible outline, I tell the wondrous story of the

great enterprise of the Southern educational public, leading the people of every Southern State in that awakening and organizing of the educational spirit which has rebuilt on the old foundation better than before and beyond all former ambition the work of universal education, which in due time shall bring a good American common school to every man's door.

How that mighty enterprise in this latter day was undertaken, and how it has gone on for the past twenty-five years, is one of the most wonderful things in the marvelous history of our country.

The South more than any other portion of the Republic is the land of tradition. Nowhere is loyalty to the memory and the achievements of great men so powerful a motive for the action even of the more intelligent classes as here. And happily the highest traditions of the South and the testimonials of the fathers were largely on the side of the education of the people. A hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson had outlined one of the most complete systems of general education then published to the world, and through his life with the full indorsement of the greatest men of his State had he labored with the people of Virginia for its adoption. Failing in all but its university upper story, he bequeathed the glorious vision to a coming generation.

All along the years the foremost statesmen and educators of the South had periodical awakenings to the absolute necessity of a more thorough schooling of the white masses. One of the best educational volumes for popular circulation would be a compilation of the eloquent, wise, and practical sayings of the greatest leaders of Southern life on popular education up to the outbreak of the civil war. And in several of the States attempts had been made to realize this idea, though outside a few cities, nowhere except in North Carolina, with any considerable measure of success. So when, at the close of the war, the great effort was made by the National Government, private benevolence, Northern church activity, and the Peabody educational fund, to establish the common school for all children, in every Southern State, it found great numbers of the people prepared for it. The necessities of the higher and the aspirations of the lower classes of society conspired with the desire of thousands of cultivated women for employment, and the common school appeared even before the decisive years of 1864-'65.

It is not necessary to defend all that was attempted in the next ten troubled years, even with good intentions, for the schooling of either race. It was inevitable under the circumstances, that great mistakes should be made, and that the people should sometimes revolt against a good deal that was well meant and wisely done. Enough to say, that no money was ever better invested for education than the $50,000,000 sent southward by the North and the Nation during the past twenty-five years. It has stimulated the desire for knowledge in several millions of youth; aided hundreds of communities to establish a useful system of schools; gathered teachers and students in seminaries of peculiar merit; introduced industrial education among the freedmen, and built several thousand schoolhouses between the Potomac and the Rio Grande. And, best of all, has been the coming together of schoolmen, children, and people, for the first time known to each other. "A little child shall lead them." State after State, class after class, have been found grouped around the schoolhouse door, beautiful prophecy of the coming "day of the Lord," when the educational and religious forces of the whole country shall be marshaled like an angelic host, with flaming swords, against that barbarism of ignorance and unrighteousness which is the Satan in the fair Eden of the new Republic.

It would require more than one discourse to do faint justice to the corresponding movement of the Southern people during the past twenty-five years in behalf of the education of their 6,000,000 children and youth. It is only the truth to say that never in the history of the world has a more notable work been attempted and carried beyond the first point of danger under anything like similar difficulties and complications than in our Southern States. I need not here speak of those difficulties and complications to an assembly of Southern friends of education, who are even to-day confronted by them all, like a stout traveler beating against a teasing wind.

It was fit that Virginia should lead in this great enterprise and, under the masterly superintendency of Dr. Ruffner, the Horace Mann of the South, take up the work that fell from dying hands at Monticello fifty years before. The New Dominion of 1891 now supports every feature of the system outlined by Thomas Jefferson, from the State University to industrial training for the freedmen in the Old Dominion of a hundred years ago.

In these memorable twenty-five years the American system of common schools in every department has been established in fact and incorporated in the constitution and laws of every Southern State. Almost every district in these sixteen Commonwealths has now something that can be called a district common school. Every city of the first class, with an increasing number of smaller towns, has established the graded school system according to the organization and methods that prevail in the superior school-keeping everywhere. Nearly half of the 6,000,000 Southern children and youth of both races and all classes of the legal school age between 6 and 21 are enrolled, and more than 50 per cent of the actual school age, from 6 to 14, are in reglar attendance from three to four months in the year. And outside, through the influence of what is done inside the schoolroom, by the press, books, home, private, Sunday school and church instruction, many thousands of youth and adults of all ages are reached.

This year the entire South will appropriate $23,000,000 for every sort of education, a sum greater than the British Parliament allows for the common schooling of 30,000,000 people. A majority of these States have established the State or city normal school, and the normal institute for training teachers is in operation in every Commonwealth. The development of literary and educational lecturing has been steady, and the Southern press speaks out for the children, with a few insignificant except tions, generally on the right side. In all but two of these States the colored folk have equal share in the distribution of the public school funds, while their contribution to these funds is still far below what it might be made. Industrial training, the most notable advance of the present era in popular education, has been planted in every State, in the higher schools, for the Negro and in an increasing number of excellent seminaries for white youth.

The original munificent gift of the General Government for agricultural and mechanical education, last year repeated by Congress, has been made of use in all and of great service in several of these States. The introduction of great numbers of superior young white women and the lifting up of several thousands of the better sort of colored youth to the most vital of American professions, the teaching of the people, has been one of the most remarkable features in the history of education in modern times.

And, spite of a great deal of direct and more indirect opposition and a fearful amount of indifference, Southern public opinion is now so firmly set towards universal education that the most dangerous experiment by any aspirant for civil office is even the underhand opposition to the people's common school. Every year the appropriation for education is somewhat larger. Thrice during the past six years only five or six of the twenty-two Senators, representing the ex-Confederate States in Congress, have thought it either wise or prudent to speak or vote against national aid to education.

Even more honorable has been the record of the recuperation of the secondary and higher education in all these States. With the aid of perhaps $10,000,000, donated by benevolent persons of both sections for colleges and academies, the Southern white people have rehabilitated these schools till, in all but endowment funds, they are, on the whole, superior to any former period. In the skill and devotion of large numbers of their teachers; the improvement in organization, discipline, and modes of instruction; the convenience of buildings; the broadening of the whole idea of the secondary-and higher education,-in all that brings the upper realm of the educational life of a people in line with the best thought and practice of the age, the university, collegiate,