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with a few German, but not a single French work. This is inexcusable, at least in California where nothing French should pass unnoticed."

A somewhat extended account, historical and descriptive, is given of the Toland Medical College, which constitutes the medical department of the University of California. The author notes as a matter of special interest that in the dissecting room he saw 15 students at work. "This," he adds, "appeared strange to me considering the season of the year, as I had not before seen students working in any of the colleges I had visited. I soon learned that the course of study here is divided into a spring, a summer, and a fall term, the vacations taking place during the winter months of December, January, and February, an arrangement best suited to the climate of San Francisco, as I can state from my own experience; this has induced the doctors to depart here from the custom as old as old Europe. It is only in America that such changes can be made without objections, and it is really the study of these thousand little details, rather than the visits to so great a number of institutions which with few exceptions are not of a high order, that has made my tour in the United States interesting."

A paragraph is given to the San Francisco polyclinic or post-graduate medical department of the University of California. Brief but interesting accounts are also given of the hospitals of San Francisco, including the Chinese hospital, the German, and the new French hospital. The plans of the latter are fully described and graphically illustrated. The Home for Inebriates is also mentioned in the same chapter. "There is nothing," says the writer "analogous to this in France."

With respect to the number of practicing physicians in California, Dr. Baudouin says: For a population of about 300,000, San Francisco has 600 physicians, or 1 for every 500 persons. At Los Angeles the proportion is still greater, i. e., 1 physician for every 250 inhabitants. This is the general average for American cities, while in Europe (even in Germany, where doctors abound) the proportion in cities is generally 1 doctor for 1,000 inhabitants. Undoubtedly the high proportion at San Francisco, as in other cities of the United States, is due to the excessive number of schools and the low standard of studies. But here another cause operates also; this is the large importation of Germans; actually there are 181 German physicians in the city. To this there could be no objection if they were really doctors, but it appears that out of the 181 only 6 have really passed the State examination required in Germany; the others are only students, who have scarcely mastered their course, and whose professional attainments leave much to be desired. A remedy for this state of things is earnestly desired here where, in truth, it is not denied that admission to the profession is far too easy. It appears, however, that the matter can not well be regulated without what would be still more difficult, the complete reorganization of American universities."

CHAPTER XXX.

EDUCATION IN THE SEVERAL STATES.

ALABAMA.

[Letter of Dr. J. L. M. Curry to the gubernatorial candidates of Alabama.]

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 21, 1896.

To the Hon. Joseph F. Johnston and Hon. Albert T. Goodwyn. DEAR SIRS: I address this open letter to you as the accredited representatives of the two great parties seeking to control the government of the State. I need make no apology for my interest in Alabama or the cause which I seek to bring before

you.

With the issues which divide the parties I have no concern in this letter. The subject of this communication is higher, far more important, more paramount than all the issues, Federal and State, which divide parties, local or national. It involves vitally every county, neighborhood, family, and citizen. It is not of temporary, but of permanent interest. It affects the people individually, socially, intellectually, and materially. All patriots should combine and labor incessantly until there be permanently established and liberally sustained the best system of free schools for the whole people, for such a system would soon become the "most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization." Such a cause should enlist the best and most practical statesmanship, and should be lifted above and out of mere party politics, which is one of the most mischievous enemies of the public school system. Mr. Jefferson is quoted by both parties on fiscal and currency and constitutional questions. Let us hear what he says on the education of the people. In 1786 he wrote to George Wythe: "I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No surer foundation can be devised for the preservation of their freedom and happiness." To Washington he wrote: "It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, too, of the people of a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect and on a general plan." The best test of a country's civilization is the condition of public instruction, said a French statesman. Tested by that standard, what is the rank of Alabama among civilized people? The total population of Alabama over 10 years of age by the last census is 1,069,545, and of these 107,355, or 18.2 per cent of the white people are illiterate, and 331,260, or 69 per cent of the negroes are illiterate. Of 540,226 children between 5 and 18 years of age 301,615, or 55 80 per cent are enrolled in schools, leaving only two States in this particular below her. In 1891-92 the percentage of school population (5 to 18 years) in attendance was 33.78 per cent with four States below. The average school term or session was seventy-three days.

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This diagram shows graphically the rank of each State and Territory according to the rates of illiteracy in 1890:

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This beggarly array does not fill up the dark outlines of the picture. These short schools are in many cases inefficient and inadequate, and the graduates of high schools, even, are three years behind the German graduates in the amount of knowledge acquired and in mental development. This inferiority is largely attributable to the shorter terms of school years, to the want of professional teachers, and to the small enrollment. In Prussia, under a compulsory law, 91 per cent are instructed in the public elementary, or people's schools, or only 945 of the children subject to the law were unjustly withheld from school. It is lamentable that in many cases a teacher in primary schools need not know much more than he is required to teach, and that knowledge may be confined to the text-book. This deficiency in teacher training is, with political and sectarian influence, the most vulnerable point in our school system. The lack of proper supervision and inspection of schools is traceable to this same pestiferous influence, and hence the officers charged with this duty remain too short a time in their places to be qualified for their work. Rotation in

office, narrow partisanship, inefficiency, are the direct fruits of making school offices not places of trust, but spoils of political victory. Our system of public instruction has acquired such dimensions, ramifies so minutely into every family and neighborhood, concerns so greatly every interest of the State, that its administration should be vested in officers of the highest intelligence and patriotism, of administrative skill and ability, of thorough acquaintance with school and educational questions. The state superintendent should remain in office long enough to be thoroughly familiar with the duties of his exalted position, and should be an expert, capable of advising executive and legislature, and school officers and teachers, and in full and intelligent sympathy with the educational problems that are so important and numerous. Greatly blessed is a State and are the children who have at head of school affairs such men as Mann, Sears, Dickinson, Draper, White, Ruffner, and our peerless Harris.

The statistics of defective schools and consequent illiteracy teach their own sad lessons. The calamities which, in the inevitable order of events, must result from having so large a portion of the people in ignorance, need not be elaborated, but they should fill every patriot with alarm and impel to the adoption of early and adequate remedies as an antidote for what is so menacing to free institutions and to general prosperity. While ignorance so abounds, how can we hope for purity in elections and safety from demagogism, immorality, lawlessness, and crime?"Whatever children wo suffer to grow up among us we must live with as men; and our children must be their contemporaries. They are to be our copartners in the relations of life, our equals at the polls, our rulers in legislative halls, the awarders of justice in our courts. However intolerable at home, they can not be banished to any foreign land; however worthless, they will not be sent to die in camps or to be slain in battle; however flagitious, but few of them will be sequestered from society by imprisonment, or doomed to expiate their offenses with their lives."

Perhaps the argument most likely to reach the general public is the close relation between public free schools and the increased productive power of labor and enterprise. The political economy which busies itself about capital and labor, and revenue reform and free coinage, and ignores such a factor as mental development, is supremest folly; for to increase the intelligence of the laborer is to increase largely his producing power. Education creates new wealth, develops new and untold treasures, increases the growth of intellect, gives directive power and the power of self-help; of will and of combining things and agencies. The secretary of the board of education of Massachusetts in his last report makes some valuable statements and suggestions. No other State is giving as much for education, and yet each inhabitant is receiving on an average nearly seven years of two hundred days each, while the average given each citizen in the whole nation is only four and three-tenths of such years. While the citizens of Massachusetts get nearly twice the average amount of education, her wealth-producing power as compared with other States stands almost in the same ratio. This increased wealth-producing power means that the 2,500,000 people produce $250,000,000 more than they would produce if they were only average earners. And this is twenty-five times the annual expenditure for schools. The capacity to read and write tends to the creation and distribution of wealth, and adds fully 25 per cent to the wages of the working classes. It renders an additional service in stimulating material wants and making them more numerous, complex, and refined. We hear on every hand louder calls for skilled labor and high directive ability. It is a lack of common business sagacity to flinch from the cost of such a wealthproducing agency. This question is not, How can we afford to do it? but, Can we afford not to do it?

All experience shows only one means of securing universal education. Private and parish schools educate only about 12 per cent of the children, and if they could educate all there would remain insuperable objections to them in the way of management, classification, efficiency and support. Our institutions and rights demand free schools for all the people, and they must be established and controlled by the State, and for their support combined municipal, county, and State revenues are needed. Eightyseven per cent of the children of the Union are now in public schools. In 1890 the entire costs for school purposes were estimated at $113,110,218, toward the payment of which the local school tax contributed $97,000,000. While furnishing education is a legitimate tax on property, whether the taxpayer takes advantage of the public schools or not, the history of education in the United States shows that with State revenues should be combined local taxation. This insures immediate interest in the schools, better supervision, greater rivalry, and, on the whole, better results.

The schools in Alabama are handicapped by a clause in the constitution limiting local taxation to an extremely low figure. If by general agreement among the friends of education the removal of this restriction could be separated from party politics, and local taxation could be brought to the support of schools, there would soon be an era of educational and material prosperity. What a commentary it would be on the capacity of our people for self-government, on their catholic patriotism, on the

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