546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



methods, a wide social philosoph}^ and the finest etliical feeling trans- 

 lated into terms of democracy. 



Wliat are the reasons for these lamentable and even tragic condi- 

 tions ? First, certainly, are those so often noted — poverty and a scanty 

 population. The proportions of area and school population might be 

 placed at forty children per square mile in Ehode Island and forty 

 square miles per child in Florida — a condition which gives the former 

 commonwealth an advantage in developing a system of public schools. 

 But back of this and back of the terrible losses of the civil war lies 

 another which has made the first two effective for harm — heretofore 

 the south has not desired any general development of education within 

 her borders. At the time that John Eliot in Massachusetts was praj^- 

 ing, 'Lord, for schools everywhere among us,' Governor Berkeley of 

 Virginia, in answer to an inquiry from England, was writing, 'I thank 

 God there are no free schools nor printing presses; God keep us from 

 both.' 



William and Mary made a j)romising beginning. It was established 

 as a school for the Virginia people and the Indians, with an endowment 

 munificent when compared with that of Harvard and Yale at that time. 

 ' ' But, ' ' to quote a southern educator, ' ' the idea that education was not 

 for the masses did not die an easy death in Virginia ; and William and 

 Mary was never a people's school in the sense that Harvard and Yale 

 were. * * * The years following the Revolution saw the defeat of every 

 plan for universal education. Most of the provisions were merely per- 

 missive, and the whole atmosphere was antagonistic. The noble plan 

 of Jefferson was too liberal to be even proposed in its entirety, and the 

 part which was made public was so mutilated in the process of adoption 

 that it became an object of contempt." 



At the outbreak of the civil war the provision for education below 

 the grade of college was sporadic and infrequent, nor, with the possible 

 exception of the University of Virginia, was there a single college in 

 the south to compare with those of the north. It is necessary to keep 

 these things in mind — the habit of neglect, the established indifference, 

 the educational poverty, both of thought and endowment — if we are 

 to understand the conditions to-day. To those must be added that 

 self-satisfied habit of mind which has always been one of the south 's 

 heaviest handicaps. It was with such a history as this that the south 

 had to meet the terrible conditions at the close of the civil war, and it 

 is these traditions which are largely responsible for the tragic mistakes 

 of these later years. 



'Wliy should the children go to school?' asked a South Carolina 

 mother. 'Every one in the county knows who we are.' So the chil- 

 dren did not, and to-day are lounging through life in frayed and listless 

 poverty. Even in towns whore tliere was a less open avowal of the doc- 



