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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



township teas to be reserved as (he basis of a school 

 fund — a beneficent provision which, in too ms;V 

 States, negligence and misappropriation have al- 

 most defeated." ' The section reserved for school 

 purposes was in every case to be the sixteenth 

 section, and the school lands are therefore com- 

 monly described as " the sixteenth-section lands." 

 These lands have been either sold or let, and the 

 proceeds are vested in each State for educational 

 purposes. The distribution of the income is not 

 made according to any uniform rule. In some 

 cases the township receives the annual revenue 

 arising from the sale of its own section ; but I 

 believe that the general custom is to throw the 

 proceeds of the sales into a common fund and to 

 distribute them by the same rule that governs 

 the appropriation of the State school-tax. Con- 

 gress has also made special grants of public lands 

 for agricultural colleges. Mr. Adams states that 

 in 1870 there had been set apart by Congress for 

 common schools, universities, agricultural and 

 mechanical colleges, 79,566,794 acres, or 124,322 

 square miles — a larger surface than that of Great 

 Britain and Ireland. 2 But for the " negligence 

 and misappropriation " of which Mr. Hildreth 

 speaks, the funds derived from these land appro- 

 priations might probably have gone a long way 

 toward making taxation for educational purposes 

 unnecessary. 



About forty years ago the " permanent school 

 fund " in the several States obtained another large 

 augmentation from the Federal Government. Un- 

 der Andrew Jackson's presidency there was a 

 passion for speculation in public lands. In one 

 year the amount received by the national Treasury 

 from this source was $11,000,000. The Federal 

 debt had been paid, and year after year the land- 

 sales continued to yield so large a revenue that 

 Congress had to confront a difficulty which I 

 suppose never occasioned serious trouble to any 

 other government either in the Old World or in 

 the New. The revenue was enormously in excess 

 of the expenditure. Politicians declared that the 

 surplus in the national Treasury " had increased, 

 was increasing, and ought to be diminished." 

 The President wished to meet the difficulty by 

 stopping the speculations in land ; he proposed 

 to refuse to sell except to actual settlers, to re- 

 fuse to sell in large quantities, and to sell at the 

 bare cost of survey and conveyance. Mr. Cal- 



i Jlildreth's "History of the United States," vol. 

 iii., p. 452. 



2 " Free Schools," p. 59. Mr. Adams's work is well 

 known to educational experts in America, and they 

 speak highly of its accuracy. 



houn suggested that the golden tide should be 

 permitted to flow into the national Treasury un- 

 checked, and that the annual surplus should be 

 placed on permanent deposit with the several 

 States. His suggestion was approved by Con- 

 gress. An act was passed in 1836 which pro- 

 vided that whatever annual surplus over $5,000,- 

 000 accrued to the Treasury should be divided 

 among the States ; " that the States were to give 

 the Federal Government certificates of deposit; 

 . . . that the Secretary of the Treasury could sell 

 or assign these certificates whenever he needed 

 the money ; . . . that the certificates, when sold 

 or assigned, should bear an interest of 5 per 

 cent. ; that the deposits not sold or assigned 

 should bear no interest." i The measure was 

 epigrammatically described by one of its oppo- 

 nents as being, "in name, a deposit; in form, a 

 loan ; in essence and design, a distribution."' 

 The " deposit " has never been recalled ; and in 

 many of the States it forms a part of the per- 

 manent school fund. 5 



The principle on which the revenue derived 

 from the State tax and from the permanent school 

 funds of the several States is distributed, varies. 

 In no case, so far as I have been able to discover, 

 is there any recognition of our English principle 

 of " payment by results." It is assumed that the 

 local authorities will make their schools as effi- 

 cient as possible, and the costly machinery which 

 is rendered necessary by the financial relations 

 between our own public elementary schools and 

 the Education Department is, therefore, dispensed 

 with. The "superintendents" and "assistant 

 superintendents " are released from a great part 

 of the purely mechanical work imposed upon her 

 Majesty's inspectors, and are free to give a larger 

 amount of their time and strength to direct efforts 

 for improving the organization and instruction of 

 the schools. In some cases the State fund is 

 divided among the local school-districts in pro- 

 portion to the number of children between five 

 and fifteen living in the district; in others the 

 limits of age are four and sixteen ; in others five 

 and twenty-one. In some cases the distribution 

 is made on the basis of the number of scholars 

 in average attendance at the public schools. In 

 one instance at least, a certain proportion of the 

 whole grant is divided among the school-districts 



1 Parton's "Life or Andrew Jackson," vol. iii., pp. 

 590,591. 



2 I have not thought it necessary to give any de- 

 tailed account of the "Agricultural College Act" of 

 1802, as that act provided for the appropriation of pub- 

 lic lands to the support of technical colleges, not of 

 ordinary schools. 



