DAIRY MEETING. 



149 



THE RELATIOX OF STATE TO RURAL SCHOOLS. 

 By Prof. T. W. Saxborx, Gilmanton, X. H. 



(Stenographic Copy.) 



There is no audience in Xew England, unless it be an audi- 

 ence from X'orthern X^w Hampshire or \'ermont, before whom 

 this question could be discussed with so much appropriateness 

 as before an audience of ]\Iaine farmers, and therefore I am for- 

 tunate in my audience. ]\Iaine is the imperial agricultural state 

 of X'^ew England. Her resources, so far as I may judge, far 

 surpass the popular impression of the resources of Elaine, 

 When they are fully developed, as they sometime will be devel- 

 oped, it will be the garden state of X^ew England ; and its gran- 

 ary house, so far as X'ew England is concerned. It is a state 

 peopled with an educated people, capable of supporting millions 

 of people from its own soil. I am fortunate, then, in discussing 

 with you the schoolhouse, the source of the power that is to make 

 Maine the final rounded, imperial agricultural state that she is 

 destined to be. I say this because here in its greatest purity 

 is probably found both the blood and the spirit of the fathers 

 who founded our public school system. The Pilgrim Fathers, 

 as you know, when driven by persecution and violence to this 

 country, because of the bigotry and superstition of their igno- 

 rant neighbors, declared that ignorance was the parent of this 

 superstition and bigotry and to ensure the perpetuation of the 

 democracies they were about to found, they planted the school- 

 house by the side of the church, and put over against every pul- 

 pit a teacher's desk ; rightly holding that knowledge would loose 

 from the throats of State and Church the grip of superstition 

 and bigotry. In due time the schools accomplished the work 

 that the fathers hoped they would. But in the development 

 of that work they took on a widening range of purpose, each 

 step carrying the school to a higher and higher vantage ground 

 and public utility. Religious bigotry and persecution are dead, 

 and sectarian ill feeling is disappearing, and today, at the close 

 of over a century, schools are the hope of struggling poverty, 

 and the measure of the wealth, strength and happiness of our 



