708 THE STATE AND HIGHER EDUCATION. 



(5) The development of the school system aud the final union or ar- 

 ticulation of the same with the colleges and the university. 



Work of this kind has been pushed not only throughout the North- 

 west but through the Southwest. It has been carried beyond the Mis- 

 sissippi Eiver, to the Pacific slope. The leading idea has been to do 

 pioneer work in the West and South, where almost nothing has been 

 hitherto accomplished towards a systematic history of colleges and uni- 

 versities. But the older sections of country have not been left out of 

 consideration. State monographs are in preparation or contemplation 

 in all of the New England States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylva- 

 nia, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Everywhere 

 the attempt has been made to secure the cooperation of good men and 

 scholarly investigators, with proper historical training for the work en- 

 trusted to their hands, and with a scientific spirit rising above all con- 

 siderations of sectional, or sectarian, or economic interest. In all cases 

 the work has virtually been a labor of love. The funds available for 

 this wide-reaching and important undertaking have barely sufficed to 

 pay expenses actually incurred, to say nothing of properly compensa- 

 ting local contributors for their time and painstaking research. 



An illustration of the practical value to the whole country of inves- 

 tigations like these, lies upon the desk before you. Here is an elaborate 

 monograph, which has occupied many mouths of patient toil, on the 

 History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education. The work was 

 done by Dr. F. W. Blackmar, for several years a professor in a California 

 college and now professor of history in the University of Kansas. Some 

 of the State superintendents of education here present have doubtless 

 received numerous inquiries from Dr. Blackmar, who for the past three 

 years has been studying in Baltimore. When this monograph begins 

 to come forth in proof from that tomb of manuscripts, the Government 

 Printing Office, some of you will probably be asked to look over the 

 portions concerning your own State, as Dr. Dickinson has already done 

 for Massachusetts, Mr. Hiue for Connecticut, Dr. Murray for New York, 

 etc. 



Without anticipating the interesting facts and figures contained in 

 this important monograph, (facts which have been kept back from indi- 

 vidual applicants for information until results could be published to the 

 public at large,) it may be said that the work describes: 



(1) The attitude of every American colony and State in this Union 

 towards the higher education, considered from an historical point of 

 view. 



(2) The chief legislative enactments by colonial courts and State leg- 

 islatures concerning the establishment and encouragement of higher 

 education. 



(3) The history of all financial aid and support given to higher edu- 

 cation by every colony and State in this country. The author has 

 found out, from a laborious examination of originai statutes, the actual 

 amounts of money appropriated and of lauds gi;itinted for education, by 



