THE OCCUPATION OF THE LAND 159 



the southern counties filled up from Lake Erie to 

 Lake Michigan with these masterful people of the 

 stock that had converted colonies into a nation and 

 whipped Indians and French, British and Hessians 

 in the process. These were to renew the battle with 

 the wilderness and convert it by the millions of acres 

 into farms and homesteads and into desolate wastes. 

 In 1830 Michigan Territory had a population of 

 less than 30,000. In the ensuing ten years it aug- 

 mented at the rate of nearly 20,000 each year. It 

 was during this decade that the foundations were 

 laid of institutional life. The town meeting, a heri- 

 tage from New England, became definitely a part of 

 the governmental system as community after com- 

 munity appeared, mushroom-like, in the Michigan 

 woods. A territorial enactment of 1827, greatly re- 

 sembling an early pronouncement of the IMassachu- 

 setts general court, made provision for popular edu- 

 cation ; but it remained for the Constitution of 1835, 

 embodying the ideas of Isaac E. Crary, to determine 

 the fundamental elements in the public school sys- 

 tem: common school and higher education, state 

 directed and natiou-illy assisted, with public libraries 

 but at first without free tuition. The Yankee was 

 a Puritan and as such he did not forget to illegalize 

 Sunday sports, gaming and merchandising; and even 

 today it is without the law in Michigan to indulge 

 in Sunday baseball, theatrical performances, racing, 

 or to operate a place of business. All this applied to 

 the State as a whole, but when adopted, Michigan 

 was predominantly rural, and the town meeting has 



