CONGBESS. UNITED STATES. 



177 



upon private schools, leaving 7,266 for whom 

 there are no school accommodations ; and now 

 you propose that those seven thousand and 

 odd children, now perhaps eight thousand, 

 when they ask for employment and cannot 

 present the certificate that this bill requires, 

 shall be refused employment." 



Mr. Edmunds: "I think that statement is 

 calculated to mislead. I suppose those figures 

 show the total number of children of school- 

 age first, then second the total number of 

 children who have attended school, not the 

 average daily attendance but every single 

 child who has been to school once during the 

 year is put down as having attended school. 

 I suppose the fact will turn out to be, if this 

 city is like others, that with the number of 

 seats provided there will always be seats for 

 a great many more children than attend on 

 each day, although the total result may show 

 that if all the children attended school every 

 day there would not be seats enough for them. 

 There are sickness and vagrancy and the ten 

 thousand things that always make a percent- 

 age of children absent themselves from school. 

 Therefore in a district anywhere in Ohio where 

 you have a hundred children of the school-age, 

 if you have seats for seventy, and ninety ot 

 them attend school, you will have seats enough, 

 because it will happen from the ten thousand 

 accidents that occur that the total number or 

 any thing like the total number will not attend 

 on any given day. That figuring, therefore, as 

 against this section in my opinion is entirely 

 fallacious." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, said : " I 

 understood that by the vote just taken that 

 part of the section which prevented children 

 having employment unless they went to school 

 was stricken out of the section." 



Mr. Thurman: "Yes." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen : "So that it does not 

 follow, as I understand the Senator from Ohio 

 to intimate, that unless they have schooling 

 they are to be deprived of employment. It 

 seems to me that a statement that there are 

 from ten to fourteen thousand children here 

 that have not got school accomodations shows 

 the importance of our passing this section so 

 as to express our opinion to these commission- 

 ers, if it only amounts to a declaration that 

 they should make provision for the schooling 

 of the children." 



The question being taken by yeas and nays, 

 resulted yeas 23, nays 29, as follows : 



_ YEAS Messrs. Bayard, Bogy, Cooper, Davis, Den- 

 nis, Eaton, Goldthwaite, Gordon, Hager, Hamilton 

 of Maryland, Johnston, Kelly, McCreery, Merrimon, 

 Norwood, Eansom, Sargent, Saulsbury, Sprague, 

 Stevenson, Stockton, Thurman, and Tipton 23. 



NAYS Messrs. Allison, Boreman, Boutwell, Cam- 

 eron, Chandler, Clayton, Cragin, Edmunds, Ferry 

 of Michigan, Flanagan, Freliughuysen, Harvey, 

 Howe, Ingalls, Mitchell, Morrill of Maine, Morrill 

 of Vermont, Morton, Patterson, Pease, Kamsey, 

 Scott, Sherman, Spencer, Stewart, Wadleigh, Wash- 

 burn, West, and Wright 29. 

 ABSENT Messrs. Alcorn, Anthony, Brownlow, 

 VOL. xv.-12 A 



Carpenter, Conkling, Conover, Dorsey, Fenton, 

 Ferry of Connecticut, Gilbert, Hamilton of Texas, 

 Hamlin, Hitchcock, Jones, Lewis, Logan, Oglesby, 

 Pratt, Robertson, Schurz, and Windom 21. 



So the amendment of Mr. Thurman was re- 

 jected. 



Mr. Thurman: "I have an amendment to 

 offer to section 25 that I hope will be accepted. 

 In line 17 1 move to strike out the world ' sixth ' 

 and insert 'tenth,' and the word 'eighteenth' 

 and insert 'fifteenth.' It requires now com- 

 pulsory education from the sixth year to the 

 eighteenth. If my amendment prevails it will 

 be from the. tenth to the fifteenth year ; I hope 

 there will be no objection to that." 



Mr. Morrill, of Maine : "I would suggest 

 ' eighth ' instead of ' tenth.' 



Mr. Thurman : " Well, I will put it at eight." 



The Vice-President : "The question is on the 

 amendment moved by the Senator from Ohio 

 (Mr. Thurman)." 



The amendment was agreed to. 



In the Senate, on January 21st, a joint reso- 

 lution to amend the Constitution, reported by 

 Mr. Morton from the Committee on Privileges 

 and Elections, was considered : 



Mr. Morton, of Indiana, said: "Mr. Presi- 

 dent, the proposition is to amend the Consti- 

 tution of the United States as to the method of 

 electing President and Vice-President, so as to 

 bring the election home to the people as nearly 

 as possible, and at the same time to avoid the 

 dangers that exist under the present method. 

 No more important question can be considered 

 by the Senate of the United States at this ses- 

 sion of Congress ; for in my opinion great dan- 

 gers impend, owing to the imperfection of the 

 present system of electing the President and 

 Vice-President of the United States." 



The Chief Clerk read as follows : 



Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the 

 Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, 

 equal to the whole number of Senators and [Repre- 

 sentatives to which the State may be entitled in the 

 Congress ; but no Senator or Representative, or per- 

 son holding an office of trust or profit under the 

 United States, shall be appointed an elector. 



Mr. Morton : " The first point now to which 

 I call the attention of the Senate is that the 

 election of electors is placed absolutely un- 

 der the control of the Legislatures of the sev- 

 eral States and that Congress had no power over 

 the election of these electors or to determine 

 any question in regard to their election, but 

 that the selection or appointment of electors 

 was to be placed exclusively in the hands of 

 the State Legislatures. The States could not 

 by their constitutions control or in any manner 

 change the appointment of electors ; the power 

 of a Legislature to appoint electors is conferred 

 not by the State constitution, but is conferred 

 by the Constitution of the United States, so 

 that it is not in the power of a State constitu- 

 tion to take from the Legislature the power to 

 appoint electors in any way that that Legisla- 

 ture may see proper. The Legislature may re- 



