Roman Catholic,

to all and supported by all. Protestant and Jew, Caucasian and African, French Canadian and Irish, Italian and Portuguese, English and German, mingle in the school-room and learn the essential likeness of each to the other, their common and peculiar gifts, and their common duties to God and the State. No man in the community is so rich. or aristocratic as to escape taxation for support of the school, even though his children may never darken the doors. No man in the community is so humble or so poor as to be debarred from sending his children to the highest as well as to the lowest grades. Unsectarian in the sense that they derive support from taxpayers of all sects and inculcate the dogmas of none, secular in the sense that religion is not a part of the curriculum, they ever have been a bulwark to the cause of religion, partly by reason of the example of the teaching force, who usually are men and women with religious faith as well as mental attainment, and partly because they have developed the rational powers of men, and thus enabled them to discriminate between superstition and truth. Beginning, in the more favored and advanced communities, with kin

dergarten instruction for young children, and not ceasing until the youth or maiden is prepared to enter the college or university, the State and the town, co-operating together, make it possible for every parent to give to his children, or for every ambitious or friendless boy or girl to secure for himself or herself, at the public expense, a thorough preparatory education. Nor is there any item of his yearly tax bill which the typical New Englander pays with greater alacrity and more certainty of belief as to its equity or economy than his annual contribution for popular education. For it is ingrained in his very being, woven into the texture of his life, to believe, as Garfield said, that "next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained." Moreover, being shrewd as well as a man of high principles and a lover of learning for its own sake, the New Englander is convinced that it pays to be educated, and to have educated neighbors and children. His reasoning takes this form : The more children in the schools, the fewer youths and adults in the jails and poorhouses. The better informed the mill operatives, the

larger the output of the mills. The higher the standard of living, the larger the demand for the product of the soil and the loom, and the better the home market. The more intelligent the voter, the less the seductive power of the demagogue and the "political boss." In short, the New England people have always believed, and still believe, what the inscription on the Public Library in Boston declares:

THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD

OF ORDER AND LIBERTY.

That the policy has been a wise one, is indicated by New England's share in the various struggles for liberty which the country has seen, the stability of all her institutions, her exemption from disorder and industrial disputes which culminate in violence, her inhospitality to "boss rule" in politics, and the thrift and prosperity of her citizens.

Historically speaking, the "public school" is a very ancient New England institution. Boston had one as early as 1635, and, in 1647, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted:

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That to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty households, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a Grammar School, the master thereof to be able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University." Nine years earlier, in 1638, the same body had founded a college (Harvard) at Cambridge, in order, as they said, that "the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of God's word perish." These two acts of the General Court may be reckoned as the germs from which has developed that system of secondary and higher education which has given Massachusetts the place of leader in the history of education in America.

In 1645, Connecticut passed a law similar to the earlier Massachusetts statute of 1642, but not until 1701 was Yale University founded at New Haven. Rhode Island did not have a system of popular education until just as the eighteenth century was closing. New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont accepted the Massachusetts methods and ideals, with some minor variations.

Devout as were the founders of New England, it followed inevitably that they should establish institutions where their children might obtain a distinctly religious training as well as a general education. Thus, for a long period of New England history, the Christian academy, under denominational control, flourished just as it does now in the West, and for much the same reason. As the public-school system has expanded, as town after town has added the high school to the primary and grammar school, as sectarian fences have toppled over or ceased to be restrictive, the academy of the old type has ceased to play the part it once did in New England life. But, in any survey of the history of education in New England, it should not be overlooked. Many excellent institutions of this type still survive to meet the demands of those persons who either distrust the public high school, or else are unable to send their children to one, owing to residence in towns where the school system has not developed to that extent. But, as a rule, the New England boy and girl, no matter what the social station or wealth of his

or her parent, still "derives his or her preparation for college or life from the community in