increased taxation on real estate, and, most of all, lack of understanding among the people themselves have retarded and delayed but not destroyed progress toward the goal.

Commissioner Wagner, however, has insisted that when the taxing system was placed on "a basis of equity, disregarding class ideas and distinctions, and incorporating fairly and fully the recognized principles of taxation in a democracy," the most important improvements desired "would logically follow or would be easily obtainable." This meant the organization of a campaign of education among the people with the hope of bringing them to an understanding of the real situation, with the belief that when the demand from the people became strong enough the desired changes would follow.

With this obiect in mind, Commissioner Wagner inaugurated a campaign covering the State and conducted by the commissioner, the county superintendents, the school principals, the leading teachers, and with the assistance of the press and the pulpit, the granges, the parent-teacher associations, the new century clubs, the home leagues, the debating societies, the institutes, and other public forums, and all other leaders and organizations for the purpose of enlightening the masses of the people and encouraging them to demand from the general assembly the enactment of the proposed reforms. The campaign was enthusiastic and State wide, and almost from house to house in its scope.

IV. THE SCHOOL LEGISLATION OF 1917.

After this story of the struggles of leaders in Delaware for advanced educational legislation had been written, the general assembly met in regular session in January, 1917, and the following brief summary of its educational activities, with comments, has been furnished by Hon. Charles A. Wagner, formerly State commissioner of education in Delaware, but by recent appointment now superintendent of schools of Chester, Pa. Dr. Wagner says:

Two agencies proposed new educational laws in the recent legislative session: One was an advanced public sentiment expressing itself through legislators themselves; the other was the State board of education and the sentiment behind its program. Among the enactments that originated outside of the State board of education were these: Paying all expenses of teachers at summer school; fixing the minimum teacher's salary at $45 per month; increasing the annual appropriation for public schools from $132,000 to $250,000. The governor of the State, Hon. John G. Townsend, proposed and even demanded the payment of expenses of teachers at summer schools. Of course, the State board of education heartily indorsed these measures and threw its entire influence for their enactment.

Among the bills proposed by the State board and passed were these: Increase of salary of county superintendents from $1,200 to $1,600 (the proposal was for $2,000); appropriating $1,500 annually for the education of foreign-born citizens; appropriating $2,000 a year for standard schools, at the rate of not more than $50 to each school; lengthening the county institutes to five days and increasing the appropriation therefor

to $200 for each institute; providing $15,000 to equal the Federal appropriation of a like amount for the installation and extension of agricultural and industrial education; providing for teaching first aid to the injured; providing that the tax levy without recourse to the voters be raised to $100 in each district in Sussex County, thus making the tax required in all districts equal; providing for education of the feebleminded; changing the school tax system so that taxes shall be assessed on real value of real estate instead of rental value; providing for the appointment of a school code commission of five to unify, harmonize, and reconstruct the school system, and appropriating $5,000 for the expenses of such commission.

The backbone of the effort for new legislation centered in the last two bills. An inequitable, iniquitous, and inadequate school tax system is thus ended, after many years of injurious operation. More money for schools and a more friendly, because more righteous, interest in schools will be sure to result. This change was easily of first importance and also the most difficult to secure. Through the new code commission it will be possible to simplify and unify present more or less chaotic control and management, so that a complete, congruous State-wide system of control and operation shall emerge.

Dr. Wagner having resigned, the Hon. A. R. Spaid, sometime superintendent of education in New Castle County, was chosen his successor and entered upon his duties as State commissioner of education in July, 1917.

Chapter IX

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.

Having traced with more or less detail the course of the public schools in Delaware from the earliest times to the present, it is now desirable to indulge in retrospect and find if possible the thought which may be said to characterize the schools of the ante bellum as well as those of the later periods. What was the idea for which the Delaware schools stood, and for what do they stand to-day?

When the schools during the period ending with the opening of the Civil War are considered, it is plain that the whole may be characterized by a single word-empiricism. It was a period of experiment and of trial; the work itself was known to be tentative and liable to rejection at any step.

The efforts of the ante-bellum period may themselves be divided into two periods. The first comes down to 1829; the second dates from 1829 to 1861. The first was again divided into two shorter periods, during the older of which the foundations for the State school fund were laid, certain sources of income assigned to it, and the fund itself slowly and painfully, but faithfully, built up. During these years also the first efforts toward public education were made, but the State imbibed from the spirit of the times, from church influences, from historical continuity, and from their neighbors the idea that public education was only for those who were unable to educate themselves. With this idea in mind the acts of 1817, 1818, and 1821 provided for the organization and establishment of schools for the education of the poor, and automatically the population was divided into two classes-those who could educate their own children and those who could not-and with the result which might have been expected. The rich did not have to patronize the public schools and the poor would not. Schools were organized and put under the administrative care of leading citizens of the section, who visited their poorer neighbors and urged them to accept the educational gratuity put at their service, but this attempt to induce "a freespirited and independent people to have their children schooled as paupers proved a failure." The law allowed only $1,000 to each of the three counties, but this sum was more than enough to meet all demands for schools of this sort, and it was found necessary to cover back into the treasury a considerable part of the allowance.

The law of 1821 sought to galvanize the system back into life, but it was dead, so dead that the county officers seem not to have thought a report of significance or value.

Fortunately by this one experience the leaders of Delaware came to realize that in their first effort at public education they were steering the ship of state on the wrong tack, for the people would not follow.

The leaders were wise enough, therefore, to change their course. The idea of a public-school system for paupers was promptly abandoned. Echoes of the idea are heard now and then through the next decade, but never again was the horizontal division of the citizenry of the State into pauper and nonpauper classes for the purpose of education seriously proposed in Delaware.

Since the poor stoutly refused to be educated as paupers, the act of 1829 proposed to educate all the people at the expense of all the people so far as available funds would permit. Judge Hall drew the bill, but he faced difficulties on the very threshold. The school fund was not rich enough to bear all the expense; the remainder was to be raised by taxation or private contribution; it was feared that a bill with a provision for additional taxation would fail, and the provision for local taxation was stricken out. The bill became a law without it. The schools were to depend on the school fund and on private contributions, and it broke down the first year. But the sober, second thought of the people was stronger than the legislature had realized, and in 1830 there was passed a law permitting the school district to raise by taxation such part of the required supplement to the school fund as a majority of the voters of the school district might deem proper. But already the enthusiasm of the advocates of education was beginning to slacken, for while the act of 1829 required the school district to raise a sum equal to that to be received from the school fund, the act of 1830 cut this requirement in half and still further reaction was inevitable. This came in 1837, when a general requirement of $25 for each school district in the State was fixed as a proper contribution from the district. It must be kept in mind, moreover, that this law did not mean that each district should raise $25 by taxation; it meant that before receiving its share of the school fund the district must raise $25 by contributions or taxes, or, by doing neither, might be allowed to forfeit its share of the school fund, and this way of escape was often availed of by the less progressive communities. In general, however, this provision of the law met with a fair degree of acceptance and was for the most part fairly well executed.

The question of voluntary taxation being disposed of, a new one soon came to the front and remained in an acute stage till the end 93106-17- -11

of the period. This was that of general administrative policy. Judge Hall had drawn the law of 1829. He had deliberately and purposely carried it to the very limits of decentralization in order to encourage local interest. He had provided for county superintendents, but had given them neither a salary nor power, and it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to estimate their educational activities. He had left the entire movement of the schools to the decentralizing forces of the individual districts. There was no power above them to say what they should do or how they should do it. As Judge Hall himself expressed it, his purpose was to give each district power to say whether it should have a good school, a poor school, or no school at all. It was not hard to predict what would be the general fortunes of a system administered on such a theory. The results were true to form; some districts had good schools, some had poor schools, and some had no schools at all. The seed which was planted bore fruit each after his kind.

The leader of this experiment in educational individualism was of course, Judge Hall. He opposed a normal school for the training of teachers; he objected to all supervision; he fought every proposition that carried within it anything that seemed to make possible a centralization of power; he argued that the people must do these things for themselves, and when the State had given them the necessary authority its work was done. Devoted attention and good leadership won their reward. These conservative decentralizationists remained in power for a generation, 1829-1861.

But during most of these years they were not without opposition. Their opponents, however, labored under handicaps. They were at first not as numerous, and they advocated views that were more or less contrary to the general political doctrines of the day, and, what was still more important, they were not always fortunate in the matter of leaders. In the early forties Charles Marim, then county school superintendent in Kent, came forward as a leader of the progressives and gave great promise of usefulness. In him Judge Hall would no doubt have found an opponent worthy of his strongest efforts, and the State law requiring general State taxation for schools would have doubtless been enacted at a considerably earlier date. but Mr. Marim soon ceased to be county superintendent, and the progressives were again without a leader who stood forth as such and who gave promise of being able to win from the conservatives what they wished.

After Marim withdrew, no marked leadership was developed on the side of the progressives, but it is evident that from 1840 progress was being made by them. The laws were becoming more liberal; the idea of State support and State control was being strengthened; efforts were being made to foster State-wide institutions like