in seeking to secure some result Judge Hall, when drawing that bill, had to keep himself within such bounds as would pass the assembly and be, to some extent at least, agreeable to the people of the State. This report seems to represent the end of the school-fund period of agitation for public education. There is little in Gov. Paynter's messages in 1826 and 1827 on the subject, and this little deals rather with home training and moral education than with "the mere acquisition of the arts of reading and writing, and of the knowledge of arithmetic, and of foreign and dead languages" for which the governor seems to have had a most sovereign contempt.1 It will be noted that the school-fund period extended from 1796 to 1829, just a generation. The fund was based on slight, but certain, sources of income. It began with nothing. In 1829 it had accumulated stocks worth in the market more than $158,000, although there had not been until 1829 any increase in the assessed valuation of State property. It appears that the fund was carefully and honestly administered, and while under supplementary laws it was constantly drawn on for money with which to pay the judicial officers of the State and even the governor, it would appear that these sums were regularly, systematically, and honestly repaid, but the administration of this fund does not seem to have taken on a character essentially different from that in other States, for the financial administration of the fund came to be an end in itself and the schools disappear largely from view. This becomes distinctly visible when we come to consider the sums paid out of the fund for schools and the sums invested for the fund in bank stocks. Under the act of 1817 each of the counties was allowed $1,000 per year for poor children. All the sums allowed were not paid over to the counties and all that was paid over was not expended, but a part covered back into the fund. From 1817 and 1818 the sums paid to the counties or to teachers for teaching poor children never amounted to as much as $1,000 per year until 1828-29, when it was $1,115.93, and this, too, although most of the time the annual income from marriage and tavern licenses and from bank stocks varied in amount from $2,131 in 1823 to $10,550 in 1826. And this failure to spend seems to have been due as much to the indifference to schools as to the usual desire to increase the fund. In 1827 no more than $432.89 was credited as expended for schools, and of this sum $160 was paid for Sunday schools. The law of 1821 provided that the funds paid to Sunday schools should be raised by a general tax, as were other taxes. It is not clear how the $124 paid out in 1822 for Sunday schools and the $189 paid out in 1823 for the same purpose were raised. The total effect of the efforts from 1817 to 1821 to establish schools was either nil or bad. No workable scheme of education was evolved; no schools were permanently established; the spirit of educational endeavor was not brought into the State nor induced to make it an abiding place; little or no interest in education was awakened among the masses; no friends for the system were raised up, and the deliberate declaration that the income of the fund was for the teaching of paupers, deliberately and distinctly so declared, divided the population into the rich and the poor, emphasized and exaggerated social distinctions, aroused a spirit of independence which would have none of the education thus offered, and so made the whole attempt a dismal failure. During these dark years, when public school education was at its nadir in the State, the better system had apparently but one friend. His efforts for better things have been noticed already in connection with the messages of the governors in 1822 and 1824, and in 1829 his ideas were finally crystallized into law. This friend of real public school education was Willard Hall, whose work will be considered with some detail in the next chapter. V. STATISTICAL SUMMARY OF THE SCHOOL FUND. All that had been really accomplished before 1829 may be given statistically in the following presentation of the fortunes of the school fund, 1796-1829: Statement of Delaware school fund, 1796–1829. 1804. 1805. 1806.. 1807. 1808. 1809. 1810.. 1811.. 1812. 1813. 1814. 1815. 1816. 1817. 1818. 1819. 1820. H. J. 1798, 42-43. H. J. 1800, 21-22. H. J. 1805, 14... $3,523.53 1,361.00 672.00 250.00 86, 678.63 8,638,000 8,081.94 114,689.78% 8,726,000 8, 185.50 880.22 1 $124.00 119, 788. 84 8,816,000 2, 131.00 8, 761.87 123, 768. 28 8,755,000 8,773,000 13, 115, 718 13, 262,000 1 It is not clear whether these sums were paid from the school fund; apparently they were not. 2 Charged as coming from the school fund, but under New Castle and Sussex Counties there is reported a total of $206.49, which was apparently paid out of county funds. Apparently paid out of local funds." The investments and amount of the school fund in 1829 were as follows, as taken from the auditor's report for 1829: 1 2,439 shares stock in Farmers' Bank, full paid in, at $50 per share. Estimated value, at $45 per share.... 37 shares in Bank of Delaware, at $310 per share. 44 shares in United States Bank, at $123.25 per share... 20 shares in United States Bank, at $122.87 per share.. 1 share in United States Bank, at $123 per share..... 65 in all, estimated at.......... Chesapeake and Delaware Canal stock, cost. Balance cash on hand............ Cost price.... Market value.. $121, 950.00 1 Appendix to H. J. 1830, p. 144. These totals will be found not to foot up correctly, but they are copied as given in the auditor's report. Chapter III. THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. I. WILLARD HALL. There came to Delaware in 1803 a man who through a devotion of 50 years to the cause of education won for himself in that State the loving title of father of the public schools. This man was Willard Hall (1780-1875), a native of Massachusetts, a Harvard graduate in the class of 1799, a lawyer by profession. He served as secretary of state of Delaware 1811-1814; was elected to Congress in 1816 and 1818, and was again secretary of state in 1821. In 1822 he was a member of the State senate, where his influence in behalf of education was already beginning to be manifest. As has been shown in an earlier chapter, he was the responsible person behind the educational recommendations contained in Gov. Collins's message of that year, and from that time on there was no let-up in his enthusiasm for the schools. In May, 1823, he was appointed by President Monroe judge of the Federal District Court of Delaware, a position which he filled with fidelity for 48 years. His elevation to the bench brought Judge Hall relief from the harassing details of his profession and gave him much leisure for maturing and developing those larger plans of usefulness upon which he had already begun to meditate, and it is even doubtful whether these unofficial and purely voluntary services, though less conspicuous, were not more valuable and farreaching in their influence than his judicial duties. Of his interest in the schools of the State his biographer says:1 It is very far from an adequate estimate of the services of Judge Hall to the cause of popular education in this State to regard him only as the founder or organizer of the school system. That was but the commencement of his labors. Not content only to frame and inaugurate the system, he watched its operations with ceaseless vigilance, encouraging effort, conciliating honest dissent, shaming selfish cavils and narrow prejudices, studying to the utmost detail the practical working of the system, seeking legislation to remedy its defects and to improve its efficiency. He was the ever-ready adviser of school commissioners and teachers, even in the selection of school books and the adoption of the best methods of instruction. His care of the schools was paternal. The father of a family does not with more solicitude and watchfulness provide for the education of his children. In New Castle County, where his personal influence was more direct and operative, he organized an annual school convention, in which delegates from the districts met and discussed the interests of the 1 For a sketch of Judge Hall's life, see the memorial address delivered by Hon. Daniel M. Bates before the Delaware Historical Society in 1876. (Wilmington, 1879.) schools, and reports were made of their progress. These reports he examined in their minutest details, classified their results, and published them in pamphlet form with the proceedings of the convention, and with his own observations upon the then present condition and necessities of the schools. These pamphlets he took means to circulate in all the districts from year to year, as a means of diffusing information and quickening interest in the subject. The office of superintendent of the public schools for New Castle County, which during all these years he held under a commission of the governor, was hardly more than an honorary appointment, being without emolument or any defined duties. It was not needful either to quicken his interest in the schools or to add to the weight of his personal influence on all questions touching their welfare. It will be found on examination that the praise quoted above, although often extravagant and inaccurate and without an intimate knowledge of what public education really stands for, as will be clearly evident to one who studies this biography in the light of the public-school development from 1829 to 1861, can hardly be called either excessive or undeserved. This is because Judge Hall, although conservative and steadily advocating an idea in school administration which has long since been shown to be unworkable, was the one man in Delaware who kept the public-school idea constantly before the minds of the people, and so made the evolution of a better system possible. Of Judge Hall's share in securing the school law of 1829 Mr. Bates says further in his memorial address (p. 33): * The secretary In 1822 Judge Hall became again the secretary of state. then took up the interests of popular education in this State with a grasp which relaxed only after 50 years of labor and under the infirmities of great age. It became, thenceforth, truly his life work. He matured, and the governor, by message to the general assembly, presented, and with great force of reasoning recommended, what in principle and outline became, and still remains [written in 1876], the school system of this State. The scheme proposed the division of the counties into school districts, with legal authority in the qualified voters of each to establish and maintain free schools; each district to receive a fair distributive share of the income of the school fund, upon the condition of its raising, additionally, a sum adequate, with the dividend from the school fund, to maintain a school. The scheme, as explained and enforced by the governor's message, so far harmonized conflicting opinions as to promise a practical solution of the long-vexed question, how to make the school fund available; and so, at a subsequent session of the legislature, Judge Hall was requested to mature the plan in further detail and to embody it in a statute. The result was the school law of 1829. Since that time the system has been, of course, revised, modified in details, adjusted in some points to the results of experience; and, as it is to be hoped, its efficiency has been much improved by the act of the last general assembly [that of 1875], providing for a State superintendent and board of control, with power to supervise the methods of instruction, and to raise the standard of the qualification of teachers. But in its essential principles and general framework the system of 1829, devised by Judge Hall, remains, after a trial of now half a century, well approved by experience and by the public judgment. From this address it appears that the main idea in Gov. Collins's proposed scheme of 1822-a cooperation of the community and the State in the organization of the school-was Hall's idea. Indeed, |