general levy, the school levy is now but twenty per cent of it, or twelve per cent of all general revenue receipts. Once the State paid more than the local political units for the support of the common schools; now it pays about three per cent of the total amount. Within the last thirty-five years population has doubled, our school enrollment increased fifty per cent, the wealth of Illinois has multiplied by four; young men have married and grown old; the sons born of their sons are now in the schoolrooms; but the distributable fund remains the same. New stars have been discovered in the heavens above, new elements in the earth beneath, but the State of Illinois now, as thirty-five years ago, is still distributing annually, to her common schools the paltry sum of $1,056,937.31. The change the commission recommends would increase the average $5.71 Illinois tax rate hardly more than one-fiftieth. If you pay $50.00 now; then you would pay $51.00. It might cost the people of Illinois 30 cents apiece-less than they pay for soda-water and gum. We believe in the restoration of the two mill tax because the tax is right in principle. To some extent surely, all the wealth of Illinois is responsible for the education of all her children. The proposition of the commission is that the State take a one-thirteenth interest in the enterprise. We believe in this larger fund because it is needed to help pay a reasonable minimum wage and the other expenses for elementary education in poorer Illinois, to aid teachers' institutes, to encourage expert supervision in townships, to help build township high schools and extend the opportunities of secondary education to every boy and girl in the State. The farmer's vocation is necessary to society and he must be permitted to engage in it without sacrificing his children.

As already indicated I believe that the plan for distributing our school fund should be changed. Surely so long as our fund remains so small not one cent should go anywhere excepting where it will do great good. What do we need of your distributable fund in McLean county, where our rural school rate is 73 cents, where we can build a million dollar court house, or $75,000.00 ward schools? Contributed according to abilities, this fund should be distributed according to needs. Townships with a total assessed valuation high enough so that they can get all necessary school advantages with a school tax rate of $2.00 or less should get none of the fund; the distribution among the remaining townships should vary inversely as the total valuation of property and directly as the rate levied for school purposes by the township itself. Even Heaven helps only those who need help and who help themselves, Massachusetts likewise. Who will doubt the wisdom of a plan followed both by Heaven and by Massachusetts?

It may not be out of place to mention here that the greatest burdens of taxation proportionately, are stood by the poorest section of the State - this notwithstanding that there are more cities and villages farther north. The last report of our auditor shows the three highest county aggregate rates to have been: Hamilton, $9.92; Gallatin, $8.04; Jackson, $7.87. Of the thirty-one county rates above $5.00, sixteen belonged to the one-third of the counties southeast of the Kaskaskia.

The adoption of the township system, the restoration of the two mill tax and its proper distribution, if accompanied by a minimum wage law, will remedy, in the main, every most glaring injustice in the workings, if not of our revenue system, at least of our school revenue system. We shall have then a logical system not one that "just growed." If there has been chaos as to school revenue matters in the objective world, it has been because of a chaos in the brain of the schoolmaster. Until the labors of this commission, the school teacher had not thought the thing out. Hitherto we 'have seen as through a glass, darkly; now, face to face." How long shall the education of an Illinois boy, his chance in the race of life, depend upon the price of land per acre in the county where he is born, or upon the track of a glacier made 40,000 years ago?

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In the public schools of Illinois must be amalgamated the children of a score of nationalities. Not of the same race, they must be made to be of the same mind. From the slums of Chicago, or from the wharves of Cairo, the State of Illinois will not hesitate when need be to call them forth in her defence to spill their blood or risk their lives. Them too, Illinois will entrust with the sacred ballot and them she will expect to be able to solve the intricate political and social problems of an increasingly complex civilization. To them Illinois owes a duty commensurate with what she expects of them. Then Illinois must educate, if not for their sake, then for her own. If this great experiment in democracy goes down, it will be for lack of sufficient elementary and high school education of the right sort. And such an education is after all largely a matter of revenue. Good revenue systems have done much to make, and bad to unmake great states. Our liberties, which have been won in battles over taxation during the last thousand years, are to be preserved in struggles of the same sort. It is to-day for the teachers and the people of Illinois to tiptoe a little, look over and beyond the hedges of all narrow and individual and class interests, stop trying to preserve the obsolescent, and unite to give Illinois an adequate school revenue system.

CHAPTER XVIII

APPORTIONMENT AND SUBSIDIES

MUCH has also been written on this question, and only a few of the more important extracts and laws are here reproduced. The first extract sets forth a condition as it existed in Michigan in 1910, and is illustrative of the inequalities in distribution naturally arising under the census basis of apportionment. It also illustrates a peculiar condition which might easily arise in any state using this basis if the funds for school support were materially and rapidly increased. The second is a good statement of the inequalities existing under the census basis of apportionment, illustrated from conditions in Ohio. The third is a good statement of the fundamental principles which ought to prevail in arranging laws for the apportionment of public funds for education.

I. DISTRIBUTION OF STATE SCHOOL MONEY IN MICHIGAN

[From the Rept. Supt. Publ. Instr. Mich., 1909-1910, pp. 40-44.]

CONDITIONS IN MICHIGAN

The fact that, in the future, from four to five millions of dollars will be apportioned annually, leads us to inquire whether this money is being distributed in such a manner as to give the people of the State the greatest possible benefit. The question of its equitable distribution is a serious one indeed when we study existing conditions.

Michigan is a state having very diverse conditions. The wealth of the people varies and the population is unevenly distributed. Some parts are exceedingly wealthy, others very poor. The townships in the southern part vary in valuation, some having a valua

1 This will amount to from six to seven dollars per census child.

tion as high as $4,000,000 while in the northern counties are townships with a valuation of $3,000 or less. In the southern part of the Lower Peninsula, we have nearly a thousand districts each having a school population of fifteen or less children. The average attendance at school in these districts is not more than eight pupils, and many maintain only five months of school. Through the central part of the Lower Peninsula, where a splendid agricultural district is being developed, are good-sized school districts and a large school population. Generally, in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula we find a scattering population, low valuation of property, and great difficulty in maintaining schools. In the Upper Peninsula, the population is more generally gathered in villages and cities, although in recent years the agricultural possibilities are being rapidly developed. There are single rural school districts in the Lower Peninsula whose valuation is $1,500,000. There are other school districts in the Lower Peninsula with a valuation of less than $1,000. In the counties of Oscoda, Crawford, Montmorency, Kalkaska, Roscommon, Clare, Lake, and Newaygo, is found a scattered population and a very low valuation of property and with this, many times, but few families to compose a school district. It is extremely burdensome to those people to raise a school tax sufficient to support their school and, having but few children, they get but a small amount of the primary school interest fund, hence it is extremely difficult to maintain a school in these districts even for five months, as the statute requires.

THE SCHOOL CENSUS BASIS

The distribution of the primary school interest fund at present is based upon the school census of the several districts as taken by the school directors, or under the authority of the school boards, during the fifteen days prior to the first Monday in June of each year. Fifty per cent of the census lists sent to this Department have to be returned for correction. In some cases we have been obliged to order a new census because of inaccuracies and because of violations of the law in including persons not entitled to be included. These inaccuracies are found in city, village, and rural districts, but from the nature of the case it is more difficult to secure an accurate school census in cities than it is in rural districts. In many places the enumerators appointed to take the census have been persons entirely unaccustomed to clerical work and especially unaccustomed to the arduous task of securing an accurate census. In one instance, the census was taken by a girl sixteen years old. In other cases, the census was taken by persons under

the direction of a school officer who could neither read nor write. In some of our larger cities the Department has been obliged to require a large number of names to be stricken from the lists because they were illegally included. It is a well known fact that people are constantly moving from one ward to another, from one city to another, from one district to another, and it is clear that school officers are unable to secure an accurate school census.

All these things make it clear that to base an apportionment of school funds upon the school census renders some districts liable to receive less money than they should and others liable to receive more money than that to which they are justly entitled. In the same township one school district has a large census and an adjoining district a very small one, but the fact that the school population varies is no reason why the public school in each district should not be thoroughly and amply supported, and yet, with the present method of apportionment, the district with a large census receives a large sum of money, the adjoining district with a smaller census receives less money, though the latter may be really deserving or really in need of more money than the first mentioned district. This condition of things prevails in every township of the State of Michigan, as reports to this Department clearly show. If the State is to assist in the support of the public schools, every district should receive the same treatment at the hands of the State. There is no reason why the children in Clare county, Crawford county, or any other county in the State, who live in the rural districts, should not have as good educational opportunities as are enjoyed by the children of the cities and villages. The Department each year receives letters from parents and taxpayers in different parts of the State, particularly in the northern portion of the Lower Peninsula, requesting that something be done that they may have a school and their children receive an education. One parent wrote that he had a family of eight children, the oldest seventeen years of age, that he was eight miles from a school, and not one of his children had ever attended school a day in his life. We sometimes are so engrossed with the consideration of how great we are and what a fine school system we have that we forget that many children even in the great State of Michigan are practically deprived of school privileges, whereas if the funds were more equitably distributed, or if the State Superintendent had authority to use the surplus of these funds in some of these specific cases, very much better results might be attained.