The Appropriation bill, with its proviso virtually repealing the County Superintendency, was sent to the Senate. The committee to which it was referred struck out the proviso, and efforts to restore it in the Senate and to insert it as a new proposition both failed, the latter by the decisive vote of five yeas to twenty-two nays. Among the nays was the vote of Senator Buckalew, who the year before opposed the enactment of the law, but was now willing it should have a fair trial. In 1835 it was the House that saved the school law; in 1855, it was the Senate. The Senate barrier had proven strong enough to resist the assault, as Dr. McClintock had foretold the County Superintendents.

Bills to abolish the County Superintendency were introduced at subsequent sessions of the Legislature, but they never had strength enough to make them dangerous. The opposition most to be feared took the shape of movements to do away with the office of County Superintendent in particular counties. These continued to threaten the system for many years, and sometimes cost the School Department much trouble and annoyance before they could be checked.

The County Superintendency, during the first term of the office, had a poor chance to achieve any marked success. In a few counties, there were competent officers with fair salaries. In some others the officers were competent, but the salaries were insufficient. Then, there were counties with medium salaries, and men of all degrees of fitness for the office, and counties with low salaries, and men who hardly earned the amount paid them for their services. Few conventions of directors either appreciated the duties of the office or understood what qualifications were necessary to fill it. Persons were chosen who thought the place a sinecure. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that changes were made during the three years in nearly one-half of the counties in the State, and in some cases a change had to be made a second time. But with all the drawbacks, marked progress was made and an impulse given the system that brightened its whole future.

Excluding Philadelphia, the following is a comparison between certain statistics of the year 1854 and those of 1857:

Districts. Schools. Term. | Teachers. |Salaries Salaries Scholars. Appropriation. Expenditures. 488,492 $156,389.25 $1,286,541.59

Male. Female.

1854 1,555 10,186 5m. 4d. 11,967 $20.31 $12.81 1857 1,688 10,956 5m. 13d. 12,474 24.00 16.60 541,247 164,723.55 1,754,215.49 The most significant figures in the table are those which show the increase in the length of term, in the salaries of teachers, in the

State appropriation, which is exclusive of the salaries paid the County Superintendents, and in the general expenditures for the system. If improvement in the qualification of teachers could be measured in figures, the increase would undoubtedly be much greater than in any of the items named. In the logic of events, such an improvement had to come and be appreciated before longer terms and better salaries were possible.

AN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DEPARTMENT. HICKOK. SULLIVAN.

PACKER. BURROWES. BATES. COBURN.

GOVERNOR

THE period from 1857 to 1866 is marked in our school history

by peculiar characteristics. The task now was to enforce the laws that had been passed, to apply the system that had been organized, to lead to battle and to victory the forces that had been mustered. This was in a peculiar sense a work of adjustment-the adjustment of the means given to the accomplishment of the end sought.

When the Legislature of 1857 adjourned, there were upon the statute-book about all the laws the friends of education had considered necessary to perfect the system. The Act of 1854 had been shaped to suit their views, county supervision, so long demanded, had been secured, provision had been made for Normal Schools, the want of an independent School Department and an organ to speak for it had been supplied; in short, the law makers had done their part, a vast machine had been constructed, and the question now was to make it work. A great ship had been launched, and was ready for the voyage; but was she seaworthy? and would she be able to reach her destined haven?

Earlier, there had always been ground for anxiety lest the system of common schools, either as a whole or in part, should be abolished. The Act of 1854 was born in a storm. It required a fierce battle to save the County Superintendency in 1855. There was more or less danger for two years longer. But after the second election of County Superintendents in 1857, there remained little fear that county supervision, the least popular feature of the law, would be disturbed, and certainly none that an attack would be made upon any of the other leading provisions of the system. Thus the field of active operations was transferred from Harrisburg to counties and school districts; and the State school officers, measurably released from the task of watching legislation, were

much more free than their predecessors had been to aid local efforts in behalf of schools. Indeed, politicians and men influential with parties, lawyers to frame and interpret laws, useful as they had been in the past at the head of the School Department, possessed no longer in any eminent degree the special qualifications needed to administer the system, and we shall see during the period of which we speak, a line of State Superintendents learned in the law succeeded by a line of teachers learned in the business of educating youth and managing schools. Hickok and Burrowes, lawyers by profession but teachers in spirit, fitly mark the transition.

The results of the nine years of work, when we come to measure it, will be found less satisfactory than might be expected, but it may be well to remember in starting, that, in 1857, a financial crisis greatly disturbed the business affairs of the whole country, and that scarcely had its effects ceased when the great civil war broke out, which, for four long years, continued to drench the land with blood. Our schools were not dead amid the clash of arms, as the laws are said to be, but marked progress in their improvement could hardly be expected.

The School was separated from the State Department by the Act of April 18, 1857, and Henry C. Hickok entered upon his duties, as the head of the new Department, on the first Monday of June, following. There had been great unanimity among the friends of public education in asking for this separation, but as the Act providing for it neither widened the scope nor increased the force of the office, some disappointment was expressed concerning the change. Indeed, its effect at first was to weaken rather than to strengthen the Department. The influential hand of the Secretary of the Commonwealth was withdrawn from the management of school affairs, and no adequate provision was made to supply the loss; and, what was of even more consequence, the Governors of the State henceforth scarcely considered their administrations responsible for the conduct of school affairs, much less took it upon themselves to lead in the march of improvement. Still, the separation came most likely in the only way it was possible; and, doubtless, the best thing to do was to accept it and allow time to remove such defects in the law as experience might develop, thus following the tentative course pursued with many other measures connected with the system and with the system itself. A great point was gained in the fact that the system had now an independent head, with no

other interest to distract or divide attention. For some months after the separation, the Department continued to do its work in the room previously occupied, and Superintendent Hickok, in his report for 1857, thus speaks of the want of proper facilities for transacting business: "This Department has less clerical force, in proportion to its heavy labors, than any other branch of the Government. It is destitute of more than one-half of its own reports, and the history of the system is not to be gathered from its archives. It is without a library of standard or current educational works for use or reference. Purdon's Digest, a dictionary, a postoffice directory, an occasional report from other States, and a few odd volumes of the Acts of Assembly and Journals of the Legislature, complete the catalogue. It is in receipt of but one educational periodical, besides our own School Journal, and that is a donation." Before the issue of the next report, the Department had obtained the use of a fine room, known as the "Governor's Room," in the second story of the capitol building, which had been comfortably fitted up for the purpose, and thus become not only legally but locally divorced from the State Department. As completed, the organization of the Department consisted of a Superintendent, a Deputy Superintendent, two clerks and a messenger. John M. Sullivan, who had served as Deputy Secretary of the Commonwealth during Governor Pollock's administration, was appointed Deputy Superintendent of Common Schools. Mr. Sullivan was educated for the bar, and had no special fitness for the place. He continued in office till the end of the term, but, although pleasant in manners and genial in his official relations, his influence was never felt to any extent in school affairs. In effecting the organization of the new Department, the Superintendent was sorely perplexed by the attempted control of political leaders and the persistent claims of applicants for place. Bills were presented, in the Legislature of 1858, for the repeal of the Separation Act, but they did not meet with

much favor.

With the establishment of an independent School Department, the Governor of the Commonwealth ceased to be an important factor in the work of education. The common schools were always noticed in the annual messages, the general school statistics compiled by the State Superintendent were usually included, and now and then an original suggestion or a new proposition concerning education came from an Executive; but the personal and official