instruction in industrial art, is urged. If we hope to maintain a commercial position among the great nations of the earth; if we would establish firmly our manufacturing interests, and enable them to compete successfully with the skilled workers of France, and Prussia, and England, we must do as they have done-educate our children with a view to making them skilled artisans. This can best be done in the public schools, and by beginning in the lowest grades, with rudimentary instruction in industrial art.

Art education is no longer a question of mere accomplishment or of æsthetic culture. It has grown to be a national necessity. The eastern States and the larger cities seeing this, are rapidly providing the proper instruction in industrial art as a preparation for self-preservation. We owe it to the future of our national, commercial, and manufacturing importance among the great nations of the earth; we owe it to the future condition of our State among her sister States to train our children to be skilled in industrial art; and, above all, we owe it to the children themselves, who by this training may be enabled the more certainly to compete with the skilled workers of other countries. The age of apprenticeship is past, and the boy naturally looks to the public schools to prepare him to some extent for his future business life; we owe it to him to give him a practical education.

By an art education we establish our national importance among other nations; increase the value of our exports; to some extent raise the standard of refinement and culture of our working-men, who form the mass of our people; obviate the necessity of going abroad for skilled laborers; give to the individuals, both male and female, thus educated a lucrative means of employment, and make of practical utility much of school instruction that would not otherwise be utilized.

This subject can not be better closed than by quoting again from the able paper of Prof. Thompson, already referred to; he says: "It (drawing) is not only so valuable inside of the school-room, but that outside of it it has a practical bearing on most of the professions and avocations of life, and eminently deserves the name of 'bread-winning.'"

SUPERVISION.

The importance and economy of efficient skillful supervision is recognized in all occupations requiring the labor of subordinate workers. It is recognized in the workshop, in the manufactory, in the mercantile establishment, in every department of labor, in every considerable financial or business enterprise, and in the administration of the schools of cities and villages, every where, except alone in the management of our

country schools; and the importance, vital importance, of experienced and skilled supervision over the provision for and management of our country schools is almost universally conceded; but how to obtain this supervision and not create eighty-eight more county offices, and also not to add to the burdens of taxation, has been the question.

For twenty-one, successive years the school commissioners of Ohio have asked for and presented arguments favoring county supervision. Indeed, scarcely a year has passed since 1837 that some provision for county supervision has not been recommended by the head of the School Department, as a measure of economy and as a necessity to the proper management of the country schools.

In the annual report of the Secretary of State for the year 1849, Hon. Samuel Galloway says of county superintendency: "Although this subject has again and again been presented to the attention and consideration of the people, its paramount importance will justify line upon line and precept upon precept until its general adoption." "No one who knows. by observation and experience the operations and results of this measure, questions its beneficial influence. In all places of our Union where it has been tested, the expectations of its utility have been realized. Order, regularity, energy, systematic action, and permanent progress are the monuments which mark educational movements wherever this instrumentality has been used. School systems which had been dormant for years, or which move but with the sluggishness of a languishing existence, after being vitalized with the power of a vigorous superintendency, have risen as if from the grave, and manifested the evidences of a new and nobler life." The single result, aside from all others, of securing a rigid and faithful examination of candidates to teach, and thus furnishing competent men for that responsible post, ought to commend the measure to public patronage. It is well known that in many places examinations are a mere burlesque upon the name, and that scores of men are licensed to teach because they are unqualified for any other employment by which they could gain a livelihood, and hence a license is given as the cheapest and most convenient mode of disposing charity to their infirmities."

"Let practical teachers, impressed with a sense and appreciation of the dignity of their position, be stationed as sentinels in each county, a prominent part of whose duty it shall be to determine the qualifications of teachers, and it is quite certain that faithless and incompetent men will be displaced from the posts which they have dishonored, and that the schools will be adorned by the presence and usefulness of a class of men worthy of the name of teachers."

These most excellent remarks apply as forcibly to the country schools of to-day as they did to the time for which they were written.

There is no act of legislation so needed, there can be no act passed, so economic in its effects upon the expenditures of the public funds of the State, or so generally beneficial to all the interests of the State, as will be an act providing intelligent supervision for the country schools. There were expended last year to provide school buildings, sites, teachers, etc., for the country schools, $3,853,592.52. By an unwise, unintelligent, extravagant expenditure of this money in the erection of school buildings where they are not needed; in the purchase of school-house sites, where they should not be located; in the employment of teachers to take charge of schools in many sub-district enrolling from two or three pupils to ten or fifteen; in the employment of hundreds of notoriously incompetent and inefficient teachers; in the generally irrational, unintelligent management and provision for the country schools-or rather, in the fearful mismanagement of all the interests pertaining to the country schoolsthis money is largely thrown away-wasted, in so far as any benefit to the county arises from such expenditure of the money. Can there be any question about the lack of intelligent economy in the country school management as at present administered? Look at the statistical returns made by the teachers of the country schools and the officers controlling them. The general incompleteness and inaccuracy of these returns have been referred to. In the financial statement the balance on hand reported by the several counties at the close of the school year ending August 31, 1873, is $47,037.35 less than the balance on hand reported by the counties at the beginning of the school year ending August 31, 1874; that is, the balance carried over from 1873 to 1874 is $47,037.35 short of the balance reported on hand at the close of the school year 1873. So for the year just closed-the balance carried over from 1874 to 1875 is $49,776.87 more than the balance reported by the counties as on hand at the close of the school year ending August 31, 1874. This is only one feature of the inaccuracy of the reports made by school officers.

Early in September the Commissioner of Schools sent to each township clerk in the State a circular in blank, asking the number of sub, joint, and special districts in each township; also, enrolled youth of school age in each sub, joint, and special district, and the number of school-houses in each; character of and cost of each school-house; size or area and cost of school-house site in each district. The object of securing this information will be apparent. It was required that the township clerk should return the report asked for not later than November 1, 1875. At this date, four months having passed, about one-half of the township clerks of the State have reported; about one-sixteenth of those who have at

tempted to report have made an intelligent report. Hence, the required statistical information that has been received, and is of any worth, comes only from a few townships where the school officers are more experienced or more interested in school provision, or more competent to make such. provision, than are the officers not reporting or reporting in an incomplete or unintelligible manner. The facts, therefore, collected from these returns will present the condition of only those districts best managed and best provided for in the matter of schools, and will certainly show a condition of affairs much better than is true of the portions of the State not reported. From the statistical information thus obtained is gained the following facts, viz: In many sub-districts of the State the enrollment of youth of school age is from two to twenty-five; in quite a number the enrollment is five or eight or ten or fifteen. There are schools in the State where it is reported the teachers frequently will remain all day without a pupil. From the information received, at the very lowest estimate that can be made, each county in the State can, by an intelligent and proper location of school-houses, abandon at least three of its subdistricts, thus saving to the State the cost of three school-houses, three school-house sites, and the employment of three teachers for each of the eighty-eight counties. This is the very least estimate made on reports from the districts having the best, most rational provisions for schools. The average cost of a school-house and site is about $1,000. This makes at the least possible estimate an expenditure of $264,000 thrown away in the purchase of sites and erection of school buildings where they are not needed. Two hundred and sixty-four teachers at a salary of $30 per month, teaching the six months required of each sub-district to continue. its school, makes a sum of $47,520 expended to pay for teaching schools enrolling from fifteen pupils down to no pupils at all. $311,520 wasted on these three items of school buildings, sites, and teachers-an amount of money that would pay for experienced, skilled supervision, and then save to the State over $150,000 yearly. A more careful and complete estimate would without doubt show this amount to be nearer $500,000 uselessly expended for buildings, sites, and teachers.

Is this statement surprising? Not at all; it is just what may be expected from so irrational a system of school administration as is applied to our country schools! It does not necessarily argue a lack of intelligence on the part of the 42,000 school officers controlling the country schools. It simply demonstrates what has been demonstrated in the management of all other organizations or occupations, the necessity for an experienced, skilled, intelligent head, responsible for the condition of the schools of each county, spending all his time in looking after the interests of these schools, and entirely interested in the excellence of their

management, and in the adequacy of the returns they make for so great remuneration, and at such considerable cust. It also demonstrates that where so great an army of officers are engaged to look after such an interest, the interest will be permitted to languish or be poorly looked after.

There are in the country schools 17,922 teachers, and there are 42,000 officers having something more or less to do with the management of the schools. An army of 15,000 workers and 42.000 officers or managers— what would be thought of the fighting capacity and the morale of an army omposed of 15.000 comnion soldiers and 42.000 officers?

The most intelligent man may fail-probably will fail-in any business he does not understand. Suppose a company organized for the purpose of manufacturing woolen goods, no member of the firm or organization understanding the business, and no member directly interested in it any farther than the little pecuniary interest of each is concerned. Buildings are erected where they are not needed and of a character not suited to the object in view; these buildings are located badly; machinery unsuited to the work, and machinery not at all needed is purchased; workmen unskilled and incompetent are employed, and these are left to work without the inspection or guide of a skilled manager and as each worker may choose to labor. Would it be matter of surprise that such an organization should spend money extravagantly and foolishly? that it eculd not be economical in the use of means, and that it would soon become bankrupt? Another company or firm taking up the same business, each member directly interested, employing a skilled and experienced superintendent; erecting better, more suitable buildings, but only such as are needed; purchasing better machinery and wisely getting just what is wanted: employing only competent, skilled workmen, under the wise management of an experienced and skilled head or superintendent, as rapidly accumulate thousands of dollars as the former company lost. It is unnecessary to argue the economy of paying for experienced and skilled supervision in any enterprise requiring the employment of laborers whose skill, experience, and capacity should be correctly measured, and whose work should be systematized and planned. The wayfaring man, though he be limited in intellectual strength, can understand the positive necessity for such supervision.

We have conceded the importance of school supervision by granting it to all the city and village districts. The State pays $158,773.64 for school supervision. This sum of money is taken from the public school fund to pay for this supervision, and this supervision is given to 4.500 teachers of the city and village districts, while the 18.000 teachers of the