work asked the board of education to take up the matter and carry it on as a part of the common school education; but for want of means we have requested the ladies to continue until we can relieve them. I wish you could come to Syracuse and see how this work is going on. This may not be teaching the trades, but it is teaching these little girls what their mothers cannot do to-day; it is teaching them the skilful use of their fingers, judgment in cutting out their garments, how to mend a tear and put on a patch neatly. It may not be teaching them tailoring, but it is teaching these girls to know just what they will want to know when they shall have families of their own. This is the kind of industrial work I favor. I am not in favor of teaching shoemaking, plastering, blacksmithing, or any other trade in the common schools, but I am in favor of teaching boys how to handle tools of any kind skilfully. Now, by the way, I think moulding a good thing to be taught in the schools, as well as drawing, how to manipulate moistened sand and work it into the best shape and form; such things as these are what we need. I believe in making the hands skilful as well as the mind.

The President announced that the hour for adjournment had arrived; and, on motion of Mr. Wilson, of Washington (at 10.10 P. M.), the Department adjourned until Wednesday at 9.30 A. M.

THIRD SESSION-WEDNESDAY MORNING.

WASHINGTON, February 5, 1879. The Department met pursuant to adjournment, and was called to order by the president, Mr. Wickersham.

The PRESIDENT. I desire to announce to the Department the different committees, as follows:

Legislative committee.-M. A. Newell, Maryland; W. T. Harris, Missouri; J. D. Philbrick, Massachusetts; George J. Luckey, Pennsylvania; G. J. Orr, Georgia.

Executive committee.-J. O. Wilson, District of Columbia; T. M. Marshall, West Virginia; Isaac N. Carleton, Connecticut; L. H. Duling, Pennsylvania; W. A. Mowry, Rhode Island.

Committee on resolutions.-W. H. Barringer, New Jersey; John Hancock, Ohio; Henry Houck, Pennsylvania; Richard L. Carne, Virginia; J. H. Piper, Illinois.

Committee on invitations.-S. M. Etter, Illinois; Edward Smith, New York; C. E. Hovey, District of Columbia.

Hon. J. ORMOND WILSON, of Washington, invited all who remained. in the city on the following day to attend the forthcoming meeting of the school teachers of the District of Columbia, in the Congregational Church.

At the request of the United States Commissioner of Education, the committee on legislation was instructed to examine and report upon the condition, plans, work, and needs of the Bureau of Education.

Hon. William Windom, United States Senator from the State of Min. nesota, was then introduced and briefly addressed the Department.

Hon. GUSTAVUS J. ORR, LL.D., State school commissioner of Georgia, then read the following paper:

Mr. President and gentlemen of the Department: The subject assigned me, viz, "The needs of education in the South," is a large one, and I fear that I shall not be able to do it justice. To acquire the information necessary to a thorough discussion of it, demanded far more time than that left me by the official duties pressing upon me. I have given it, however, such thought as I could, and I shall endeavor to make the best presentation of it possible under the circumstances. In what I have to say I shall speak with entire candor, and the views presented shall have at least one merit, that of sincerity and honesty. The two sections of our common country never will be able to understand each other properly until their representative men, upon all occasions which may bring them together, shall learn to deal with one another in a spirit of frankness. Liberality is of the essence of learning, and true culture has no more distinctive mark than large heartedness and breadth of views. I found this general statement illustrated in the reception given me by this body twelve months ago, and the manner of my reception then emboldens me to open my heart fully to you now.

war.

EARLY PROVISIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.

In order to understand the educational needs of the South, it will be necessary to have some understanding of the educational condition of that section, and in order to take this latter fully into the mind it will be necessary to take a rapid review of the history of educational effort in the Southern States from the earliest times down to the late unhappy This is the more necessary as the two civilizations (the ante-bellum and post-bellum) are distinct, and to understand the one requires some previous knowledge of the other. The opinion has had wide currency that in educational achievement the South has always been very far behind other sections of the Union. If what I have to say shall have the effect of modifying this opinion I feel that I shall thereby have rendered some service to the cause of truth. At the time the present General Government was formed, five of the original thirteen States forming it were Southern States, viz, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina. South Carolina, and Georgia. All of the other Southern States were offshoots from these, and were, in the main, peopled by emigrants from the five original Southern States. In most of these States provision was early made, either by the State itself, by private individuals incorporated in companies, or by the different religious denominations, and, in some cases, by all of these different agencies, for the higher education, including under that phrase the instruction usually given in academies, high schools, and colleges. I am fully conversant with educational effort in my own State, and as what was done educationally in Georgia in antebellum times was almost identical with the educational achievement of

every other Southern State, I feel that I cannot better represent the ante-bellum educational work of the South than by going a little into the details of Georgia educational history. Permit me, then, to give a brief educational sketch of my own State. To do this, let me first present succinctly our educational legislation; and first as to the fundamental law: Georgia had before the war three constitutions. The first was adopted in the midst of civil commotion in the year 1777. This made it the duty of the legislature to provide schools for the education of the people. The second, adopted in 1789, contained few specific grants of power and none in respect to education. I find in it, however, this general provision: "The general assembly shall have power to make all laws and ordinances which they shall deem necessary and proper for the good of the State;" and surely this grant is broad enough to cover the most liberal things a legislature could have devised for the promotion of education. The third, adopted in 1798, remained in force till 1861. It contained a grant in respect to education which I shall not quote, but which was always held to be of sufficient amplitude by the friends of liberal educational progress.

Thus much as to the educational provisions of the different constitutions in force during the ante-bellum period. Let us now look hastily into the statutes. Two of these relate to the establishment of a State college or university. One of them, enacted in 1784, donates a large tract of land as an endowment. I have never been able to learn the exact number of acres. Of one thing, however, I am sure: the form of the endowment was early so changed as to make it pay annually the handsome sum of $8,000 to the support of the college an annuity which it still enjoys notwithstanding the general destruction of values wrought by the war. The second, enacted in 1785, provided for the organization of the college by creating a board of trustees and a board of visitors, which two boards were to sit together under the title of the senatus academicus. This joint board was clothed with large powers and was charged with important duties in respect to general education, the scheme of the act contemplating the establishment of one or more academies in every county in the State, which were to be constituent parts of the college and were to be under the supervision of this senatus academicus. The college was not put in operation till about the beginning of the present century, and the grand conception in respect to the county academies never was carried fully into effect. It evidently continued long to be cherished, however, for an act was passed in 1821 appropriating $250,000 to be invested permanently, the annual proceeds of which were to be applied to the support of these county academies.

Thus much in reference to the laws providing for higher education by the State. About the year 1835 there was a great awakening among the religious denominations in Georgia upon the subject of the higher education. During that year Oglethorpe University, an institution under the patronage of the Presbyterians, was incorporated. The next year two other colleges came into existence-Mercer University, endowed

by the Baptists, and Emory College, an institution under the charge of the Methodist Church. In order to exhibit the ante-bellum work of these institutions, State and denominational, I give the following statistics, which are taken from their respective catalogues:

These four institutions gave a partial education during the same period, no doubt, to at least twice the number of alumni enrolled in their respective catalogues, the recipients having been compelled, by various causes, to relinquish their studies before the completion of the college curriculum. They thus gave to their country over 5,500 men, more or less fully equipped for the great battle of life. I have looked carefully over their lists of alumni; and among them I find men who have filled with honor high places in all the departments-legislative, executive, and judicial—of the national and of their respective State governments; men who have shed lustre upon the learned professions of law, medicine, and theology; men who have added to the domain of science by discovery; men who have been an ornament to authorship in the fields both of science and literature; men who have been honored and successful teachers of youth, and men who have adorned the walks of private life. The numerous county academies, too, though not supported by the bounty of the State according to the original design of the fathers (receiving, nevertheless, from time to time, small contributions in the way of aid from the public fund), were enabled, through the proceeds of tuition fees, to contribute to society every year throughout the ante-bellum period large numbers of persons of both sexes with respectable academic attainments. Who will dare to rise up for the purpose of undervaluing this great educational work?

Great attention was also given in Georgia, during the same period, to the higher education of females. In 1836 endeavor in this direction received its first great impulse by the chartering of the Georgia Female College, now known as the Wesleyan Female College, an institution under the control of the Methodist Church. This was the first college in the United States, and perhaps in the world, to have the right given it of conferring degrees on women. This mother of female colleges sent forth, in ante-bellum times, bearing her diploma 456 alumnæ to adorn and elevate and bless society. The founding of other similar institutions followed in rapid succession till the number rose to nearly twenty. I cannot give the number of alumnæ of any of these, as the necessary data have not been within my reach. I can, however, make this state

ment, that I once had occasion to make some investigations upon this subject before the recent war, and I satisfied myself that there were, at that time, in actual attendance upon these higher institutions for the education of women in Georgia upward of sixteen hundred pupils.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN GEORGIA BEFORE THE WAR.

What shall I now say of elementary education? I am well aware that I now approach much the weakest point in our system. By elementary schools I mean schools in which were taught spelling, reading, penmanship, arithmetic, and sometimes English grammar and geography. Schools of this grade were the sole reliance throughout the rural districts in my State for many long years. The men who taught them were often incompetent-being sometimes without natural capacity, attainments, or aspirations-and now and then even persons of bad morals. There were among them no teachers' institutes or associations, no circulating libraries, no educational periodicals-in short, nothing approaching the modern appliances provided with a view to professional elevation. There was no examination of teachers, no issuing of license as a condition precedent to obtaining a school, and no supervision. Every teacher was isolated, entirely dependent upon his own ability to modify methods or originate better ones, and completely and absolutely independent in the little realm over which he held sway. The obtaining of a school was entirely a matter of contract between the person offering himself as teacher and his proposed patrons. The latter were often utterly incompetent to judge of the teacher's qualifications, and hinged their acceptance or rejection of him solely upon the rates at which he offered his services. A vivid picture of one of the more harmless of this class of "old field school-masters," as they were called, is drawn in the person of Michael St. John, in the "Georgia Scenes," a book of infinite humor, written by my venerated and revered preceptor, Hon. Augustus B. Longstreet; while a type of the more brutal class is given us in the character of Israel Meadows, of the celebrated Philemon Perch Papers, of which Col. Richard M. Johnston, now of Pen Lucy Academy, near Baltimore, is the author.

The State did not propose to make even these inferior schools free. I have already mentioned the fact that the sum of $250,000 was set apart in 1821 as an academic fund. The same amount was appropriated in the same statute for the education of the poor, which, added to a former appropriation of $200,000 for the same purpose, made the sum of $450,000. This large fund (large for that period) was invested and the annual proceeds, amounting to from $20,000 to $30,000, were devoted to the payment of the tuition of poor children. It was not the policy to establish separate schools for these indigent children. Such teachers of the academies and of the inferior schools that I have already sketched as were willing to submit to an examination, which was often a mere matter of form and conducted by incompetent examiners, were