APPROPRIATIONS NEEDED. The following letter, written in connection with the annual estimates of the Office, contains a full statement of my views in regard to appropriations needed for its support: DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., October 13, 1885. To the Honorable the THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, Washington, D. C. SIR: In submitting the estimates of this Office for appropriations for the year 1886-87, I may be permitted to add a word of explanation. First. I recommend the addition of $200 to the present appropriation of $1,800 for the salary of the chief clerk. Two thousand dollars was formerly the salary of this office. The $200 was taken off of his salary several years since, when the same amount was taken from the salaries of a considerable number of officers of the same grade. These salaries have generally been restored. Chief clerks of Bureaus are generally paid $2,000, and I fail to see why a chief clerk of the Office of Education, with all the most delicate and difficult duties of such a position, should be paid less than a chief olerk of the same grade in any other service. Second. I have submitted an increased estimate of two clerks of class 4, $3,600; one librarian, $1,800; two clerks of class 3, $3,200; one copyist, $900; one copyist, $800,an addition to the clerical force of the Office. Those who have been familiar with the growth of this Office may have been observant of the fact that I have never submitted estimates of increase until that increase was clearly demanded and had become plainly necessary in the administration of the Office. The work undertaken under my direction has been kept strictly within the requirements of the law to collect "statistics and facts," and to diffuse "such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems, and methods of teaching, as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country." It is well known that the interests of war and commerce have forced the information touching these subjects into forms for generalization and the satisfactory drawing of conclusions. It is equally well known with reference to the subject of education that the data upon which conclusions depend have only within a comparatively recent period begun to be collected in a form for purposes of generalization. There is a lack of a common nomenclature. Even when this Office began its work the statistics of States and cities in the Union could be compared only to a limited extent. This Office, without authority, has fortunately been favored by the good-will of the administrative officers of education, and terms and forms of statement have been so changed that there has been great increase in the possibilities of generalization and reasonable deduction. This good-will has been far more valuable than money. It has furnished in many cases information that money could not purchase; but it may be said, in a sense, to increase the obligation of this Office to be able to handle the material efficiently and satisfactorily which comes to it. All the estimates made by me from time to time have been made with a view to these demands. Their growth from year to year will be apparent to any one who will become familiar with the facts. No remote, impossible theory of doing the work has ever been projected. Each step forward has been taken with a clear knowledge of what was to be done. No careful student of the work of the Office, coming from any part of our country or from any part of the world, that I know, has failed to approve its objects, its methods, and its administration. Everything about it is submitted to the freest scrutiny of everybody. Again and again urgent demands for work by great interests of education are made, which it is impossible for the Office to undertake. The entire work of the Office is kept in the closest possible relation to the requirements of educational progress. No fanciful objects have been sought, no sinecures desired. The presence of an idle person connected with the Office would be a personal annoyance to me. The character of the work of the Office is not sensational, and should not be sensational if it would promote the most healthy progress of the care of the young; but careful inquiry from any quarter will readily ascertain what its methods and merits are. It is to do more of this work required within the Office that these estimates for increased clerical force are made. The assistants now furnished are overtaxed, and much exceedingly valuable work remains untouched. The tasks which the Commissioner has been accustomed to carry in his own hands are too heavy, and they cannot long be performed by one man; they must be subdivided. Therefore the increase asked is mainly for a higher order of clerks, with an appropriate increase of copyists. The friends and promoters of a variety of special departments of education are asking more attention to their specialties. Those engaged in the prevention of crime among juveniles, the management of orphan asylums and reformatories, those engaged in the management of libraries, the promoters of industrial education and others, are urgently asking that one or more persons in the Office of proper competency be charged with special care of their respective subjects under the Commissioner. This can hardly be regarded otherwise than as a most reasonable demand. If there should be granted my request for the three $1,800 places, a movement of this kind in the organization could be begun. One of these places I have specified as librarian. To the growth of the library I refer elsewhere. Clearly the handling of the material in the Office, cataloguing, indexing, and holding it in readiness for the use of the several departments of work in the Office, and the demands of educators from outside, is central to all that is undertaken by it. So far I have had to carry the work forward without specific provision of law. I ask for a librarian. The museum of the Office, to which I refer elsewhere, has had rapid growth with slight expenditure, and has become especially helpful in conveying to educators ideas of improvements in appliances and conditions of education; and while I have deemed it best to manage it without specifically asking for a director of the museum, I do need sufficient clerical force upon which to draw for its custody, and for explanations necessary to inquirers. Third. I estimate for three watchmen, and may remark that when the Department of the Interior had an ample supply of watchmen, they furnished the watchmen for the building occupied by this Office; but since the superintendent of the Department buildings and of the force of watchmen has been so greatly called upon for service in the care of other buildings, it has been impossible, as he has informed me, to furnish the watchmen for this building in full, and since that date the time of two watchmen necessary for this building has been made up out of the time of laborers of this Office, voluntarily, in addition to their regular work. I may observe that the books and collection of educational appliances in the possession of this Office have become very valuable. Some of them, if destroyed by fire, could not be replaced. Though they have come to the Office by comparatively little expenditure of money, their purchase outright in the market would be very costly. Their loss by fire would be a great detriment to education. I ask, therefore, that the necessary watchmen for this service may be granted. Fourth. I submit a recommendation for an increase of $500 to the present appropriation of $500 for the purchase of books for the pedagogical library. When my service here commenced there were not a hundred volumes in the possession of the Government for use in this work. The number of volumes now in the library is 18,21, and the number of pamphlets 47,800. Congress saw fit to give me annually $1,000 for this library. By the care with which this small sum has been expended, the library has come to be pronounced by foreign experts as unique. Moreover, it is not only used primarily by the clerks of the Office for the techni cal purposes of the Office to abbreviate labor and save expenditure in other directions, but as it has become known to the educators of the country that there is such a literature of education, students and investigators are coming from a distance for its use, and the stream of inquiries for quotations and drafts upon it is steadily increasing. Besides, the literature of education throughout the world is multiplying rapidly, and, if we would keep up with its progress, more instead of less should be appropriated. Shall there not be one point in the United States where the educators of the country can be sure they will find the literature of their subject? I only ask that the $500 some time since taken from the $1,000 previously appropriated for this purpose, may be restored. Fifth. In the last appropriation there was granted the Office $3,000 for the collection of statistics, making of special reports, preparing circulars of information, etc., and I have the honor to submit an estimate for an increase of $17,000, or a total appropriation of $20,000. Is it necessary in the American Republic to set forth the reasons for this estimate? As a government we properly expend large amounts of money to promote the science of physics, of chemistry, of geology, and the sciences which especially promote the efficiency of instruments of war. Can we as a people of liberty, whose institutions we claim depend solely upon the free, intelligent, virtuous choice of the people, not afford to expend $20,000 outside of the regular clerical work of this Office for the promotion of the science of education, our progress in which determines the progress in every other science and in every other art? Over a hundred million of dollars are expended annually on education through the various agencies of the country, and no one knows how much of this amount is wasted on houses badly heated, ventilated, and lighted, and unhealthy in other respects, or how much is expended on inferior books, appliances, and methods. No one knows how much barm comes through neglect, unwise action, or inferior conditions, for which these millions are expended, when better and more healthy aids would be less expensive, and could be ascertained, and thus teachers and school officers placed in a way to prevent them by a slight expenditure of means, by this Office, in observing the facts of the science of education as applied to school architecture and school administration. Something of what this Office has done with its small means in this behalf is known to the world in showing the relation of education to labor, the relation of ignorance to crime, in pointing out the best conditions of lighting and heating school apartments, and collating facts bearing upon the hygiene of school life. It is not too much to say that the world of educators have pronounced their approval upon these endeavors, and for the enlargement of this work to meet immediate demands I ask for an increase of $17,000. Sixth. I submit an estimated increase of $4,000 to the amount appropriated for the two purposes of (a) distribution and exchange of educational documents, and (b) the exchange, cataloguing, and care of articles, apparatus, and appliances of the pedagogical museum. As there comes in upon the Office from the different nations of the world the literature they are preparing upon the subject of education, and their promotion of improvements in educational management by means of pedagogical museums, and I see how little is done in our own country for the same purpose, I am made to feel deeply the danger that we shall fall behind in the race of intelligence and virtue, and thereby also in the possession of the advantages of free government of which we justly boast. The revolution of education in Japan, for instance, as it may be called, has been carried forward with great rapidity by the establishment of a separate building for the collection and exhibition and dissemination of pedagogical appliances from other portions of the world. The Republic of France, as is known, has organized an office of education, modeled on this Office in Washington, and, in staking the perpetuity of its liberties on the education of its people, makes pre-eminent among its instrumentalities the presentation of illustrations to the eye of articles showing the improvements in educational principles, methods, and appliances. Seventh. The Department has seen fit to order the execution, through this Office, of the requirements of the law directing the establishment of schools in Alaska, for the education of its children without respect to differences of race, and I have estimated that an additional sum of $50,000 should be appropriated for this purpose. Several times, by the request of the Department, or by the request of others interested in education in this remote region, I have been carefully over the plans for introducing schools for that widely scattered population, and it should be noted (a) that there are few houses anywhere in the country available for school purposes. There is, therefore, the first cost of erecting houses. (b) In many places the teachers must be, under the circumstances, the only parties representing the civilization of the States, in which case the teacher should have his family with him, and the expenses must be increased accordingly. (c) In most cases the books, maps, charts, slates and pencils, as well as the fuel and furniture, must be furnished by the Government at the start. (d) I need not allude to the expenses necessarily connected with the vast distances and inconveniences of travel in that country. The people, as a rule, wherever found in that territory, it should be observed, have manifested a desire for the education of their children, and the young are found to be teachable wherever the experiment of establishing schools has been made. The policy of feeding or supporting need not be introduced. If schools are promptly established and the people taken as they are, and by well fitted, skillful education advanced in intelligence, and virtue, and skill in the industries by which they now live, and in ability to improve themselves with their present environment, it can hardly be doubted that they will not only continue self supporting, but that they will contribute vastly more to the commercial profits of the country. If, on the other hand, their education is neglected and the vices of civilization go before its virtues, the evils to be expected can hardly be described, nor would it be possible to foretell the expense likely to be incurred in preserving order and establishing peaceful commercial relations. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to the faithful laborers in the Office and to all others elsewhere who have contributed to the success of its work. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Hon. L. Q. C. LAMAR, JOHN EATON, Commissioner. Secretary of the Interior. |