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Another device for making the library more generally available and useful is the classified subject index. Not a few small libraries of well-chosen books are made doubly serviceable through the use of catalogues so arranged as to place within easy reach their material. Next in importance to the free use of books is the very extensive utilization of magazine, newspaper, and other current literature as sources of information bearing upon studies. Judiciously selected pamphlet collections are of incalculable value. The geographical and educational and economic bureaus of the Johns Hopkins University illustrate this function. Most colleges sustain reading-rooms of substantial literature, also brought by index into the regular current of the library service. Columbia has ten thousand pamphlets, Cornell fifteen thousand, Michigan as many, Yale forty thousand, and Harvard two hundred and seventy thousand.

So important are the management and use of these collections considered in the best colleges, that in more than one institution they have come to be subjects of study. The Columbia College "School of Library Economy" (1883) is a well-organized enterprise that in a more or less complete way is being tried at Johns Hopkins University, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, and elsewhere, both East and West. Rochester University, New York, has given annual lectures on the founding, control, and development of libraries since 1880. At Columbia the faculty of the School of Library Economy consists of nine instructors, including the director and twenty to thirty special non-resident lecturers annually.

The course includes lectures and observations on:

1. Library economy.

2. The scope and usefulness of libraries.

3. The founding and extension of libraries.

4. Buildings.

5. Government and service.

6. Regulations for readers.

7. Administration, catalogue, references, loan, etc.

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"The Literary Influence of Academies," by M. Arnold; "Learned Societies," by J. Farrar, "North American Review," vol. viii, p. 157; Warren and Clark, " Public Libraries in the United States," 1876; "College Libraries as Aids to Instruction," published by the Bureau of Education; "Free Public Libraries," T. Greenwood, 1886; "Libraries and Schools," by S. S. Green, 1883; "Libraries and Readers," by W. E. Foster, 1883; "District School Libraries," Horace Mann, Lecture VI; also "Relation of Libraries to General Education," Horace Mann, “Third Report," 1839. Of incalculable value is the " Library Journal," edited by

M. Dewey, New York.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION.

THE modern representative Government, like the contemporary Church, is an organized protest against the dominance of unreasoning authority, from whatever source. Nevertheless, the national Government in this country has had a large share in the control and direction of educational thought and institutions.

It has created and repeatedly enlarged school funds, first and directly, by appropriations of land, to the common schools, academies, and universities; and indirectly, through the surplus revenue deposit, and the three per cent of public land sales. It is officially charged with the education of the Indians and Alaskans; provides generously for military and

naval education, both in the two national institutions and in established colleges and universities in the States; furnishes homes and instruction to many hundred soldiers' orphans, and has with rare wisdom contributed millions to the schooling of the impoverished South. The true spirit of republi. canism has never opposed any centralization that looked to the greater general good. And to the service of the Government in the particulars named, must be added another chapter treating of the National Bureau of Education, the Smithsonian Institution, and the general scientific work carried on through its departments.

1. The Bureau of Education.

Pinckney, of South Carolina, Madison, of Virginia, Morris, of New York, the wise Jefferson, and a half-dozen other contemporary statesmen, advocated the establishment of a national university, "for the advancement of useful knowledge, and the promotion of agriculture, commerce, trades, and manufactures." The idea, in some form, has since come up in almost every administration.

In his message to the two Houses of Congress in 1790, Washington's often-quoted words were full of wisdom and rare foresight. Knowledge," he says, "is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately as in ours, from the sense of the community, it is proportionally essential. ... Whether this will be best promoted," he continued, "by affording aid to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients, will be well worthy a place in the deliberations of the Legislature." Six years later he urged immediate attention to the improvement of agriculture as a fundamental concern in this country, and recommended "the creation of a national central agency, charged with collecting and diffusing information, and enabled by premiums and small pecuniary aids to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement." Twenty

years after the address just quoted, M. Julian, a Frenchman, urged upon his Government the comprehensive and comparative study of educational questions through a national establishment, whose duty it should be "to collect the material for a general report on the scholastic institutions and on methods of instruction in the different European states."

The need for such an agency in this country early attracted the attention of educators. The teachers of Essex County, Massachusetts, in association 1849, voted to petition Congess to established a "bureau in the home department for promoting public education." Fifteen years later, at the sixth meeting of the National Educational Association, a paper was read and discussed on the subject of a "National Bureau of Education," for the establishment of which the intelligence and interest of the country were pledged. The year following, Bishop Fraser, after emphasizing the importance of a more general supervision, commended the growing sentiment in the States in favor of a central agency. In 1866 the attention of the National Educational Association was turned toward the subject in a practical way. At the first meeting of the Section of School Superintendents, held in Washington that year, a committee, of which State School Commissioner E. E. White, of Ohio, was chairman, was appointed to memorialize Congress on the establishment of such a bureau. This memorial was presented in the House of Representatives, in June of the same year, by Hon. James A. Garfield, in a speech which is rich in the history of the educational sentiment of this country. After some unimportant modifications the bill passed both Houses, and on the 16th of March, 1867 Hon. Henry Barnard was appointed first United States Commissioner of Education.”

Originally created a Department, it was two years later made a Bureau of the Interior, as it remains. Mr. Barnard held the office but three years, and was succeeded by Hon. John Eaton, who resigned in 1886. The present commissioner is Hon. N. H. R. Dawson. The function of the bureau is: 1. To collect such statistics and facts as shall show the

condition and progress of education in the several States and territories; and, 2. 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.

A. BUREAU PUBLICATIONS.

The office issues an annual report, and publishes occasional circulars of information, besides carrying on an extensive correspondence in both hemispheres. Its nineteen reports make a valuable statement of a most interesting period of our educational history. They completely cover the quarter of a century since the war, and shed a flood of light upon the saving influences of a right training of youth. Among the sixty or seventy circulars are included discussions of American and foreign systems; elementary, secondary, and collegiate instruction, and various phases of them; industrial, physical, and art training; Kindergarten and normal schools; school architecture, expositions, and legislation; besides methods in particular branches of the curriculum. Its special reports on "Medical Education," "Public Libraries," ‚” “Education and Labor," and "Education and Crime," the "Theory of American Education," and "City School Systems of the United States," would be of incalculable service if studied by every teacher.

B. PEDAGOGICAL LIBRARY.

In the prosecution of its official duties there has been collected an educational library, in size and richness unsurpassed in this country. It contains eighteen thousand volumes and about fifty thousand pamphlets. It is full in more or less disconnected and diffuse but original material for the history of American education. This includes State and city reports, American and foreign educational journals, catalogues and special publications of colleges and other

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