chiefly in the interest of the negro, Indian, and Chinese races. Educational bills of this nature may not be more constitutional than bills to relieve fire sufferers and water sufferers, but they are equally humane. Such bills in the interest of race education may not be more popular with the masses than bills granting railroad subsidies and authorizing the expenditure of moneys for river and harbor improvements, yet edu cation affects, as nothing else does, the head, heart, and life of the Republic. At the present crisis in our educational development, nothing could be more conducive to the progress of civilization and the stability of good government than a few millions expended as national aid for the education of the races almost wholly neglected in the distribution of school funds, and comprising 8,000,000 of our people.

In a government of the people there is neither beauty nor utility without education. In a government where all men are created free and equal, all men should have opportunities for an equal education. In a government of races there should be an equality of educational privileges, regardless of the political strength of each race. If the gov ernment be based on education, instead of being a weapon of defense, the free ballot never should be permitted by a free people to become an instrument for the government's destruction. If in education dwells the life of the government, then the government should protect its own life by educating all of its races. If education is the bulwark of American liberty, then all the races within our borders should be fortified with such an education as that behind which they can serve their country best. Great as may seem the emancipation of a race from servitude, incomparably greater is the emancipation of a race from ignorance. Let there be obliterated from among the races all that caste which now comes from illiteracy, then the Nation will develop unity in its variety, strength out of its weakness, a co-education as broad as the universe. Mr. Young's paper was discussed by Hon. JOHN W. KNOTT, of Ohio, who said: We cannot have schools in which the races can be educated together. If we owe the Chinese anything in the way of education, it is because the Christian view of our relations to mankind as a whole requires such action. There is no race that is not susceptible of cultivation. It is possible to secure the cultivation of all races. Amalgamation is not wise and should not be encouraged.

The Hon. A. P. MARBLE, of Massachusetts, said:

The race question is local and transient. In one part of the country, where the Germans are numerous and seek to introduce their language, opposition arises to the Germanizing process; Irish ascendency is feared in another place; negro influences in another; the Chinese and Indians in another. In the North we do not fear negro ascendency; in the Northeast we do not so much dread the Mongolian. A broad view will render the race question less formidable. The power of absorption in this great country is immense; it has not yet been exhausted; and time and custom have a mollifying influence.

Forty years ago in my own city there was an African school. The children of the first families would not go to school with children of color. There is no evidence that this reluctance was caused by fear that the colored people would outstrip the white. The opposition came from mere prejudice. At the present time in that city children go to school together, with as little regard to the color of the skin as of the hair or eyes. Children of African descent, in some proportion greater or less, attend the schools of every grade; and in the veins of several teachers there mingles one-fourth or one-eighth of African blood. The only criterion by which they are judged is brains and moral character. Now if forty years will accomplish so much in Massachusetts, eighty years will do it in South Carolina; for we will not admit that we are more than forty years in advance of our sister State.

As to amalgamation, I think we need not be alarmed about that. The Creator has always taken care of that; and He may be trusted with that concern in future. The Anglo-Saxon is a vigorous race, and it has a mixed origin. The Douglas blood was good in Scotland; and though shaded in America it still has power. As a rule, white people will not choose to marry colored people, unless they are prohibited. Then they may in a few cases desire it.

Why, the Indians and the Chinese are our educational superiors, if the modern theorists, the industrial wing of our association, are in the right. Hand-education has long been in vogue with the Indians; we ought to employ them as teachers in our industrial annexes. The Chinese excel in the use of tools and in every imitative art. Employ In. dians and Chinese in the manual training schools and keep cool! The rest may be left to time.

Hon. J. W. AKERS, of Iowa, said: It is the duty of every State to educate its people. The Pacific States should adopt the same method with the Chinese as the South is wisely doing in regard to the colored So far as the public school problem is concerned, we should have no distinction of races in this work. Our duty is to Americanize all who come into our schools.

Hon. LE ROY D. BROWN, State commissioner of schools of Ohio, said: It is not wise to attempt to interfere with matters that belong strictly to the local authorities. The matter of mixed schools was one that the States have the right to adjust and should be left to them. The colored people of Mississippi and Alabama are themselves opposed to mixed schools.

President EASTON announced the following committees:

On Memorial of John D. Philbrick-W. E. Sheldon, Massachusetts; A. J. Rickoff, New York; R. W. Stevenson, Ohio.

On National Aid to Common School Education-M. A. Newell, Maryland; S. M. Finger, North Carolina; B. S. Morgan, West Virginia; Le Roy D. Brown, Ohio; J. Ormond Wilson, District of Columbia; J. W.

Akers, Iowa; John W. Dickinson, Massachusetts; Aaron Gove, Colorado.

FOURTH SESSION.

Thursday Morning, February 25, 1886.

The Department convened at 10 A. M., President EASTON in the chair. Prayer was offered by Rev. S. L. RUSSELL, of Alabama.

Hon. LE ROY D. BROWN, Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Educational Statistics, reported as follows:

At a meeting of this Department at Saratoga last July a committee was appointed to prepare a report on a plan for securing more uniform and more accurate school statistics throughout the United States.

The Hon. John W. Holcombe, of Indiana, the chairman of the committee, being unable to attend the present meeting, I have been requested to prepare and to present the following preliminary report:

PRELIMINARY REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS.

It is assumed that the desirability of securing uniform and accurate school statistics is very generally admitted by the members of this organization. It is also assumed that in the United States there is still lack of uniformity and accuracy in this direction.

Much good has followed the adoption of the report of the Committee on School Statistics, made at Detroit in 1874. That report has tended toward securing uniform laws regarding school age, taxation for school purposes, and the administration of school systems. The twenty-three blanks prepared by our honored Commissioner of the Bureau of Education, and distributed among the school superintendents of the coun try, have been of great service in the way of unifying and systematizing school reports. It is believed, however, that we can now safely proceed to define more closely some of the terms used in our reports, thereby securing a nomenclature which in time will be universally adopted and uniformly understood. Your committee hope in their final report, to be made at Topeka next July, to present some questions relating to school nomenclature for your consideration. In that report some attempt will be made to define such terms as Attendance, Belonging, Tardiness, Truancy, High School, Academy, Seminary, College, Normal School, and University.

Whether there shall be a change of school age in some of the States, and whether the change shall be from the present age to from 5 to 15, or to from 6 to 16, are also questions that will be discussed by the committee and the Department. The only question now presented is whether the term Intermediate should not be substituted for the term Grammar, as applied to the second four years of what is included in the elementary course of instruction. That this should be done is evident, for the reason that the term Grammar School is a misnomer. It

does not convey the idea of the school with clearness. While English is more successfully taught than ever before in the second four years of the elementary course, it is taught by use in conversation and composition chiefly, and not by the study of technical grammar in textbooks on the subject. It may be stated in this connection that the term Intermediate has already been substituted for the term Grammar in many of the schools of the country. In concluding this preliminary report, I have on behalf of the committee to recommend the adoption of the following:

Resolved, That the term Intermediate be recommended as a substitute in school reports for the term Grammar as applied to the second four years of the elementary course of instruction in public schools.

The report was adopted.

Prof. J. A. B. LOVETT, of Huntsville, Ala., then read the following paper:

NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION.

In discussing National Aid to Education, we do not propose even to allude to the advantages of education to the individual as such, for this is a fact conceded by all intelligent people. It is the education of the masses in view of their relations to the Government as free citizens, to which we would call your attention.

The safety of any free government depends largely on the intelligence and virtue of the people, who are the original source of power. Just as the masses become intelligent and enlightened, do they value and appreciate the blessings of good government. A large mass of ignorant and illiterate people must ever be regarded as a dangerous element in any nation. Intelligent and virtuous citizenship is the one great aim of every wise and well-ordered government.

Now, if these several propositions be true, there can be no question of greater importance to those who administer the affairs of our country than the education of the people who constitute the Government. In a free government like ours, where we have manhood suffrage, we should have intelligence to so direct the voter that he may be independent and self-reliant. Next to the intelligent voter is a competent juryman. An ignorant voter is a mockery upon the name of a free government, and an incompetent juryman puts in jeopardy every interest of human life. Unrestrained ignorance is a dangerous element anywhere, and ignorance with legalized power is the one monster evil to be dreaded in our Republic.

There is a large voting population distributed all over this country who cannot read the ballots they cast. With national pride we all have written, "George Washington was the father of his country." True, George Washington was the father of his country, when our country was in its swaddling clothes. But in many respects the national paternity has changed. Our country has grown to full manhood, and

our grand nation, in its supreme representative and chief magisterial capacity, should assume the parental care of the ten thousand ignorant ones who to-day bear the names of George Washington, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas Jefferson, who are unable to write their own illustrious names.

To remedy the evils and dangers mentioned national aid is asked, to enlarge and make more efficient our public-school system. The school systems in most of the States and Territories are, perhaps, all that wise legislation can make them. We have no serious controversy with any system of public instruction of which we have any knowledge. It is the inefficiency of the systems we have and the remedy for that inefficiency that claim our attention. We need, and must have, more than the mere machinery; we must have motive power; we must have the means with which to support our public schools. How long would the great Corliss engines turn the million spindles, or the Mogul locomotives draw the nation's commerce, if machinery were all? Without the steam imparting its force just at the points where force is needed our glorious machinery would stand as still as death. Our school systems, then, in many of the States, need more, vastly more than plans and methods. Yea, they need more of the motive power than we have found it in the ability of some of the States to bestow. They need the impetus which the proposed $77,000,000 would give to them.

What would a finely-constructed system of canals, forming a complete net-work of inter-communication over our continent, avail with no water in them? Such a system may be admired for the exercise of engineering skill in its construction, but for what? When the meager appropriations are spilled out from some of our depleted State treasuries into our systematically-cut scholastic canals, there is not enough of the pedagogical element of navigation to float a literary tramp. No teacher of even passable qualifications can afford to teach in the majority of our public schools at the South for the public funds alone.

In view of the fact that education makes a better citizen, a better officer, a better soldier, a better statesman, national aid is invoked. But it may be said that this matter belongs to the State. So it does,

but certainly not exclusively. The national Government is interested as much as the States in having an intelligent voter. It is a matter which concerns the national peace and safety, as well as State pride and prosperity.

The rapid increase of the population of our country calls for a speedy and prompt action in the matter of free schools on a most liberal basis. While at least a common English education should be provided by our system of popular education, even this much cannot be furnished in some sections of our country. In some of the States three months in the year is the length of the school term, and $21 per month is the average pay to teachers. With these short school terms, and with such