for 16 districts, $880 to Richmond County for 22 districts, and $360 to Macor County for 9 districts.

These are the first actual payments to schools from State funds of which I am

aware.

VII. THE EXPERIMENTAL PERIOD, 1840-1852.

The preceding is a summary of what was done prior to 1840, when a new law entitled "An act for the establishment and better regulation of common schools, was passed, under which the system was reorganized.

This act1 provides that the net annual income of the literary fund was to be divided between the counties in proportion to Federal population. The courts of such counties as voted for schools in 1838 were to appoint not less than five nor more than ten "superintendents of common schools," who were to hold office for one year; these superintendents were to elect their own chairman and he was to give bond. The funds for each county were made due on September 1 and were payable to the chairman. The county court was "authorized and empowered to lay a tax for school purposes "which shall not exceed one-half of the estimatedamount to be received by said county for that year from the literary fund." The tax was to be collected and paid over to the county chairman. The board of county superintendents were to lay off the county into school districts. The free white electors of each school district were to choose by ballot three men as a "school committee" to serve for one year. These school committees were incorporated and put in charge of the schools. They were to provide houses, make a census (between 5 and 21), and employ teachers. "Any branch of English education" might be taught; all white children under 21 were allowed to attend and the committee was to visit the schools. The board of superintendents was to fix the number of teachers and the funds that were to go to each district, and its chairman was to report all essential facts and statistics to the literary board, having received these in turn from the school committees. Those counties which had rejected the schools under the act of 1838 were given an opportunity to vote on the question again, and those voting for schools were to be admitted to all rights and privileges. The literary board was directed as soon as it was ascertained what counties had voted against schools to invest for their future benefit "so much of said fund as said counties would have been entitled to receive under the ratio provided for in the first section of this act." This board was to prepare and distribute the forms necessary to carry out the provisions of the act, and a penalty of $50 was provided for refusal or neglect on the part of a county officer "to perform the duties required of him by law." Teachers were exempted "from performing military duty, working on the road, or serving on the jury whilst engaged in teaching."2

Little was done, as we have seen, toward the organization of the schools prior to 1840. Having reached this period, it may be well to view the situation as it then appeared.

The condition of the educational interests of the State in 1840, according to the census, was as follows:

2 This act may be considered the real beginning of the system in North Carolina. It was reported to the legislature by Jonathan Worth, afterwards governor, from the joint committee on education, of which Senator Mangum was the chairman for the senate and W. N. H. Smith, afterwards chief justice, chairman for the house.

1. Total white males, 240,047; white males 20 years old and over, 100,331. Total white females, 244,823; white females 20 years old and over, 109,354. Black: Slaves, all ages, 245,817; free, all ages, 22,732.

The total number of whites 20 years old and over was 209,685; the number of these who could not read and write was 56,609. This means that 27 per cent of : the adult population of the State could neither read nor write.2

The condition of affairs in 1840 can hardly be put into more graphic language than that used by Dr. Wiley in his History of the Common Schools of North Carolina, published in the North Carolina Educational Journal in 1881. He says:

"According to the census of 1840, one-third of our adult whites, by their own statements to the enumerators, were unable to read and write. This is one fact. By the side of this was the fact that our sisters had nearly outgrown us in population and improvements, and yet it was well known to some, and is now a matter of common information, that no part of the world enjoyed greater natural advantages. Our resources from soil and climate, from minerals and timber, fisheries, and water power were varied and immense; our colonial and Revolutionary history and traditions were honorable; from the establishment of American independence there was no purer government on earth than that of our own State and municipal system, and society was moral, peaceful, and secure.

"We always had an educated class, numbering men and women of the highest type for virtue, intelligence, patriotism, and public spirit, and our biographical annals, faithfully written, would embellish any history.

"But development everywhere around us was more rapid than here, and thus, comparatively, our course was downward. We labored under one disadvantage, and that was the want of streams navigable into the interior; but in other places railroads were superseding rivers as commercial highways. The exuberant soil and cheap lands of the West allured immigrants, and rapidly covered that vast region with industrious people; but there was no such exodus from other States as from ours, and some of our Northern sisters, with sterile lands and harsh climate, were in the van of improvement, while States south of us, under scorching suns and enveloped in a malarial atmosphere, were not only outstripping us, but constantly draining us of our capital and enterprise.

"We had sons who would honor any people, but we had no State pride and no State system: our people were straining their eyes to the desirable features of all other countries but their own, and plants from our human nurseries were shedding bloom and bearing fruit to beautify and enrich many regions, while their native and goodly land was desolate and poor. Our great leaders wrote and spoke of North Carolina, but their sketches never reached the masses; and in the hands of her common people were common-school histories and popular nursery songs of nearly all lands but their own. God has so created nature here that development was preeminently dependent on an intelligent and spirited yeomanry, knowing the resources of their country and attached to their homes; and this was the

1 There were for that year 169 students in the University of North Carolina alone. 2 It may be of interest to present the corresponding figures for the census years following: 1850.-Total white population, 553,028; males, 273,025; females, 280,003. Total white population 20 years old and over, 251,922; males, 120,585; females, 131,337; illiterate (can not read or write) males over 20 years old, 26,239, or 21.8 per cent. Illiterate females over 20, 47,327, or 36 per cent; total illiterates, 73,566, or 20.2 per cent.

1800.-Total white population, 629,942; males, 313,670; females, 316,272. Total white population 20 years old and over, 205,562; illiterate males over 20 years old, 26,024, or 18 per cent; illiterate females over 20, 42,104, or 27.5 per cent; total illiterates, 68,128, or 23.5 per cent.

1870.-Total white population 10 years old and over, 497,132; total illiterates, 106,397, or 33.5 per

cent.

1880.-Total white population 10 years old and over, 608,806; total illiterates, 192,032, or 31.5 per

cent.

1890.-Total white population 10 years old and over, 754,857; total illiterates, 173,722, or 23 per one thing needed in North Carolina, the great want for which all her advantages offered no compensation. And there were the materials for such a people, a working population unexcelled in sobriety, morality, and sturdiness of character, industrious, frugal, and conservative. But the masses, generally, were born homeless; the better part grew up to move, and for long years the situation was not comprehended even by the most sagacions of our leaders. At last the truth began to dawn dimly on various classes, and to some it came as an intuition."

Again Dr. Wiley very pertinently remarks on the introduction of the school system:

"This population was proverbially tenacious of old habits, conservative to the point of stubbornness, with no neighboring precedents or examples, and no persons trained under such systems. The experiment was an absolute novelty in this region, the cause occupied little of the thoughts of Southern statesmen, and it began among a people inured to light taxes and the less inclined to be taxed for education from the fact that there was a large school fund. The accumulation of the fund was a practical and strong teaching against current taxation, and since its inception the principle of distribution was changed from the basis of white to that of Federal population, and thus an element of sectional jealousy and strife was added to other inherent trials. The idea of a charity system was connected with it, rendering it obnoxious to many interested in it, and there were no appliances for the instruction and training of the vast number of managers and teachers immediately needed, while many of the 'old field' instructors, as the teachers of primary subscription schools were called, received it with jealousy, prepared to make war upon it."

But the schools were organized under the new law. The report on the finances of the literary board for 1842 was as follows:

Cash on hand November 1, 1840...

Income from all sources, November 1, 1840, to November 1, 1842 (including entries for vacant lands, interest on money invested in stock of navigation companies and bank stock, and for capital and interest on loans)

The disbursements were:

Support of common schools, 1841-
Support of cominon schools, 1842.

Investments (loans, draining swamps, railroad bonds, etc.)
Total expenses

Balance on hand November 1, 1842..

$78,007.06

222,936.50

300, 943.56

32, 836.12 65, 277.14

98, 113.26 144,832.00

242, 945.26 57,998.30

For the two years from November 1, 1842, to November 1, 1844, the total income of the board from all sources, and including the balance brought over, was $316,439.81. The total expenditures were $252,130.41. Of this amount $175,744.57 went to the schools. It may be of interest to give the expenditures by months, to show the seasons mostly preferred for the schools:

26,036.35

The total income for 1845 and 1846 was $293,007.87. Of this sum $61,466.01 was paid out for common schools in 1845 and $96.702.01 in 1846

Leaving a total in the treasury, after deducting all other expenses, of $127, 319.63 Income from all sources, 1847-48.

Disbursements to schools. 1847...
Disbursements to schools, 1848

Total for 1847 and 1848

Other expenses, including building of Deaf and Dumb Asylum and appropriation for deaf and dumb education, draining of swamp lands, and a loan to Floral College.

Balance on hand November 1, 1848
Income from all sources, 1848-1850

Disbursements for schools, 1849.
Disbursements for schools, 1850.
Other disbursements..

Total.

Amount on hand November 1, 1850

358,218.31

96.511.31 101,530.04

198,041.35

23,964.27 136, 212.69 347,902.37

99,449.38

107,339.00

22,921.32

229,709.70

118, 192.67

Such was the course of the first period of actual trial of the school system. The school fund was in good condition and a steady revenue was received from it. But the evils of the system were perhaps larger than the good results. In the first place, there was no efficient supervision, and under the system in vogue there could be none.

Until 1853 the literary board was the chief executive head of the system. This was an awkward arrangement, and the board urged on the legislature the more. simple and efficient plan of a single executive chief or superintendent. The biennial reports of the board were mostly confined to this one object, and hence for twelve years friends of the schools labored in darkness. As it was, the system could not be managed as a whole, and was left largely to local officers and to a public wholly unused to such cares. Whatever there was of error was allowed to grow unheeded, and there was no published record of progress.

"Some of the legislative provisions were wise-remarkably so, considering the circumstances and they laid a broad and good foundation, but they could not be prudently added to from time to time, and it was impossible for any man to survey the whole system in its details, in its wants, and in its results."

Returns from the counties could not be enforced, and the result was that hardly half made regular reports to the board. No special report by the State authorities was provided for; consequently there was no general information on the subject. The first forms, which were necessarily imperfect, were not improved, and were often clumsily filled or entirely neglected. Diverse habits sprang up in different counties, and the best county systems, made so by the exertions of discreet and zealous local friends, naturally felt least interest in State action and in the system as a whole, and it was not until 1849 that the various acts relating to the common schools were collected and published. The character of much of this legislation was permissive. Thus the act of 1846 provided that the board of county superintendents might appoint a committee of five to examine "into the qualifications, mental and moral," of applicants for teachers' positions. Where there were such committees persons could not teach without their certificate, but this, when given, was little more than a testimonial of moral character. Another reason for the small success of the schools during the first decade of their existence is summarized by Dr. Wiley, in his special report, as follows:

"Under the constitutional provision of 1776 the schools were not to be charity schools. They were to be subsidized by the State, but every man was expected to

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pay something toward the instruction of his children, but the idea of charity was attached to the common schools and the name itself helped to raise a barrier between the upper and lower classes of society. It seemed as if these schools were to erect a fence between the two. It prevented many from sending their children to these schools, and kept the more intelligent part from taking any active part in the management of the schools."

Further, the common schools were a novelty to the people; they were imported from the outside and did not grow in the soil; hence it took more time for the people to understand and appreciate them. They were at first considered as a sort of labor-saving machine and expected to work themselves,

Then came the imperfections of the system itself. The plan adopted in 1840 was dominated by the ideas in the plan submitted by Judge Murphey in 1817. His idea as to a literary board was framed into a law:

"It was enacted that there should be a 'Board of Literature in this State,' to be called The President and Directors of the Literary Fund of North Carolina;' so called because there was then only a fund and no public schools. This board became mere trustees of the fund-they have been useful as such, and as such only have tried to be useful, it being impossible, in the nature of things, that they could, without immense cost to the State, officially discharge the duties of the head of the public schoole, as originally intended by Judge Murphey. Neverthe less, when we established our system of public schools, this literary board was made the nominal head-and thus, as I stated, we were still under the influence of the erroneous conclusions of one active intellect which thought for us twenty years before. This board, however, was but a nominal head, divested of all the powers necessary to make it useful as such; and so we launched our experiment, so new to our people, so complicated, so liable to difficulty, and cut ourselves off from all direct communication with it."

The radical defects of the system were soon seen and changes were repeatedly urged on the assembly. At the end of the first year it was not known how many schools had been established; it was not known thirteen years later, for there were no means by which the system could observe and note its own deficiencies, ascertain its own progress, and record its own experience.

Another vital defect was the permissive character of the legislation. The laws of 1838 and 1840 left it to the counties to say whether they would have the system at all. They took their time. In 1840 Governor Dudley said in his message: "Most of the counties have adopted the common-school system, and a few have received the State's quota of money to aid them." It was not until 1846 that the school system had been adopted in all. The law of 1840 simply "authorized and empowered," but did not require the counties to levy a local tax, and the effect of this laxness was soon felt. In 1844 the literary board says: "In some counties the justices fail to lay any tax whatever for common schools, alleging that the law does not impose it as a peremptory duty on them to do so, but leaves it to their discretion."

In 1848 Governor Graham asked if the counties should not be required to raise by local taxation at least one-half as much as they received from the State before being paid anything from the State quota. The board said on the same subject:

"It seems, however, to be expedient to require of each county imperatively to raise by local taxation, annually, a sum equal to at least one-half of that received from the State, to the end that schools may be maintained a sufficient portion of each year in the several districts, and to withhold from any county her share in the State's distribution until her chairman shall make the report now required of him by law."1

1 The census of 1850 gives the total annual income of the public schools from taxation as $42,936. The income from all sources, endowment, taxation, public funds and other sources is put down as $158,564. The total income of the academies and other schools was $187,648.