CHAPTER IV. THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM OF INDIANA (Continued). II. THE NEW CONSTITUTION AND THE SYSTEM AS IT IS. The new constitutional convention met at Indianapolis October 7, 1850. It finished its work February 10, 1851. An important part of that work related to the subject of free schools. The agitation of the five previous years and the experience which the schools had endured were not to prove fruitless. The public mind was ready for a radical change, and those who had struggled long and watched anxiously while the fundamental concerns of the schools were left to the care of changing and uncertain legislatures, had now resolved to secure a guarantee for a wise state guardianship of the schools by the fundamental provisions of the commonwealth. Some of the best men of the State were members of this convention. They had seen clearly for years that the school interests of the State had suffered from these principal defects, and without the removal of these causes there could be no confident hope for the future. They would no longer entrust such important affairs to the caprice of legislatures, and experience had taught them the wisdom of guarding not the people but communities, falsely imagining themselves to be the people, against themselves. They therefore proposed, while holding fast to that which was good in the old Constitution, and there was much good, to seek a guarantee in the fundamental law of the State on the three following points: 1. The careful guardianship and the permanent security of the common-school fund. 2. Uniformity in the operation of school laws. 3. State supervision and control. The first two of these guarantees, it was not difficult to secure from the convention. While some good laws had been passed in care of the school fund, much revenue which should have accrued to that interest had been lost by carelessness and neglect. The importance of carefully defining and guarding this fund the more easily recommended itself to the members of the convention since some had previously dared to raise the question whether the State should keep this fund inviolate for the benefit of the schools. people upon this subject. It was not hard to arrive at the will of the plication of the laws to the administration of the schools of the State had been thoroughly taught by a generation of experience, and upon this point all the friends of education seemed to be united. The principle encountered no serious opposition either in committee or in the convention. But the idea of State supervision by State superintendency did not meet such easy passage. Generally the friends of the schools felt convinced that without some scheme of efficient supervision, the public-school system could not succeed. John I. Morrison, the master of the Salem Academy, and one of the ablest teachers of the State, was a member of the convention from Washington County. He was made the chairman of the Committee on Education. We do not know how many of the provisions of the Constitution relating to education were due to his suggestion, but he has left us the story of the eighth section of article VIII, which provides for the election of a State superintendent of public instruction. In the original draft of Mr. Morrison's report to the committee this section was included. By a majority vote of the committee, it was stricken out of the final report which was to go to the convention. This action Mr. Morrison regarded as "a fatal blow against the State's undertaking to educate the children of the State;" and in this exigency, in face of the adverse vote of the committee, he de termined to submit the rejected article to the tender mercies of the convention itself. When the report of the committee came up, Mr. Morrison, weak from illness, was hardly able to stand before the convention. In answer to his brief but earnest appeal, the convention, as much moved, as Mr. Morrison afterward said, by his anxiety and the weakness of his condition, as by the strength of his appeal, accepted the section rejec ted in committee and ordered it engrossed by a vote of 78 to 50. Thus was secured to the State ever after a supervising educational officer. The educational provisions of the new Constitution, comprising eight sections of article VIII, are as follows: SECTION 1. Knowledge and learning generally diffused throughout a community being essential to the preservation of a free government, it shall be the duty of the general assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement, and to provide by law for a general and uniform system of common schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge and equally open to all. SEC. 2. The common-school fund shall consist of the Congressional township fund and the lands belonging thereto; The surplus revenue fund; The saline fund, and the lands belonging thereto; The bank-tax fund, and the fund arising from the one hundred and fourteenth section of the charter of the State bank of Indiana; The fund to be derived from the sale of county seminaries, and the moneys and property heretofore held for such seminaries; from the fines assessed for breaches of the penal laws of the State, and from all forfeitures which may accrue; All lands and other estate which shall escheat to the State for want of heirs or kindred entitled to the inheritance; All lands that have been, or may hereafter be, granted to the State, where no special purpose is expressed in the grant, and the proceeds of the sales thereof, including the proceeds of the sales of the swamp lands granted to the State of Indiana by the act of Congress of the 28th of September, 1850, after deducting the expense of selecting and draining the same; Taxes on the property of corporations that may be assessed by the general assembly for common school purposes. SEC. 3. The principal of the common-school fund shall remain a perpetual fund, which may be increased, but shall never be diminished; and the income thereof shall be inviolably appropriated to the support of common schools, and to no other purpose whatever. SEC. 4. The general assembly shall invest in some safe and profitable manner all such portions of the common-school fund as have not heretofore been intrusted to the several counties; and shall make provision by law for the distribution among the several counties of the interest thereof. SEC. 5. If any county shall fail to demand its proportion of such interest for common school purposes, the same shall be reinvested for the benefit of such county. SEC. 6. The several counties shall be held liable for the preservation of so much of the said fund as may be intrusted to them, and for the payment of the annual interest thereon. SEC. 7. All trust funds held by the State shall remain inviolate and be faithfully and exclusively applied to the purposes for which the trust was created. SEC. 8. The general assembly shall provide for the election, by the voters of the State, of a State superintendent of public instruction, who shall hold his office for two years, and whose duties and compensation shall be prescribed by law. It will be noticed that six of these eight sections, all but the first and the last, relate to the subject of the common-school fund. It is a subject of the first importance and more than usual interest. The amount of that fund and the care with which it is guarded are justly a matter of pride to the people of Indiana. The school fund of Indiana is divided into two distinct parts: 1. The Congressional township fund. 2. The common-school fund. The first is easily comprehended. It came from the land given to Indiana by the United States when the State was admitted to the Union in 1816. It is the fund derived from the sale of the famous "sixteenth section." The enabling act passed by Congress April 18, 1816, "to enable the people of the Indiana Territory to form a Constitution and State government, and for the admission of such State into the Union," offered to the people of the State "section numbered sixteen in every township, and when such section has been sold, granted, or disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, for the use of schools." This gift by the General Government was upon the condition that the State "should provide, by an ordinance irrevocable without the consent of the United States," that this land should have exemption from taxation during the five years next succeeding its sale. By an act of 1828, Congress granted power to the general assembly of Indiana to sell these lands, but not without the "consent of the inhabitants thereof." Provision was made in the same year for their sale by the agents of the State. The proceeds were to be loaned at interest, and the income to be applied to the use of schools. Acts of 1833 and 1838 related to the sale and distribution of this fund. In the latter year, the Congressional township was made a body politic and corporate, and the township school commissioner was authorized to sell lands and lend the money for the use of the schools of the township. The legislation of these years was based upon the princi. ple that the school section was intended for the exclusive appropriation of the respective townships. This seemed to be the verbal intent of the enabling act of Congress in 1816, which provided that the lands "should be granted to the inhabitants of such township." This interpretation of the grant was described by Dr. Larrabee, the first superintendent of public instruction, as an "inequality manifestly never intended," for by it there was given to some townships where the sixteenth section happened to include rich land, a large sum, sufficient for tuition throughout the year, and to others where the section was less valuable the fund would be altogether inadequate. As the larger part of the school revenue is now not derived from this source, the inequality is not so noticeable; yet some townships are still enjoying a larger income from that source than others. But for the fact that the fund is an inviolable one, the State would probably have converted it into a trust fund to be held by the State and distributed to the counties in proportion to school population. But the fact still remains that each township gets from this source in proportion to what its sixteenth section was sold for. From such considerations as these the general assembly in 1852 attempted to consolidate the funds. In 1843 the counties were made liable to the Congressional townships for the preservation of this fund and the payment of interest. Nearly $28,000 had already been lost to this fund through the failure or dishonesty of mortgagees. There was then no constitutional provision for its security. Thus we see that the Congressional township fund is the gift of the General Government for the cause of popular education in the State. Land has been sold from this donation amounting to 650,317 acres, mak. ing a fund of $2,487,806.39. Twelve counties report 5,160 acres still unsold. The common-school fund is not so easily understood. The constitutional convention of 1851, seeking light on educational finances, asked the Treasurer of the State for an itemized statement showing the sources of this fund. Then was revealed the folly of the State, in past years, that no comptrollership had been provided for these important revenues. No one knew exactly how much had come to the fund from each several source. By carelessness and neglect, large sums had been lost. No one could tell exactly how much nor to what accounts the lost amounts were due; while the sources of this fund are known, only an approximate statement can be made of the amounts which the various sources have furnished. The common-school fund and its sources may be seen in the following: 1. THE SURPLUS-REVENUE fund. In 1836 the United States Government was confronted with the problem of a "surplus." By act of Congress, approved June 23, 1836, this surplus revenue was distributed to the various States according to their representation in Congress. Indiana received $860,254. In 1837, the general assembly of the State provided that $537,502.96 of this amount should be applied to the school fund. It was distributed to the counties for the use of schools according to the number of polls. By the terms of this grant the United States Government bound the State to return this money when called for by the Secretary of the United States Treasury, and it is therefore held subject to call. 2. THE BANK-TAX Fund. The Secretary of the United States Treasury, Hon. R. B. Taney, withdrew the surplus revenues of the Government from the Second United States Bank in 1833. These funds were distributed among the varions State banks, the "pet banks" of President Jackson, as they were called. This encouraged the increase of such banks. Indiana chartered such an institution January 28, 1834. Within the following year it received over $1,000,000 from the General Government. On this money the bank paid no interest, while the money was loaned again at the current rate. The bank became a paying institution. The State owned a large number of shares, and the charter of the bank stipulated that at the winding up of the institution, 25 years later, the profits of the State should go to the school fund.' It was also provided that a tax of 123 cents on each share not held by the State should be deducted from the annual dividends and applied to the same fund. The terms of the charter were faithfully observed, and the school fund received from this source of the taxation on this stock more than $80,000. In 1845 this was distributed to the counties. These profits were very large, and have been classified under the sinking fund explained hereafter. |