past in cities and villages the high school has indeed seen a remarkable growth. But as to rural communities it is only when the district organization is discarded for what is essentially the township system, that they get high schools at all. Out of the 240 rural districts of the greatest and richest farming county of the State, only four or five could get, even by taxing to the limit, $2,500 for the support of a high school.

Such, then, are the short-comings of our present school revenue system. How far would the proposals of the Educational Commission remove them? The most pertinent proposals of the commission are two: To substitute the township for the district system; and to restore the two-mill tax.

To make the township the unit for school purposes would equalize tax rates as well as school opportunities within townships. The big district and the small district, the poor land and the best land would all pay the same rate. That large district in Funk's Grove, for example, that paid 17 cents last year, would under the township system with all the other districts have paid 43 cents. It might continue, if desirable, a big district, but it would not for that reason escape, comparatively, taxation for school purposes. Of course no criticism of the farmers of that district is intended. They are among the most progressive in America and would be the last persons in the State to wish to escape any proper burden. It is the system that is criticised and that causes the inequality. The injustice arising now from the unequal distribution of railroad property among districts would entirely pass away, though it would still remain as among townships. The larger the school unit, however, the smaller the chance of inequality. This inequality among townships and counties will demand eventually a sweeping change that it is the function of a revenue commission rather than of an educational commission to suggest a separation of the sources of State and local revenues. When that time comes the railroads will be relieved from all local taxation whatever, and will pay a per cent of gross receipts or the average State rate for all purposes calculated upon their assessed and equalized valuation, directly into the State treasury. The latter method would undoubtedly be both fair and constitutional and would net the State nearly six millions annually. The State tax could then be done away with and realty and some personalty left to be taxed, as in Pennsylvania, for local purposes only. Until this is done injustice must continue. Hardin and Calhoun counties have no railroads at all. Madison, because it lies in the direct way of lines making for St. Louis, has twenty-one. Cook has more than twice that number. The railroad valuation alone of Madison county is greater

than the total valuation of all property in any one of twenty-seven counties in Illinois; and the railroad valuation of Cook county is nearly twice that of all the thirty-six counties of our poorer Illinois combined.

The adoption of the township as the school unit would open the way for the culminating expanse of the high school system. Where land is assessed at $10.00 an acre even country townships could spare $3,000.00 for high school purposes and still keep within the present tax limit. In the poorer townships - such say as have not a total assessed valuation so great as $300,000.00- the State should help maintain high schools, the help extended to vary inversely with the total assessed valuation of the township, and directly with the tax rate levied by the township itself for the maintenance of its schools. Possibly 800 of the townships of Illinois might require such aid to the extent of an average of $1,000.00 each, or in all $800,000.00. In some cases two townships could unite to support a school. In exactly the same way the cost of adequate supervision of both elementary and high schools should be shared by the State. This might take $500,000.00 annually.

It is important that everybody understand exactly how the adoption of the township system and the establishment of high schools would affect tax rates. Let us take an illustration. Take Aetna township, Logan county. The approximate assessed values, the actual levies, and the rates resulting were last year as follows:

One or two of these districts are partly in another township but this may be neglected in the calculation. No. 9 contains a railroad, which furnishes about one-fifth of its valuation; hence the low rate -63 cents. Districts 11 and 12 are about the same size as 9 but contain no railroad, and, with somewhat higher levies pay rates of

$1.12 and $1.30. District 16 owes its lower rate to its larger size. District 10 contains the little village of Chestnut and the levy, $1,200.00, valuation, and rate, $1.60, suggest the struggle that the average village undergoes when population is increasing faster than property.

The eight purely country districts in this illustration are paying an average tax rate of 91 cents. Their levies range from $400.00 to $600.00 and average a little less than $500.00. Their tax rates, because of varying levies, the different size of the districts, or unequal distribution of wealth, or the presence of railroads in some districts, range from 54 cents to $1.30.

Now suppose we adopt the township system, what will be the results? The total valuation being about $534,000.00 and the sum of the levies being $5,175.00, with no increase for school expenditures the burdens of all would be equalized at a rate of 96 cents. Would not this rate be fairer than nine different rates varying from 54 cents to $1.60? Now let us add $2,500.00 for a high school, with two assistant teachers, and a superintendent who will supervise all the schools of the township. The tax rate becomes $1.44. The farmer who owns 200 acres of land, assessed at $16.00 an acre, the usual value in Logan county, before the township system was adopted paid, at the average, $29.12; now he pays $46.08, or about $17.00 a year more school tax. The illustration is typical.

With the adoption of the township system should come a compulsory high school law. Even if the courts eventually sustain the State Superintendent's interpretation of the recent high school act, whereby we have accidentally, or providentially, a free high school law, yet this solution of the problem is not wholly satisfactory and can be only temporary; the payment of a student's tuition away from home does not give him a school that he can call his own, and is calculated to confine free high school privileges to such as can afford to pay for board and lodging in town. I can see no reason, excepting one of policy, for the exclusion of places of 1,000 or more under boards of education, from the contemplated township organization for school purposes. Such places either contain high schools now, or the nuclei for high schools. In the majority of cases to establish a township high school elsewhere than in such a village, city, or incorporated town, if such be accessible, would surely seem unwise and not economical. If the farmer's tax rate is low now it is because he hasn't been getting much. It should be somewhat higher and he should get vastly more. In southern Illinois for elementary schools alone farmers are paying higher rates than would be needed here for both elementary and high schools. If there is anybody on earth taxed less in proportion

to ability to pay than the farmer of the corn belt, I do not know who it is.

The Educational Commission has voted to recommend the restoration of the two-mill tax. Let us see just what this means.

By the free school law of 1855 it was provided: "The common school fund of this State shall consist of such sum as will be produced by an annual levy and assessment of two mills upon each dollar's valuation of all the taxable property in the State; and there is hereby levied and assessed annually . . . the said two mills." The same statute provides that six per cent interest upon funds received from the federal government for the support of common schools and upon the amount of the surplus revenue distributed to Illinois in 1837 shall be part also of the said fund. It is said that this provision of the law of 1855 providing for this fund to be raised by an ad valorem tax upon all the wealth of the State and distributed according to population and area, put the bill through the Legislature and kept it from being repealed. It made the bill acceptable where it would have been weakest in the poorer sections of the State. By the first distribution every county but two in what we have called poorer Illinois got more out of the fund than it paid into it. And this state of affairs holds true without exceptions to-day. The two mill tax brought in $607,000.00 this first year, averaged $687,000.00 for the next twelve years, and by 1872 was running about $900,000.00. At that time the school law was re-written and into the rewriting crept a change that has proved of serious importance. The section providing for the distributable fund was made to read, . . . the proceeds of a two mill tax to be levied . . . annually, unless otherwise provided by law." The very next year the Legislature proceeded to levy the lump sum of $1,000,000.00 " in lieu of the two mill tax," a practice which has been since kept up. At the time when the change was made in the law the tax was bringing in only $900,000.00 annually but now it would mean nearly $2,500,000.00 a year, even though property is actually assessed at seventy per cent of one-fifth of the real value.

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By the terms of a revenue law of 1855 the rate to be levied for general revenue purposes annually thereafter was one and one-fifth mills. From 1873 to 1888 the average levy for general purposes was $1,600,000.00. Since 1895 the amount levied for general purposes has risen rapidly, until it is now $5,000,000.00 a year, with receipts from fees, insurance and inheritance taxes, and from the Illinois Central aggregating $3,000,000.00 more. The school levy remains $1,000,000.00, which with $56,937.31 interest constitutes the distributable fund. Once, one and two-thirds the

general levy, the school levy is now but twenty per cent of it, or twelve per cent of all general revenue receipts. Once the State paid more than the local political units for the support of the common schools; now it pays about three per cent of the total amount. Within the last thirty-five years population has doubled, our school enrollment increased fifty per cent, the wealth of Illinois has multiplied by four; young men have married and grown old; the sons born of their sons are now in the schoolrooms; but the distributable fund remains the same. New stars have been discovered in the heavens above, new elements in the earth beneath, but the State of Illinois now, as thirty-five years ago, is still distributing annually, to her common schools the paltry sum of $1,056,937.31. The change the commission recommends would increase the average $5.71 Illinois tax rate hardly more than one-fiftieth. If you pay $50.00 now; then you would pay $51.00. It might cost the people of Illinois 30 cents apiece-less than they pay for soda-water and gum. We believe in the restoration of the two mill tax because the tax is right in principle. To some extent surely, all the wealth of Illinois is responsible for the education of all her children. The proposition of the commission is that the State take a one-thirteenth interest in the enterprise. We believe in this larger fund because it is needed to help pay a reasonable minimum wage and the other expenses for elementary education in poorer Illinois, to aid teachers' institutes, to encourage expert supervision in townships, to help build township high schools and extend the opportunities of secondary education to every boy and girl in the State. The farmer's vocation is necessary to society and he must be permitted to engage in it without sacrificing his children.

As already indicated I believe that the plan for distributing our school fund should be changed. Surely so long as our fund remains so small not one cent should go anywhere excepting where it will do great good. What do we need of your distributable fund in McLean county, where our rural school rate is 73 cents, where we can build a million dollar court house, or $75,000.00 ward schools? Contributed according to abilities, this fund should be distributed according to needs. Townships with a total assessed valuation high enough so that they can get all necessary school advantages with a school tax rate of $2.00 or less should get none of the fund; the distribution among the remaining townships should vary inversely as the total valuation of property and directly as the rate levied for school purposes by the township itself. Even Heaven helps only those who need help and who help themselves, Massachusetts likewise. Who will doubt the wisdom of a plan followed both by Heaven and by Massachusetts?