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It may not be out of place to mention here that the greatest burdens of taxation proportionately, are stood by the poorest section of the State this notwithstanding that there are more cities and villages farther north. The last report of our auditor shows the three highest county aggregate rates to have been: Hamilton, $9.92; Gallatin, $8.04; Jackson, $7.87. Of the thirty-one county rates above $5.00, sixteen belonged to the one-third of the counties southeast of the Kaskaskia.

The adoption of the township system, the restoration of the two mill tax and its proper distribution, if accompanied by a minimum wage law, will remedy, in the main, every most glaring injustice in the workings, if not of our revenue system, at least of our school revenue system. We shall have then a logical system not one that "just growed." If there has been chaos as to school revenue matters in the objective world, it has been because of a chaos in the brain of the schoolmaster. Until the labors of this commission, the school teacher had not thought the thing out. Hitherto we "have seen as through a glass, darkly; now, face to face." How long shall the education of an Illinois boy, his chance in the race of life, depend upon the price of land per acre in the county where he is born, or upon the track of a glacier made 40,000 years ago?

In the public schools of Illinois must be amalgamated the children of a score of nationalities. Not of the same race, they must be made to be of the same mind. From the slums of Chicago, or from the wharves of Cairo, the State of Illinois will not hesitate when need be to call them forth in her defence to spill their blood or risk their lives. Them too, Illinois will entrust with the sacred ballot and them she will expect to be able to solve the intricate political and social problems of an increasingly complex civilization. To them Illinois owes a duty commensurate with what she expects of them. Then Illinois must educate, if not for their sake, then for her own. If this great experiment in democracy goes down, it will be for lack of sufficient elementary and high school education of the right sort. And such an education is after all largely a matter of revenue. Good revenue systems have done much to make, and bad to unmake great states. Our liberties, which have been won in battles over taxation during the last thousand years, are to be preserved in struggles of the same sort. It is to-day for the teachers and the people of Illinois to tiptoe a little, look over and beyond the hedges of all narrow and individual and class interests, stop trying to preserve the obsolescent, and unite to give Illinois an adequate school revenue system.

CHAPTER XVIII

APPORTIONMENT AND SUBSIDIES

MUCH has also been written on this question, and only a few of the more important extracts and laws are here reproduced. The first extract sets forth a condition as it existed in Michigan in 1910, and is illustrative of the inequalities in distribution naturally arising under the census basis of apportionment. It also illustrates a peculiar condition which might easily arise in any state using this basis if the funds for school support were materially and rapidly increased. The second is a good statement of the inequalities existing under the census basis of apportionment, illustrated from conditions in Ohio. The third is a good statement of the fundamental principles which ought to prevail in arranging laws for the apportionment of public funds for education.

I. DISTRIBUTION OF STATE SCHOOL MONEY IN MICHIGAN

[From the Rept. Supt. Publ. Instr. Mich., 1909-1910, pp. 40-44.]

CONDITIONS IN MICHIGAN

The fact that, in the future, from four to five millions of dollars will be apportioned annually,' leads us to inquire whether this money is being distributed in such a manner as to give the people of the State the greatest possible benefit. The question of its equitable distribution is a serious one indeed when we study existing conditions.

Michigan is a state having very diverse conditions. The wealth of the people varies and the population is unevenly distributed. Some parts are exceedingly wealthy, others very poor. The townships in the southern part vary in valuation, some having a valua

1 This will amount to from six to seven dollars per census child.

tion as high as $4,000,000 while in the northern counties are townships with a valuation of $3,000 or less. In the southern part of the Lower Peninsula, we have nearly a thousand districts each having a school population of fifteen or less children. The average attendance at school in these districts is not more than eight pupils, and many maintain only five months of school. Through the central part of the Lower Peninsula, where a splendid agricultural district is being developed, are good-sized school districts and a large school population. Generally, in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula we find a scattering population, low valuation of property, and great difficulty in maintaining schools. In the Upper Peninsula, the population is more generally gathered in villages and cities, although in recent years the agricultural possibilities are being rapidly developed. There are single rural school districts in the Lower Peninsula whose valuation is $1,500,000. There are other school districts in the Lower Peninsula with a valuation of less than $1,000. In the counties of Oscoda, Crawford, Montmorency, Kalkaska, Roscommon, Clare, Lake, and Newaygo, is found a scattered population and a very low valuation of property and with this, many times, but few families to compose a school district. It is extremely burdensome to those people to raise a school tax sufficient to support their school and, having but few children, they get but a small amount of the primary school interest fund, hence it is extremely difficult to maintain a school in these districts even for five months, as the statute requires.

THE SCHOOL CENSUS BASIS

The distribution of the primary school interest fund at present is based upon the school census of the several districts as taken by the school directors, or under the authority of the school boards, during the fifteen days prior to the first Monday in June of each year. Fifty per cent of the census lists sent to this Department have to be returned for correction. In some cases we have been obliged to order a new census because of inaccuracies and because of violations of the law in including persons not entitled to be included. These inaccuracies are found in city, village, and rural districts, but from the nature of the case it is more difficult to secure an accurate school census in cities than it is in rural districts. In many places the enumerators appointed to take the census have been persons entirely unaccustomed to clerical work and especially unaccustomed to the arduous task of securing an accurate census. In one instance, the census was taken by a girl sixteen years old. In other cases, the census was taken by persons under

the direction of a school officer who could neither read nor write. In some of our larger cities the Department has been obliged to require a large number of names to be stricken from the lists because they were illegally included. It is a well known fact that people are constantly moving from one ward to another, from one city to another, from one district to another, and it is clear that school officers are unable to secure an accurate school census.

All these things make it clear that to base an apportionment of school funds upon the school census renders some districts liable to receive less money than they should and others liable to receive more money than that to which they are justly entitled. In the same township one school district has a large census and an adjoining district a very small one, but the fact that the school population varies is no reason why the public school in each district should not be thoroughly and amply supported, and yet, with the present method of apportionment, the district with a large census receives a large sum of money, the adjoining district with a smaller census receives less money, though the latter may be really deserving or really in need of more money than the first mentioned district. This condition of things prevails in every township of the State of Michigan, as reports to this Department clearly show. If the State is to assist in the support of the public schools, every district should receive the same treatment at the hands of the State. There is no reason why the children in Clare county, Crawford county, or any other county in the State, who live in the rural districts, should not have as good educational opportunities as are enjoyed by the children of the cities and villages. The Department each year receives letters from parents and taxpayers in different parts of the State, particularly in the northern portion of the Lower Peninsula, requesting that something be done that they may have a school and their children receive an education. One parent wrote that he had a family of eight children, the oldest seventeen years of age, that he was eight miles from a school, and not one of his children had ever attended school a day in his life. We sometimes are so engrossed with the consideration of how great we are and what a fine school system we have that we forget that many children even in the great State of Michigan are practically deprived of school privileges, whereas if the funds were more equitably distributed, or if the State Superintendent had authority to use the surplus of these funds in some of these specific cases, very much better results might be attained.

METHODS OF APPORTIONMENT

The problem of apportioning the primary school interest fund in Michigan is one of the greatest problems, in my judgment, before the people at this time and one that deserves the most careful and conscientious consideration.

The statutes provide in Section 4676 of Compiled Laws, that the primary school interest fund shall be used for teachers' wages only, and in Section 4665 the one mill tax shall be used for teachers' wages until the district has maintained eight months of school. If there is a surplus of one mill tax after having maintained school for eight months, such surplus may be used for general running expenses of the school. There are rural school districts in the State which have from $500 to $5,000 of primary school interest fund on hand which has accumulated during recent years and which cannot be used for anything but teachers' wages. The apportionment of primary school interest fund for the year 1905 was $3.30 per capita, and the reports to this office show that with this rate of apportionment over 300 districts received more primary school interest fund than they expended for teachers' wages, to say nothing of the one mill tax, and that 1,700 additional districts received more money from primary school interest fund and one mill tax than was expended for teachers' wages. In 1907, 1,296 school districts in the State received more primary school interest fund alone than they paid for teachers' wages, and 3,297 districts received from the primary school interest fund and one mill tax an amount equal to or greater than the amount paid for teachers' wages. In July, 1908, there were 1,054 school districts in the State having enough primary money on hand to pay the teachers for two years.

There are 7,330 school districts in the State and, of this number, more than 1,000 districts receive so small an amount, because of the small number of children, that it is of practically no benefit whatever, and these people are obliged to support their school by the one mill tax and the direct taxes levied upon the district. It appears to me, therefore, that the present method of apportioning the primary school interest fund is absolutely unjust and inequitable. I am convinced that the people of the State are practically a unit in favor of the proposition that the primary school interest fund shall be used for teachers' wages and tuition only and also that a very large number of our people have no objection whatever to the levying of the one mill tax under the statutes of the present time, which provide in Section 4705 of the Compiled Laws, as amended in 1905, that when a district has on hand a sum equal to or greater than the amount paid for teachers' wages the one mill

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