ought in efforts to do so, far more heavily, indeed, than the State as a whole; and that, if they received aid from a State tax intended to help their schools, they could be trusted to use that aid for the welfare of their schools. The help that well-to-do communities might give to other well-to-do communities was likely to be an incident, it was claimed, of any general legislation; it certainly has its parallel in every form of general taxation under which money raised by a whole is distributed in expenditure among its parts; and so, however preposterous such needless help might be made to look when isolated and viewed by itself, it should not be used as an argument against a policy that, viewed in a large way, bade fair to prove a beneficent one both for the whole that should raise the money and the parts that should receive the benefits thereof. Without giving at length the arguments for and against the measure, it is enough here to say that there seemed to be an irreconcilable difference of opinion as to whether the money raised under the measure would go to the schools or not. "The bill contains no guarantee to that effect," said one side. "No guarantee to that effect is necessary," said the other. Inasmuch, however, as all parties have united in increasing the State school requirements, are sympathetic witnesses of the burdens these requirements have imposed upon many towns, and are practically agreed that the State should relieve such towns from a part, at least, of the load they must carry if they are to have good schools, though not agreed as to the best way of doing so, it is worth inquiring whether common ground cannot be found for a State policy that shall insure good schools where it gives aid. The problem is a complicated one. A similar one, with fewer factors and of less difficult solution, was successfully handled in framing the law for distributing the income of the school fund. If the Legislature should direct an inquiry to be made by competent persons into the nature of this larger problem with special reference to suggesting legislation for its solution, it is by no means improbable that a measure can be devised of greater real help to the schools than the several helpful but partial measures now in existence, involving, doubtless, a greater expenditure by the State than at present, but imposing a less serious tax upon the wealthier places of the state than some of the propositions to which they have taken exception. . . . It should not be forgotten that Massachusetts stands almost alone among the States of the Union, in putting, with very modest exceptions, the full burden of the schools upon the towns and cities themselves. VI. INEQUALITIES IN TAXING POWER FOR SCHOOLS IN ILLINOIS [From an article by O. L. Manchester, on the proposed changes of the Illinois Educational Commission in relation to school revenues, published in the 28th Bien. Rept. Supt. Publ. Instr. Illinois, 1908-10, pp. 493-499.] No school revenue system is good enough for Illinois that does not tendèr every child eight months a year elementary instruction in an easily accessible and not over-crowded school taught by a teacher who not only earns but gets at least a legal minimum wage of $50.00 a month. No revenue system will be from now on quite good enough for the great State of Illinois unless it proffers every qualified boy and girl a free high school education. Illinois boys and girls are as good as those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Indiana, and there is no use in our hedging any longer upon this question. Any acceptable school revenue system must provide that this education be furnished and paid for by the local school unit if that be possible without excessive taxation; if not, that the State stand good for what is wanting. And, finally, all this must be done with the least possible inequality and injustice in the distribution of the burden. Now, how far does the present scheme for school support fill the bill? It takes $480.00 to run a rural school in fair shape for eight months $400.00 for the teacher and the $80.00 for incidentals. The ordinary school district is four square miles. It contains 2,560 acres. As the value of personalty runs for Illinois about one-fourth that of realty, we may neglect it in our calculations and count 3,200 acres. Now if land in the district is assessed at $6.00 an the assessed being one-fifth of the real value under the $2.50 tax limit for general purposes we can get just the $480.00 for our school. Such a district needs no aid if it taxes itself to the limit. acre The conditions of our school revenue problem were set for us 40,000 years ago. In the southern end of our State, covering largely seven counties, reappearing also in the elevated northwest corner in Jo Daviess, and in Pike and Calhoun to the west, is an area untouched by glaciation. Land in four of these ten counties is assessed and equalized at $2.50 an acre and in all but one of the others at $5.00 or less. South and east of the Kaskaskia river and so far north as to include Clark and Cumberland, with Bond and Monroe just across the river, is the lower Illinois glaciated area. The equalized values here vary from $3.50 to $5.50 per acre. In all the rest of the State the figures run from $6.00 to $16.50, There are then thirty-six counties in Illinois where land values are so low that rural districts of proper size, if without railroads, cannot expect without State aid to support in good shape their schools. Just what do such counties do? In Alexander, Clay, Effingham, Jefferson, and Wayne counties, land is assessed at $4.00, men's wages average $45.59, women's $35.58; school keeps 6.7 months, and the average enrollment is thirty-nine. The district varies from 4.4 square miles in Jefferson to 7.7 square miles in Alexander. The school tax averages $1.86. In Franklin, Hamilton, and Massac counties, land is valued at $3.50, the district averages five square miles, school runs seven months, the average enrollment is fifty-five, the tax rate $1.86, wages $39.00 for men, and $35.50 for women. In Hardin, Johnson, Pope, and Pulaski, land is $2.50, which would mean a maximum school tax of $200.00, did they not put 5.6 square miles into their districts. They run their schools six months, the enrollment averages forty-four, the school tax is $2.23. They pay men $40.00 and women $34.00. Now let us come to the best farming sections of the State. In McLean county land is assessed at $16.50, in Livingston and Logan at $16.00, in Champaign, Ford, Piatt, and Woodford, at $15.00. The maximum tax obtainable is from $1,320.00 to $1,200.00. The district is 4.4 square miles, the school year eight months, the average enrollment twenty-three, the tax rate $1.30. Men get $63.90, women $45.76. Comparing the twelve southern counties with these seven in central Illinois, we find that in the latter school runs one-fifth longer, the men's wages are one-half and women's wages one-third higher, but that in the southern schools the enrollment is twice as great, while the tax rate is fifty per cent higher. But it will not do to rely too implicitly upon averages. Mark Twain's watch averaged well, but never was right, and we have heard that a donkey got drowned once upon a time in a stream that averaged eight inches deep. And this comparison of tax rates, obtained by dividing aggregate county school levies by total county assessed values, under-states the inequality because of the greater number of villages and cities with their higher rates in central Illinois. Eliminate from the calculation for McLean county, for example, twenty-five city and village districts, whose rates average $2.19, then average the remaining 240 rates appearing on the county clerk's books, and we get a purely rural school rate of seventy-three cents. Indeed the average of all actual rates for McLean county last year was only eighty-six cents; in Livingston, ninety cents for general purposes, in Logan ninety-two, and in Piatt $1.18. Now as in Hardin, Pope, Johnson, and Pulaski counties there are only two cities and only three villages of 500 people or more, their rate of $2.23 is essentially a country school rate. It is safe to say that in that poorer Illinois, school rates are two or three times as high as here, although for their money they are getting shorter terms, crowded schools, poorer instruction, and almost no high schools. But poorer Illinois is not all in the southern end of the State; it is scattered all through the State. And again, neighboring districts anywhere vary much in size with consequent differences in tax rates. And, finally, the presence or absence of railroads and of cities and villages has an important bearing upon tax rates. When these things conspire in their operation the result is truly interesting. As samples of high rates, may be quoted these from Sangamon county for this year: $1.90, $2.00, $2.50, $2.45, $3.30, $2.00, $3.20, $3.20, $1.85, $5.00, $3.30. As samples of low rates may be quoted these from the same county: 65, 55, 66, 55, 64, 57, 64, 46, 62, 64, 40, 66 cents. In Morgan county last year one rate was below 25 cents; fourteen were between 26 and 50 cents; twenty-six between 51 and 75 cents; thirty-three between 76 and $1.00; eighteen between $1.01, and $1.25; ten between $1.26 and $1.50; four between $1.51 and $1.75; eight between $1.76 and $2.00; two between $2.01 and $2.25; and one between $2.26 and $2.50. The average was 98 cents. In Edwards county there was none below 25 cents, but for the next nine classes above the number of rates ran successively, 1, 5, 16, 11, 9, 3, 2, 1, 4; and one rate was $3.70; another $4.20. The average rate was $1.36. There is a little district in Macon county, District No. 32, Hickory Point Township, just north of Decatur, which is one-fourth regular size, one-half mile wide and two miles long, Its school rate last year was $2.58. In Mt. Hope township, McLean county, there are two big country districts, each containing nine or ten square miles. They levied $500.00 and $350.00 last year respectively, and their school tax rates were 38 and 26 cents. The adjoining township of Funk's Grove contains two more such excrescences; their rates last year were 32 and 17 cents. A few years ago I went into the county clerk's office at Clinton, De Witt county, to look through the tax books. The first township I struck was Tunbridge and the first districts therein Nos. 75 and 76. No. 75 was of ordinary size and was blessed with a railroad that furnished onethird of the total valuation. It levied $400.00 last year and got off with a rate of $1.10. No. 76 was small and hilly and had no railroad. It levied $50.00 less, but got a rate of $2.46, or two and |