3. THE SALINE FUND. The enabling act of Congress in 1816 donated to Indiana all salt springs within the State, and the lands reserved near them, and such other lands as the President of the United States might deem necessary for working these springs-the whole amount of the reserve not to exceed 36 sections. The lands were not to be sold nor leased for any period longer than ten years. In 1832 this restriction was removed, and in 1833 the lands were ordered to be sold and the proceeds appropriated to the commonschool fund. The lands sold on this account amounted to 23,829 acres789 acres more than the stipulated 36 sections, and the school fund has received from this source more than $85,000. This was distributed among the counties by the act of 1845. These "salt lands" are now valuable health resorts, French Lick and West Baden Springs being among the most famous. 4. THE SINKING FUND. This fund has been classed by some as properly belonging to the bank fund. Its origin is to be found in the State's relation to the State bank of 1834. In order to take stock in the bank the State issued her bonds for the money, which it was necessary to borrow. In order to provide for the payment of these bonds and the interest thereon, a sinking fund was established by the bank law of 1834, which was to consist of all unapplied balances of the procured loans, the semiannual interest, and the dividends on the stock of the State. It was stipulated by this law that after paying these loans and all expenses relating thereto, "the residue of said fund shall be a permanent fund and be appropriated to the cause of common-school education in such manner as the General Assembly shall hereafter direct." A board of sinking-fund commissioners was appointed to care for this fund. In 1859-60 a small part of the revenue derived from this source, $350,948.65, was distributed among the counties of the State. In 1865 the sinking-fund commission was abolished and the remainder of the fund was invested in State stocks and Government bonds, and on this account the State pays interest to the common-school fund in the sig nificant sum of $3,904,783.22. The semiannual interest from this source is $117,143.49 The fund is safely secured to the purposes of education by the Constitution of the State. 5. THE SEMINARY FUnd. The State, under the Constitution of 1816, had not been very generous to the old county seminaries. The early Constitution itself provided that the money paid for exemption from military duty and fines for breach of the penal laws should be given for the use of these seminaries. The act of 1852, soon to be considered, provided that "all county seminary buildings, grounds, and other property belonging to the State shall be sold by the county auditor and treasurer and the proceeds of such sales shall be added to the common-school fund." The counties did not make exact reports of sales and it is not known what amount was received or lost from this source. The gain to the fund from this source is supposed to be in excess of $100,000. The summary of these various school funds of Indiana is given by State Superintendent La Follette, in his report of 1888, as follows: Common-school fund held by counties, June, 1888 ... Total....... $3,247, 643. 57 3,904, 783. 21 2,502, 125. 27 9,654, 552.55 This is an increase of nearly $1,000,000 since the Centennial exhibit of 1876, and the school revenues have increased more than $200,000 within the same time. It was the purpose of the general assembly, in the first school law enacted under the new Constitution, to consolidate all these funds into one common fund, but the law to this effect was declared unconstitutional by the supreme court in 1854, the court holding that the Congressional township fund could not be merged with the others. This magnificent sum, now nearly $10,000,000, shall remain, according to the fundamental law of the State, "a perpetual fund, which may be increased but shall never be diminished, the income thereof shall be inviolably appropriated to the support of common schools and to no other purpose whatever." This is a significant passage in the Constitution of Indiana. It is the solemn guarantee of the State that the school fund shall be zealously guarded and never diverted from the purposes of education. The provision of the Constitution has been carried out in law, and the school fund is secured from loss by as careful a scheme as human ingenuity and legal science can devise. It may be truly said that, while the fund will constantly increase through the provisions made by the Constitution and the law-from swamp lands, fines, escheats, forfeitures, and licenses-it is virtually impossible for the fund to grow less. It is always gaining, and it can never lose. The moneys intrusted to the counties are in the care of the county auditors. The State is responsible to the fund-the counties are responsible to the State-the auditors are responsible to the counties. Each county is charged 6 per cent. of all the money intrusted to it. This the county pays, whether or not its auditor succeeds in making safe loans of the amount to individuals. The auditor may lend from this fund only on the security of first mortgage on real estate, and never in amount more than half the appraised value of the mortgaged property. This provision, in almost all instances, secures the fund. But if by mistake or fraud, if by any connivance of auditor, assessor, and borrower, more of the fund be loaned to an individual than his mortgaged property will make good at public sale, any consequent loss falls, not upon the fund, the last loser in any conceivable energency, nor upon the State, but upon the county itself. The counties are called to the strictest account for every cent of the school fund intrusted to their care. It is interesting to notice also how strictly is interpreted the provi sion that no part of the income of this fund can be used for any other purpose than for tuition in the common schools. None of it can b diverted for buildings, grounds, or equipments. The superintendent of schools in incorporated cities and towns can not be paid from this source; a special tuition tax has been necessary to meet the expenses of these officers, and their salaries come from a distinct and separate source. In addition to the income for tuition which comes from the interest on the various funds which we have described, the State, by a general law, has assessed sixteen cents on the hundred dollars, and fifty cents on each poll for tuition purposes. This, with the interest from the Congressional and common-school funds, brings a yearly revenue to the State for school purposes of about five and a quarter millions of dollars. This sum Indiana is spending every year for the education of her children in her primary schools. It is interesting to reflect in this connection on the influence of the General Government in this direction. It has been constantly a beneficent influence. The United States Government laid the foundation of Indiana's school fund in the grant of the sixteenth section. It had previously given educational encouragement to the State in the grant of university and seminary lands; it added to the common-school fund by the saline reservations of 1816, and made possible further increase by the grant of the swamp lands in 1850, while the deposits of the United States in 1834 were a very material aid in enabling the State to realize such a princely sum to the school fund by the operation of the old State bank. We venture to think that if accounts were strictly reckoned the people of Indiana would find themselves indebted to the General Government not only for the conception and the origin of their school fund, but for the major part of the amount into which it has grown. Indiana is under obligation in many ways to the Government of the United States. In no way may that obligation be more clearly seen than in the history of Indiana education. The States of the Northwest have not been unmindful of the source of so great a benefit; their deep national spirit and their ardent devotion to the Union have proven a memorable reciprocal strength. The year after the Constitution was adopted which gave a fundamental guarantee to the school fund, a new general school law was passed by the assembly. This was the law of June 14, 1852. It attempted to consolidate the various school funds and it provided for a school tax of 10 cents on the hundred dollars. It made school corporations out of the towns and cities and civil townships, and provided for special corporation taxes for the support of schools and the construction of buildings. Township libraries were also provided for in this year, and the libraries resulting from this provision were for many years afterward very valuable in an educational way among the people. The provisions of this law consolidating the funds and authorizing special tuition taxes were soon declared unconstitutional by the supreme court, the latter provision because inconsistent with the requirement that the school law should be "general and uniform." This provision, authorizing a special tuition levy, was revived in 1855 through the influence of the lately organized State Teachers' Association, and the privilege was conferred on incorporated cities and towns. In 1857 it was again declared unconstitutional. In 1867 the special tuition tax was again revived and the privilege conferred upon all school corporations. This provision has never been set aside, and school trustees may now assess taxes for special purposes at as high a rate as 25 cents on the hundred dollars. The law of 1852 contained the substance of the present system. It has been many times amended and strengthened. It is not our purpose to trace in this connection the various slight changes through which it has gone. These additions and changes are noticed in the presentation of the system as it is to-day. Although the State has taken no backward step in its common-school law since 1852, and although the progress of its schools since that time has been the occasion of frequent congratulatory remark, it must not be supposed that the course of free schools has always run smooth among the people. The free-school system, in spite of the many advantages to recommend it, and strong friends to defend it, had to overcome many obstacles and discouragements; it met many unreasoning, dogged, and persistent enemies. Prejudice and ignorance are always stubborn foes to encounter. The old bourbon spirit of opposition, which seems never open to an idea nor subject to death, planted itself squarely to resist the introduction and operation of the new system. Mr. E. P. Cole, one of the ablest educational leaders of that time, and one of the few who were looking a generation ahead, to a condition which the people have since realized, read a paper before the State Teachers' Association August 25, 1857, on the subject of "Indiana-Her educational condition and prospects." This was more than five years after the enactment of the new law. Yet from this paper we learn what the opposition to the free system was in many parts of the State. And he spoke "not alone of the newer and more uncultivated portions of the State, but of those parts claiming a large share of refinement and intelligence." One county for two successive elections returned a majority of 1,900 against the establishment of the free-school system within her boundaries. "From a certain class of people," says Mr. Cole, "we frequently hear language like the following: 'We have lived to old age and made money, too, without any of this book-learning, whose only tendency is to make scoundrels of men, and wishing to shield our children from all such malign influences, we intend that they, too, shall grow up as their parents before them, ignorant of the villainies superinduced by the district school.' But the 75,000 illiterate must by no means bear all the blame of an opposition to our school system. This opposition has its representatives among all classes of our population, and the motives are almost as various as are the opposers; but various as are the motives, they are unsanctified by a single generous, patriotic or intelligent feeling. There are not more than three cities in our State where the question of these schools seems to be settled in the affirmative. There are always men who prefer the exclusiveness of private schools, in which the nobility of their children shall not be tainted by contact with the vulgar crowd attendant upon the free schools. Others resist on account of the tax; having no children of their own, they ignore their relation to the common brotherhood of man, and, in the language of their great exemplar, exclaim, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Corporations forget, purposely, too, to provide the necessary tax, and the school, after having diffused for a while a sound and virtuous education and convinced the people of its superior excellence, is mercilessly garroted. There has not, we believe, been a single session of our legislature since the adoption of the new Constitution, during which a bitter hostility to our school system has not manifested itself. At two several sessions strenuous efforts were made to abolish the office of superintendent of public instruction, and on both occasions the members making the same were so ignorant of the Constitution whose interests they had sworn to subserve, that they did not know that the abolition of the office could not be effected by the leg. islature, being constitutionally provided for. Thwarted at this point, another tack was taken and an effort made to virtually accomplish the same end by so reducing the salary that a perpetual vacancy would be insured. It was only at the last session that a motion was made to postpone indefinitely the operation of the school law. And all efforts to improve that law and make it more efficient were steadily and persistently rejected. These facts do not redound much, we admit, to the credit of those seeking to legislate for the imperishable interests of a great and growing State." This is sufficient to show the character of the opposition which the schools endured. But the stars in their courses fought against the enemies of the schools. The new movement was one of the destined reforms which are proverbial for never retracing their steps. The spirits of the men and women fighting for the schools were stronger than those which fought against them. Changing conditions which touched the lives of the people, the fact |