diminished by the amount of money paid to the other town, and by the amount of the indebtedness of the district apportioned to the town, shall be remitted by the town to the tax-payers of the portion of such district within its limits in collecting the equalization tax, provided for in section seven, in the same manner as in the case of other districts entirely within the town.

SEC. 9. No powers of school districts or any officers thereof, except such as are reserved or given by this act, shall be exercised after September first, 1887, but every school district then existing may preserve its organization and necessary pówers for the purpose of closing and settling up its affairs, and especially for the purpose of managing and paying any of its indebtedness not devolved upon the town.

SEC. 10. At the close of each month, unless the town otherwise vote, the chairman of the board of selectmen of each town shall, upon the written application of the chairman of the school committee, draw orders upon the town treasurer, which shall be by him honored, for the payment of all expenses incurred in the maintenance of the public schools, and detailed in such written application.

SEC. 11. The school year shall, in the year 1888, and thereafter, end on the fifteenth day of July, and said day shall be substituted for the thirty-first day of August, in all estimates, reports, and certificates relating to schools in which the latter day has been required by law to be taken as the end of a year of

account.

SEC. 12. This act, with the exception of section eleven, shall not apply to any town which has a city within its limits.

SEC. 13. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent herewith are hereby repealed.

Mr. BAILEY said:

The whole aim and object of this bill is to secure to every school, and to every child, equal privileges; and your committee believes it accomplishes its object.

We shall have better schools, because all of them will be under one management; each and every child will have equal advantages with others living in the same town; it will be more economical and more business-like, and better in every way.

1. This is not a bill to abolish, nor necessarily to unite schools, but to secure to all the schools of a town, throughtown management, equal advantages.

2. The bill makes it the duty of the towns to care directly for the schools in all particulars, the same as they do for roads, bridges, etc. Most of the matters relating to schools are already under town management; the towns are charged with the support, but are denied the right to hire and pay the teachers and to have charge of school buildings; the district hires, the town pays; the temptation is for the district to create expense and for the town to overlook special needs; this bill will remedy these evils, because it will give to the towns final authority and responsiblity, which now no one has.

3. The business pertaining to schools can be all done at the annual town meetings, where the taxes which support the schools are laid, and it is but just that the same body and the same persons which furnish the money shall say how it shall be expended.

4. I will mention some of the evils that have grown up under our present system. There is inequality of school privileges in the same town; some children can attend school forty weeks, while others, not ten rods away, can only attend twenty-four weeks, simply because they are not in the same district. Locality determines the amount, and sometimes the quality, of schooling; consequently about one-half the children of the State must grow up with about one-half the advantages of education that the others have. We call our schools free; this is true only in part; our best schools are only free to those living in large districts or favored localities; others must take the small portion that their unfortunate position or their poverty permits. The money comes from the State and town tax, and then is generally apportioned to support a school of the minimum length, and without any regard for obtaining the most for the money; the effort seems to be to maintain the greatest number of schools for the least money. This process has gone on in one town, until with 158 scholars, ten districts are maintained at a cost of between $1300 and $1400 for the whole town; this money is largely thrown away, be

cause the schools are poor and short. As has been said, with - fewer and fewer scholars, less and less money, schools in the back districts run down, they are regarded as of little consequence, therefore little time or money is bestowed upon them; under the present system no continuous education can be gained, and where strong men and women were once trained, the endeavor now is to give as little training as possible to as few as possible.

Many of our best families leave the country towns for no other reason in the world than to get to a place where their children can have the advantages of good schools. There are ninety-five towns in the State that to-day have fewer children than they did ten years ago (see page 160, Report of Board of Education, 1886).

The present system is killing the schools in our farming towns, and driving the boys and girls to the cities where they can be educated.

Much has been said about "the Little Red School-house on the hill." The small and selfish management which would not permit generous dealings with our children has been the cause of many country schools being deserted. This bill proposes to give all towns an opportunity, to build up in a generous way, the schools which are needed, and to give to all of the children, be they rich or poor, equal educational advantages.

The reason that cities are not included, is that they are already provided with good schools. The districts are large and strong enough to take care of themselves; more than all that, of the ten cities in the State, three are already under this system (New London, Bridgeport, New Britain); two of the remaining seven are substantially so, and some of the others partially so. There are so many special laws in regard to city schools, that it would be hard to adjust, equally, the interests of the various districts. In many cities there are large and prosperous schools, apparently not needing the direct attention of the towns that the schools in other localities do. (See General Statutes, page 146, Sec. 12, for school law for cities.)

There are nineteen towns in the State that manage their schools in the way that this bill proposes, and in those nineteen towns the average attendance is four per cent. greater than in towns under the old system.

This is not an untried plan. Two of the New England States have adopted it altogether, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and all the rest of the States in New England in part; more than 200,000 of the people of our own State are conducting their schools under this system, and upwards of 3,000,000 of people in New England are under it; more than all that, but seven States in the Union are working under the old system.

I have heard no one give a good reason why this bill should

not pass.

Objection was made in the House to the arbitrary character of this bill; every law in the world is so, and must be so, to be a law; the law says, every parent or guardian having charge of children must cause his children or wards to attend school, and to be instructed in certain branches; no one feels this to be an interference with private rights; this Senate has just passed a bill that said no minor shall be employed more than ten hours per day, and another that said, that payments shall be made weekly for all wages.

Is one any more compulsory than the other? or does one interfere with private rights more than another?

The law says that districts must maintain schools, twenty-four weeks at least; children must attend all the time, or sixty days, or else they shall not be employed in any work.

This right of the State to use the word shall, is enforced by the fact that the State furnishes a large sum of money each year to support the schools; from the school fund comes annually $114,000, and from State tax $228,000, which goes to the towns directly from the treasury; the State requires a census of its children in order to justly distribute this large sum of money; it fails in its duty, if it fails to make provision for the best and wisest use of this amount. This money is now paid to the towns from the State, the towns give it to the various districts, the latter handle it as they please, so that the town cannot see that it is properly used. The power is now confided to

a very few, who, in a despotic way, can hire the teachers, manage the schools to their own advantage, to suit themselves without regard to the interests of the children, or the town, which is charged with the support of the schools.

MR. SUMNER said:

Mr. President, Connecticut used to have perhaps the best school system in the world. I believe we have many good schools to-day, particularly in the cities, but I have taken pains to talk with some of those who know most about our public schools and they tell me that a very large proportion of our common schools hardly offer anything to children which is fit to be called education. It seems to me time that something was done. The evil seems to be the worst in outlying and poor districts of our country towns.

The only remedy for such cases is the one provided by this bill. We must hold the towns responsible for providing means of a good education for every child within their limits. It makes me a little impatient to hear some people argue that we ought not to say "shall" to the towns. A law isn't good for much that doesn't say shall. There is no justice in allowing the people whose property lies in a rich school district to perpetuate the present system. There is no reason why a farm or a building because it is in one part of the town should pay a heavier rate of taxation than property which lies in another part of the town. Furthermore, the State gives to the towns annually the sum of $350,000 for the purpose of educating children between the ages of four and sixteen years, and it may surely say that no town shall use that money without assuming the responsibility of giving equal opportunities of a good common school education to all the children within its borders.

I think I heard some one say that he didn't believe in this bill because it meant centralization. I suppose he said so because for some reason he didn't like the bill and wanted to give it a bad name. If it was really a measure of centralization I

should not favor it. Centralization means the destruction of local self-government. This bill on the contrary means the invigoration of local self-government. The great system of local self-government outlined in our federal constitution is so preg