The amount of stock in these companies held in Michigan Januuary 1st, 1885, was reported at $10,758,760.71; their total indebtedness $345,787,796.36, or $30,231.51 per mile; their total stock and debt was $624,580,650.67, or $54,348.52 per mile; their total cost for Michigan, $222,194,232.28; the total income for Michigan, was $26,847,797.76; total operating expenses, $19,956,786.32. Total passengers carried, 24,782,322. Total tons of freight moved, 36,479,844. Total freight forwarded from Michigan stations, 12,575,793 tons. Average rate per mile for passenger fares, 02.539 cents. Average rate per ton per mile freight carried, 000.904.

The companies for the year 1885 paid into the State treasury taxes amounting to the sum of $634,817.28.

Within the limits of the State there were at the date of the last reports to the railroad department, 1,059 railroad stations and 20,030 employes. Our railroad lines extend into every county of the lower peninsula, save seven; and of that at first despised Upper Peninsula, not a single county is now without railroad facilities. In addition to the six roads that practically run across the State from east to west, two meridian lines extend from our southern boundary to the straits of Mackinaw; while shore lines along the lakes that wash either border, are rapidly extending northward to the same terminal.

In the construction of this comprehensive system of railroads, congressional grants of 3,650,936.78 acres of land have been conceded; to which the State has added 1,595,840.66 acres more of swamp lands, making a grand total of 5,252,777.44 acres received by our railroad corporations, the proceeds of which will go far towards meeting the cost of at present unproductive roads.

Michigan at the close of the first half century of her political history, in all that goes to make a State prosperous aad wealthy and its people contented and happy, may most justly claim to be the peer of any in the Union. Foremost among the causes that have led up to this felicitous result, is the rapidity with which her material resources have been developed through the instrumentalty of her railroads. By a constant recognition of that fact, and the enforcement of the legislative policy which seeks to protect the interests of capital alike with that of the people whom it serves, its continued investment in our railroad properties may be expected, and their permanent usefulness assured.

A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS OF MICHIGAN AND OF THE STATE

NORMAL SCHOOL.

PROF. J. M. B. SILL.

I am asked to contribute two brief sketches, one outlining the history of the common schools, and the other a similar paper on the State Normal school. The limits of time and space prescribed to me, forbid anything more than a condensed statement of what seems to be the salient facts in the history of these State institutions. There is no room for much in the direction of inferences or suggestions.

The term "Common Schools means all the free public schools of the Commonwealth, supported to a greater or less extent by a common public fund, and devoted to the primary and secondary education of the youth of the State.

Thus the term includes not only the isolated country schools, but also the Union and High Schools of the cities and villages, and the extended systems of free public education, sustained and supported in all our towns of any considerable size.

They are common schools because they are common ground where all, whether rich or poor, may meet on a standing of perfect equality; they are institutions wherein in the seeking of a common benefit and in the pursuit of a common interest, distinctions of race and sect, however bitter and sharply drawn, ought to be and are forgotten, and the youth of diverse and even unfriendly sects and nationalities are, by the very nature of their association, trained to a fraternal regard and wholesome mutual respect.

The common schools and the Normal school are fitly united in these sketches. The latter is an outgrowth from the necessities of the former. The chief educational thought, the grand aim of the State being the advancement of her youth in intelligence and in the knowledge essential to good and useful citizenship by means of her common schools, the Normal school was established to render these more efficient in the performance of the great work assigned to them.

The first requisite of good elementary instruction is a sufficient supply of earnest, devoted aud intelligent teachers, and to meet this want and to secure to the common schools their highest measure of efficiency, the Normal school was established and has been cheerfully maintained by the State.

Indeed, so close is the connection between the subjects of these sketches, that most authorities class normal schools as a mere division of common schools. I shall first treat of the common schools.

THE COMMON SCHOOLS.

First, -as to their resources:

In 1785, shortly after the general government had taken possession of the vast area of unoccupied lands lying west of Pennslyvania, north of the Ohio river and eastward from the Mississippi, one thirty-sixth part of this entire Northwest Territory was set apart and reserved "for the support of public schools," and the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the same territory, affirmed this grant or reservation by declaring as follows: "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged."

An act, also of the Congress of the confederation, dated in 1804, making provision for the sale of lands in Indiana Territory comprising the present States of Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, again confirmed this dedication by expressly reserving from sale section No. 16 in every township for the support of schools.

When the Territory of Michigan was organized in 1-05, comprising at that time the lower peninsula of this State, and also a narrow strip of land on the northern border of Indiana and Ohio, there was a further confirmation of the grant for school purposes secured by the acts mentioned above; and in 1828 Congress placed these reserved lands under charge of the Territorial Governor and Council to care for them and to take measures to make them productive of an income for the purposes intended in the grant. Further, the Ordinance of 1836 admitting Michigan as a State into the Union, declares that "Section No. 16, in every township of the public lands, and where such section has been sold or otherwise disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and as contiguous as may be, shall be granted to the State for the use of schools."

Of late some doubt has been thrown upon the motives of Congress in making this beneficent grant. It has been questioned whether it was not a desire to render the public lands salable to

settlers, and so to make a way for the payment of the public debt, rather than a high sense of the value of popular education that prompted the gift. It is true that the close of the war of the Revolution found the General Government almost hopelessly encumbered with a great debt incurred in the exhausting though heroic and brilliantly successful struggle for independence; that to the means for the extinction of this debt which was paralyzing the ambition and barring the prosperity of the new nation, the statesmen of the infant republic were directing their anxious thought and their most earnest endeavors.

But there ought to be little sympathy with any attempt to ascribe to human action any motive lower or meaner than the best and highest that will fully explain and account for it, and, certainly, we can afford to judge these patriotic men by the explanation which they themselves make in the famous declaration already quoted from the Ordinance of 1787. Even if it be granted that members of Congress had in view nothing more than enhancing the value of the public lands and making them more desirable to settlers, this act showed a quick appreciation of the fact that the American people set a high value on universal education, and they recognized this in granting what, of all things, would make such lands most desirable to settlers, viz., a provision for perpetual aid to common schools.

Certainly they were steadfast in the liberal policy first inaugurated. The brief account which I have already given of the history of these dedicatory acts, shows, to the last, no variableness nor shadow of change in the wise and philanthropic policy first formulated in the Ordinance of 1785.

In considering this first grant for the support of common schools, it is hardly necessary to say that the uniform method of survey of public lands lays it off into townships six miles square. This is the largest division of land known to the survey. Each township is subdivided into thirty-six sections, each one mile square, and containing six hundred and forty acres of lands. These sections are numbered consecutively, and section No. 16 is, as nearly as possible, the central section.

The matter of the location of the section reserved for support of schools is significant. Why a central section was fixed upon becomes evident in view of the wording of the Ordinance of 1785, which prescribes that there shall be reserved from sale the lot (sec

tion) No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within said township.

It is plain that it was the original design of Congress to apply the moneys acquired by the sale of lands in each section 16 for the benefit only of the township in which such section was situated.

When Michigan sought admission to the Union, she profited by the experience of some of her sister States. They had taken the grant of land for school purposes under the formula of the Ordinance of 1785 as quoted above. There were many difficulties in the way of such an administration of the trust; the chief one being that the sections numbered 16 differed immensely in value. Some of them were of sufficient value to afford a magnificent fund for the support of the schools in the township of which they were a part; others being of little or no value for this or any other purpose.

The proposition in reference to primary school lands made by the people of the proposed State to Congress, has already been quoted in this paper; and it subsequently became a part of the ordinance admitting Michigan into the Union. It will be seen that the State took jurisdiction of these lands for the benefit of popular education, not in the several townships in which the sections were located, but in the State as a whole. Of the wisdom of this alteration of the original plan of Congress, there can be no doubt. F. W. Shearman, then Superintendent of Public Instruction, in his valuable report for 1852, speaks of it as follows: "In taking the grant to the State, it avoided a multiplicity of officers otherwise located in different counties; it contributed and is still contributing in an unexampled manner to the education of all the youth of the whole State; it has saved many townships from asking legislative aid, where the school section was unavailable, either from prior location by actual settlers, or where the section was covered with heavy timber, which prolonged the event of its being cleared for many years; and in many instances, saving not only time, labor and expense, but the means of education itself to the inhabitants of those townships where the section was entirely unavailable from natural causes, and relieving the inhabitants in such cases from the management of equivalent sections at a distance from their townships."

"In taking the grant to the State, there was a higher principle