the policy of the board in every particular. If errors have been committed, the lessons taught thereby will not need repeating. Time will strengthen that which is weak, and experience will supply whatever may be wanting.

The report of the board is so full, and comprehensive, that it will not be necessary for me to refer to our several eleemosynary, penal, and reformatory institutions in detail. I commend the report itself to your careful personal perusal and consideration. It sets forth at some length the various needs of the several institutions under its management. For all necessary demands, it will be the duty of this general assembly to make provision. Great care should be exercised that the revenues of the state be not wasted; but, while this is true, the unfortunate inmates of our hospitals for the insane, the Institution for the FeebleMinded, the College and the Industrial Home for the Blind, the School for the Deaf, the Soldiers' Orphans' home, and especially the Soldiers' home, should be cared for-not lavishly, but lib. erally. The people of the state will approve a policy that insures ample food and suitable clothing for the inmates of all these institutions, and the employment of teachers, where required, the equal in qualification and aptness with those engaged by public school boards to instruct the more fortunate. It is idle to suppose that equivalent talent can be obtained to teach the same branches to the deaf, the blind, and the feebleminded at less wages than are paid amid more congenial surroundings. Intellectual ability and skill have a market value; and the state or individual that buys below current rates will receive corresponding service. The dominant sentiment of Iowa is favorable to good wages, and the state should not by example teach private corporations lessons in economy at the expense of labor. All that the people of the state of Iowa require is 100 cents in service for each dollar expended, and no one need ever expect more. The board of control will neither squander nor recklessly expend any appropriation the general assembly may place at its disposal.

The several institutions under the control of the board have in the aggregate 4,189 acres of land, valued at $300,849. The buildings thereon are valued at $7,482,735, and the personal property at $597,134.77, making a total of $8,380,718.77. There were being cared for at these institutions June 30, 1899, 6,980 persons.

There was expended during the period for the support of inmates....

For improvement to buildings and grounds

....

$2,114,619.75 452,653.80

Total expenditures of the term......... $ 2,567,273.55

Of the support fund $1,148,126.80 was expended the first and $966,492.95 the second year of the biennial period—a difference of $181,633.85 in favor of the last year of the term.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

The public school system of Iowa has had many encomiums pronounced upon it, and needs none from me. To say that it was never better, or that no state in the union has ever pursued a wiser policy, is not equivalent to saying that ours cannot be improved. To say that it has accomplished great things for the people of our state does not imply that it cannot be made more efficient. Within the memory of persons now living, women were denied a college education, and the first woman to be graduated from any coeducational institution of learning, if now living, is but little past the prime of life. A revolution has been wrought in these matters; and, while no one would return to former conditions, yet a system which results in the graduation of 1,839 young ladies from the high schools of Iowa the current year, and only 954 young gentlemen, is weak at a vital point. These graduations are from town and city schools, for rural districts do not generally afford high school privileges. That town and city schools are superior to those in rural districts will be readily observed as soon as the policy pursued by each is compared. As soon as a girl arrives at the age of 17, she finds ready employment as the mistress of a country public school. If she proves to be proficient, and possessed of aptness to teach, after a few terms in some summer school or perhaps a year of normal training, and after having attended a few county institutes, she may secure a position, at better wages, in an intermediate grade in town, where her efforts are supplemented by the supervision of a principal or a city superintendent of schools, whose talents command from $1,200 to $3,000 per annum. Here she has also the advantages of regular teachers' meetings, and association with advanced scholarship and skill. If she still improves, she may be promoted to the primary department at yet increased wages, for it is now recognized

that the best talent is demanded in the primary teachers. Or, if after alternating in teaching and attending school she obtains a collegiate education, she may secure a position in a city high school. But if she makes little or no improvement she will continue in the rural districts, with no supervision other than a county superintendent, who, owing to his varied duties and extensive field, is necessarily unable to examine her work very often, if ever. Let this custom be continued, and boys will not remain in school, as in former generations, until past school age; and, so long as a majority of the teachers, in town and city schools, are women and girls, so long will a majority of the graduates be of the same sex. Our girls should be educated; but that does not imply that our boys should not be, and a policy that retires the latter from school, at 14 and 15 years of age, needs amendment.

In several counties of the state the experiment has been tried of maintaining a central township graded school, to and from which the pupils are conveyed in carriages, at public expense. Wherever this plan has been adopted the results have been most satisfactory. The enrollment has been thereby invariably increased, and the attendance has been more regular; better teachers have been employed, with correspondingly improved scholarship, and in addition the expenses have been very considerably reduced. This is the experience also of other states where the practice has become quite general. I think this plan should be encouraged by specific legislation. I am not prepared to advise that, at present, it be made universal. It is probable that the erection of no more single room subdistrict schoolhouses should be permitted. Some encouraging legislation should, I think, be enacted looking toward the establishment of graded schools within easy access of every farm in Iowa. This can be accomplished gradually, by replacing existing schoolhouses with central two or more room buildings, as fast as occasion to rebuild arises. The vocation of the farmer, which is so admirably adapted for rearing industrious, and therefore self-supporting, children, must not become offensive because of the want of school privileges. The generation now represented by the youth of Iowa corresponds in outward conditions to that from the Atlantic states which controlled the affairs of this nation-politically, educationally, professionally, and commercially-a half century ago, and to the generation, reared in the states bordering the Alleghanies, which is now in

control. The children of the Mississippi valley will be in command in turn, and they, like their predecessors, will be the sons of the first progressive, ambitious generation. They will have been bred, born, and reared amid industrious and hopeful surroundings; and in the future, as in the past, a goodly percentage will be from the rural districts. It should be the privilege of the general assembly to make the best possible provision for the development of the intellectual resources of Iowa, which have never been equaled by any generation, and are not likely soon to be excelled.

In this and kindred matters economy is not the synonym for statesmanship. With a central graded school in each township, and with a superintendent of these schools at such a salary as will command the best talent in the market, to be selected by a board in the same manner as city superintendents are chosen, and the employment of a corps of matured teachers, a fair proportion of whom should be men, would wonderfully augment the effectiveness of our educational system, and insure the retention in the schools of our boys as well as our girls.

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

The foregoing observations naturally lead to the question of normal schools. Iowa possesses one such institution under state control and management. This has facilities to reasonably accommodate six hundred pupils. During the last year the attendance has averaged over one thousand. A better class of students never congregated. They are not sent to the State Normal school in the fond hope that they may develop into something, at some time, but they come voluntarily and many of them at their own expense, with the settled purpose to make men and women of themselves, to take their places in the battle of life, and to bear their share of the world's burdens. The school is grossly overcrowded. not believe its capacity ought to be materially increased. There is a limit in number over which an instructor can exercise a personal influence. Until character is firmly established, and the bent of attainment and desire well fixed, the best results have ever been accomplished by comparatively small institutions, even when the equipment has been below the standard. Afterwards, the great university, with its thousands of students, has its place. From seven to eight

hundred pupils is, in my opinion, the maximum for any one normal school. I should be glad to see a state normal established on each of the great trunk railways of Iowa. I think it would be better to locate them thus than to follow geographical divisions, for the reason that distance is not so important a factor as accessibility. It is frequently more difficult to compass thirty miles north and south than to cross the state from east to west. There are quite a number of localities ready, and anxious, to make to the state donation of spacious grounds and suitable buildings, already erected, adequate for a school with an attendance of from two to five hundred. Other communities are willing to donate grounds and subscribe the needed money to build. I think it would be both wise and prudent for the general assembly at this session to locate at least four normal schools. Forty or fifty thousand dollars in property can be secured as a donation with each school thus located. This would equal an appropriation of two hundred thousand dollars. It would cost less to put these schools in operation than to build the equivalent in additions to the existing plant, and be much more advantageous to the patrons than one gigantic institution, where student influences are quite liable to overbalance that of teachers and instructFive normal schools will not be an oversupply for Iowa. Massachusetts has ten; New York twelve; Pennsylvania thirteen; Wisconsin, with a less population than Iowa already maintains seven; while Minnesota and Missouri each has four; and Illinois is building her fifth.

ors.

In the absence of some affirmative legislation looking to the speedy establishment of more normal schools under state control, I think some encouragement should be extended to private and denominational colleges that are now maintaining, or that may elect to maintain, a normal department the equivalent in grade to that established by the state. What Iowa needs is educated teachers. This she ought to provide for by furnishing the requisite facilities for educating and training

But, so long as the state fails to do this, she ought to reward the enterprise and philanthropy that seek to meet the demand. I see no reason why the board of educational examiners may not be safely empowered to prescribe a course of study, and professional training, which, if adopted and carried out in private schools, shall entitle the graduates therefrom to the same official recognition, and to the same class of diploma