USA > Illinois > Clay County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 20
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 20
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The school men say, "Give us compulsory education, then, indeed, will we show the rich fruits of our public schools." To this is answered: "You have had public free schools already more than a generation, and show us what you have done." They claim it is no answer to say look at our fine school- houses all over the land, or the many teach- ers, and the buildings all crowded. These, of themselves, are nothing. They are not responsive to the question, cui bono? that is, where is the good in advancing our civiliza- tion. And they triumphantly quote this passage from the greatest writer on political economy the world has yet produced, as fol- lows: .. How do we measure the progress of our civilization, by work and thoughts of our great geniuses who discover new truths in the mental or physical laws, new and useful inventions in the arts and the promise and expectancy of others still greater to follow these-by the freedom of the people-free. dom from oppression and government med- dling-freedom from errors, freedom from prejudices, and freedom from supersti- tions."
These discussions are a healthy sign of the times. They call the attention of the people to the question of supreme importance to men in this life. If it results in getting the people-the masses, so to speak-to once really understand what is education, it will have done more for mankind than have all the public schools in christendom. That is, it will put the people in the way of taking matters in their own hands-for the people are always wiser than their State government -and evolving from this chaos of inanity a system of real schools where brains will be trained and developed, and not a hothouse yielding largely vagabonds and tramps.
Freedom of discussion, and freedom for men to do their own thinking sometimes, are
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of themselves good schools, probably the best in the world.
It is to be hoped that the future of the schools in the county may be as full of prom- ise as the past has been prolific of the growth and increase that has come here in the sixty years since the first log cabin was dedicated to the purpose of education.
The School Commissioner in 1860, E. A. Johnson, reports total school moneys received $7,681, and that he paid out $7,907.
County School Commissioner, 1864, Cal- vin A. Cooper, reported total amount of money received, $7,068.
In 1868, J. B. Mabry was County Com- missioner, and reported the whole school moneys for distribution that year at $8,958.31.
William A. Vernon was School Superin- tendent, and retired from the office in 1873.
F. M. Woolard elected in 1873, and was succeeded by Ben F. Meeks, and at the end of his term Z. B. West was appointed by the board to serve one year, and in 1882 was · elected for the term he is now serving. His report for 1883 shows the following: Number males under twenty-one in the county, 6,039, number females, 5,985. Total under twenty- one years of age, 12,024; number of males
between the ages of six and twenty-one, 3,928; number of females. 3,834; total be- tween those ages, 7,762. There are two school districts in the county that have no schools. Total number of schools in the county is 121, and of these five are graded schools. Total number of teachers em- ployed, 199. There are 112 schoolhouses, two brick, 101 frame and fourteen log houses. Four districts have libraries. There are two private schools, and in these are fifty-eight pupils and three teachers. The highest monthly wages paid any male teacher being $125, and the lowest $16: high- est monthly wages paid female teacher, $40, lowest $16. Total amount paid male teach- ers, $17,079; total paid females, $8,356. Total amount of district tax levy for the year, $20.693. Total estimated value of school property, $76.508. There are reported as illiterate, between the ages of twelve and twenty-one years, thirty-one. The “inci dental expenses of treasurers and trustees " is reported, 996.31. Amount of interest paid on district bonds, $1,247. Total expendi- tures for the year $35,880.10. The County Commissioner reports his total compensation for the year ending June 30, 1883, at $641.75.
HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
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CHAPTER XII.
RAILROADS-INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS FOLLIES-SOME THOUGHITS ON MUNICIPAL AID-VOTERS AND THEIR DEMAGOGUES-MONOPOLIES AND PAUPERS-THE UNWISDOM OF LAWMAK-
ERS-IGNORANCE IN BULK CONSIDERED-THE FIVE HORSE COURT- SWAMP LANDS-SHARP FIGURING-O. & M. ROAD-AIR LINE-
D. & O. LINE-NARROW GAUGE, ETC., ETC., ETC.
R AILROADS .- As far back as 1837 this ! county was deeply engaged in the grand scheme of building railroads through the county. That was more than a generation ago, and while at first there was nothing but loss and grievous disappointment, yet their children when they came on, joined their fathers in the generous spirit of public enter- prise. and took up the work as soon as the debris of the splendid wreck of the old in- ternal State policy had been cleared away, and while then there was not a county in the State that could boast its mile of railroad track, now there is scarcely a county but that is fairly gridironed with these highways of wealth and commerce.
Judge S. J. R. Wilson tells us he was a member of the surveying party that surveyed the line of a railroad through Wayne County, in 1837. It was intendid to build a line from Mt. Carmel to Alton. The people of Illinois were filled with extravagant day dreams, and they went wild, and the State went daft, and the State commenced not only to make itself and each voter rich, but it would, by a kind of Chinese home protection, build its own. great cities and have them here in Illinois. And the wisdom of the law-makers was exquisitely manifested when they selected Alton, Shaw- neetown, Cairo, Mt. Carmel and a few other places that are not now designated on the mapa, and determined that here the world's
great cities should and would be built. These were great statesmen, and they flour- ished mightily, and the few members of the Legislature who had sense enough to forsee the calamities that awaited their folly, were pooh-poohed down, and a glorious constitu - ency retired them at the first opportunity, to private life. But the bubble burst, and not a mile of railroad track was built, and yet millions of the people's money was squan- dered, and worse than wasted, and bankrupt- cy and pinching poverty were wide spread over the land. A remarkable, yet a common fact in history, was that at that time a commercial panic ran round the civilized world, thus demonstrating that it was the age that these people lived in, more than the special igno- rance and folly of the people of Illinois that evolved this calamity to the young State at that time, and it will sometime become the historian's duty to con the statistics of that age, and tell what movements it was in states and societies that produced this culminating era of blindness and ignorance on these vital questions. The chastisment of the people was long and severe, and it taught them a most wholesome lesson, and in the end perhaps was the best thing that could have happened to them. There is danger that this generation .may forget the story. If the schools that the State runs at such an enormous expense would only hold such lessons as these np to the
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
minds of the young that are placed in their hands, it would tend to recompense somewhat for the outlay of the people's money. It is simply in other words, that proper knowledge of the past that should enable us to avoid the errors of those who have gone before us. Teach the young more of these practical les sons of life, and less of that glittering and fundamental folly of the fathers that "all men are equal." The truth is all men are unequal in every thing and in every way, and governments are instituted solely to increase this natural unequality. One of the most wonderful things in nature is that there are no two things in existence that are ex- actly alike-either hairs, grains of sand or blades of grass, letters in a book or any con- ceivable thing, and this is the very life, the essence of the cosmic worlds and the universe itself.
There are strong-minded men who now doubt that the lesson Illinois had in its young days on the subject of internal im- provements has not been misread to the ex- tent at least that these great improvements are or should be any more the care of the State or municipalities to build than dairies, cheese factories, corn-fields, or cattle and sheep ranches; that the transportation of the commerce of the country is a private business, and, like all such things, it should be left to private enterprise, that always in due time meets the public wants with a prompt supply. A hue and cry runs over the land about crushing monopolies-gigantic combinations of capital that sap the people of their staff of life, and breed wide distress, financial panics and pinching poverty among the la- boring classes, and something of this public complaint arises from the railroads; and it is not mere foolish babbling. At present, per- . long may they laugh at the voters-that pal- haps, what we see of this public disturbance is mere smoke, but certain the fire is some-
where below, and fortunate will it be indeed if the time would soon come when this pub- lic alarm about monopolies in this country should cease for the want of any solid basis of facts to rest upon. A now growing evil has arisen in the last twenty years, and so swiftly has it come that now three men are said to control the commerce, railroads, bank- ing, and the business of the western slope of the continent. And without a blush they boast that they own the State legislatures of their vicinage, and recent confidential let- ters that have found their way to the pub- lic prints, show that their grasping ambi- tion has extended to, and been met with smiles, too, by the Congress of the United States. Could more testimony be wanted when it is an open secret that already the office of United States Senator has been pur- chased more than once, and the rich scoun- drels have filled their terms in the high chamber of justice instead of the penitentiary where they belonged. The monopoly com- bination of capital is made possible in this country only by foolish laws, that were orig- inally made in the great mistake that it was the province and duty of the Government to aid in developing the business of the country. These monopolies, when they have been made strong and rich, and when, as in California, they have every business man and the labor of the State by the throat, are answered by that feeble and often foolish scheme of labor combination -- the very thing combined cap- ital wants to see, as it gives them a pretext for their open attacks upon the public, and apparently justifies the grievous exactions that they demand and collect in the name of the strong arm of the law. So long as they can control the legislation of the country, so ladium of the laborer of universal suffrage, " Vote, vote, vote on forever," say they,
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
"and we will tax you to the poorhouse and the potter's field."
In looking over American law books, no intelligent man could ever for a moment sup- pose that this country had produced a soli- tary political economist-a single writer who understood anything of the seienee of politi- cal economy-how best to govern a people, and yet in the mountains of foolish laws ev- ery man is supposed to know the law, and, supremest of all other nonsense, in every ig- nerant neddle in the land is faithfully en- grafted the fact that he is not only equal to the wisest and best, but that he is in the race for every office in the land, especially that of President of the United States. Universal suffrage is worth nothing to igneranee-in- deed it may be the weapon, wielded by its own hands, for its destruction-not the de- struction of ignorance, for this seems to be indestructible, but the ignorant.
If the schools of the country, instead of contributing to these evils of mankind, would turn about and begin to systematically instill into the children of the nation a few simple axioms of life such as would enable them to better regulate not only their own affairs, but enable them when they reached the age of majority to go to the ballet box and there deposit an intelligent vote-a vote that would contribute to the bettering of the Government and the condition of all the people, it would be a happy consummation, and would seon give a sublime solution of the new mooted question, " Are the schools a failure?"
Our law-makers, in other words, believe they possess the wisdom to make laws that will more rapidly develope the country, and thereby make the people rich and happy. That they can pass friendly laws for railroads, canals, rivers and harbors and lines of ocean steamers is readily granted, and! that the laws that aid these enterprises by the public
money. or by special privileges and favers from the Government, can and de stimulate into a quicker existence these great measures there can be no doubt, and they lend an ap- pearanee to the world's splendor, wealth and glittering prosperity. But the pomp and glitter may be there and yet the people may be miserably oppressed-the suffering vietims of mistaken laws-the starving slaves of pampered monopolies. The dreariest paths in the long past history of the human race are to be found in the impartial story of these meddlings of Government in affairs that it should let alone. At one time in the name of a divine king; at present and for a hundred years in this country, in the name of the divine mob, which with " greasy hands and stinking breaths " can rote. The eruel- lest taskmaster was always the fellow slave; he always wielded the bloodiest lash, and laid on its pitiless tortures with the most unsparing hand. And now, following the thoughtful question in reference to the schools, will come eventually the greater question, " Does universal suffrage make un- iversal wealth or happiness." The dema- gogne, the combination of capital and the ignorance of the voters, are the menace to democracy and freedom in America, and if fifty years of our publie schools is slapped in the face with the astounding fact that ignorance has spread faster than the free school system itself-not illiteracy, mind you, but ignor- anee that is duped by demagogues to voting for its own men-if this has even kept step with the growth of schools, and the result is that in a hundred years we have degenerated in the scale of a poor, happy and contented and innocent people, to a rich, prosperous and demeralized natien, what account can the annual institutions give to such faets as these.
We are arguing none of the problems of
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
political economy. We are merely hinting at a few things-suggestions that may cause some minds of a thoughtful tendency, to in- vestigate those subjects which vitally concern every voter in this land of much voting and more law making. It is simply a crime to vote upon matters you know nothing about, and the evil will fall upon the head of the ignorant voter always. This penalty cannot be detached from ignorance. In the econo- my of God, this is inflexible, and hence that man is troubled with a hopeless idiocy who believes that he can be made great, good or happy by much voting and much law making. It was a non-voting English woman, who, from a simple interest in the human family, studied and investigated into the science of governments, and wrote books on the subject that are worth more to men, than have or will all the votes that may ever be cast. It is, therefore, the thinker, and not the voter, who benefits his fellow man. The most ignorant man that ever voted may be told, and he may be made to understand the re- markable fact that since governments have been instituted, the masses -- the voters in this country, have always furiously voted against and often violently resisted at first every human scheme and invention that gen- ius offered for their sole behoof and benefit. The superfical demagogue and the dishonest politician is ever proclaiming as a political axiom, that the people are always infallible, where the plain truth is they never ap- proached that perfection, but have nearly always been wrong or mistaken. So true is this that a wise and just government cannot be found, and could not exist over any nation in the world for an hour. Because a government, either monarchic or democratic, is a reflex of the people's intelligence over whom the government exists. It is nonsense to talk about the tyranny of governments that
exist for centuries in their cruel oppressions -it is the ignorance of the people who are governed, that is at fault. That kind of ignorance that in the voter in some way thinks the government can meddle in men's private affairs, and do better by its subjects than they can do by themselves; that stolid assininity that pushes forward its long ears and listens to the demagogue, who tickles them with promises that when he gets to the legislature he will pass laws to make them all rich and happy; that he will lay a tax, so smart and cunning, too, it will be, that it will take money from bloated wealth and, under the name of work and big pay, fill the coffers of all the poor. The dupe does not realize that his innate dishonesty is alone appealed to, but thinks it is his patriotic love of his fellow man, and, therefore, he is a patriot and the government that, in his imagination, . allows him to rob somebody else, is the greatest and best government on the planet.
We dismiss this subject with this simple proposition, that is so plain, and to the writ. er's mind so true, that it will do much to better the condition of men, and advance civilization if ever it comes to be generally understood. That is this. Every society in all times and all places is good or bad exactly as it is wise or ignorant-nay, fur- ther, a people is moral or immoral, chaste, or base, upright or dishonest, sober or drunken, good or bad, exactly as it may be wise or ignorant. And the only way under heaven to make good men is to store their minds with the simple and divine truths of nature -- this Holy Writ must be read, studied and obeyed, or otherwise its penalties will have to be endured.
Swamp Lands. - September 28, 1850, Congress passed an act entitled " An act to enable the State of Arkansas and other States
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
to reclaim the swamp lands within their limits."
The Legislature of Illinois, June 22, 1852, passed " An act to dispose of the swamp and overflowed lands, and pay the expense of surveying and selecting the same " and vest- ing the title in these lands to the respective counties in which they were situated.
By these acts, Wayne County became pos- sessed of about 100,000 acres of swamp lands.
November 5, 1855, the voters of Wayne County voted in favor of the proposition "For appropriating the swamp and over flowed lands of Wayne County, as a bonus to any company for building a railroad through the county.
March 13, 1856, the county conveyed the lands to Charles Wood, Trustee, to the use of the Belleville & F'airfield Railroad Com- pany, the Mount Carmel & New Albany Railroad Company, or to any railroad com- pany which should build a railroad through the county, conditioned that work should commence on the execution of the deed. No work, or expenditures were ever done by any railroad under this deed during the two years of its limitation.
September 24, 1857, the county again con- veyed the same land to Thomas Cooper, and eleven other citizens of the county (desig- nated sometimes as the twelve apostles of Wayne), on condition that they build a rail road through the County Wayne and town of Fairfield to the Wabash and Ohio Rivers, within two years, with the right of exten- sion of three years. Nothing was ever done under this deed, and it is not cancelled ex- cept by its terms.
November 19, 1858, the county entered into a contract with Vanduser, Smith & Co .. to construct a railroad through the county by November 19, 1860, the county to pay $12,500 for each three miles of grading, and
when the road was completed. to pay $6,000 per mile in swamp lands at $5 per acre, the land to be conveyod to the contractors when the road was completed. If the con- tractors failed to complete the contract in time, then to forfeit to the county all they had done, and receive nothing.
While this contract was in force, the Mount Vernon Railroad, which only had a charter from Ashley to Mt. Vernon, but which had this curious provision in its char- ter:
Any county through which any other railroad may run with which this road may join, connect or intersect, may, and are hereby authorized and cm- powered to aid in the construction of the same or of such other road with which it may so connect, and for this purpose the provision of the seventh, eighth and ninth sections of this act shall extend, include and be applicable to every said county and every said railroad.
On the 20th of April, 1859, the Mount Vernon Railroad Company claiming to have acquired the contract made with Vanduser, Smith & Co., by assignment and by agree- ment to fulfill the conditions of the agree- ment as a consideration, procured two of the County Judges of Wayne County, to execute a deed and mortgage of said lands to Isaac Seymour as Trustec, to the use of the Mount Vernon Railroad Company, as security for $800,000 of bonds to be issued by the Mount Vernon Railroad Company, for the construc- tion of the said railroad. The Mount Ver- Lon Railroad Company, at the same time agreeing to, and did execute to Isaac Sey- mour, Trustee, a mortgage on the franchiso and " all property " of every character and description, whatsoever and wheresoover, and of the kind of title acquired, or to be ac- quired, that they might have, to secure the payment of said bonds covenanting, also at the same time to pay all tax assessed against heir property, when due. Nothing was done
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
under this contract or assignment, nor under the deed and mortgage, when at March term of County Court, 1860, the Mt. Vernon Rail- road Company appeared and asked an exten- sion of the time to commence and complete the railroad under the Vanduser, Smith & Co., which was granted. The conditions of which were, that they were to file, plat and survey of location of the railroad in twenty days, and keep fifty men at work and more if necessary to its completion in two years, failing in either, the contract and all there- under done or had, should be null and void.
Nothing was done under this extension of time, when in August, 1860, Isaac Seymour abandoned his trust, and the railroad com- pany abandoning all effort to construct a rail- road, and Seymour having died in 1861, all was at sea, when the County Court at De- cember term, 1862, passed the order directing the Swamp Land Commission to proceed and sell the said lands as heretofore by preemp- tion or otherwise, which was done, the last being sold October 13, 1868.
March 7, 1865, suit was commenced by John W. Kennicott, et al, claiming that they held the bonds for the payment of which these lands were mortgaged.
In the meantime, a large portion, perhaps all these lands had been conveyed to private parties, many of whom were citizens of the county and who had thus, as they supposed, secured a homestead.
These suits that have gone on for the past eighteen years will go into history as its celebrated cases. They have run the gant- let of about all the courts, and only just now 1 has it been settled in favor finally of the |tricts, and for five Supervisors, two to be people.
The whole thing was a fine piece of sleight- of-hand by which the county was to be euchered out of its lands and to receive nothing in return. The people expected a
railroad to be built, and they were liberal enough to give all they had for it, and the sharpers appeared and plucked the goose.
The gift of a hundred thousand acres of land to the county was simply its greatest misfortune ; and yet, there are people silly enough to believe and to vote that their own government possesses only much money, great wisdom, and all the virtnes, and in some way or another they never doubt but that if they fail to take care of themselves the paternal government will certainly do all that.
The Five Horse Court .- The session of the Illinois Legislature of 1867 met, and the whole people of the State were wild and en- thusiastic over the subject of new railroads. Wayne County was represented by a strong lobby at Springfield, and the Springfield & Southeastern Railway Charter was passed, and as the county was under the control of fifteen Supervisors, and for fear that this body was too large to handle well in the mat- ter of submitting propositions to the voters to aid railroads, a cunning scheme in the way | of an act of the Legislature was submitted and passed the Legislature. This was exclu- sively a Wayne County law, and it was due to the wisdom alone of Wayne County men that the law was conceived and brought forth. This was known as the "Five Horse Court " law. It was passed under the modest title of "An act to change the time of electing certain officers in a county therein named." It simply abolished the Board of Supervisors, consisting of fifteen members, in Wayne County, and divided the county into four dis- citizens of Fairfield. The two in town, of course, were in favor of any road, east and west, or north and south, and the cunning act so arranged matters that three controlled, and hence, no matter what direction any
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