Town annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1862-1866, Part 15

Author: Worcester (Mass.)
Publication date: 1862
Publisher: The City
Number of Pages: 1076

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Town annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1862-1866 > Part 15

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

ties, and do much for the improvement of the moral tone of the City.

HOPE CEMETERY AND PUBLIC GROUNDS.

In compliance with my recommendation made last year, the usual item for Hope Cemetery was omitted from the annual appropriations. By the present arrange- ment, all the proceeds from the sales of lots are set aside as a fund, from which is to be annually appropriated such sum as may be necessary for the care and improvement of this hallowed spot. The present amount of this fund is $1596.77. Eighty-two lots have been sold during the year for $1359.50. The Expenditures have been only $50. The Commissioners have liberally placed at the disposal of the City, without charge, such lots as were wanted for the reception of the remains of the dead which were removed from the Pine Street school house yard, and for which no provision was made by their friends.

My personal attention has been frequently called, dur- ing the year, to the condition of the Pine Street burying ground. Since the purchase of Hope Cemetery this lot is rarely used, and is no longer needed for future inter- ments. No one can regard it in its present neglected state with other feelings than of regret and mortification. Its location in the immediate neighborhood of the most populous district of the City on the one side, and of the never-ceasing noise and turmoil of our busiest Railroads on the other, will tend to keep it in its present condition. If burials should be prohibited there hereafter, the disin- terments which are constantly taking place, would rapidly vacate the ground, and the time would not be far distant when the public sentiment would sanction its conversion

into a public park, to give health and value and ornament to this important but somewhat neglected portion of our City.

THE POLICE.

It is with satisfaction and pride that I refer to the Police force, which, with great good fortune, I have been able to organize, and to retain in the public service, and to the record of its action during the last year. Reluct- antly accepting a position which he could only hold at great personal sacrifice, the Chief of the Department has devoted himself to the discharge of the difficult and re- sponsible duties of his office, with a constancy and vigor and success which has left me little to desire, and has materially lightened my labors and responsibilities in this most trying sphere of my official duty. The general policy which a year ago I explained and foreshadowed as that which would control my action in this Depart- ment, has been steadily adhered to, and after a year's experience, I see no sufficient reason to change it. The records of the courts and of the office will show, at least, the efforts that have been made to detect and punish crime, to protect private rights, to preserve the public peace, and especially to suppress those monster twin evils of intemperance and licentiousness, which are sap- ping the foundations of virtue and morality, and destroy- ing the happiness of the community. More still has been done, which is not recorded, and can not be publicly known.

The appropriation for the Police in 1863, was $7,000.00

The earnings of the Assistant Marshals, were 2,032.24

The earnings of the Assistant Watchmen, were 182.40

Amount received for special services, - 134.00 -

Total,

- $9,348.64

The expenses were, for salaries of the Marshal and his Assistants, $2,332.86 Salary of Assistants Haven and Perry, five days, - -

17.14

Pay roll of Watchmen, -

5,054.87

Pay of extra Police,

143.49

Pay of Day Police,

33.00

Miscellaneous expenses, -

216.15

$7,797.51

Leaving an unexpended balance of -

$1,551.13

The earnings of the Police in 1862, were $1,491.55, and the expenses were $7,996.67. The pay of the watch- men was increased at the commencement of the year from $1.37} to $1.50 per day.

During the alarm and excitement which prevailed here, as well as generally throughout the land, during the enforcement of the draft in July last, it was necessary to employ extra force, and make such other arrange- ments as seemed called for by the emergency. The expenses thus incurred did not, however, exceed one hundred dollars.

The number of persons arrested and committed to the watch house during the year has been 1,526, of whom 1,024 have been complained against in the Police Court. In 1862 the arrests were 755, and the complaints 676. There have been 586 poor persons fed and lodged in the watch house.

Without reference to the present incumbent, whose services will neither be lost nor retained by any action in the matter, I recommend, as an act of simple justice and of wise policy, that the salaries of the Chief Marshal and of the Assistants, be raised to such reasonable sums as shall be sufficient to fairly compensate the talent and services and high character which are required for these

responsible trusts. The pay of the watchmen is, by the charter, left exclusively with the Board of Aldermen, and is now fixed at $1.50 per night. I recommend that their pay be also raised, at least temporarily, to corres- pond with the present high prices of living, and the increased duties which should be required of them. Whatever services they render during the day is extra, for which they receive additional compensation. The public interest requires that, as with the Marshal and his assistants, the whole services of these officers should belong to the City, and that all their earnings, as wit- nesses and on warrants, should be paid into the City Treasury. The chief should feel authorized, at all times, by day or night, to call for their aid, without having to make terms and conditions for the extra service. The whole force, with the exception of the Chief Marshal, should also be required to wear a plain uniform, such as is now generally adopted by the Police in other cities.

FINANCES.

The Appropriations for the year 1863, for City pur- poses, amounted to $140,370.75, being $2,879.21 less than in the preceding year. The County Tax was $19,- 441.25, and the State Tax $47,784, the former being $2,160 less, and the latter $11,946 more than in 1862. The City, County, and State Tax and overlayings in 1863, was $214,283; the valuation of the City was $16,698,750. In 1862, the Tax was $206,605.20, and the valuation $16,131,000.

Of the sums thus appropriated by the City, $113,000 was for the ordinary support of the Government, and $27,370 was for special and extraordinary purposes, including the purchase of the new Steamer, Hose, and

Hose Carriage, the payment of the Library Debt, the erection of two new School Houses, and the enlargement of the Aqueduct.

There was in the Treasury at the commencement of the year a balance of $10,946.94. The annual income of the City from Rents, the sale of Water, Licenses, the City Farm and Pauper Department, School Fund, &c., will not vary much from $10,000. There has been re- ceived from uncollected taxes of previous years, $32,000. These items, with the annual tax, constituted the re- sources of the Government.

There is now in the Treasury applicable to the ex- penses of the current year, about $9000. The amount of uncollected taxes considered good and collectable, is about $2500.

The money which it has been necessary to borrow from time to time, amounting to $96,000, has been obtained at the lowest market rates; $39,000 having been hired at 42 per cent, and $57,000 at only 4 per cent.

The debt of the City on the 1st of January, 1863, was City debt proper, - - - - - $105,380.07

War debt, -

- - - -

- -

103,034.48

$208,414.55

The debt on account of the Library has been reduced by the payment of $4000 due in December last. The sum of $5000 received from the County, on account of the Quinsigamond causeway, was applied to the payment of the debt contracted on that account in 1861, leaving the present debt of the City, exclusive of war debt, $96,380.07. The debt of the City, on account of the war, has been increased during the year $15,402.13.

As it now stands, the City debt is,

City debt proper, -

$96,380.07

War debt, -

- 118,436.61

Total debt, - -

$214,816.68

Of this amount $41,137 for State aid is due from the State and will be paid next year, leaving the actual debt of the City about $174,000, or six thousand dollars less than on the first of January last.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CITY COUNCIL :-

Such substantially is the condition of our Municipal affairs at the present time, and such are some of the most important interests which will require your attention during the coming year. No previous Administration has been charged with duties more responsible, or with concerns of greater moment to the welfare of this City. Let us strive so to discharge those duties, that the great public interests committed to us may receive no detri- ment from or in our hands, and that we may justify the confidence and satisfy the reasonable expectations of our constituents.

Report of the School Committee

FOR THE YEAR

1863.

The law of 1857 requiring " the Board of School Committee to consist of any number of persons divisible by three, which the town has decided to elect, one third to be elected annually and to continue in office three years," has been tried long enough to test its practical utility.

Under the former system of annually electing the entire board, there was no certainty that the policy pursued by one board would be acceptable or satisfactory to the next, and the brief term for which the members were elected hardly gave them time to become acquainted with the schools before they gave place to their successors.

The change in the law has been attended with very decided advantages, affording the board an opportunity to keep any 'school for several successive years under the charge of the same visiting committee, when the interests of the school demanded it, while it has enabled the committee to learn the character, capac- ity and tact of the teachers, to discover the defects of the schools, correct their errors, rectify their mistakes, and to more thor- oughly appreciate their merits than would be possible under the former system.

SCHOOL HOUSES.

At the opening of the year 1863 the usual annual petitions for more school rooms and additional schools were presented.

Every enterprize dependent upon the public purse must be jus- tified by the public need. The city wisely and justly holds those to whom the government is intrusted to the strictest economy. The obvious necessity of a new school house is the only sufficient justification of the city authorities for erecting it. That school houses are sometimes needed for a long time before they are erected, and that the community suffer in con- sequence of the delay, are the natural results of that extreme and commendable caution which prefers to meet the groundless charge of parsimony, and even of indifference to the public good, rather than incur the fatal odium of extravagance.

The supply has not been equal to the demand since 1855. Various expedients have been devised from time to time to avert the immediate necessity of building. The almost uniform annual increase of scholars, which falls but little short of two hundred, was at first provided for by organizing schools in the vacant rooms in the several houses ; after all the vacant rooms had been appropriated, such single schools as were kept in rooms large enough to admit of it were doubled, and an assist- ant employed ; when this resource failed to provide for the surplus, a part of the basements of the Ash street, and Pleasant street houses, formerly used as play-rooms, were converted into school rooms.

The injurious effects of the policy which, to postpone for a year or two the erection of a school house, locates a school in a low, inconvenient and imperfectly ventilated room, extend through the entire lives of many of the pupils, for the associ- ations of such a room are almost as prejudicial to habits of order and sound scholarship as to good health.

The relief afforded by these expedients was only temporary, and in 1861 two school rooms in Temple street were leased, and the Salem street house with accommodations for two hundred and forty children was erected.

In 1863 the city government, seeing that all other resources had been exhausted, and that there was need of prompt and decisive action if all the children in the city were to enjoy the advantages of the public schools, generously tendered to the

school board a convenient, commodious and pleasant room for a school of one sex in the basement of the public library building, in which the committee organized a grammar school of the lower grade for girls.

To meet the wants of the extreme eastern and extreme west- ern parts of the centre district, where the school accommoda- tions were the most defective, the city authorities, on the recommendation of the school board, decided to postpone so manifest a want no longer, and determined to erect a house in Pleasantville for two schools, and one in East Worcester for six.

These buildings now completed, are, except in the number of schools for which they are designed, copies of the Salem street house, which has been justly considered the best in the city.

In the selection of lots for the new houses, great care was taken to secure for each, both a convenient location and room enough for ample play-grounds, two important points some- times lost sight of, as the very contracted yards in Sycamore, Salem, and Ash streets abundantly testify.

The Mason street lot comprises 13,200 cost -

square feet and

The house cost -

- $550 00 5099 99-$5649 99

The Shrewsbury street lot comprises 18,000 square feet and cost -

$1500 00

- 12041 35-$13541 35 The house cost - -

These aggregates do not include the cost of the furniture, which was made in this city, and is more durable, convenient and comfortable than that with which the schools have been heretofore furnished, while the cost is less.

The prompt response of the city government for the year 1863, to the call of the school board for additional accommo- dations for the schools, has given the centre district, to which the increase of pupils is almost exclusively confined, more than twice as many school rooms as were given by all the city gov ernments from 1855 to 1863. In the seven years preceding 1863 the aggregate increase in the daily average attendance in the centre district was 1124, while the only addition to the

school accommodations in that district during that period was the Salem street house, which is furnished for 240 scholars. In the year 1863 nine rooms have been added, which will accom- modate 540 children.

Still there is not room enough. All the schools of the lower grades, and one of the higher, in the south part of the city, are full and crowded. The rapid increase of population is con- stantly pushing the city southward where many of the children that ought to be in the primary schools are excluded for the want of room. The immediate wants of that section might have been supplied by adding at the time of its erection, a thing now impracticable, another story to the Salem street house, which would have furnished two excellent school rooms at a comparatively small cost and in the precise locality where they are needed.

A decided advantage which a house with six school rooms has over one with a less number is, that in the former all the grades from the lowest to the high school may be accommodated, while in the latter some of the grades must be wanting, and the children of the same family are consequently separated, one attending school in one house and another in another, while it is desirable that the younger children should always be attended to and from school by their older brothers and sisters.

It will be for the interest of the city to dispense with the Temple street house which is very inconvenient and which costs $300 per annum, and to sell the Providence street house, which is inconveniently located for the accommodation of the district and is too small for the two schools whichi are kept in it, and to appropriate the proceeds to the erection, at or near the foot of Providence street, near the junction of five or six other densely populated streets, of a new house of the size and form of the one just completed in East Worcester.

It is to be hoped that measures will soon be taken to sell the central school house, which is so near to the paved street, that the schools are seriously interrupted and disturbed by every passing carriage, and a child's voice is with difficulty heard across either of the rooms at any hour of the day. That prop -.

erty ought to sell for enough to buy. a larger lot and build a much better house in a far more desirable locality.

The school house at Northville, which has but one school room, should have two, and until it is enlarged the school there cannot be made satisfactory, for, no teacher, having a school of more than sixty scholars ranging in age from four to fifteen years, of whom not five can be classed together, and the whole making more than thirty different classes to be heard daily, can give to each child the time and attention which are necessary to awaken a healthful interest in study and to assist the pupil to form correct mental habits.

The original design of the Northville house required it to be of two stories, but unfortunately the design was not carried out, and the district is now in want of room.

The Quinsigamond school lately became too large to work efficiently as one school and, in the month of May, it was reor- ganized into two, and graded. The change in the school required a corresponding change in the house, which was made at the cost of about two hundred dollars.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOLS.

At the commencement of the year 1863 there were sixty-two public schools in the city employing eighty-three teachers; at its close there are sixty-seven schools and ninety-one teachers, an increase of five schools and of eight teachers.

· The month of May which opens our school year and the spring blossoms, also opens our homes, where the little ones have nestled through the long cold winter, and calls them out to seek admission into school. Although at that time some of the older classes take their leave of the schools, and each grade promotes its highest class to the next higher grade, the vacancies below are more than filled by recruits from the home and the nursery. The demand for new schools is therefore most urgent at that period of the year.

The change in the number of scholars in the high school has not been so great as to make it necessary to change the number of teachers there.

The large number belonging to the higher grammar grade in the south part of the city rendered it expedient in the fall term to place a temporary assistant in the Sycamore street school, an arrangement which will probably be terminated by the early organization of another school of the same grade in the south- east part of the city.

The Pleasant street grammar school of the lower grade was in the spring reorganized into two,-one exclusively for girls in Elm street,-the other for both sexes in the basement of the Pleasant street house.

The promotion of two classes from the Ash street primary and the large number prepared for promotion in the Temple street primary called for another secondary school in the south- cast part of the city, and one was accordingly organized in Temple street.

The crowded condition of the primary schools through the entire year has been a serious impediment to their progress and subversive of all comfort. But as there was no room in which to organize another, the committee adopted the only alterna- tive, placing a second assistant in the Temple street school and proportionally increasing the number of pupils. While this did not afford sufficient relief to the grade, it was all that the limited means would allow.

The sub-primaries in Main and Pleasant streets were the only ones which would admit of enlargement, and they were accord- ingly supplied each with one assistant and a corresponding increase of pupils.

When the truant school which, comprising scholars from nearly every grade, can at best be only imperfectly classified, became too large for one teacher to do justice to all, an assis- tant was placed there.

The aggregate increase in the average daily attendance in the suburban districts has been small and has been chiefly in three districts, the Quinsigamond, the South Worcester, and the Northville. As the double school in Quinsigamond has been greatly improved by being reorganized and graded, the same thing should be done at an early day at South Worcester, where.

two teachers are now employed in one school but in separate rooms. It is equally necessary that it should also be done in Northville, but they have no second room.

TEACHERS.

No change in the corps of teachers has been made, except to supply the vacancies caused by resignations, of which there have been only five in the centre district, and eight in the suburbs,-to supply the new schools organized, and to place assistants in the schools that have been enlarged.

As usual, the changes in the suburban districts are propor- tionately much larger than in the centre,-the former having lost fifty-seven per cent. of their whole number, the latter only seven per cent.

In the selection of teachers great care has been taken to secure the best talents and skill which the salary of the position to be filled would command. Whenever these talents and this skill are found in Worcester, the committee do not look further, uniformly preferring those educated in our own schools when- ever they can successfully compete with the applicants from abroad.

Much labor has been given during the last two years to the improvement and completion of our own educational system with the view of giving in our public schools to those wishing to make teaching a profession a preparation as thorough, exact, and extensive as can be had in any educational institution in the commonwealth.

The normal course in the high school, which was recom- mended in the annual report for the year 1861, and was adopted in the year 1862, has already achieved most gratifying results. The only class which has yet completed the normal course, has furnished candidates greatly superior to those who formerly presented themselves from the same school, and seve- ral of them have been successful competitors with teachers of large experience for positions of grave responsibility and dignity.

The adjustment of salaries exactly according to the services

rendered and the merit of the teachers is as difficult as it is delicate. Before the war the salaries of the teachers in this city were thought to be generally fair and just when compared with what teachers received in other cities and with what cor- responding skill and talents would command in other pursuits. The salaries were all fixed as they now are, when there was no difference between the price of currency and of gold. Though the salaries are now nominally what they were then, the depre- ciation of the currency has reduced them to two-thirds of their former value. A revision of the salaries to make them conform to the altered circumstances of the times is imperatively de- manded.

Another point in this matter should receive the serious and prompt consideration of the school-board. In teaching, as in every profession and art, the skill and tact which one brings with him make his services vastly more valuable than another's who brings no such qualities. It is cheaper to pay an intelli- gent, skillful, able lawyer his price to manage a case in court, than an ignorant, blundering, inefficient one his, though the latter may be satisfied with half the fee of the former. As a veteran is worth more than a raw recruit, so a teacher, whose faithful and conscientious labors have extended through years of successful experience, surely ought to 'command a larger salary than a novice,-one whose capacity and success are yet to be tested by experiment.

Again, the course pursued in other cities compels us either to pay extraordinary skill a corresponding reward, or to see it certainly gravitate towards those golden centres, where salaries are the largest, leaving our schools to suffer under second and third rate teachers as long as we make it for the interest of the best talents to seek more lucrative situations. No intelligent artizan or manufacturer deems it economy to permit an inade- quate compensation to deprive him of the services of his best workmen. Worcester, the heart of the commonwealth, cannot afford to permit her sister cities by the offer of larger salaries, to recruit for their schools, from her proved and veteran corps of teachers. It is a serious and important question vitally

affecting the educational interests of the city, whether we shall recognize and reward long, faithful, and successful experience in our schools and thus stimulate the younger teachers to hon- orable emulation by showing them that merit pays,-"or whether, by neglect of so plain a duty, we shall contribute to the pros- perity of other cities at the expense of our own.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Town annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1862-1866, Part 15

Author: Worcester (Mass.) Publication date: 1862 Publisher: The City Number of Pages: 1076

Author: Worcester (Mass.)
Publication date: 1862
Publisher: The City
Number of Pages: 1076