USA > Michigan > Michigan as a province, territory and state, the twenty-sixth member of the federal Union > Part 19
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tricity is entirely modern. It was not dreamed of be- fore 1890.
Transportation by water has kept pace with the de- velopment of the country. As population has increased industries expanded, capital become more abundant, the wants of a higher and yet higher civilization have mul- tiplied and American enterprise does not permit any want to go unsatisfied. The opening of the Erie canal across the state of New York was rightly considered one of the most important events in the progress of the northwest. The advent of steam navigation upon the lakes was of great consequence. In 1816 the total ton- nage of vessels at all Lake Erie ports, including Detroit, was only two thousand and sixty-seven, less than half the register of some of our modern steamers. These vessels ranged in size from ten to one hundred and for- ty tons burden.
The subsequent growth of the lake tonnage was more rapid, as well in size as in the number of craft put afloat. In 1850 it aggregated about one hundred and sixty thousand tons, of a value of nearly eight million dollars. In 1890 there were two thousand, one hun- dred and twenty-five vessels with a tonnage of one mil- lion, eight hundred and sixteen thousand, five hundred and eleven. Of this total tonnage of all vessels, one million, one hundred and seventy-eight thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five was in steam vessels, which numbered four hundred and eighty-five. As showing the character of modern shipping, it is recorded that there were two hundred and forty-six thousand, six hundred and seventy-four tonnage registered in Michi- gan of steel steam vessels built within the previous ten years. These metal ships have in modern times almost wholly superseded wooden ships. The limit of the size of the latter was long ago reached and metal has grown
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cheaper. The deepening and widening of channels and harbors led to the increase in size of vessels, and the large ships are operated at less relative cost, and so have greatly reduced transportation charges per ton. There is economy in the big ship and some of the lake vessels have now reached in dimensions well toward the maximum of the first-class Atlantic liners.
But for many purposes craft of smaller size must still be equipped. There are yet narrow and shoal harbors and business enough in these harbors to call for numer- ous vessels. So, while the great leviathans are carrying coal, iron, copper, grain, from the far end of Lake Su- perior to lower Lake Erie, there are, nevertheless, a majority of the lake craft which are small, comparative- ly speaking, and able to carry full loads into all har- bors. These minor craft, though less in tonnage, are greater in numbers and will probably so continue. The facilities for loading and discharging cargoes have kept pace with other improvements and the largest ships are now detained but a few hours at the docks at either end of the voyage. These ore and coal docks and grain ele- vators are marvels of engineering skill and many mil- lions of dollars are invested in them.
With the rapid growth of the lake marine is inti- mately associated the development of ship building. The forests of Michigan furnished the finest ship tim- ber in the world. Her oaks have been exported almost from time immemorial for the stanchest ships of the British navy. Her tall pines have supplied masts for the Atlantic shipping, as well as for the lakes. In the days of wooden ships there were yards for building them at Detroit, at several points on the St. Clair river and at Bay City. When the steel ship came into vogue the machinery and the equipment of the yards at Detroit, Wyandotte and Bay City were expanded to
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meet the new conditions. These yards are now the most extensive and complete on the lakes, being rivaled only by those near Cleveland. There have been no ship building plants on the western shore of Michigan, prob- ably for the reason that the shipping of Lake Michigan has found less field for enterprise, though there is a carrying trade to both Chicago and Milwaukee in coal and ore, while immense quantities of grain are shipped outward. Like many other things in recent times the building of ships has shown a tendency to concentrate into fewer hands. Though there are not so many plants in Michigan as there were a generation ago, their extent, equipment and investment have multiplied many fold.
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CHAPTER XX EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS
T HE initiation and development of the educational system of Michigan have been discussed in a preceding volume. It only remains here to speak of the expansion which has kept pace with the growth of the state in population and material wealth. It counts for much that the system was well thought out at the start. It has not been neces- sary to take any backward steps, to retrace the course, or to correct errors. The system has simply moved forward along the lines forecasted from the beginning. Speaking of the civil war, Superintendent Hosford, in his report for 1865, says: "During all these years of darkness and doubt the interest felt in our schools has not in the least abated. No schools have been discon- tinued, and only in a few instances have the numbers been materially diminished. The large accessions which the returned soldiers make fill the schools to the limit of their capacity. Most of the higher institutions are crowded to or even beyond their full capacity.
"Michigan never had more occasion to be proud of her schools and her school system than now. Their success thus far has been most gratifying. What a change has twenty years wrought in the schools of the state! Then it was almost impossible to secure teachers competent to give instruction in the most elementary branches. The school houses were little else than shape- less piles of logs, scattered here and there. These have given place to the beautiful white house, enclosed by a substantial fence, producing a most agreeable impres- sion upon the stranger as he passes through the country, while in the villages and large towns are seen those magnificent edifices devoted to learning, which astonish even a New England traveler. These are constantly acting as potent educating forces, vieing with the best
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instructors in their work of discipline. Well may a state be proud when the noblest structures found in all her towns are devoted to learning and religion. These are her towers of strength, her impregnable citadels. With these thoroughly garrisoned she need fear no enemy.
"But quite as great a contrast is seen in the schools themselves. Their present condition fully sustains the prediction long since made in relation to the mutually beneficial influence which the public schools and the higher institutions exert upon each other. The univer- sity, the colleges and the normal school have been rear- ing teachers for the union schools. As soon as these educated teachers reached these schools a change was immediately seen. Courses of study were arranged and a rigid system of instruction was introduced. The schools were at once graded, each pupil mingling with those of his own degree of advancement. Teachers assigned to these several departments were enabled to give their individual attention to the pupils of that department; hence better work was done by both teacher and pupil. New branches of study were introduced and the whole course so enlarged that the union schools soon became fountains of supply for the university and the colleges."
This was unquestionably the effect originally intended. Graded up from the primary department through the grammar schools, the high schools, or union schools, as the higher classes were then called, to the university itself was the clear line of progress, with its influence acting and reacting in both directions. This influence was felt to the remotest districts of the state, elevating the standard of scholarship and inspiring the whole community toward advancement. This was a
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hopeful and most encouraging sign of educational progress. There was abundant evidence of it.
The primary school statistics for 1865 showed four thousand, four hundred and fifty-two school districts, with two hundred and ninety-six thousand, two hundred children between five and twenty years of age. These districts employed eight thousand, seven hundred and forty-four teachers, of whom seven thousand, four hun- dred and twenty-seven were women. The average salary paid men was forty-one dollars and seventy cents per month, and to women, seventeen dollars and forty-three cents per month. The total school revenues for the year were one million, two hundred and thirty-eight thou- sand, four hundred and eighty-seven dollars, of which about half was paid in salaries to teachers, one hundred and seventy-two thousand, eight hundred dollars for building purposes, and the remainder for library and all other purposes. The statistics for 1885, twenty years later, show six thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two school districts, with five hundred and ninety-five thou- sand, seven hundred and fifty-two children. The num- ber of teachers employed was fifteen thousand, three hundred and fifty-eight, of whom eleven thousand, four hundred and eighty-two were women. The average salary paid women was thirty-one dollars and eighteen cents, and to men forty-six dollars and seventeen cents. The reader will note the great advance in the rate paid to women. Clearly this was because of their better qualifications which school managers saw and appre- ciated. In 1900 the number of districts had increased to seven thousand, one hundred and sixty-three and the school population to seven hundred and twenty-one thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight. At this date the number of teachers employed was fifteen thou- sand, nine hundred and twenty-four, of whom twelve
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thousand, six hundred and eighty-four were women, whose compensation had increased to thirty-five dollars and seventy-one cents per month, as against forty-six dollars and seventy-three cents for men. Here again we see the increasing demand for women as teachers and the increasing appreciation of the money value of their ser- vices. The number of school houses was eight thousand and thirty-five, with six hundred and twenty-nine thou- sand, two hundred sittings, and of a value of nineteen million, three hundred and thirty-three thousand, one hundred and seventy-three dollars. The total net receipts for the year were upwards of nine million dol- lars. Three-fifths of the pupils at this time were enrolled in the graded schools. A measure has been proposed and seems certain to be brought about in time, of con- solidating school districts in the rural towns and by uniting the pupils of several districts grading them in the same manner as in the villages. The only obstacle lies in the fact of the long distance which some of the pupils would be required to travel from their homes. But this is overcome by providing omnibuses for trans- portation. The plan has been tried in several localities and has been found feasible and popular. Thus the child living in a remote country settlement will have the same advantages of graded school and better qualified teachers enjoyed by the resident of a city or village.
It has been the common experience that when the farmer's boy or girl reaches the age of fifteen or sixteen he or she goes to the nearest city or village containing a good high school for the purpose of getting the educa- ยท tion which the rural school can no longer supply. For this the farmer is obliged to pay tuition. There are sev- eral high schools in the state whose revenue from non- resident pupils goes far toward sustaining the school, and in nearly all of them it forms an important item.
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This is added expense to the farmer, who not only is taxed to support the school in his own district, but is taxed in the form of tuition to support the school of his nearby village. The consolidation of districts suggested may provide the high school training in every district.
Manual training has largely come into vogue in the more important cities of Michigan within recent years. This form of instruction was established in this country as a result of the educational exhibit made by Russia at the centennial exposition of 1876. This was wholly a revelation to the American people. Not only did art in education receive a new baptism but the value of training the hand gained an impulse which has since been widely felt. Under the impulse given by this exhibit manual training schools were soon organized in a number of the large cities. The St. Louis school was organized in 1879; Baltimore in 1883; Chicago, New York Toledo in 1884; Philadelphia and Denver in 1885; Cleveland in 1886; Detroit in 1899. Its first introduction in the state was at Bay City in 1891. It was begun at Muskegon in 1896; at Calumet, Flint, Detroit, Kalamazoo in 1899; at Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Ishpeming, Marquette in 1900. The movement was retarded by the hostility of the trade and labor unions who made a factious opposition through a misconception of the plan and purpose of such schools. The crude idea of those who controlled the unions seemed to be that it was an insidious effort to train apprentices to trades. The unions undertake to control the number of apprentices in any trade for the purpose of restricting competition in that trade. But it was soon made evident even to the dull minds of unionists that the training in schools does not turn out apprentices, but only tends to develop whatever talent or inclination a boy may have in any given direction,
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and best of all to give that training of hand and eye which is useful in a thousand ways in after life. The hostility to such training soon faded away altogether. At the outset instruction was given to boys only in the way of teaching the uses and handling of tools of vari- ous kinds, to develop skill in designing and making of simple articles of wood. Later it was carried into metals, such as iron, tin and brass, the operating of lathes and simple machinery. Later still instruction was given to girls in cooking, sewing, home decoration and other branches of domestic science.
The possibilities of instruction in this direction appealed so strongly to men of wealth that some schools, notably at Muskegon, Jackson, Saginaw, have been built or endowed by private munificence, but open free to all boys and girls in their respective neighbor- hoods. The purpose is to bring out latent talent and to afford opportunity for those who have special gifts in any direction to develop them to the utmost. In this way genius may be discovered, to the manifest advan- tage of humanity, which would otherwise never show itself. It has a sociological as well as an educational aspect.
Another feature of our modern schools not dreamed of a generation ago is the kindergarten. This is a sys- tem of training the very youngest children, devised and carried into effect in Germany many years ago by Froe- bel. The child from four to six years of age, before he is old enough to make use of a text book or to be con- fined to the rigid routine of classes, can be trained in many ways to the very great advantage of himself. We begin to learn from the time of our first conscious life. It is important that the teaching be in the hands of those competent to give it and that it be along the lines which experience has shown to be most useful. So, as
UNVEILING THE PINGREE STATUE, DETROIT, MAY 30, 1904
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soon as the child can be spared from the mother's imme- diate and constant care its education can best be taken in hand by expert teachers. The very young children are gathered in large, well ventilated, well lighted rooms, and given such things to do as will interest them and which will be incidentally instructive. Their physi- cal welfare is of the first importance. There are light gymnastic movements with music accompaniment; there are plays with ball, with straws; there is the learning of colors, of numbers, of form, of size. Cheerfulness and physical delight are the first essentials. There is story telling; there is reading to them the best literature, poetry and prose, on subjects which appeal to them, re-telling the old fairy tales which are within their com- prehension, making the words real to them because they express what they themselves do know and see and hear. The child is very fond of the kindergarten, because it is having a good time. It is all fun, but at the same time it is scientific and careful training of all the senses, of the physical, mental and moral nature. Rightly done it is the most important of all teaching, for it is at the very foundation and forms the fundamental basis upon which the after education, and in one sense the char- acter, of the individual must rest. This system of kindergarten schools is universal in all the larger cities of the state. It is not available to any important extent in the smaller villages. These schools call for specially trained teachers. They must be women of sound and wholesome natures, a motherly love and appreciation and understanding of children, and they must engage in the work with their whole heart and soul. Such there are and there is a field for them.
Another feature of educational work, which is not new, but which has been carried forward with increasing value in recent years is the teachers' institute. This is
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an effective method of improving the quality of the teaching force. The teachers themselves are taxed toward their support, and though attendance upon them is not compulsory, teachers as a rule do attend and seek to profit by them. They are of greatest service to the teachers in rural districts, and especially so to those who are young and inexperienced. To serve the con- venience of those who are expected to attend they are held in various parts of the state and so are easy of access. A corps of instructors is appointed who are selected for fitness, and instruction is given by lectures and quizzes. The statistics show seventy-six of such institutes held in the course of a year, at least one in each county, with upwards of one hundred different per- sons as conductors and instructors, in all cases one con- ductor and from one to four assistants, depending on the number of teachers in attendance.
The training of teachers in normal schools was entered upon in Michigan in 1852, when a school was opened in Ypsilanti. Adoniram S. Welch was the first principal and continued as such for ten years, building up in the meantime a large and successful school. He resigned in 1865 and was succeeded by Prof. D. P. Mayhew as acting principal. At that time the institution had ten instructors and an enrollment of two hundred and fifty-five students in its normal department. It had from the first maintained an experimental department made up of children of the town in which students of the school were given practice in teaching under the supervision of their instructors. In the first ten years twenty persons received diplomas of graduation from the school. By 1885 the number of pupils had increased to five hundred and twenty, of whom ninety-seven grad- uated in that year: In 1900 the number of instructors was fifty-one, with an attendance of fourteen hundred
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and twenty-one students, of whom three hundred and two graduated in that year. The whole number of graduates since the foundation of the school was three thousand, nine hundred and nine. The name of the institution had some time previously been changed to State Normal College. Some of the greatest and best known educators of the state have been at the head of this school. Among these may be mentioned Joseph Estabrook, John M. B. Sill, Daniel Putnam.
The Central State Normal School at Mt. Pleasant was established in 1895, with Charles T. Grawn as principal. In 1900 it had twenty-five instructors and four hundred and fifty-six students. In the five years of its existence it had graduated three hundred and eighty. The Northern State Normal School was founded at Marquette in 1899, with Dwight B. Waldo as princi- pal. It had in 1900 six instructors and ninety-one stu- dents. A few years later a Western State Normal School was established at Kalamazoo. Thus it becomes evident that the state has entered deliberately upon a system of normal schools for the training of teachers and doubtless the beneficial effects of this liberal policy will continue to be evident in a better trained and more efficient corps of teachers for the district and graded schools generally.
The State University, the founding of which was coincident with that of the state, is the crown and apex of the state's educational system. The Michigan boy or girl beginning in the kindergarten may pass through the primary, the grammar and the high school departments directly into the university. The organization and early development of the institution have been discussed else- where and it only remains here to make a brief allusion to its continued progress and prosperity. At the close of the civil war Dr. Erastus O. Haven was its president.
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He continued to occupy that position for about five years, when he resigned to return to the pulpit, which was his first love. He was afterward made a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church. His administration of the affairs of the university was successful. He was a man of broad culture and liberal views. He compre- hended the aims of the institution and carried it forward on the lines which had been laid down by his prede- cessor. The departments of literature, science and the arts, of medicine and of law had been already estab- lished. The attendance of students had been somewhat diminished by reason of the war, but it now sprang forward with a rush. The year 1865 showed an enroll- ment in all departments of nine hundred and fifty-three, with eighteen instructors in the literary department, eleven in the medical and three in the law. Four of these gave instruction in more than one department, so that the actual number of persons employed as pro- fessors was twenty-eight. The number of diplomas granted in that year was two hundred and eighteen.
In the interval after the resignation of Dr. Haven, Dr. Henry S. Frieze was made acting president and served for upwards of a year and until the advent of Dr. James B. Angell in 1871. The latter came hither from the University of Vermont, of which he was presi- dent at the time of his election to the presidency at Ann Arbor. He was a native of Rhode Island and a gradu- ate of Brown University, in which also he had for a time held a professorship. His varied experiences had led him into the field of journalism and he had success- fully conducted the Providence Journal for a time. His career as president of the University of Michigan has been a long and notable one. Under his wise conduct the institution expanded beyond all anticipations until it became widely recognized throughout this and other
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lands as one of the leading universities of the country. In the matter of attendance of students alone, before the close of the century, it was exceeded by no college in the west, and only by Harvard in the east.
One of the marked departures from the policy of the classical schools which preceded it was when in 1870 it admitted women on an equality with men to all its classes. This step was taken under the administration of acting President Frieze and before the advent of Dr. Angell. It was a step which had been thoroughly con- sidered, and though there was some hesitancy in view of its tremendous importance, it was boldly taken. No other institution of similar rank and standing had had the courage to depart from the time honored cus- tom of refusing the admission of women to its classes. In this, as in many other things, Michigan was the lead- er. At first the women came timidly and in few num- bers. But it was found that they were able to hold their own along side their brothers. There was no letting down in requirements or in the standard of scholarship. The experiment proved an unqualified success. It was merely a nine days' wonder and was then universally accepted as a matter-of-course. No evil results, either moral, intellectual or social, flowed from the radical departure from the policy of the older institutions. These soon showed a disposition to fall into line.
In 1900 there were three thousand, four hundred and forty-one students registered. There were two hundred and twenty-seven persons in its faculties. The number of graduates exceeded seventeen thousand, and they were found leading in all the professions, in public and educational affairs, and in every good word and work, not only in every state in the union and its outlying pro- vinces, but in every quarter of the civilized world.
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