USA > New York > New York : the planting and the growth of the Empire state, Vol. II > Part 11
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cents a ton per mile, or for 352 miles $88. In 1824, with the canal only in part in use, it fell to 6.1 cents a ton per mile, or 821.47 for the whole distance. By 1833 the rate per ton per mile was reduced to 3.84 cents, and in 1835 to 1.83 cents. By 1850 it was 1.7 cents, and by 1860, 1 cent a ton per mile, or $3.52 per ton between Albany and Buffalo. The rates fell to 74 mills per ton per mile in 1870, to 42.9 mills in 1880, and in 1884 to 27.7 mills. The rates in 1850 are those fairly to be cred- ited to the Erie Canal, for the full effects of railroad competition had not then come into play. The reduction in twenty-six years, from before the opening of that great waterway to that date, was, between Buffalo and Albany, from 888 to $5.98 per ton ; and on the tonnage of 1850, which was 3,076,617, the saving on the canal alone, assuming that so much freight could possibly have been moved under the old methods, was over $252,000,000 for the single year. Since that period the competition of the canal and the railroads has been reflex. Com- paring 1860 with subsequent years, the cost of transporting wheat per ton from Buffalo to New York by water has fallen from 84.98 at that date to 83.74 in 1870, to 82.17 in 1882, and since tolls have been abolished, to $1.57 in 1885. The influence of the Erie Canal in bring-
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ing about this change was at the outset control- ling, and it has been great at all times.
In his message in January, 1825, Governor Clinton, announcing the approaching comple- tion of the Erie Canal, Imarked out a compre- hensive system of additional internal improve- ments, including not only lateral canals, but a road through the southern tier of counties. The State after some years adopted his policy, and built the Oswego, the Cayuga and Seneca, the Crooked Lake, the Chemung, the Chenango, the Black River, the Genesee Valley Canals, and the Oneida Lake Canal, with feeders essential to the system of navigation, while State aid was given to the Delaware and Hudson Canal. These were completed at various dates from 1831 to 1850. The total cost was 827,554,422. The Delaware and Hudson continues to be op- erated by a private corporation ; and the Black River, the Oswego, and the Cayuga and Seneca Lake Canals remain in use by the State, with the Erie and the Champlain Canals. The other laterals, after serving a temporary purpose. gave way before the competition of railroads and have been abandoned. Under like competition, the people in 1882 voted, 486,105 to 163.151, for the abolition of all tolls; and since that time the canals of the commonwealth have been wholly free, and serve as a regulator of the rates
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of transportation, although the tonnage has fallen to about 5,000,000 a year. ,
The canals became an important factor in politics. At various periods they divided par- ties, and made and marred reputations. The controversy of 1842, and for a few subsequent years, serves as an illustration. Michael Hoff- man, in the assembly, and Azariah C. Flagg as comptroller, took strong grounds against the expenditure incurred, and opposed the creation of any debts. Horatio Seymour, in 1844, as chairman of the committee on canals, insisted on the prosecution of the enlargement of the Erie and the construction of the Black River and Genesee Valley Canals, and glowingly por- trayed the benefits. He found his predictions more than verified when he came, forty years later, to advocate the abolition of all tolls. In 1851, so intense was the hostility of one wing of the democratic party to the measures pro- posed for prosecuting the canal enlargement, that fourteen senators resigned to break the quorum necessary for their passage, but the people at a special election sustained the canal policy by large majorities.
Grave scandals grew out of the letting of contracts under various administrations to spec- ulators and politicians who had no knowledge of such work, and at wasteful prices, under
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circumstances prompting suspicion of collusion and corruption. With reference to the repairs, which on such vast works honestly involved large outlay and were easily exaggerated im- mensely, conspiracy has been charged with cir- cumstance and detail, and the " canal ring " has earned odium and led to repeated investigation. But the legislature was in the habit of legaliz- ing the heavy expenditures, and the sole pun- ishment meted out for the offenses has been that of public opinion. In September, 1885, a (lebt of 88,339,100 remained from the outlay for the canal, against which stood a sinking fund of $4,663,188.61, so that the whole amount will be easily paid when it matures in 1893.
The objection to the heavy expenditures on the Erie Canal, and afterwards on the laterals, was strong from the counties remote from their line. To meet this objection a project for a State highway in the southern counties was proposed, which gave way to a plan for State aid to the New York and Erie Railroad ; and in 1836 83,000,000 was loaned to that company, which has never been repaid. To the Canajo- harie and Catskill Railroad, and to the Hudson and Berkshire Railroad, smaller sums were also loaned and lost ; and of $500,000 so loaned to the Ithaca and Oswego Railroad, 8315,700 was never repaid. Moneys were lent to five other
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railroads to aid in their construction, and in due time returned to the State treasury. In later years, railroads have been aided by ex- emption of their bonds from taxation for a pe- riod, and by subscriptions by towns and cities to their stock.
Sanguine as were the hopes of the projectors of the canal policy, they were exceeded by the reality. Immigrants at once chose homes where access was rendered so easy. Farm products increased in value, so that wheat in the Seneca country, where it was the chief crop, advanced fifty per cent. in price in 1825. Factories were built where water-power could be found, be- cause the cost of transportation was so much reduced. Land, therefore, became more valu- able in the remote districts, while to Albany and to New York especially the advantages of increased trade outran the most liberal calcula- tions. The canals, which so many threatened would be sources of disaster, actually added in the early years to the revenues of the common- wealth, while they enriched the people. The population, already in 1820 the largest of any State, became, in 1830, 1,918.608, fifty per cent. more than Virginia. three times that of Mas- sachusetts, and forty-two per cent. more than Pennsylvania. In numbers the primacy was undoubted and permanent. In wealth the in-
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crease was no less, was doubtless greater, al- though definite statistics for that period were not accurately recorded. That this growth was due in very large part to the canals, is proved from the fact that villages sprang up along their lines, and industry became there much diversi- fied, while in the outlying counties such devel- opment was much less rapid. Far beyond the lines of the commonwealth the benefits were extended. The facilities for travel afforded, gave new attractions to the rich lands of Ohio and the Northwest; and immigrants and traffic turned along the pathways where, by the addi- tion of all modern devices and machinery, so much of the wealth and activity, not only of the Union, but of the world as well, now moves to and fro.
For years packets were run on the Erie Canal with comfortable accommodations, making such speed as three or four horses driven tandem could give, sometimes six miles an hour, carry- ing travelers for pleasure as well as for busi- ness. Freight was transported less rapidly, but at rates steadily falling. A trip by packet sur- vives in the memory of many as a pleasurable gliding between banks of beauty, sometimes ro- mantic, presenting constant change of scene, with berths at night enclosed in curtains in the single cabin, and quite as comfortable as, if less swift, than a journey in the modern palace cars.
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CHAPTER XXXI.
PROGRESS OF EDUCATION.
THE ease of access to Yale College and the College of New Jersey in the earliest days gave to them a large number of students from New York, and to that extent diminished the dispo- sition to establish higher institutions within this State. The liberal and patriotic teachings of Yale were especially in accord with the views of the patriots, and that college became the nursery of many of our early statesmen while King's College was under tory control. New Haven has continued to draw pupils from the State beyond any local college, while Princeton has depended very largely for benefactions, and in only less degree for students, on the chief city, and in later years the younger colleges of New England have rarely been without New York names on their catalogues. Advantages doubtless accrue, but the practice checked the planting and the growth of local institutions of the highest order. The State now contains eighteen colleges for young men. six for young women, and four to which both sexes are ad-
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mitted. One of the youngest, and the largest and richest, is Cornell University, founded in 1868. Of schools of science there are seven, of theology thirteen, of law four, and of medicine fourteen. In these institutions in 1885 the in- structors numbered 785, their property was valued at $23,164,602, and the annual expendi- ture was $1,787,391. The number of pupils in the colleges was 8,592, in the law schools 487, and in the medical schools 2,566.
Incorporated academies were not of rapid growth ; from eight in 1800 they were multi- plied to thirty in 1820, to fifty-five in 1830, and to one hundred and twenty-seven in 1840. In the latter year the attendance was 10,881, and 37,043 in 1885, while, including the academic departments of union schools, the number of institutions was two hundred and eighty-three.
Normal schools, designed primarily to train teachers for the common schools, have trenched upon the field of the academies. The first Nor- mal school was opened in Albany in 1844, and others have followed, at Oswego in 1861: at Brockport in 1867; at Cortland, Fredonia, and Potsdam in 1869; and at Geneseo and Buffalo in 1871. The attendance in them in 1885 reached 5,039 ; while teachers' classes, includ- ing 2,348 pupils, were taught in one hundred and forty-three other institutions. In the pri-
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vate schools of the State, in the same year, the number of pupils of all grades was 124,816.
Reformatories, and industrial and mission schools, are maintained in various parts of the State, the former in part by appropriations by the legislature, and in nearly all the cities much care and labor and liberality are turned in this direction.
The great work of education depends upon the common schools, in which, in 1885, 31,399 teachers gave instruction in 11,912 school- houses to 1,024,845 pupils, for an average of thirty-three and one-half weeks.
The system dates back in a crude form to 1633, during the early Dutch sway. In 1789 two lots were set apart in each township by the legislature for educational purposes. In 1795 the sum of 850,000 annually for five years was appropriated to maintain schools for such branches as are most necessary to complete a good English education, while the boards of su- pervisors were required to raise by tax one-half of the local share of this sum for like purposes. Only sixteen of the twenty-three counties took the benefit of the law, and in 1798 1,352 schools were in operation with 59,660 pupils. The law expired by its terms in 1800, and in that year four successive lotteries were authorized to raise $100,000, of which one-eighth was to
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be distributed by the regents of the univer- sity among the academies, and seven-eighths used for the common schools. These measures were fitful and without enlarged system.
In 1805 two steps, which led to great and permanent improvement, were taken. The first was the foundation, with DeWitt Clinton for president, of "The Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York," upon the basis of individual subscriptions, to which the legislature added moderate help; and the sec- ond was an appeal from Governor Lewis for the gift of the lands of the State, then amounting to 1,500,000 acres, for schools, resulting in the passage of an act, April 2, 1805, for the sale of 500,000 acres and the assignment of the pro- ceeds for a fund, of which the interest, when reaching $50,000, should be distributed among the common schools. To this beginning the legislature, in 1811, gave more definite value by appointing a commission of five, with Jede- diah Peck of Otsego at its head, to report a plan of organization, under which, in 1813. Gideon Hawley of Albany was appointed State superintendent of common schools. The next year an act was passed, less commendable in its methods than its ends, attributed to the ef- forts of Rev. Dr. Nott, president of Union Col- lege, for giving to that institution $200,000, to
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be raised by lotteries; and in order to gain votes in the legislature, smaller sums were ap- propriated to Columbia and Hamilton Colleges, to an African church, to the Historical Society, to the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the western district, and to the Medical Col- lege in New York. It was the first of a series of " log-rolling " operations by which money was for a number of years voted to colleges and to academies.
More useful and more moral was the remod- eling of the common-school system, according to the recommendations of Superintendent Haw- ley, with a provision allowing the remission of tuition in deserving cases by the trustees, on consent of the voters of the school district con- cerned. Mr. Hawley's report in 1818 claimed over 5,000 schools organized, with more than 200,000 pupils in attendance for a period of from four to six months, and other authorities commend the efficiency of his administration. His advice was followed in the succeeding year in legislation for improving the school system; but in 1821 the politicians wanted his office, and he was removed by the council to make room for his clerk, who had no fitness for the superintendent's place ; whereupon the legisla- ture, to rebuke the outrage, transferred the schools to the care of the secretary of state,
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under whom, after 1841, general deputies were designated to look after them. In 1854 the legislature recognized the need of a separate department of public instruction ; and since that date its superintendent has been practi- cally the executive head of our common-school system, and of our Indian schools, while he has had important duties in relation to other edu- cational institutions.
Much was hoped, more than has been at- tained, from a plan adopted by the legislature, April 13, 1835, for the establishment of libraries in the several school districts. In some of the cities, libraries have to some extent been en- couraged, but in the rural districts not much was ever achieved, and of late years the money has been more and more diverted from the pur- chase of books to the payment of teachers' wages. The sum appropriated by the State was for a great while $55,000 annually ; it is now 850,000. The number of volumes in all the district libraries, which was 1.604,210 in 1853, fell to 732.876 in 1885, and the loss shows how little care is given for the books possessed, while less desire is indicated for the extension of the libraries.
The question of religious instruction in the common schools became the subject of active discussion in 1838 and the following years.
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John A. Dix as secretary of state, charged with supervision of the schools, advocated such in- struction based on the Bible without note or comment. William H. Seward, in his message as governor, in January, 1841, urged the " edu- cation of all the children of the commonwealth in morality and virtue, leaving matters of con- science where, according to the principles of civil and religious liberty established by our constitution and laws, they rightfully belong ; " and John C. Spencer, as secretary of state, in a report on petitions asking for more full provi- sion in New York city for the children of for- eigners and Catholics, recommended the elec- tion of a board of commissioners to cooperate with existing authorities to that end, but his suggestions were not followed ; neither did the legislature accept Governor Seward's elaborate argument submitted in his next message, in fa- vor of a distribution of school moneys in New York city between Protestants and Catholics.
Except the establishment of the Normal school in Albany, little change was made in the educational policy of the State until 1849. In 1848, Nathaniel S. Benton reported that many cities and villages, by voting to remit tuition, had made their schools free, and he urged that the State should render the system uniform. His successor, Christopher Morgan, argued the
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imperative duty of the State to educate all its children as a preventive of crime and pauperism ; and March 26, 1849, an act was passed sub- mitting to the people at the ensuing election a proposition for free schools, supported by the existing funds and by taxation, to be kept for at least four months in each year, for all chil- dren between the ages of five and twenty-one. Every county except Tompkins, Chenango, Cort- land and Otsego, gave for the policy majorities aggregating 158,000. Difficulties in the admin- istration of the law caused demand for its re- peal; and when that question was submitted to the people in November, 1850, forty-two coun- ties voted for repeal, and seventeen counties voted for sustaining free schools, and showed a majority in their favor of about 25,000. Under pledges made during the canvass, the details of the law were modified by the legislature, especially those which related to the raising and distribution of school moneys and to the retaining of rate bills ; but legislation soon fol- lowed providing for free and union schools in the cities and villages and chief towns, and in 1867 all the common and normal schools, and the departments in academies for the instruc- tion of common-school teachers, were declared absolutely free. The total expenditure for the common schools of the State was, in 1885, $13,466,367.97.
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The efficiency of these schools varies. In the cities they generally are liberally supported, in commodious structures, with teachers of fair and often of eminent qualifications. The union schools in many of the towns are well equipped, and provide thorough education in the branches which they take up. In the rural districts, much room for improvement exists. Commis- sioners are chosen, numbering one hundred and six, who have each oversight of several towns or of the smaller counties, and much depends on their knowledge and fidelity. Only con- stant care and watchfulness can keep the school- houses in condition, or render them suitable for their uses. The teachers are frequently changed, often coming from the normal school or academy, as an episode before marriage or entering a profession. Teachers' institutes are enlisted for training the inexperienced, and de- veloping interest in education and in the best methods. The State can hardly be blamed if the schools fail fully to meet the demands upon them, for its system is in theory admirable. With the regents of the university as a superior power, with a State superintendent, commis- sioners in districts of several towns, and in cities, and with vast expenditure of money, any lack must be in the zeal and fidelity and persistence of these officers, and in the attention of the
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people to a matter so vital to the individual - and to society.
A State library was founded at the capital by act of April 21, 1818, and it has, under the fostering care of the regents and the liberality of the legislature, grown to creditable propor- tions. In New York city the libraries estab- lished and maintained by private munificence are among its chief adornments. Elsewhere in the State the foundations of libraries have been laid ; and the several colleges, notably Cornell University, are gathering collections from which scholars may derive much hope.
In the earlier days, the incoming missiona- ries and the churches gave an impetus to schools and to educational influences. The interior of New York became noted for its zeal in revivals and its religious activity. If there was less of extravagance than in some other parts of the country, the orderliness was due to the charac- ter of the people. The growth of churches kept equal pace with the increase in the population. By reason of the surprising advance of the set- tlements, the State was. in the first third of this century, an attractive field to the most prom- ising graduates of the Eastern colleges, and to the strong minds that in various branches of the church were planning for their extension. Every new method in religion, every new sug-
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gestion in theology, found hospitable reception. Some remarkable men were developed by this religious activity, and contributed to it. A prominent figure in central New York, in the years succeeding 1824, was Rev. Charles G. Finney, born in Connecticut, but brought at the age of two years to Oneida county, and 1 thence to Jefferson county. He was of strong ยท natural talents, without thorough education, but with the zeal and aggressive force which com- mand attention. He became a Presbyterian clergyman, and strenuously insisted on the "voluntary total depravity of the unregen- erate, " and invited converts to the "anxious seat." His " revivals " stirred up society, and led to discussion within his own denomination, for his language and theology and methods were not approved by many conservative clergymen. He and other revivalists who followed him were, however, a power in awakening thought and marking their era.
A vagary not born of the soil, but imported from Connecticut, was developed by John Hum- phrey Noyes, who in 1847 established the Oneida Community, near Oneida. and gave it a world- wide reputation. He claimed to restore the communism of the Bible in property and be- tween the sexes, and maintained an institution in which its members were thrifty and orderly
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after their way, but shocked their neighbors by open advocacy and practice of their peculiar morality. The association in 1881 abandoned its practices relative to the sexes, and became simply a corporation for business purposes.
The pulpit of New York, not of its chief cities only, but of the interior in remarkable de- gree, has in all denominations been a type of the progress and education of the people. The rec- ord of the State's religious activity, of its cul- ture and development, of its charities at home and abroad, of its benevolent institutions, and its private gifts for public uses, has never been fully written, while these labors are expanding constantly in their dimensions and in their ef- ficiency.
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CHAPTER XXXII.
CONSTITUTIONS AND JURISPRUDENCE.
1821-1874.
THE first constitution of New York was in many respects a remarkable document, and was found to serve its purposes for forty-four years. The provision relative to a council of revision and appointment was the subject of criticism, but was deliberately sustained by the conven- tion of 1801. In the ensuing twenty years this council became the arena of sharp faction fights, and removals and appointments were made in accordance with or over the wishes of the gov- ernor, as the balance of power happened to turn. The members were chosen from the senate by the assembly upon the nomination of the assem- blymen of the dominant party in each sena- torial district. The body. as the source of pat- ronage remorselessly used for partisan advan- tage, was a machine of vast power, and with only a divided responsibility. Governor Clin- ton had used this power while he commanded the majority, but before 1820 it was turned
CONSTITUTIONS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 563
against him. This feature, and a desire to reconstruct the judiciary, led to a movement, for some time under discussion, for a consti- tutional convention ; and at a special election in April, 1821, 109,346 votes were cast for holding a convention to 34,901 against it. This convention, which sat from August 28 to November 10 of that year, had Daniel D. Tompkins for its chairman, and included a goodly representation of the men of experience in politics, and of ability and standing in the professions and civil life. Martin Van Buren, who represented Otsego county in part, was diligent and influential ; Ambrose Spencer, of Albany, took large share in the proceedings, but finally did not sign the constitution, nor did Chancellor James Kent. Peter A. Jay, of West- chester, and Ezekiel Bacon and Nathan Wil- liams, of Oneida, impressed themselves on the convention ; and not a few others earned repu- tation for prudence and practical understand- ing.
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