History of Knox County, Ohio, its past and present, Part 25

Author: Hill, N. N. (Norman Newell), comp; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-; Graham, A.A. & Co., Mt. Vernon, Ohio
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Mt. Vernon, Ohio : A. A. Graham & Co.
Number of Pages: 1096

USA > Ohio > Knox County > History of Knox County, Ohio, its past and present > Part 25

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).

Having now considered the resources and the products of the soil and the mines of Ohio, we may properly ask how far the people have employed their resources in the increase of art and manu- facture. We have two modes of comparison, the rate of increase within the State, and the ratio they bear to other States. The aggregate value of the products of manufacture, exclusive of mining, in the last three censuses were : in 1850, $62.692.000; in 1860, $121,691,000; in 1870, $269,713,000.

The ratio of increase was over 100 per cent in each ten years, a rate far beyond that of the in- crease of population, and much beyond the ratio of increase in the whole country. In 1850, the man- ufactures of Ohio were one-sixteenth part of the aggregate in the country; in 1860, one-fifteenth

143

HISTORY OF OHIO.

part. in 1870, one-twelfth part. In addition to this, we find, from the returns of Cincinnati and Cleveland, that the value of the manufactured prod- ucts of Ohio in 1875, must have reached $400,- 000,000, and, by reference to the census tables, it will be seen that the ratio of increase exceeded that of the great manufacturing States of New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Of all the States admitted into the Union prior to Ohio, Pennsylvania alone has kept pace in the progress of manufacture. Some little reference to the manufacture of leading articles may throw some light on the cause of this. In the production of agricultural machinery and implements, Ohio is the first State ; in animal and vegetable oils and in pig iron, the second; in cast iron and in tobacco, the third ; in salt, in machinery and in leather, the fourth. These facts show how largely the resources of coal, iron and agriculture have entered into the manufactures of the State. This great advance in the manufactures of Ohio, when we consider that this State is, relatively to its surface, the first agricultural State in the country, leads to the inevitable inference that its people are remarkably industrious. When, on forty thousand square miles of surface, three mill- ions of people raise one hundred and fifty million bushels of grain, and produce manufactures to the amount of $269,000,000 (which is fifty bushels of breadstuff to each man, woman and child, and $133 of manufacture), it will be difficult to find any community surpassing such results. It is a testimony, not only to the State of Ohio, but to the industry, sagacity and energy of the American people.

Looking now to the commerce of the State, we have said there are six hundred miles of coast line, which embraces some of the principal internal ports of the Ohio and the lakes, such as Cincinnati, Cleve- land, Toledo and Portsmouth, but whose commerce is most wholly inland. Of course, no comparison can be made with the foreign commerce of the ocean ports. On the other hand, it is well known that the inland trade of the country far exceeds that of all its foreign commerce, and that the larg- est part of this interior trade is carried on its rivers and lakes. The materials for the vast con- sumption of the interior must be conveyed in its vessels, whether of sail or steam, adapted to these waters. Let us take, then, the ship-building, the navigation, and the exchange trades of Ohio, as elements in determining the position of this State in reference to the commerce of the country. At the ports of Cleveland, Toledo, Sandusky and Cin-

cinnati, there have been built one thousand sail and steam vessels in the last twenty years, making an average of fifty each year. The number of sail, steam and all kinds of vessels in Ohio is eleven hundred and ninety, which is equal to the number in all the other States in the Ohio Valley and the Upper Mississippi.

When we look to the navigable points to which these vessels are destined, we find them on all this vast coast line, which extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Yellowstone, and from Duluth to the St. Lawrence.

Looking again to see the extent of this vast in- terior trade which is handled by Ohio alone, we find that the imports and exports of the principal articles of Cincinnati, amount in value to $500,- 000,000; and when we look at the great trade of Cleveland and Toledo, we shall find that the an- nual trade of Ohio exceeds $700,000,000. The lines of railroad which connect with its ports, are more than four thousand miles in length, or rather more than one mile in length to each ten square miles of surface. This great amount of railroads is engaged not merely in transporting to the Atlantic and thence to Europe, the immense surplus grain and meat in Ohio, but in carrying the largest part of that greater surplus, which exists in the States west of Ohio, the granary of the West. Ohio holds the gateway of every railroad north of the Ohio, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, and hence it is that the great transit lines of the coun- try pass through Ohio.

. Let us now turn from the progress of the arts to the progress of ideas; from material to intellect- ual development. It is said that a State consists of men, and history shows that no art or science, wealth or power, will compensate for the want of moral or intellectual stability in the minds of a nation. Hence, it is admitted that the strength and perpetuity of our republic must consist in the intelligence and morality of the people. A re- public can last only when the people are enlight- ened. This was an axiom with the early legislators of this country. Hence it was that when Vir- ginia, Connecticut and the original colonies ceded to the General Government that vast and then un- known wilderness which lay west of the Allegha- nies, in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, they took care that its future inhabitants should be an educated people. The Constitution was not formed when the celebrated ordinance of 1787 was passed.

That ordinance provided that, " Religion, mor- ality, and knowledge being necessary to good

144

HISTORY OF OHIO.

government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever en- couraged;" and by the ordinance of 1785 for the survey of public lands in the Northwestern Terri- tory, Section 16 in each township, that is, one thirty-sixth part, was reserved for the maintenance of public schools in said townships. As the State of Ohio contained a little more than twenty-five millions of acres, this, together with two special grants of three townships to universities, amounted to the dedication of 740,000 acres of land to the maintenance of schools and colleges. It was a splendid endowment, but it was many years before it became available. It was sixteen years after the passage of this ordinance (in 1803), when Ohio entered the Union, and legislation upon this grant became possible. The Constitution of the State pursued the language of the ordinance, and de- clared that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged by legislative provision." The Governors of Ohio, in successive messages, urged attention to this subject upon the people; but the thinness of settlement, making it impossi- ble, except in few districts, to collect youth in suf- ficient numbers, and impossible to sell or lease. lands to advantage, caused the delay of efficient school system for many years. In 1825, however, a general law establishing a school system, and levy- ing a tax for its support, was passed.

This was again enlarged and increased by new legislation in 1836 and 1846. From that time to this, Ohio has had a broad, liberal and efficient sys- tem of public instruction. The taxation for schools, and the number enrolled in them at different pe- riods, will best show what has been done. In 1855 the total taxation for school purposes was $2,672,827. The proportion of youth of school- able age enrolled was 67 per cent. In 1874 the amount raised by taxation was $7,425,135.` The number enrolled of schoolable age was 70 per cent, or 707,943.

As the schoolable age extends to twenty-one years, and as there are very few youth in school after fifteen years of age, it follows that the 70 per cent of schoolable youths enrolled in the pub- lic schools must comprehend nearly the whole number between four and fifteen years. It is im- portant to observe this fact, because it has been inferred that, as the whole number of youth be- tween five and twenty-one have not been enrolled, therefore they are not educated. This is a mistake; nearly all over fifteen years of age have been in the public schools, and all the native

youth of the State, and all foreign born, young enough, have had the benefit of the public schools. But in consequence of the large number who have come from other States and from foreign countries, there are still a few who are classed by the census statistics among the "illiterate;" the proportion of this class, however, is less in propor- tion than in twenty-eight other States, and less in proportion than in Connecticut and Massachusetts, two of the oldest States most noted for popular education. In fact, every youth in Ohio, under twenty-one years of age, may have the benefit of a public education ; and, since the system of graded and high schools has been adopted, may obtain a common knowledge from the alphabet to the classics. The enumerated branches of study in the pub- lic schools of Ohio are thirty-four, including mathematics and astronomy, French, German and the classics. Thus the State which was in the heart of the wilderness in 1776, and was not a State until the nineteenth century had begun, now presents to the world, not merely an unrivaled de- velopment of material prosperity, but an unsur- passed system of popular education.

In what is called the higher education, in the colleges and universities, embracing the classics and sciences taught in regular classes, it is the pop- ular idea, and one which few dare to question, that we must look to the Eastern States for superiority and excellence; but that also is becoming an as- sumption without proof; a proposition difficult to sustain. The facts in regard to the education of universities and colleges, their faculties, students and course of instruction, are all set forth in the complete statistics of the Bureau of Education for 1874. They show that the State of Ohio had the largest number of such institutions; the largest number of instructors in their faculties, except one State, New York; and the largest number of stu- dents in regular college classes, in proportion to their population, except the two States of Connect- icut and Massachusetts. Perhaps, if we look at the statistics of classical students in the colleges, disregarding preparatory and irregular courses, we shall get a more accurate idea of the progress of the higher education in those States which claim the best. In Ohio, 36 colleges, 258 teachers, 2,139 students, proportion, 1 in 124; in Penn- sylvania, 27 colleges, 239 teachers, 2,359 students, proportion, 1 in 150; in New York, 26 colleges, 343 teachers, 2,764 students, proportion, 1 in 176; in thesix New England States, 17 colleges, 252 teach- ers, 3,341 students, proportion, 1 in 105; in Illi-

145

HISTORY OF OHIO.

nois, 24 colleges, 219 teachers, 1,701 students, proportion, 1 in 140.

This shows there are more collegiate institutions in Ohio than in all New England ; a greater num- ber of college teachers, and only a little smaller ratio of students to the population ; a greater number of such students than either in New York or Pennsyl- vania, and, as a broad, general fact, Ohio has made more progress in education than either of the old States which formed the American Union. Such a fact is a higher testimony to the strength and the beneficent influence of the American Government than any which the statistician or the historian can advance.

Let us now turn to the moral aspects of the people of Ohio. No human society is found with- out its poor and dependent classes, whether made so by the defects of nature, by acts of Providence, or by the accidents of fortune. Since no society is exempt from these classes, it must be judged not so much by the fact of their existence, as by the manner in which it treats them. In the civil- ized nations of antiquity, such as Greece and Rome, hospitals, infirmaries, orphan homes, and asylumns for the infirm, were unknown. These are the creations of Christianity, and that must be esteemed practically the most Christian State which most practices this Christian beneficence. In Ohio, as in all the States of this country, and of all Christian countries, there is a large number of the infirm and dependent classes; but, although Ohio is the third State in population, she is only the fourteenth in the proportion of dependent classes. The more important point, however, was, how does she treat them? Is there wanting any of all the varied institutions of benevolence? How does she compare with other States and countries in this respect? It is believed that no State or coun- try can present a larger proportion of all these institutions which the benevolence of the wise and good have suggested for the alleviation of suffer- ing and misfortune, than the State of Ohio. With 3,500 of the insane within her borders, she has five great lunatic asylums, capable of accommodat- ing them all. She has asylums for the deaf and dumb, the idiotic, and the blind. She has the best hospitals in the country. She has schools of reform and houses of refuge. She has "homes" for the boys and girls, to the number of 800, who are children of soldiers. She has penitentiaries and jails, orphan asylums and infirmaries. In every county there is an infirmary, and in every public institution, except the penitentiary, there is a

school. So that the State has used every human means to relieve the suffering, to instruct the igno- rant, and to reform the criminal. There are in the State 80,000 who come under all the various forms of the infirm, the poor, the sick and the criminal, who, in a greater or less degree, make the dependent class. For these the State bas made every provision which humanity or justice or intelligence can require. A young State, de- veloped in the wilderness, she challenges, without any invidious comparison, both Europe and Amer- ica, to show her superior in the development of humanity manifested in the bencfaction of public institutions.

Intimately connected with public morals and with charitable institutions, is the religion of a people. The people of the United States are a Christian people. The people of Ohio have man- ifested their zeal by the erection of churches, of Sunday schools, and of religious institutions. So far as these are outwardly manifested, they are made known by the social statistics of the census. The number of church organizations in the leading States were: In the State of Ohio, 6,488; in the State of New York, 5,627 : in the State of Pennsylvania, 5,984 ; in the State of Illinois, 4,298. It thus appears that Ohio had a larger number of churches than any State of the Union. The number of sittings, however, was not quite as large as those in New York and Pennsylvania. The denominations are of all the sects known in this country, about thirty in number, the majority of the whole being Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists. Long before the American Independ- ence, the Moravians had settled on the Mahoning and Tuscarawas Rivers, but only to be destroyed ; and when the peace with Great Britain was made, not a vestige of Christianity remained on the soil of Ohio; yet we see that within ninety years from that time the State of Ohio was, in the num- ber of its churches, the first of this great Union.

In the beginning of this address, I said that Ohio was the oldest and first of these great States, carved out of the Northwestern Territory, and that it was in some things the greatest State of the American Union. I have now traced the physi- cal, commercial, intellectual and moral features of the State during the seventy-five years of its constitutional history. The result is to establish fully the propositions with which I began. These facts have brought out :

1. That Ohio is, in reference to the square miles of its surface, the first State in agriculture

146

HISTORY OF OHIO.

of the American Union; this, too, notwithstand- ing it has 800,000 in cities and towns, and a large development of capital and products in manu- factures.

2. That Ohio has raised more grain per square mile than either France, Austria, or Great Britain. They raised 1,450 bushels per square mile, and 10 bushels to each person. Ohio raised 3,750 bushels per square mile, and 50 bushels to each one of the population ; or, in other words, five times the proportion of grain raised in Europe.

3. Ohio was the first State of the Union in the production of domestic animals, being far in advance of either New York, Pennsylvania or Illi- nois. The proportion of domestic animals to each person in Ohio was three and one-third, and in New York and Pennsylvania less than half that. The largest proportion of domestic animals pro- duced in Europe was in Great Britain and Russia, neither of which come near that of Ohio.

4. The coal-field of Ohio is vastly greater than that of Great Britain, and we need make no com- parison with other States in regard to coal or iron; for the 10,000 square miles of coal, and 4,000 square miles of iron in Ohio, are enough to supply the whole American continent for ages to come.

5. Neither need we compare the results of commerce and navigation, since, from the ports of Cleveland and Cincinnati, the vessels of Ohio touch on 42,000 miles of coast, and her 5,000 miles of railroad carry her products to every part of the American continent.

6. Notwithstanding the immense proportion and products of agriculture in Ohio, yet she has more than kept pace with New York and New England in the progress of manufactures during the last twenty years. Her coal and iron are pro- ducing their legitimate results in making her a great manufacturing State.

7. Ohio is the first State in the Union as to the proportion of youth attending school; and the States west of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio have more youth in school, proportionably, than New England and New York. The facts on this subject are so extraordinary that I may be excused for giving them a little in detail.

The proportion of youth in Ohio attending school to the population, is 1 in 4.2; in Illinois, 1 in 4.3; in Pennsylvania, 1 in 4.8; in New York, 1 in 5.2; in Connecticut and Massachusetts, 1 in 8.7.

These proportions show that it is in the West, and not in the East, that education is now advanc-

ing; and it is here that we see the stimulus given by the ordinance of 1787, is working out its great and beneficent results. The land grant for educa- tion was a great one, but, at last, its chief effort was in stimulating popular education; for the State of Ohio has taxed itself tens of millions of dollars beyond the utmost value of the land grant, to found and maintain a system of public education which the world has not surpassed.

We have seen that above and beyond all this material and intellectual development, Ohio has provided a vast benefaction of asylums, hospitals, and infirmaries, and special schools for the support and instruction of the dependent classes. There is not within all her borders a single one of the deaf, dumb, and blind, of the poor, sick, and insane, not an orphan or a vagrant, who is not provided for by the broad and generous liberality of the State and her people. A charity which the classic ages knew nothing of, a beneficence which the splendid hierarchies and aristocracies of Europe cannot equal, has been exhibited in this young State, whose name was unknown one hundred years ago, whose people, from Europe to the Atlantic, and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, were, like Adam and Eve, cast out-"the world before them where to choose."

Lastly, we see that, although the third in pop- ulation, and the seventeenth in admission to the Union, Ohio had, in 1870, 6,400 churches, the largest number in any one State, and numbering among them every form of Christian worship. The people, whose fields were rich with grain, whose mines were boundless in wealth, and whose commerce extended through thousands of miles of lakes and rivers, came here, as they came to New England's rock-bound coast ---

" With freedom to worship God."

The church and the schoolhouse rose beside the green fields, and the morning bells rang forth to cheerful children going to school, and to a Chris- tian people going to the church of God.

Let us now look at the possibilities of Ohio in the future development of the American Repub- lican Republic. The two most populous parts of Europe, because the most food-producing, are the Netherlands and Italy, or, more precisely, Belgium and ancient Lombardy ; to the present time, their population is, in round numbers, three hundred to the square mile. The density of population in England proper is about the same. We may assume, therefore, that three hundred to the square

147

HISTORY OF OHIO.

mile is, in round numbers, the limit of comfortable subsistence under modern civilization. It is true that modern improvements in agricultural machin- ery and fertilization have greatly increased the capacity of production, on a given amount of land, with a given amount of labor. It is true, also, that the old countries of Europe do not possess an equal amount of arable land with Ohio in proportion to the same surface. It would seem, therefore, that the density of population in Ohio might exceed that of any part of Europe. On the other hand, it may be said with truth that the American people will not become so dense as in Europe while they have new lands in the West to occupy. This is true; but lands such as those in the valley of the Ohio are now becoming scarce in the West, and we think that, with her great capacity for the production of grain on one hand, and of illimitable quantities of coal and iron to manufacture with on the other, that Ohio will, at no remote period, reach nearly the density of Belgium, which will give her 10,000,000 of people. This seems extravagant, but the tide of migration, which flowed so fast to the West, is beginning to ebb, while the manufactures of the interior offer greater inducements.

With population comes wealth, the material for education, the development of the arts, advance in all the material elements of civilization, and the still grander advancements in the strength and elevation of the human mind, conquering to itself new realms of material and intellectual power, acquiring in the future what we have seen in the past, a wealth of resources unknown and undreamed of when, a hundred years ago, the fathers of the republic declared their independence. I know how easy it is to treat this statement with easy incredulity, but statistics is a certain science ; the elements of civilization are now measured, and we know the progress of the human race as we know

that of a cultivated plant. We know the resources of the country, its food-producing capacity, its art processes, its power of education, and the unde- fined and illimitable power of the human mind for new inventions and unimagined progress. With this knowledge, it is not difficult nor unsafe to say that the future will produce more, and in a far greater ratio, than the past. The pictured scenes of the prophets have already been more than ful- filled, and the visions of beauty and glory, which their imagination failed fully to describe, will be more than realized in the bloom of that garden which republican America will present to the eyes of astonished mankind. Long before another century shall have passed by, the single State of Ohio will present fourfold the population with which the thirteen States began their independence, more wealth than the entire Union now has; greater universities than any now in the country, and a development of arts and manufacture which the world now knows nothing of. You have seen more than that since the Constitution was adopted, and what right have you to say the future shall not equal the past ?

I have aimed, in this address, to give an exact picture of what Ohio is, not more for the sake of Ohio than as a representation of the products which the American Republic has given to the world. A State which began long after the Declaration of Independence, in the then unknown wilderness of North America, presents to-day the fairest example of what a republican govern- ment with Christian civilization can do. Look upon this picture and upon those of Assyria, of Greece or Rome, or of Europe in her best estate, and say where is the civilization of the earth which can equal this. If a Roman citizen could say with pride, " Civis Romanus sum," with far greater pride can you say this day, "I am an American citizen."

148

HISTORY OF OHIO.

CHAPTER XIV.

EDUCATION#-EARLY SCHOOL LAWS-NOTES -INSTITUTES AND EDUCATIONAL JOURNALS- SCHOOL SYSTEM-SCHOOL FUNDS-COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.

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.

History of Knox County, Ohio, its past and present, Part 25

Author: Hill, N. N. (Norman Newell), comp; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-; Graham, A.A. & Co., Mt. Vernon, Ohio Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Mt. Vernon, Ohio : A. A. Graham & Co. Number of Pages: 1096

Author: Hill, N. N. (Norman Newell), comp; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-; Graham, A.A. & Co., Mt. Vernon, Ohio
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Mt. Vernon, Ohio : A. A. Graham & Co.
Number of Pages: 1096