Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 91

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 91

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For the factory family, unless it accomplished the difficult achievement of building eco- nomic dependence by unrelaxed thrift and saving, removal from the factory village seldom meant more than migration to another. His own interest in maintaining his organization intact would counsel the factory owner to carry his employes over dull season periods, by

*New trial not granted. State vs. Gordon, 1 R. I. 179, and see Chapter XXVI.

¡February 11, 1852.

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extending credit for rent and store purchases ; they entered the reopened factory when opera- tion was resumed with an accumulated indebtedness. The factory system, complete in all its details, was easily maintained in isolated villages; it was maintained rigidly even in cities and large manufacturing towns where employers owned tenements and paid wages with orders on company stores. Had factory managers depended for operatives upon the natural increase of population, the time might come in which competition for a limited supply of operatives might destroy the balance in favor of the employer, which helped to maintain the feudal organization. Immigration postponed the shortage of operatives that would destroy the employers' advan- tage, and flowed into Rhode Island in an apparently unending stream. The abundance of posi- tions in Rhode Island mills and factories was known beyond the ocean, and immigrants on reaching ports of entry lost no time in taking packet, train or other conveyance for Rhode Island.

IMMIGRATION-The earliest immigrants were English and Scotch; many from the fac- tory towns were already experienced textile workers. A large emigration from Ireland occurred following the famine year of 1826. The more serious evils attending unrestricted exploitation of workers were adjusted eventually by statutory enactments requiring the intro- duction of devices intended to protect life and health; prescribing limited hours for the employment of women and children, which had the effect of shortening the work day for all employes; ordering weekly payment of wages, and accomplishing the payment of wages in cash through statutory provision for collecting debts in money. The earliest factory legisla- tion aimed to correct the evil entailed in the employment of children glimpsed by Josiah Quincy on his visit to Pawtucket. Slater had justified child labor as an alleviation of poverty, and had undertaken to ameliorate the social condition of his charges through education. In the extension of the Rhode Island factory system to employment of families, children of ten- der years were drawn into the mills to work under conditions that were detrimental to health and the normal physical growth of the body. To child labor and the employment of women and girls in factory occupations has been attributed the stunted stature of factory operatives. Factory children were deprived not only of the natural life of "air, space and sport," but edu- cation even so slight as that which would establish literacy. It is true that while Rhode Island's political system rested upon a selective freehold qualification that excluded the majority of factory children from the probability and possibility of acquiring political rights, there was no threat to the integrity of the government involved in an illiterate Periceci. There was no necessity for "education for complete citizenship," if citizenship were never to be so complete that the denizen could vote, hold office and serve on the jury.

But there was in Rhode Island a popular consciousness of civic obligation for the gen- eral welfare, which while insisting upon individualism as the strongest bulwark of personal liberty, had expressed itself in measures for the abolition of negro and Indian slavery in Rhode Island, in the organization of anti-slavery societies, and in opposition to the extension of the institution of slavery within the United States; the same leaven working in the body politic must focus attention eventually upon the child slave to the factory system. Southern orators in Congress, answering Northern speeches against negro slavery, did not hesitate to accuse the North of maintaining a white industrial wage slavery in factories which was more debasing than negro slavery, because the white master manufacturer did not assume the responsibility for the economic welfare of his factory employe which in the South operated to assure the negro slave of abundant food, a comfortable house, medical care in illness and maintenance at his master's expense after he was no longer able to work. The earliest state school law, 1800, offered free school education to persons who stood in need of it and who offered themselves for admission to school. In 1818, Governor Nehemiah Knight, in his mes- sage to the General Assembly, invited consideration of measures to provide schools for chil- dren employed in factories. In justice to employers it should be remembered that many of

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them were earnest promoters and liberal supporters of the schools* that had become so numer- ous that more than 200 were conducted in 1819, and more than 300 in 1828. Industrial Rhode Island was strong enough politically in 1828 to defeat, had it seen fit to appear in opposition, the school legislation of that year; but industrial Rhode Island supported the bill to appro- priate state revenues for the support of public schools. The General Assembly, in 1840, enacted the first American child labor and compulsory attendance statute, which required chil- dren under twelve years of age, if employed in factories, to attend school for at least three months of each year. This statute was repealed in the revision of the school laws in 1845. Eight years later, 1853, the General Assembly limited the hours of labor of children employed in factories, and, in 1855, forbade the employment of children under fifteen years of age in factories for more than nine months in any year and unless the children had attended school for three months in the preceding years. With these statutes the State of Rhode Island entered upon a program of restricting child labor, banishing children under fifteen from employment in factory or business occupations, and enforcing regular attendance on school instruction.

THE CHANGES OF HALF A CENTURY-In little more than half a century from the first success of Samuel Slater Rhode Island had been transformed from a commercial into an indus- trial state. Shipbuilding was at an end, as well as ocean commerce with distant ports in strange foreign lands. The wealth that had been acquired in foreign trade had been reinvested in factory property, and Rhode Island's white coal, or water power, had been harnessed to turn hundreds of factory wheels. Restrained by dams and liberated through sluices, it yielded to man's mastery and accomplished his purposes. Of cotton factories there were, in 1850, 158, which employed 10,915 persons and yielded a product valued at $6,447,120 annually. It should be noted that the improvement of machinery and introduction of new mechanical devices had tended to restrict the number of employes. Of woolen and worsted factories there were forty-five, employing 1758 operatives and producing cloth valued at $2,387,825 annually. The jewelry industry, later to experience a remarkable development, supported forty to forty- five establishments. Of the number of iron and steel manufactories, of their employes, and the value of their annual products, no reliable statistics for 1850 are available. The volume of business in Rhode Island is indicated somewhat by banking. Rhode Island had sixty-three banks in 1850, with a total capital of $11,716,000, and a paper note circulation amounting to $2,554,000. Deposits were $1,592,000, and loans and discounts $14,300,000. The greatest gain in population was taking place in the three northern counties; agricultural towns were no longer gaining, population increases being definitely related to manufacturing. Newport, because of its fine harbor, was still a commercial city, though taking on more and more its modern aspect as the fairest of summer resorts. Yankee cotton buyers in the Southern States were scarcely more familiar than the Southern planters who came to Newport for the summer, there to enjoy an unparalleled climate. Incidentally to the development of manufactures a system of internal transportation had been developed practically on the main lines that have persisted in twentieth century steam railways. The main trunk lines to Boston and Worces- ter, and Rhode Island's part of the line to New York, as well as the east shore line to War- ren and Bristol, all centering in Providence, had been constructed. New problems faced Rhode Island, to be met with the same fine courage and indomitable enthusiasm that had car- ried Rhode Island from poverty to wealth in little more than half a century.

*See Chapter XV.

LINCOLN MEMORIAL SCHOOL, LONSDALE

CHAPTER XX. EVOLUTION OF THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM.

DUCATION was not the major issue in the Dorr Rebellion, although Dorr, who had been interested in public education as a member of the General Assembly and as a member and chairman of the school committee of Providence, in the constitution drafted by the people's convention in 1841, included an article on education that ordered the General Assembly to establish and maintain a system of free public schools. Had Dorr not been an educational reformer, the use of the word "free" might be construed as accidental; the fact that Dorr had persuaded the school com- mittee of Providence to abolish the fuel tax, because it was an obstacle to enrollment and attendance, shows that he understood clearly the difference between free schools and public schools. Had the Dorr movement been successful immediately, Rhode Island might have real- ized a state-wide, universal, free public school system a quarter-century before the abolition of tuition, which became effective in 1868. The Dorr movement was suppressed, so far as it involved turning out the Charter government; but the agitation for a constitution, which had its beginning in the eighteenth century, bore fruit in 1842 in a state Constitution. The Con- stitution made the General Assembly a state school committee, and the General Assembly exercised the school committee function almost immediately, through action of the first Assembly organized under the Constitution.

A SURVEY ORDERED-Wilkins Updike, Representative from South Kingstown, intro- duced at the October session, 1843, a bill authorizing the governor to appoint an agent to visit, examine and report on the condition of the public schools. The bill was passed unani- mously by both houses. The duties of the agent were to "visit and examine the respective district schools in this state; ascertain the length of time each district school is kept, and at what season of the year, the qualifications of the respective teachers of said schools, the mode of instruction therein; collect information of the actual condition and efficiency of our public schools and other means of popular education, and diffuse as widely as possible among the people a knowledge of the most approved and successful methods of arranging the studies and conducting the education of the young, to the end that the children of the state who depend upon common schools for instruction may have the best education that those schools may be made to impart ; and shall make report to the legislature with such observations and reflections as experience may suggest, upon the condition and efficiency of our system of popular educa- tion, and the most practicable means of improving the same." Governor James Fenner appointed Henry Barnard, the foremost American educator of the nineteenth century, to undertake the survey, which gave Rhode Island the distinction of conducting, under an expe- rienced public educator, the first survey of an American state system of schools. The pos- sibility and probability that Barnard suggested the survey are supported by the facts: (1) that Barnard for the time being was without employment and available for appointment as agent, having been removed, for political reasons, from office as secretary and executive agent of the State Board of Commissioners of Common Schools of Connecticut; (2) that Barnard visited Updike at Kingston in 1843; (3) that the address in which Updike supported his bill proposing the survey displayed an acquaintance with educational problems rather extraordi- nary for a layman and lawyer, and included a review of education, including statistics, that smacked of professional knowledge .*

*Two versions of the address are printed in "Public Education in Rhode Island," page 123.

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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

HENRY BARNARD-Rhode Island was most fortunate in obtaining the services of Henry Barnard. A graduate of Yale in 1830, he had taught school for a year; studied law, thereby acquiring a splendid foundation for administration and for drafting the Rhode Island school legislation that carried his name; and had travelled extensively in America and in Europe. He visited Pestalozzi at Yverdun, in Switzerland, and in the same country met Fellenberg and Hoffweil. On his return to America, he was admitted to the Connecticut Bar, but did not settle down to practice law. He served three years in the Connecticut House of Represen- tatives. He wrote the Connecticut statute providing for a State Board of Commissioners of Common Schools, and himself became Secretary of the Board. He had by this time definitely dedicated his life to education, thus: "Here in America, at least, no man can live for himself alone. Individual happiness is here bound up with the greatest good for the greatest number. Every man must at once make himself as good and as influential as he can and help at the same time to make everybody about him and all whom he can reach better and happier. The common school should not longer be regarded as common, because it is cheap, inferior and attended only by the poor and those who are indifferent to the education of their children, but common as the light and air, because its blessings are open to all and enjoyed by all. That day will come. For me, I mean to enjoy the satisfaction of the labor, let who will enter into the harvest." And, later: "So far back as I have recollection the cause of true education, of the complete education of every human being without regard to the accident of birth or fortune, seemed most worthy of the concentration of all my powers, and, if need be, of any sacrifice of time, money and labor, which I might be called on to make in its behalf." Here, then, was a man with splendid, self-sacrificing ideals and a forward look; a reformer of the finest type; a man of intellectual superiority ; a trained, experienced educator ; a man of affairs, schooled by actual service, whose initial failure in carrying to completion his program for reforming the public schools of his own state, had resulted in abatement only-Henry Barnard went from Rhode Island back to Connecticut to finish there the work that he had undertaken. He served four years as State Superintendent of Education in Connecticut, 1850-1854; of Barnard's work his successor in Connecticut said: "He had done more than any other man to shape the educational policy of the nation." Barnard published the "American Journal of Education," a monumental encyclopedia of education, in thirty-one octavo volumes. He was Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, 1858-1860; President of St. John's College, Annapolis, Mary- land, 1866-1877; first United States Commissioner of Education, 1867-1870, his last public office. His service to the people and to education continued as author, editor and publisher. He died July 5, 1900, in his ninetieth year. Wilkins Updike died in 1867, after seeing the public school system reorganized. The General Assembly, in resolutions commending his life and service, failed to mention his most notable contribution to Rhode Island's welfare, the survey of the public schools: "Whereas the General Assembly has learned with sorrow of the death of the Honorable Wilkins Updike of Kingston, for many years a prominent mem- ber of this body ; therefore, resolved, that we desire to inscribe upon the record some memorial of our respect for this old-fashioned gentleman, this vigorous and honest legislator, this hos- pitable and warm hearted citizen: resolved, that in the death of Honorable Wilkins Updike has passed away from earth almost the last of a generation of true Rhode Island men, worthy of our respect and imitation in the walks of public and private life."

BARNARD'S METHODS-Governor Fenner announced the appointment of Henry Barnard as state school agent in a proclamation, addressed to the people of Rhode Island, in which he urged "the sympathy and cooperation of every citizen of the state." Barnard's earlier reports were made orally to the General Assembly, which as a state school committee called him into conference as its expert adviser. He was one of very few men who have been invited to address the General Assembly on matters pending. His first printed report recapitulated his work for two years; it was almost encyclopedic in detail, and presented a thoroughly organ-

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EVOLUTION OF THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM

ized review of his methods and activities. He had visited every section of Rhode Island, inspected schoolhouses, examined and questioned teachers, consulted with school officers, con- ducted and addressed public meetings, one of which was held within three miles of every home in the state. He drafted school legislation to remedy the defects which he found, and he con- ducted in every town and district of the state a "school revival meeting," knowing full well that law becomes effective only when enacted with the consent of the people, and when the sympathy of the people is enlisted in its enforcement. In a review of Barnard's activities over a five-year period; it was said that "more than 1100 meetings were held expressly to dis- cuss topics connected with public schools, at which upwards of 1500 addresses were delivered. One hundred and fifty of these meetings continued through the day and evening, upwards of 100 through two evenings and a day, fifty through two days and three evenings, and twelve, including teachers' institutes, through the entire week. In addition to this class of meetings and addresses, upwards of 200 meetings for teachers and parents were held for lectures and examination of schools. Besides these various meetings, experienced teachers were employed to visit particular towns and sections of the state and converse freely with parents on the con- dition and improvement of the public schools. In this way a meeting was held within three miles of every home in Rhode Island. In addition to all this, more than 16,000 educational pamphlets and tracts were distributed gratuitously through the state, and one year no almanac was sold in Rhode Island without at least sixteen pages of educational reading attached. This statement does not include the official documents published by the state nor the 'Journal' of the Institute, nor upwards of 1200 bound volumes on teaching purchased by teachers or added to public or school libraries. Before Mr. Barnard left the state a library of at least 500 volumes had been secured in twenty-nine out of thirty-two towns." Barnard was engaged in conducting an educational "revival" quite as much as in surveying the public schools, col- lecting information, and reporting facts, and suggesting measures for improving public education.

WHAT THE SURVEY REVEALED-As to the physical condition of schools Barnard reported that "405 schoolhouses were required, whereas but 312 were provided. Of these 29 were owned by towns, 147 by proprietors and 145 by school districts. Of 280 schoolhouses from which full returns were received, including those in Providence, 25 were in very good repair, 62 were in ordinary repair, and 86 were pronounced totally unfit for school purposes; 65 were located in the public highway, 180 directly on the line of the road, without any yard or outbuildings attached, and but 21 had a playground attached. In over 200 schoolhouses the average height was less than eight feet, without any opening in the ceiling or any other effec- tual means of ventilation. . ... Two hundred and seventy schools were unfurnished with a clock, blackboard or thermometer, and only five were provided with a scraper and mat for the feet." He found the schoolhouses too small and not appropriately fitted up, badly lighted, improperly ventilated, imperfectly warmed, supplied with desks and seats which were crude and unsuited to physical needs and convenience of pupils, wanting the ordinary accessories, such as blackboards, clocks, maps, thermometers and other apparatus and fixtures which are indispensable to well-regulated and well-instructed schools, and deficient in arrangements "which help to promote habits of order and neatness, and cultivate delicacy of manners and refinement of feeling." In some districts apartments in old shops or dwellings were used as schoolrooms. In many instances districts paid to proprietors rents that exceeded the interest on the cost of new and improved schoolhouses. To remedy these conditions the General Assembly, in January, 1844, empowered school districts to purchase, acquire, hold and con- vey land for school purposes; to build, hire and repair schoolhouses; to equip schoolhouses with furniture, apparatus and blackboards; and to levy and collect taxes, and appropriate money for these purposes. Barnard printed and distributed a pamphlet of seventy-two pages,

"History of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction," E M. Stone.

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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

with fifty illustrations, dealing with schoolhouse architecture and equipment. It is still stand- ard in essentials, though Barnard probably would be amazed could he see the beautiful modern temples of learning rising in Rhode Island, and visit them and examine the apparatus and equipment. Barnard had found eighty-six of 280 schoolhouses "totally unfit for school pur- poses." That this was not a condition peculiar to Rhode Island is disclosed by Mann's report on the Massachusetts schools as he found them, thus: "In 1837 not one-third of the public schoolhouses of Massachusetts would have been considered tenantable by any decent family out of the poorhouse or in it." Young's New York report for 1844 said of the public schools of the Empire State: "One-third only of the whole number of schoolhouses visited were found in good repair, another third in ordinary and comfortable condition only in this respect -- in other words, barely sufficient for the convenience and accommodation of the teacher and pupils ; while the remainder, consisting of 3319, were to all intents and purposes unfit for the reception of man or beast." Barnard had left Connecticut with the work of reform incom- plete, and was to return there. Similar conditions have been reported in the twentieth century in state school surveys made in Middle Atlantic and Southern States. Three New England States-Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts-and New York were fortunate in undertaking effective measures for improvement at the middle of the nineteenth century. In Rhode Island the response to Barnard's report and effort to interest the people was such that Barnard after two years wrote: "If the same progress can be made for three years more, Rhode Island can claim in proportion to the number of school districts more specimens of good houses and fewer dilapidated, inconvenient and unhealthy structures of the kind than any other state. To bring about thus early this great and desirable result, I can suggest nothing beyond the vigorous prosecution of the same measures which have proven so successful dur- ing the past two years."

School attendance was found to be unsatisfactory on the basis of Barnard's estimates of school population as probably 30,000; of these, 24,000 attended school, including 21,000 in public schools, but only 18,000 attended regularly. Far too many children of school age attended no school and received no instruction. Barnard was not committed to compulsory attendance, however; he had too great faith in the principle of attraction, believing that school and education processes could be made so attractive that no boy or girl would willingly remain away. Among other improvements sorely needed, Barnard suggested graded schools and graded courses of study, if any advance were to be made beyond schooling of the most elementary-primary type, with special attention to adapting the work of the schools to the community. Henry Barnard believed that populous manufacturing districts would become the homes of thriving schools; in this he proved to be in error-children worked instead of going to school. He recommended also examination and certification of teachers, a school year of not less than four months, a normal school for training teachers, school libraries open to the general public, and publicity for schools through printed reports and discussion in pub- lic meetings. One of his most significant services was drafting a new state school law, which with a few changes, was enacted by the General Assembly. To Barnard's credit it should be added that the state school law of the twentieth century essentially embodies the principles of the Barnard school law ; that it is the Barnard school law, amended in detail to meet changing conditions; that under it Rhode Island education has pursued a progressive evolution for eighty-five years; that Rhode Island is the only state that has for the same period of years avoided an educational revolution through radical reorganization of its public school system. One contrast betwixt evolution and revolution is that the former preserves, while the latter destroys, as the basis for progress. The fundamental features of the Barnard law were and are: (1) Organization of town schools as a quasi-state system with a state officer, the Com- missioner, as supervisor and director; (2) supervision of schools by (a) state and (b) town officers ; (3) a system of school reports (a) school committees to the Commissioner, and (b)

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 91

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716