In the Mississippi Valley, then, or the greater part of it—whatever the historical origin of the provisions may be-from one-thirty-sixth to one- eighteenth of the public land has been set apart to the education of generation after generation till the end of the republic—or as Americans would be disposed to put it in synonymous phrase, "till the end of time."
Acres vary in size, one of our eminent horticulturists has reminded us, measured in terms of productivity. And the gifts to the various townships have been by no means of the same size, measured in terms of revenue for school purposes. "Number sixteen" may sometimes have fallen in shallow soil or on stony ground and "thirty-six" in swamp or alkali land. The lottery of nature is as hard-hearted as the lotteries of human devising; but the general provision has put an obligation upon the other thirty-five or thirty-four sections in every township that I suppose is seldom evaded. The child's acres are practically never, I suspect, less valuable than the richest and largest of those in the township about it, for the reason that the difference is made good by the local taxpayer. The child's acre is, as a rule, then, as large as the largest, the most productive acre. And roughly there are fifty thousand of those little plots in that domain— fifty thousand sections a mile square, thirty-two million acres reserved from the beginning of time, theoretically at least, to the end of time. As a matter of fact, they are not to be distinguished objectively from other acres now; they are to be distinguished only subjectively, that is, as one thinks of what is grown year by year in the schools, to which their proceeds, if not their products, are given.
I quoted above an estimate made in 1803 of what might have been done with the fifteen million dollars, paid to the French for Louisiana. One alternative suggested was the permanent endowment of eighteen hundred free schools, allowing five hundred dollars a year per school and accommodating ninety thousand pupils. The public-school allotment for that part of the valley alone is fifteen million acres. Even at two dollars an acre (a very low estimate), the endowment is twice the total amount paid for Louisiana —and I am estimating this school acreage at but one thirty-sixth instead of one-eighteenth of the total acreage. Therefore, France may, in a sense, be said to have given these acres to the support of the "children of always"—since these plots alone have probably yielded many times the purchase price of the entire territory.
To be sure, these white plots, as I would have them marked on a map of the valley, have in many States been sold and occupied as the other plots, with only this distinction, that the proceeds are inviolably set apart to this sacred use, as certain parts of animals were, under Mosaic law, reserved for public sacrifice. In one trans-Mississippi State, Iowa, for example, of a total grant of 1,013,614.21 acres [Footnote: Iowa, 1,013,614.21 acres from section 16 and 535,473.76 acres by congressional grant in 1841.] (less what the boundary rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri, had carried away in their voracious encroachments, and plus what other natural agents had added), only 200 acres remained unsold in 1911.
As we view the policy from the year 1903 and from the midst of a populous valley, in which land values have risen from one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre to a hundred or two hundred dollars in most fertile farm tracts, and to thousands in urban centres, we can but regret that these lands themselves had not been held inviolate, and can but wish that only their rentals had been devoted to the high uses to which the nation and State had consecrated these lands. This policy would have put in the heart of every township a common field whose rental would have grown with the development of the country. It would have furnished fruitful data for comparison between two systems of land tenure. And it would have kept ever visibly, tangibly before the people their heritage and their obligation. As it is, one has to use the greatest imagination in translating the figures in a State treasurer's or county supervisor's report, back into the little plots that gathered into the soil of their acres the noblest purposes that ever animated a nation—these spots where one generation made its unselfish prayer and sacrifice for the next.
That the purpose still exists, despite the passing of the tangible symbol, and that the prayer is still made in every township of that territory, where even a few children live, is evidenced by the fact that every two miles north and south, east and west of settled region there stands a schoolhouse. I shall speak later of this wide-spread provision, not only for universal elementary education but also for secondary and higher education, ordained of the people and for the people, to be paid for by the people out of their common treasury. But attention must here be called, in passing, to the fact that the parcelling of the domain of Louis XIV in the new world fixed irrevocably the public school in the national consciousness and purpose and made it the foundation of a purely democratic social system and the nourisher of a more highly efficient democratic political system.
On the Atlantic side of the mountains there was bitter controversy between those who held that education was necessary for the preservation of free institutions and those who held that free education increased taxation unduly; between those who desired and those who regretted the breaking down of social barriers which both claimed would ensue as a result of such education; between those who regarded education as a natural right and those who considered taxation for such a purpose a violation of the rights of the individual; between those who saw in it a panacea for poverty and distress and those who urged that it would not benefit the masses; and, finally, between those of one sect and race and those of another. But in the trans-Alleghany country north of the Ohio, and in all the territory west of the Mississippi (practically coterminous, let me again remind you, with that region where the French were pioneers within the present bounds of the United States) there was practically no dissension, though the provision was meagre at the start. The public school had no more of the atmosphere or character of a charity, a "pauper" school than the highway provided for out of the same grant, where rich and poor met in absolute equality of right and opportunity. It became the pride of a people, the expression of the people's ideal, the corner-stone of the people's hope. I suppose that three-fourths of the children of the territory whose ranges have been surveyed by the magic chains forged of this first great parcelling ordinance have had the tuition of the public schools—future Presidents of the United States, justices, railroad and university presidents, farmers, artisans, artists, and poets alike.
So while it was desire for revenue that prompted the early sales of the public domain in the Mississippi Valley, the nation got in return not only means to help pay its Revolution debt, but, incidentally, settlements of highly individualistic, self-dependent, and interdependent pioneers, gathered about one highly paternalistic or maternalistic institution—the public school. The credit for this has gone to New England and New York, but the "white acres" came of the territory and the riches of Nouvelle France.
You will not wish to follow in detail the ministrations of the priests of the land-offices and the surveys of the men of the magic chains, for it is a long and tedious story that would fill thousands of pages, and in the end only obscure the real significance of the movement. Here is a summary of allotments made up to 1904 of all the public domain, that of the Mississippi Valley being somewhat more than half. [Footnote: See Report of the Public Lands Commission, Washington, 1905.]
Private land claims, donations etc. (the first of the latter being made to the early French settlers)………………………………………(ACRES) 33,400,000