1621
69

matter. If the State has a right to educate its citizens, then
it has the right to do it, and not simply to seem to doit.

Again, our county is too large for one School jurisdiction,
The difficulties arising out of this fact are manifold. First,

the meetings of the School Board cannot be attended by the
Commissioners, except at great inconvenience and expense.
Then, to bring the number of Commissioners down to aoy-
thing like reasonable limits, makes each Commissioner District
too large. The number of Schools in each District may not be
excessive, but this county must not be judged by ordinary
rules. The greater part of the county is mountainous, our
roads are uniformly and universally bad. We have few
bridges across our streams. The snows gather deep in our
valleys and along the ridges or across the spurs of our moun-
tains; the cold is severe. If a man leaves home for a journey
of twenty miles, he cannot tell when he will get back, and
though from the universal hospitality of the people, he may
fee sure of entertainment somewhere, yet time is valuable
here as elsewhere. Nothing in the shape of School super-
vision, in my opinion, can be better than our system of School
Commissioners, but it should be carried out in its full spirit,
to make it truly efficient, and no Commissioner should hare
a district, the remotest School of which he cannot reach so as to
make a visit and get back to his home the same day. No
man up here who is fit to be Commissioner at all, can afford
in some of our districts to spend the time requisite for a visi-
tation of his district, for anything like the present compensa-
tion. Some of our Commissioners, to my knowledge, visit their
Schools or attend a meeting of the Board only at a pecuniary
sacrifice.

Now all this applies with still greater force when viewed
in connection with the duties of the President. I believe it
is impossible in so large a territory, with so many natural
hindrances, for any one man to exercise an efficient super-
vision. The Schools must be open in winter time. Then
only can our children, from ten years old and upward, be
most easily spared from home. And that is just the time,
when a man cannot start from this side the great range to
go to the other side, with any certainty of getting there or
of getting back again. He can make no calculation upon his
time. Or even if nothing hinder him, to do any ordinary
amount of visitation, will require a vast outlay of time and
labor, to say nothing of exposure, personal inconvenience

and bodily suffering. To give a clearer idea of the work to
be done, I will give some statistics of my own work not given

elsewhere. I have met the Board 13 times, made 14 addres-
ses to the people more or less formal, examined 121 teachers
(48 men and 73 women) at 7 different places, and 29 differ-
ent times, written 8 public notices or articles, attended two
general conventions, written 313 letters, made 173 visits to