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 crossings of railways and highways, and in 1894 the commonwealth began the construction and maintenance of state highways.

Since 1885, in Boston, and since 1894, in Fall River, the administration of the city police departments, including the granting of liquor licences, has been in the hands of state commissioners (one commissioner in Boston, a board in Fall River) appointed by the governor. But though in each case the result has been an improved administration, it has been generally conceded that only most exceptional circumstances can justify such interference with local self-government, and later attempts to extend the practice have failed. The referendum has been sparingly used in matters of local concern. Beginning in 1892 various townships and cities, numbering 18 in 1903, adopted municipal ownership and operation of lighting works. The gasworks have been notably more successful than the electric plants.

In Massachusetts, as in New England generally, the word “town” is used, officially and colloquially, to designate a township, and during the colonial era the New England town-meeting was a notable school for education in self-government. The members of the first group of settlers in these colonies were mostly small farmers, belonged to the same church, and dwelt in a village for protection from the Indians. They adapted to these conditions some of the methods for managing local affairs with which they had been familiar in England, and called the resultant institution a town. The territorial extent of each town was determined by its grant or grants from the general court, which the towns served as agents in the management of land. A settlement or “plantation” was sometimes incorporated first as a “district” and later as a town, the difference being that the latter had the right of corporate representation in the general court, while the former had no such right. The towns elected (until 1856) the deputies to the general court, and were the administrative units for the assessment and collection of taxes, maintaining churches and schools, organizing and training the militia, preserving the peace, caring for the poor, building and repairing roads and bridges, and recording deeds, births, deaths and marriages; and to discuss questions relating to these matters as well as other matters of peculiarly local concern, to determine the amount of taxes for town purposes, and to elect officers. All the citizens were expected to attend the annual town-meeting, and such male inhabitants as were not citizens were privileged to attend and to propose and discuss measures, although they had no right to vote. Generally several villages have grown up in the same “town,” and some of the more populous “towns,” usually those in which manufacturing has become more important than farming, have been incorporated as “cities”; thus either a town or a city may now include a farming country and various small villages. Although the tendency in Massachusetts is towards chartering as cities “towns” which have a population of 12,000 or more, the democratic institution of the town-meeting persists in many large municipalities which are still technically towns. Most “towns” hold their annual meeting in March, but some hold them in February and others in April. In the larger “towns” the officers elected at this meeting may consist of five, seven or nine selectmen, a clerk, a treasurer, three or more assessors, three or more overseers of the poor, one or more collectors of taxes, one or more auditors, one or more surveyors of highways, a road commissioner, a sewer commissioner, a board of health, one or more constables, two or more field drivers, two or more fence viewers, and a tree warden; but in the smaller “towns” the number of selectmen may be limited to three, the selectmen may assess the taxes, be overseers of the poor, and act as a board of health, and the treasurer or constable may collect the taxes. The term of all these officers may be limited to one year, or the selectmen, clerk, assessors and overseers of the poor may be elected for a term of three years, in which case a part only of the selectmen, assessors and overseers of the poor are elected each year. The selectmen have the general management of a “town’s” affairs during the interval between town-meetings. They may call special town-meetings; they appoint election officers and may appoint additional constables or  public officers, and such minor officials as inspectors of milk, inspectors of buildings, gauger of measures, cullers of staves and hoops, fish warden and forester. A school committee consisting of any number of members divisible by three is chosen, one-third each year, at the annual town-meeting or at a special meeting which is held in the same month. Any “town” having a village or district within its limits that contains 1000 inhabitants or more may authorize that village or district to establish a separate organization for lighting its streets, building and maintaining sidewalks, and employing a watchman or policeman, the officers of such organization to include at least a prudential committee and a clerk. All laws relative to “towns” are applied to “cities” in so far as they are not inconsistent with general or special laws relative to the latter, and the powers of the selectmen are vested in the mayor and aldermen.

Education.—For cities of above 8000 inhabitants (for which alone comparative statistics are annually available), in 1902–1903 the ratio of average attendance to school enrolment, the average number of days’ attendance of each pupil enrolled, and the value of school property per capita of pupils in average attendance were higher than in any other state; the average length of the school term was slightly exceeded in eight states; and the total cost of the schools per capita of pupils in average attendance ($39.05) was exceeded in six other states. In 1905–1906 the percentage of average attendance in the public schools to the number of children (between 5 and 15 years) in the state was 80; in Barnstable county it was 95, and in Plymouth 92; and the lowest rate of any county was 68, that of Bristol. In the same year the amount of the various school taxes and other contributions was $30.53 for each child in the average membership of the public schools, and the highest amount for each child in any county was $35.77 in Suffolk county, and in any township or city $68.01—in Lincoln. The school system is not one of marked state centralization—as contrasted, e.g. with New York. A state board of education has general control, its secretary acting as superintendent of the state system in conjunction with local superintendents and committees. Women are eligible for these positions, and among the teachers in the schools they are greatly in excess over men (more than 10 to 1), especially in lower grades. No recognition exists in the schools of race, colour or religion. The proportion of the child population that attends schools is equalled in but two or three states east of the Mississippi river. The services of (q.v.) as secretary of the state board (1837–1848) were productive of almost revolutionary benefits not only to Massachusetts but to the entire country. His reforms, which reached every part of the school system, were fortunately introduced just at the beginning of railway and city growth. Since 1850 truant and compulsory attendance laws (the first compulsory education law was passed in 1642) have been enforced in conjunction with laws against child labour. In 1900 the average period of schooling per inhabitant for the United States was 4.3 years, for Massachusetts 7 years. (The same year the ratio of wealth productivity was as 66 to 37.) Massachusetts stands “foremost in the Union in the universality of its provision for secondary education.” The laws practically offer such education free to every child of the commonwealth. Illiterate persons not less than ten years of age constituted in 1900 5.9% of the population; and 0.8, 14.6, 10.7% respectively of native whites, foreign-born whites and negroes. More patents are issued, relatively, to citizens of Massachusetts than to those of any other state except Connecticut. Post office statistics indicate a similarly high average of intelligence.

The public school system includes common, high and normal schools, and various evening, industrial and truant schools. Many townships and cities maintain free evening schools. In 1894 manual training was made a part of the curriculum in all municipalities having 20,000 inhabitants. There are also many private business colleges, academic schools and college-preparatory schools. The high schools enjoy an exceptional reputation. An unusual proportion of teachers in the public schools are graduates of the state normal schools, of which the first were founded in 1839 at Lexington and Barre, the former being the first normal school of the United