Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/138

132 The unfavorable reaction of that year is clearly shown in the available statistics, but the schools had made a good start, the momentum already attained soon carried them over this handicap and there was a substantial increase in 1877–78 in the total enrollment, average attendance, and total income, and this last item permitted an increase In expenditures. The number of teachers increased, but there was a shortening of the school term, and owing to a general fall of prices a decrease in teachers’ wages. It may be said therefore that the withdrawal of Gov. Safford from school leadership did not have the permanent effects that might have been expected. He had builded so well that his removal caused only a temporary reaction, and it awoke the legislature to the desirability of putting the schools under a separate officer. This was done by the act of February 14, 1879, but no salary was attached to the office other than the $500 per annum formerly allowed the governor for expenses.

Gov. Frémont commissioned Moses H. Sherman, then principal of the Prescott schools, to take over the schools of the whole Territory in addition to his other school duties as superintendent at Prescott. It does not appear, however, that Sherman did much more than attend to the clerical duties of the office. The organization of the schools, the evolution of a course of study, the perfecting and settling on a series of textbooks to be used throughout the Territory, the codification and coordination of the school laws, the revising and defining the duties of county school officers, the organization of county institutes, the readjustment of county and Territorial school taxes, the proper apportionment of school funds, the recognition and granting of diplomas, the certification of teachers, were all matters which were left in the main by Supt. Sherman to his official successors. To Supts. Horton and Long is due the chief credit of taking the disjointed, disconnected, unorganized, and never articulated elements of a Territorial system and uniting them into a single whole. This work was largely accomplished in the administrations running from 1883 to 1887.

But while the decade of the eighties saw the first organization of the schools into a Territorial system started on its way, the same decade and the next witnessed the bitter factional fights that were growing out of the general educational situation of Territorial affairs. The Territory was naturally Democratic in politics. The Federal Government, on the other hand, was for the greater part of the time Republican, and its appointees, the Territorial governor and superintendent, were of the same political faith. There was therefore constant friction between the people and the administration. This resulted in serious limitations on the superintendent’s authority ; he was reduced to the position of a clerk; once they refused to confirm a superintendent because refusal to confirm made it pos-