Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/21

Rh maps, and apparatus, provided this tax did not exceed one-fourth of 1 per cent per annum. A district school board consisting of a director, clerk, and treasurer was to be elected, and the school district when thus organized was given corporate powers. The voters were to decide also how long the schools should be kept open and whether they should be taught by a man or woman or by both, and whether the school money should be applied to the summer or winter term. The district board had general charge of the schools, and its clerk was to make an annual report.

It was provided that the district tax should not exceed 1½ per cent per annum, but the county board might levy an additional one-fifth of 1 per cent on all the taxable property in each county for the support of public schools in the county. The funds raised in the county by taxation or coming from the legislature or other sources were to be known as the common school fund, and were to be used for no other purpose; taxes for schools were to be “assessed on the same kind of property as taxes for county purposes are assessed.” They were also collected by the same officers and in the same way as other county taxes.

In neither of these acts was there any provision for Territorial oversight. There was, however, something of a county organization, with a county superintendent; a county tax; a district organization with required and special taxes. A part of the machinery for schools was being evolved, but the acts of 1867 and 1868 provided for local taxes only for schools, and this phase of taxation has not even yet attained full success within the State; further, the school officers—most of them ex officios—were to receive nothing for the performance of these new duties, and there was always the unsolved problem of distances. It is to be presumed that school organization would begin with the towns, and although Gov. McCormick complimented the legislature and himself by saying that they had laid “the foundations of a thorough system of common schools, an act in itself sufficient to make your meeting memorable,” there is little or no record to show that anything was done. As McCrea has suggested (p. 82), what the Territory needed was an educational leader, and founding schools was not Gov. McCormick’s forte.

In justice to the officers of the Government and other leaders, it must be remembered also that in 1870 there were reported but 9,581 persons living in a territory that covered more than 113,000 square miles, or if they had been evenly distributed only about one person to every 12 square miles of territory; that in addition much of this was barren desert infested by the infernal Apaches, perhaps the most cruel and devilish of all American Indians.