Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/157

 HISTOKY OF OHIO.

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��nois, 24 colleges, 219 teachers, 1,701 students, proportion, 1 in 140.

This shows there are more collegiate institutions in Ohio than in all New England ; a greater num- ber of college teachers, and only a little smaller ratio of students to the population ; a greater number of such students than either in New York or Pennsyl- vania, and, as a broad, general fact, Ohio has made more progress in education than either of the old States which formed the American Union. Such a fact is a higher testimony to the strength and the beneficent influence of the American Government than any which the statistician or the historian can advance.

Let us now turn to the moral aspects of the people of Ohio. No human society is found with- out its poor and dependent classes, whether made so by the defects of nature, by acts of Providence, or by the accidents of fortune. Since no society is exempt from these classes, it must be judged not so much by the fact of their existence, as by the manner in which it treats them. In the civil- ized nations of anti(|uity, such as Greece and Rome, hospitals, infirmaries, orphan homes, and asylums for the infirm, were unknown. These are the creations of Christianity, and that must be esteemed practically the most Christian State which most practices this Christian beneficence. In Ohio, Christian countries, there is a large number of the infirm and dependent classes; but, although Ohio is the third State in population, she is only the fourteenth in the proportion of dependent classes. The more important point, however, was, how does she treat them? Is there wanting any of all the varied institutions of benevolence? How does she compare with other States and countries in this respect? It is believed that no State or coun- try can present a larger proportion of all these institutions which the benevolence of the wise and good have suggested for the alleviation of suffer- ing and misfijrtune, than the State of Ohio. With 3,500 of the insane within her borders, she has five great lunatic asylums, capable of accommodat- ing them all. She has asylums for the deaf and dumb, the idiotic, and the blind. She has the best hospitals in the country. She has schools of reform and houses of refuge. She has " homes " for the boys and girls, to the number of 800, who are children of soldiers. She has penitentiaries and jails, orphan asylums and infirmaries. In every county there is an infirmary, and in every public institution, except the penitentiary, there is a
 * is in all the States of this country, and of all

��school. So that the State has used every human means to relieve the sufiering, to instruct the igno- rant, and to reform the criminal. There are in the State 80,000 who come under all the various forms of the infirm, the poor, the sick and the criminal, who, in a greater or less degree, make the dependent class. For these the State has made every provision which humanity or justice or intelligence can require. A young State, de- veloped in the wilderness, she challenges, without any invidious comparison, both Europe and Amer- ica, to show her superior in the development of humanity manifested in the benefaction of public institutions.

Intimately connected with public morals and with charitable institutions, is the religion of a people. The people of the United States are a Christian people. The people of Ohio have man- ifested their zeal by the erection of churches, of Sunday schools, and of religious institutions. So far as these are outwardly manifested, they are made known by the social statistics of the census. The number of church organizations in the leading States were : In the State of Ohio, 6,488 ; in the State of New York, 5,627 : in the State of Pennsylvania, 5,984 ; in the State of lUinois, 4,298. It thus appears that Ohio had a larger number of churches than any State of the Union. The number of sittings, however, was not quite as large as those in New York and Pennsylvania. The denominations are of all the sects known in this country, about thirty in number, the majority of the whole being Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists. Long before the American Independ- ence, the Moravians had settled on the Mahoning and Tuscarawas Rivers, but only to be destroyed ; and when the peace with Great Britain was made, not a vestige of Christianity remained on the soil of Ohio ; yet we see that within ninety years from that time the State of Ohio was, in the num- ber of its churches, the first of this great Union. In the beginning of this address, I said that Ohio was the oldest and first of these great States, carved out of the Northwestern Territory, and that it was in some things the greatest State of the American Union. I have now traced the physi- cal, commercial, intellectual and moral features of the State during the seventy-five years of its constitutional history. The result is to establish fully the propositions with which I began. These facts have brought out :

1. That Ohio is, in reference to the square miles of its surface, the first State in agricukure

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