Page:Pen Pictures of Representative Men of Oregon.djvu/22

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Among the public institutions of our country none more deservedly attract the attention of all lovers of law and order than do our public schools. It is all-important, therefore, that each commonwealth should have some man of learning and ambition at the head to represent, as it were, in a single individual the individual interest of every child in the State. Especially is this the case in our own State, where we are in reality but just laying aside the swaddling clothes of self-government and endeavoring to lay broad and deep the foundations of a government for higher and more prosperous days to come. Not but what we are as far advanced in educational interests, perhaps, as we are in other interests of a public nature, but that what we are doing for the cause of education at the present time is but a poor sample of what we intend to do in the near future, when our valleys and hillsides are teeming with the fruits of the husbandman, and our wants and necessities in that direction become more general. In order,, however, to prepare for this good time coming, it is requisite and necessary that we should make wise laws and most thoroughly systematize the workings of our common schools, and by these and other means better prepare them for their expansion and improvements in the future. Our legislators are sufficiently wise to make the laws, but no system of a uniform course of public instruction can be complete without a head center, and in this head center in a great measure depends the success or failure of the common school system under his control. Our State has, since the creation of the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, been peculiarly fortunate in their selection of men of capability to fill the position creditably. Among those whose names have become almost a household word by reason of their incumbency of such office might be mentioned Hon. Syl. G. Simpson, Hon. L. L. Rowland, Hon. L. J. Powell, and last, but not least by any means, is that of Hon. E. B. McElroy, who, although he has been in office but a few short weeks, is already evincing a rare aptitude for his work and will, we feel fully confident, prove the equal if not the superior of his predecessors in that office. He brings with him the ripe experience of a successful teacher, the practical teachings of a like although minor position of a county school superintendent, the energy and ambition of a man who is just entering the prime of life, the love of the work inculcated into him by his long-continued connection with public instruction, the necessary qualifications of a successful business career, and a spirit of that progress to the overthrow of old-fogyism, if necessary, which will insure his educational work the advancement made by other public interests. As a man he is the very soul of integrity and is very highly esteemed by those who know him best. He is one of that class of men who, while you will fancy him the moment he addresses you, will none the less bear acquaintanceship and advance in your admiration and esteem the longer and more intimately you know him. Prof. McElroy is a native of Washington county, Pennsylvania, where he was born on the 17th day of September, 1842. His early life was spent on a farm, and he was educated in the public schools of Pennsylvania and at the Southwestern State Normal College of that State. He commenced