Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/702

684 to others than pupils—in fact, to all who wish to use them, parents as well as children—and are open for reading fourteen hours out of every twenty-four.

For this system of scholastic and industrial schools, as well as the school libraries, the total expenditure of the French Government for the whole of France was about fourteen million dollars for the past school year. The number of students this sum paid for educating has been estimated at 4,700,000.

Educational appropriations reach a much larger sum than this in the United States, proportion of population considered. New York alone has spent for educational purposes for the past eight years from ten to eleven millions annually. In 1876 eleven and a half millions was disbursed; this was the largest sum ever paid out by the State. Since then the expenditures have somewhat decreased, the returns for the past year showing a smaller sum than any previous year since 1871. The total, however, reached considerably over ten millions. The number of pupils this sum educated (?) was 1,030,000. From these statistics it may be seen that New York pays more than three times as much per head for giving a merely scholastic and commercial education as it costs France to combine these with the artistic and industrial features, including a system of free-school libraries.

If this large outlay of money gave New York in return a more law-abiding, cultured, and self-helpful population, it would be capital well expended. That it does not do this is to be seen in the yearly increase in the appropriations for prisons, reformatories, and charitable institutions of all kinds. In fifteen years taxation has been more than doubled in the State of New York for purposes of public charity. Much of this evil may be laid to the fact that the industrial schools of the great capitals of Europe furnish New York with her best artisans. To remedy this, private enterprise and liberality have founded several industrial schools in New York. Statistics show these to have been well attended. Indeed, the applications for admission have in all cases been far in excess of the accommodations supplied. These night-schools, five in number, are mostly modeled upon the plans of the industrial schools of Paris and Berlin, and of South Kensington, London.

 

N 1849, Dr. Harvey, the author of the "Phycologia Britannica," describing his visit to the University of Pennsylvania, remarked, "There I met several persons, among whom was Dr. Leidy, a young man who will be famous if he lives and goes ahead according to 