Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/528

378 $19,704.51. The state fund of perhaps $3,000 is yet due, but which will be applied to the work of the coming- year. So it will be seen that the common school fund is ample enough to give us free schools for one-half year. Then the local tax is simply for a half year's school. The cost to the taxpayers of this district over and above the tax provided for by the statute, amounts to about $12 per pupil. [While on this subject it may be stated that the cost of each pupil in the public schools for the year 1910, is $35.72.]

Our city has a contract (1878) with a certain person to furnish city prisoners with meals at 14 cents each. Two meals a day for a year cost the city $102.20 — add cost of "supervision," bedding, etc., and the total cost tO' this city for its "jail education" will reach at least $125 per year for each person so imprisoned.

Yet there are a few persons in Portland who lay claim to literary attainments; who are, by their present occupation, at least, accredited leaders in the formation of public opinion; who have been assiduously and insidiously laboring to create a movement against the free schools, alleging, prominently, that they are too costly. It is certainly a scathing rebuke to such intermeddlers, when the heaviest taxpayers and the best brawn and brains of the city meet in a public capacity and unanimously vote liberal taxes for the maintenance of the free schools.

In view of the foregoing figures as to the cost of maintaining city prisoners, with all the fearful consequences of our "jail system," and the cost of providing for the free tuition of every girl and boy in the city with all its possible and the probable advantages to society, there was occasion for the remark made at a school meeting by one of Portland's wealthiest men, when moving for a five-mill tax, "The school tax is the most economical tax I have to pay, and one which I pay most cheerfully." For the last six years at least no public fund in this county, or for that matter, in the state, has been more faithfully and economically expended than has been that for the support of the city schools. By a system of accounts, not at all complicated, each article purchased for use is accounted for accurately. Such minor items as pens, ink, paper, penholders, etc., are so checked in passing from the stationer to the directors, city superintendent, principals and assistants that every possible avenue for waste is closed. Go into almost any public office in the state and see with what apparent indifference and almost criminal prodigality the one item of stationery is worse than wasted. Reams of legal cap are wantonly destroyed by scribblers, legislators and briefless attorneys; the walls and floors seem to be general receptacles for ink and for the offal of low mental and immoral heads and hearts. If an assistant in our public schools should willingly and knowingly permit a tithe of such vandalism, she would be reported at once. Yet these council chambers, the court rooms, these legislative halls, are fitted up extravagantly. Cushioned chairs, marble-topped tables, elegant lounges, etc., are furnished at public expense without a grumble, while our public schools are frequently censured in the public press for extravagance. To those having immediate control of the schools, these newspaper flings are often annoying, but they are at all times fully aware that the solid men and women, the bone and sinew, the intelligent and patriotic are a unit on the question of the liberal maintenance of our free schools.

This is not a very commendable item of statistics to record. From the figures it will be seen that the per cent of tardiness of teachers has been nearly three times that of the pupils. Although a fine of $1 for each tardiness has been imposed and collected for each case, the number of cases this year is largely in excess of those of last year. Comment is unnecessary.

Referring to the historical sketch prepared in 1879, Professor Crawford adds the following: