upon his duties,* so that the University was now fully equipped for its great mission. Rev. George P. Williams was the head of the faculty. By Section 8 of the act organizing the University it was made the duty of the Board of Regents to appoint a "Chancellor" of the University, but this duty was never performed until after the adoption of the constitution of 1850, and by that instrument the old appointive Board of Regents was abolished and an elective board of eight members was substituted to take effect from and after the year 1853. And by Section 8, Article XIII it was provided that "The Regents of the University shall at their first annual meeting, or as soon thereafter as may be, elect a President of the University, who shall be ex officio a member of their board," etc. In accordance with the mandate of the constittuion, the Board of Regents in 1852 elected Dr. Henry Philip Tappan, of New York, first President of the University.

The opening of the University presents an appropriate occasion for calling to mind the steps already taken in the provision for education in the state, and also to trace its progress in the ensuing period until the civil We have already seen that concurrently with the law creating the University, provision was made for the oragnization of the primary school system of the state, in accordance with the plan formulated by Superintendent Pierce in his first report to the legislature.

war.

Early provision had been made by Congress for popular education in the Northwest Territory, in the Ordinance of 1787, by reserving one section (or lot) numbered sixteen in every township "for the maintenance of public schools within said township."

In the "ordinance" or memorial attached to the con

*Rev. H. Colclazer.

stitution of 1835, the convention proposed that Congress should grant to the State, for the use of schools, Section 16 of every township. This was done. Thus one thirty-sixth of the entire acreage passed into the hands of the State as trustee for public schools.

In those states where the section 16 went to the township for the support of schools "in said township," the school fund was soon frittered away and dissipated, while in Michigan nearly or quite 1,100,000 acres passed to the state, to be sold for the benefit of the "primary school fund," now amounting to nearly or quite three and a half million of dollars, on which the state pays to the several counties interest at seven per cent, in proportion to their number of residents of school age. To this fund, so created, was added another by the act of 1858, which provided that fifty per cent of the receipts from the sale of "State Swamp lands," granted to the state by the United States, should be devoted to the support of common schools, and should constitute a fund on which the state should pay interest at the rate of five per cent per annum.

The next source of revenue for support of the primary schools is the "mill tax.' By an act first passed in 1843, and modified repeatedly since, the supervisor of every township of the state is required to assess a tax of one mill on each dollar of taxable valuation, for the support of schools,* and lest the schools should suffer and possibly be compelled to suspend through failure to collect these taxes, "The town treasurer shall retain in his hands out of the moneys collected by him-the full amount of the school taxes on the assessment roll."

But, after all, the greatest resource for the maintenance of the common schools is district taxation,—a tax

*Laws 1843, p. 107, Sec. 44.

which the people of the several districts impose upon the real and personal property within the district for the support of their own schools and the education of their own children. From this source alone in the year 1903 there was realized the vast sum of $5,218,380.54.' *

Another factor of income which is provided for in Article XIV, Section I, of the present constitution is the specific tax upon corporations, "except those received from mining companies of the Upper Peninsula," which however did not become available until 1881, when by a decision of the Supreme Court it was held that these taxes "must be held applicable under the constitution. . . to the primary school interest fund." This has added a large and constantly increasing income to the school fund. The liberal provision made for the common schools of the state may be seen from the following statement of the school revenue for the year 1903:

Of this vast sum of nearly twelve millions of dollars, almost ten millions was raised by direct tax upon the property and business of the state, and even of the $1,924,961.00 from primary school interest fund, the greater part is raised by direct taxation, for while the state pays the fund seven per cent on the greater part, it can borrow on its bonds all it may wish at not more than three per cent.

*Michigan Manual 1905, page 318.

To illustrate the remarkable growth of the school system of the state, the following figures are here given:

The great increase of teachers in proportion to the number* of districts shows the influence of graded schools in cities and villages.

The graded school had its genesis in an amendment to the school law in 1843, by which two or more districts were authorized to join territory and revenues and organize a "Union school."+

In the year 1842 Detroit was made one school district and incorporated as such, and the schools at once made free.§ These were the first really free schools in the state.

The development of the "Union school" in the state is obscure. Probably the consolidated district of Detroit was the first union school, that is, in the sense of several schools under one school board, but it does not seem to have become a "graded" school until 1847, when the state capital was removed to Lansing, the school board of Detroit opened a regular graded school in the old capitol building.

This first graded school had an "infant school" a

*Michigan Manual 1905, page 318.

*Section 37, Act No. 50. Laws of 1843. This section was afterward incorporated by the Revision of 1846, as Section 92 of Chapter 58 "of Primary Schools." For a comprehensive discussion of the rise of the graded schools see Putnam's Primary and Secondary Education, Chapter VI.

Campbell 512. Cook Michigan, 194.