YATES UNION SCHOOL. (Chittenango, Madison Co.) Organized under general act of May 2, 1864. Admitted by the Regents January 9, 1868. Formerly the " Yates Polytechnic In stitute." Anthony Magoris, 1876. Principals. F. R. Moore, A. M., 1878. and have the privilege of educating his own children. The same provision was to be made with respect to the letting of the buildings for manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. Other stipulations were made, ending with a pledge that the lots of 50 by 200 feet should not be sold for less than $500 apiece, nor rented at less than $25 a year. On the 10th of February, 1830, the Senate committee reported in detail,* reviewing the plan of the "Polytechny" (as the institution was to be called) in terms of approbation, and presenting in detail an inventory of the property offered as security. In this report the plans proposed were stated with more detail. There were to be five general departments: 1. A President to have a general directory supervision over the whole. 2. A Principal in the Scientific Department, wich the requisite Professors and Tutors. 3. An Agricultural Superintendent, to direct and control the system of farming for each farm, and to keep an accurate account of the mode of culture, expenditure and product. 4. A Superintendent of the manufacturing operations, who is also to keep a particular account of labor and stock, and also to keep an account of and report the result of each new experiment in the operations; and 5. A Superintendent of the mechanical operations, and under his directions to have made whatever might be required. The commercial transactions, in buying, selling and accounting, were to give employment to a number of persons, who would thus become familiar with busi ness accounts. As to the probable utility of the experiment, the committee were united, and there could be but one opinion, that of unqualified praise. As to the complete pecuniary indemnity offered, they were unwilling to express an opinion. The amount required would be $200,000, of which $160,000 were to pay debts, and $40,000 to erect new buildings. But they could count up $15,000 a year from incomes, and after using $2,000 for insurance and repairs, this would leave $5,000 per annum more than would pay the interest of the loan The committee left the subject for the consideration of the Senate, with the draft of a bill, but without particular recommendation, and there the matter ended. We have given somewhat in detail the outlines of this plan, because it represents a theory that had plausibility in it, although but a feeble conception of what has since been attained in other countries, and to some extent in our own, in the way of industrial education; not in the more general instruction of an academic school, in connection with elementary teaching, but in the thorough and special application of principles first acquired in the school-room, and afterward illustrated in the practical work of the shop, the laboratory or the field. 1 Chap. 555, Laws of 1864. Senate Doc. 124, 1830. CHAPTER XXVIII. NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY 1 By HENRY A. HOMES, LL. D., Librarian. The New York State Library was first established at the Capitol by an act of the Legislature, passed in 1818,2 which declared that its object was to found "a Public Library for the use of the Government and the people of the State." The most noticeable of the causes leading to its establishment were the introduction of a system, first proposed by Massachusetts in the year 1811, of exchanges between the States of the Union of their session laws, and the passage of a law by Congress ordering that one copy of the Laws and the Journals and Documents of Congress should be distributed to each of the States. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, the Chancellor of the Court of Chancery (now abolished), and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, were constituted a Board of Trustees for the new Library; and a few years afterward the Secretary of State, the Attorney-General and the Comptroller were added to their number.3 The first appropriation of money for the support of the Library was a sum of $3,000 for the immediate purchase of books, and of $500 as an annual provision for the same purpose. A Librarian was appointed, with an annual salary of $300; but, for fifteen years from its organization, the Library was only open during the sessions of the Legislature and the Courts, and both Departments of the Library were in the same hall. The first report, made in the year 1819, showed the existence of a Library with six hundred volumes, of which two hundred and fifty were law books, and there were eleven maps. The first Catalogue of the Library, published in 1820, contained brief titles of seven hundred and fifty-eight volumes. The income of the Library, after the year 1825, was $1,300 a year, $300 of which were derived from a fund of the Court of Chancery. From the year 1826, annual reports regarding its condition have been addressed 1 Reprinted with amendments, from the "Public Service of the State of New York," by the permission of the publishers. 2 Chap 41, Laws of 1818. ⚫ April 12, 1824. Chap. 239, Laws of 1824. Under this act the Governor, Lieu tenant-Governor, Secretary of State. Attorney General and Comptroller were made ex-officio Trustees of the State Library. to the Legislature. During the early years of the existence of the Library, the Trustees devoted their attention principally to the purchase of works on Law, frequently in their reports referring to their inability, with the means at their disposal, to purchase historical and scientific works. With the gradual increase of the Library, it became evident that it needed a steadier supervision than could be given to it by a Board constantly changing its members, and it was decided to transfer the care of it to a more permanent body. The Legislature enacted, May 4, 1844, that thenceforth the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York should be Trustees of the Library, and they formally assumed the trust in the same month. They found that three hundred volumes of this small collection were missing; the whole number of volumes being estimated at ten thousand. A catalogue of the Library was published in 1846, embracing also the Warden Collection of two thousand two hundred volumes; and in the year 1850 another catalogue appeared, of over a thousand pages, of all the books in both departments. In 1855 and 1856 a catalogue was published in four volumes, embracing all the departments, and covering eighteen hundred octavo pages. It contained a catalogue: 1. Of the General Library, of nine hundred and eighty-seven pages. 2. Of the Law Library, of four hundred and two pages. 3. Of Maps, Manuscripts, Engravings and Coins, of two hundred and seventy pages. 4. Of books on Bibliography and Typography, of one hundred and forty-three pages. Five years after, in 1861, this catalogue was followed by a supplement to the General Department of the titles of the books added to it in the preceding five years, of one thousand and eighty-four pages; and in 1865 by a supplement to the Law Library, of one hundred and eighty pages. In 1872 a Subject-Index of the General Department was printed in an octavo volume, of six hundred and fifty pages, containing, under topical headings in dictionary form, abbreviated titles of all the works in the previously published catalogues, and of all the books added since the publication of the last catalogue of 1861. In 1882 a supplement Subject-Index of four hundred pages followed of the additions of the past ten years, and also of the principal subjects treated of in most of the collections of the American Historical Societies, containing, besides, thousands of references to subjects buried under some general title of works which were in the Library previous to 1872. These subject-indexes are intended to be a substitute for the expensive full title alphabetical catalogues by authors' names. A similar Subject-Index was published in 1883, of the elementary works and reports in the Law Library, much more elaborate than previous indexes of that department. The annual appropriation for the purchase of books for the Library has been gradually increased from the small sum of $500, until, at the present time, it amounts to $5,000 a year. year. At various times during the last fifty years, the Legislature has also made extra and specific appropriations, for the purpose of purchasing books or manuscripts so costly, that it was not deemed expedient that they should be purchased with the money of the annual appropriation. Of the annual appropriation of from $2,500 to $4,000 for the purchase of books from 1850 to 1880, it is estimated that one year with another $1,000 has been used for purchases in the Law Department, and the remainder for purchases in all the other branches of human knowledge. The character of the Library results, for the most part, from the special aims pursued by the Trustees in developing it. Their earliest purchases were largely for the Law Department, which was regarded as of the most practical importance, and they have continued to the present time to purchase all the works essential for it, for the use of the members of the Courts meeting at the Capitol. A Select Committee of the Trustees, in 1879, reports as the result, that the Law Department" is believed to be nearly, if not quite complete in its collection of Law Reports of the Federal Courts of the United States, of the highest Courts of the several States and of Great Britain, as well as of the Statutes of the several States." It aims also to contain, the committee says, "all really standard elementary works touching all departments of Municipal Law within Great Britain and the United States, together with a reasonable supply of all Digests, Books of Practice and Hand-books of like character," the leading authorities upon subjects of International and Ecclesiastical Law, and the Laws of the modern Continental Nations. Medical Jurisprudence has been largely provided for from the library of Dr. T. R. Beck, who was for fifteen years Secretary of the Board of Re gents of the University, devoted to the interests of the Library, and author of a great work on the subject. The collection of the Statute Law and State Papers of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, embraces upward of twelve thousand volumes. It also has been the custom to preserve in the Law Department the Journals and Documents of Congress and the States of the Union, as complete as they can be obtained from the beginning, with the Journals and Sessional Papers of the Parliament of Great Britain, and the Parliaments of her Colonies, especially of Canada. Of the Sessional Papers of the British Parliament there are on the shelves one thousand and three hundred folio volumes, from the years 1803 to 1832, 1844 to 1851, and from 1869 to the present time. The American State Papers number eight thousand volumes. As regards the character of the remainder of the Library, the Trustees, before and since the Regents of the University took charge of it, have always aimed, as is manifest from their frequent declarations in their annual reports, to enlarge it with works pertaining to American History, to Political and Social Economy, to Statistics, and to topics of Legislation. The first year of service of the present Board of Trustees was inaugurated by the receipt of the second collection of books on American History, made by David B. Warden, amounting to two thousand two hundred volumes. It had been purchased by the Legislature at their request by an appropriation of $4,000. The Trustees, in the report of the Select Committee of 1879, express their opinion of the importance of continuing to develop the Library principally in these directions, in the following language: "Whatever pertains to the Science of Government, in its broadest sense, has a special place in a Library designed for the aid of those who are to administer the Government. And in a State. Library, whatever illustrates the history, character, resources and development of the State, past, present and future, should be the subject of collection and preservation." "To make the Library encyclopedic or universal is simply out of the question." No appropriation, they say, likely to be obtained from the Legislature, would suffice the expenditure for the purchase of books and the maintaining of the Library. The result of building up a Library with such purposes is, that at the present day it is one of the most extensive and best supplied with works on American History in the country; and with the direction given to the aims of the Library Committee by the decision of the Trustees, it is likely to become proportionately stronger in the future than in the past, in books tending to illustrate the History of this State, of the Nation, and of the New World. Its present relative completeness may be inferred from its condition in one branch of research. Of the two hundred and sixty one volumes quoted by Durrie in his " Index to American Genealogies, contained in Town |