In fact, the monitorial system was destined to perform a great service for American education. At the time of its introduction, public and free schools were generally lacking, outside of New England, and the facilities that existed were meager and available during but a small portion of the year. In all parts of the country illiteracy was almost universal among children of the poor. This want of school opportunities was rendered more serious by the rapid growth of American cities. ‘Free school societies,’ like that in New York City, formed to relieve the situation, came to regard the system of Lancaster, because of its comparative inexpensiveness, as a godsend for their purpose. And when the people generally awoke to the crying need of public education, legislators also found monitorial schools the cheapest way out of the difficulty, and the provision made for these schools gradually opened the road to the ever increasing expenditures and taxation that had to come before satisfactory schools could be established. Moreover, the Lancasterian schools were not only economical, but most effective, when the educational conditions of the times are taken into consideration. Even in the cities, the one-room and one-teacher school was the prevailing type, and grading was practically unknown. The whole organization and administration were shiftless and uneconomical, and a great improvement was brought about by the carefully planned and detailed methods of Lancaster. The schools were made over through his definite mechanics of instruction, centralized management, well-trained teachers, improved apparatus, discipline, hygiene, and other features. [Illustration: Fig. 27.--A monitorial school, with three hundred pupils and but one teacher.] [Illustration: Fig. 28.--Pupils reciting to monitors.] [Illustration: Fig. 29.--Monitor inspecting slates.] [Sidenote: Disappeared when educational sentiment improved.] But while the monitorial methods met a great educational emergency in the United States, they were clearly mechanical, inelastic, and without psychological foundation. Naturally their sway could not last long, and as enlarged material resources enabled the people to make greater appropriations for education, the obvious defects of the monitorial system became more fully appreciated and brought about its abandonment. Before the middle of the century its work in America was ended, and it gave way to the more psychological conceptions of Pestalozzi and to those afterward formulated by Froebel and Herbart. [Sidenote: Beginning with Oberlin;] [Sidenote: development in Paris;] [Sidenote: part of national system.]