being, woven into the texture of his life, to believe, as Garfield said, that “next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.” Moreover, being shrewd as well as a man of high principles and a lover of learning for its own sake, the New Englander is convinced that it pays to be educated, and to have educated neighbors and children. His reasoning takes this form: The more children in the schools, the fewer youths and adults in the jails and poorhouses. The better informed the mill operatives, the larger the output of the mills. The higher the standard of living, the larger the demand for the product of the soil and the loom, and the better the home market. The more intelligent the voter, the less the seductive power of the demagogue and the “political boss.” In short, the New England people have always believed, and still believe, what the inscription on the Public Library in Boston declares: THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY. That the policy has been a wise one, is indicated by New England’s share in the various struggles for liberty which the country has seen, the stability of all her institutions, her exemption from disorder and industrial disputes which culminate in violence, her inhospitality to “boss rule” in politics, and the thrift and prosperity of her citizens. Historically speaking, the “public school” is a very ancient New England institution. Boston had one as early as 1635, and in 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts enacted: “That to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty households, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a Grammar School, the master thereof to be able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University.” Nine years earlier, in 1638, the same body had founded a college (Harvard) at Cambridge, in order, as they said, that “the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of God’s word perish.” These two acts of the General Court may be reckoned as the germs from which has developed that system of secondary and higher education which has given Massachusetts the place of leader in the history of education in America. In 1645, Connecticut passed a law similar to the earlier Massachusetts statute of 1642, but not until 1701 was Yale University founded at New Haven. Rhode Island did not have a system of popular education until just as the eighteenth century was closing. New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont accepted the Massachusetts methods and ideals, with some minor variations.