been seen, before the Supreme Court of the State. But when the Negro children applied for admission to the public schools, they were again refused. Before the schools were opened for the session of 1908–09, many of the Negroes were visited and induced to send their children to the four Negro schools built in Alton. But forty other Negroes filed a petition for a writ of _mandamus_ against the mayor and council of Alton seeking to have them answer why they refused to obey the mandate of the Supreme Court of the State.[434] A statute[435] of Indiana of 1869 required the trustees of schools to organize separate but equal schools for Negroes. If there were not enough Negroes in the district for a school, two or more districts might be consolidated for that purpose. If there were not enough within a reasonable distance, then the trustees might provide such other means of education of colored children as would employ their proportion of the school fund to the best advantage. A case[436] testing the constitutionality of this law, which arose in 1874, is one of the most exhaustive cases on the subject. The father of Negro children applied for a mandate to compel the admission of them to white schools. The court held that the separation of the races in schools is not in violation of the Federal or the State Constitution. The common schools, it was said, are based upon State legislation, are domestic institutions, and, as such, subject to the exclusive control of the constituted authorities of the State. The Federal Constitution does not provide for any general system of education to be conducted and controlled by the national government, nor does it vest in Congress any power to exercise a general or special supervision over the State on the subject of education. Under the Constitution of Indiana the common school system must be general, uniform, and equally open to all, but uniformity will be secured where all schools of the same grade have the same system of government and discipline, the same branches of learning taught, and the same qualifications for admission. The court said: “In our opinion the classification of scholars on the basis of race or color, and their education in separate schools, involve questions of domestic policy which are within the legislative discretion and control, and do not amount to an exclusion of either class ... there would be as much lawful reason for complaint by one scholar in the same school that he could not occupy the seat of another scholar therein at the same time the latter occupied it, or by scholars in different classes in the same school, that they were not placed in the same class, or by scholars in different schools, that they were not all placed in the same school, as there is that black and white children are placed in distinct classes and taught in separate schools.”