Take the exact figures of the census returns, and the amount actually needed is easily ascertained for that year—though it must be remarked that the amount needed is not remaining the same, nor diminishing, but increasing every succeeding year. The school population in 1880 was 16,243,822. To educate that population required an assumed average annual expenditure of not less than $10 each, or $162,438,220. The real expenditure was but $91,158,039. Hence there was in that year a necessity for an expenditure of at least $72,085,783 more than was actually expended. But let us examine the statistical facts a little more closely. It is true that the school population then was 16,243,822, but it is also true that of that number only 10,013,826 were enrolled in the public schools, and of these again only 6,118,331 took advantage of their opportunities for instruction by daily attendance at those schools. Here, then, we find that the $91,158,039 was expended in educating the 6,118,331 children who daily attended school, and that the actual average cost per scholar, therefore, was $14.90, and not $10. We discover also, that while 6,118,331 children were in daily attendance at the public schools, 3,895,495 children on the rolls of such schools were not in daily attendance, and that 6,229,996 other children of school age had not even the opportunity or facilities for any such education! It is plain, therefore, that had the 10,125,491 children of school age in the two latter classes—those who failed to take advantage of the school opportunities offered them, and those who had no such opportunities at all—been compelled, as they should be (except in case of sickness or other very sufficient cause), to daily attend public schools, then instead of the $91,158,039 actually expended in such schools that year, there should have been expended $242,027,855 that year, in order to give all children of school age an equal educational chance. In other words, the expenditure, as compared with the necessities of the case, left a deficit for that one year of $150,869,816. Now it is to make up for the deficiencies in the school facilities already provided in the states and territories, that Congressional legislation and national aid is proposed. But it would puzzle the combined mathematicians of all countries and ages to demonstrate that an annual deficiency of $150,000,000, or more, can be made up by an expenditure of $77,000,000, dribbled out in annual sums varying from $5,000,000 to $15,000,000, during eight successive years.