The early workers, despite the preliminary journeys to Europe, were largely pioneers, and this country owes an immeasurable debt to the founders and directors of the first schools. Many of them were ministers of the Gospel, and all of them were men of high ideals. Possibly there has never been a movement undertaken for the good of humanity that has drawn to it a more capable or earnest band of men. These early workers were possessed of a determination, an ardor, a resourcefulness, combined with scholarship and understanding of no common order, that would have graced any human cause. They were truly of those in America that have blazed trails, and to them belonged those elements of character that are a pride to any people.[225] The first schools were created by societies of private citizens, funds being contributed from "membership fees" in the societies, from subscriptions and from other private donations.[226] To the aid of these schools the state later came with appropriations; but while an oversight and general control were assumed by it, the schools were left as private corporations. With the establishment, however, of the Kentucky School in 1823, a second stage is reached in the extension of the new work, the state now undertaking the task itself and providing the schools at its own initiative and expense. At first admission into the schools was restricted to a certain number of pupils, often based upon some political division of the state, as a senatorial district in Tennessee, or a judicial in Ohio. When such limitations were swept away, we have the third stage in the provision for the education of the deaf. The fourth and last stage--though not necessarily in this order in any one particular state, and not in every case formally accomplished--is attained when in Indiana all charges are removed, and education is made free to all.[227] In the schools created in later times all these steps were usually merged into one: limitations of any kind were mostly omitted, and the schools were in general thrown open to all from the beginning. Thus is reached the culminative point in the course of the provision for the education of the deaf in America. No longer was private benevolence to inaugurate and carry on the work, but the state was coming to see its responsibility in part, finally to realize its full duty in making education free to all its deaf population, just as it was free to the rest of its citizens.[228]