For Free Text Books

Editor Democrat:- J have been greatly interested in two editorials which have recently appeared in the Washtenaw Times on the subject of free textbooks. Will yon permit me space for a word on the same subject? I am in hearty accord with the sentiment of the Times and trust that oui people may become sufflciently concerned to take the final step in making everything which distinctively pertaios to a school free, when the question is submitted to the voters, as I understand it must be. The public school is established primarily for the good of the state. The good of the individual is secondary, and is cared for in providing for the highest interest of the state. The public school system is purely socialistic therefore in its conception and practical operation. Admit the rightfulness of establishing the public school and logically there is no place to stop short of furnishing all the things which specitically pertain to the school at public expense. The free textbook system is therefore no extensión of the principie of state socialism as some of its opponents claim. The site, school house, teachers, training schools for teachers, fuel, reference books, supplementary reading matter, maps, dictionaries, charts, globes and all other appliances, (except textbooks,) which properly pertain to the school, are now furnished at public expense and the propriety of doing this is nowhere questioned. AVhy then strain at the gnat of free textbooks? The furnishing of textbooks free to the pupils is no new or untried thing. It has been in operation for years and wherever tried has proven to be ve ry satisfactory. We know of no instanee of its having been adandoned after trial. In Massachusf-tts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Maine, Deleware, Ehode Island, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Vermont, and New Jersey, free textbooks are compulsory, while in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Maryland, Colorado, South Dakota, Minnesota, Ohio, North Dokota and our own state, tliey are authorized. It is the cheapest way to supply textbooks also and will end for all time the everlasting meddling by the legislature. At every session of our legislature for the past twenty years,great amounts of time have been taken up with uniform textbook schemes, the principal object of whicn has been lessening the cost of school books. But wherever that sys;em has been put in practice, it has cheapened the quality and the schools ïave been made to suffer. All this is civoided under the free system and at ;he same time all the advantages of uniformity are secured while the disadvantages are avoided. There are senous pedagogical objections to uni formity but none to free textbooks. The alleged great increase of taxation which would result from the purchase of books at public expense, is pure and unmitigated moonshine. The entire cost of school books of the country is ess than 18,000,000, while the cost of chewing gum is two or three time? as nuch. The smoker who smokes one ten cent cigar a week consames ten times as much as it costs for school )ooks on an average. Ten cents a head ou the population or tifty cents a head on ihe pupils will buy the textbooks. The calculation as to what it will cost Ann Arbor to supply free textbooks is herefore an easy problem. One sixth of all the school districts of Michigan ire already f urnishing free textbooks and certainly Ann Arbor should not )ring up the rear in this important ddvance. A mi Arbor, June 29, 1307.