For Primary Education

FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION

This month marks the thirty-fifth semi-annual apportionment of primary school money among the counties and the amount is the largest in the history of the state and foots up to $1,530,700, or $2.10 a head for every boy and girl in the state between the ages of five and twenty years. This, taken with the previous apportionment for this year, makes the entire amount $2.62. Washtenaw's share in this primary interest money is $25,699.80. There is probably no expenditure of public money in the state which returns greater value received to the taxpayers than that invested in public education. There is still a chance, however, to give the people greater value for this expenditure. The department of education is doing all it can to create a sentiment throughout the state in favor of concentration of the rural schools which concentration will, according to the best statistics obtainable, return more for the same money. Many rural schools are now costing more per capita than city schools which give much more instruction. The best educators are convinced that this plan of concentrating the rural schools will enable the accomplishment of much more for the same money and this is actually proved by experience where the plan has been tried. The only thing in the way of making a similar showing in Michigan is public sentiment in the rural districts which has been opposed to the scheme. But it is being educated and the time is not distant probably when it will be put to the test here.

Governor Bliss announces his intention to be governor himself during the two years to come. If he will be an improvement on the administration of the past two years, here is hoping Mr. Bliss will carry out his resolve. The acknowledgment he makes in announcing this resolve is most discreditable to himself, as it is an acknowledgment that someone else has been the real governor during the past two years. It is doubtful, too, whether a man who has shown the lamentable weakness he has during his first administration has the stamina to resist the vicious influences which surround him. No one of course accuses Governor Bliss with being personally corrupt or dishonest, but he is so weak of purpose that he has permitted corrupt and dishonest men to shape the policy of his administration to his own shame and the disgrace of the great state which elected him and not the nineteeners and rippers governor. The people will hope for the best.

The fact that Gov. Bliss ran 20,000 behind his ticket shows that, in spite of the utterly demoralized and disorganized condition of the democratic party in Michigan, 10 per cent of the republican voters preferred to chance a democratic governor to voting for a candidate on their own ticket whose methods they condemned. We are glad to see this independence in the republican party. Had there been an opposing party which was worthy of confidence, and had Judge Durand been able to stay on the ticket, Gov. Bliss would have been defeated. - Hastings Banner (Rep.).