2. It may be proper to repeat that the Map, Apparatus, and Prize Book branch of the School System was not established until 1855. From that time to the end of 1873, the amount expended for Maps, Apparatus, and Prize Books, (not including Public Libraries), was $408,287, one-half of which has been provided from local scurces, from which all applications have been made. The number of Maps of the World furnished is 3,407; of Europe, 5,032; of Asia, 4,053; of Africa, 3,703; of America, 4,328; of British North America and Canada, 5,005; of Great Britain and Ireland, 4,335; of Single Hemispheres, 3,387; of Classical and Scriptural Maps, 3,110; other Maps and Charts, 7,252; Globes, 2,554; sets of Apparatus, 594; single articles of School Apparatus, 19,943; Historical and other Lessons in Sheets, 225,649; Volume of Prize Books, 699,147.

3. I also repeat the following explanation of this branch of the Department :The Maps, Globes, and various articles of School Apparatus sent out by the Department, apportioning one hundred per cent. upon whatever sum, or sums, are provided from local sources, are nearly all manufactured in Ontario, and at lower prices than imported articles of the same kind have been heretofore obtained. The Globes and Maps manufactured, (even the material), in Ontario contain the latest discoveries of Voyagers and Travellers, and are executed in the best manner, as are Tellurians, Mechanical Powers, Numeral Frames, Geometrical Powers, etcetera. All this has been done by employing competitive private skill and enterprise. The Department has furnished the Manufacturers with copies and Models, purchasing certain quantities of the articles when manufactured, at stipulated prices, then permitting and encouraging them to manufacture and dispose of these articles themselves to any private parties desiring them, as the Department supplies them only to Municipal and School Authorities. In this way new domestic Manufactures are introduced, and mechanical and artistical skill and enterprise are encouraged, and many aids to School and domestic instruction, heretofore unknown amongst us, or only attainable in particular cases with difficulty, and at great expense, are now easily and cheaply accessible to private families, as well as to Municipal and School Authorities all over the Country.

The following Tables will also be found of much interest in connection with this part of our School System.

(1) TABLE SHEWING THE VALUE OF ARTICLES SENT OUT FROM THE EDUCATION DEPOSITORY DURING THE YEARS 1851 TO 1873, INCLUSIVE.

YEAR.

Articles on which the 100 per cent. has been
apportioned from the Legislative Grant

value of

Articles sold at
Catalogue prices Total
without any ap- Library, Prize &
portionment School Books,

Public School Library Maps, Apparatus and from the Legisla- Maps and Appa

Books.

Dollars.

Prize Books.

Dollars.

tive Grant. ratus despatched.

(2) BOOKS IMPORTS INTO ONTARIO AND QUEBEC.

The following Statistical Table has been complied from the "Trade and Navigation Returns" for the years specified, showing the gross value of Books (not Maps or School Apparatus) imported into Ontario and Quebec.

YEAR.

Value of Books en-Value of Books en-Total value of Books Proportion imported
tered at Ports in tered at Ports in
the for the Education De-
the Province
partment of Ontario.

of the Province of On- imported into

two Provinces.

Quebec.

tario.

(3) THE GENERAL QUESTION PRACTICALLY DISCUSSED.

In every Country the interests of Education, at least in its elementary organization, are committed to the care and oversight of some Department of the Government. Experience proves the necessity of doing so. But it may be asked: "What is expected of such a Department in its administration of the School System?" "Is it the merely perfunctory duty of keeping a certain statutory machinery in motion, receiving formal Reports, and making the same in return, which is expected? Or is it the dealing with the great interest of popular education as if it were the nation's life blood, every pulsation of which indicated a healthy, vigorous growth of intellectual and moral life, or the torpidity of bare existence, maintained at large cost, but producing little fruit and no satisfactory returns?" The prevention of this latter, and the promotion of the former are, we think, the true objects for which Popular Education is especially entrusted to the care and oversight of a responsible Public Department. If it be so, the question then is, "How can this be best accomplished, and in what light should the Schools be regarded and treated, so as to bring about the best possible results?" whether as the joint property of the State and people, their interests should be paramount to private interests, or should they be treated merely as Institutions that should be made to subserve the interests of the trades and professions, whether it be of Booksellers, or of Private Schools, or Institutions for the training of School-masters.

(4) PRACTICE AND OPINIONS OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONISTS IN REGARD TO A DEPOSITORY. The Commissioner of Public Schools in the State of Rhode Island, in discussing the question of School Libraries in his Report, thus remarks:

"The plan of providing such district School Libraries, adopted by the Parliament of Canada West in undoubtedly the wisest that has yet been acted upon. It is in short this-The Parliament by vote appropriated a specific sum to purchase a suitable number of Books, Charts, and articles of Apparatus for Schools and School Libraries. This sum was expended under the direction of the Chief Superintendent of Public Education, and a large Depository of excellent and select Books for the reading of youth and older persons was made at the Office of Education. Whenever any School District, or Municipality wishes to form a Library, it may send to the Office of the General Superintendent a sum not less than five dollars, and the Superintendent adds one hundred per cent. to the sum, and returns, at cost price, such Books to the district as may, by a Committee, or otherwise, have been selected from the printed Catalogue of the Depository. Thus the Books that go into Libraries are Books that have been well examined, and contain nothing that is frivilous, or that could poison the morals of those who read them; the Libraries purchase them at the wholesale price, and of course, can obtain a much larger amount of reading matter for their money than as though they had each made the purchase direct from the Booksellers for themselves, and at the same time they are stimulated to do something for themselves, as well as to ask that something may be done for them. It is believed that some such plan might be carried into effect in our own State greatly to the profit of the whole community."

In my Special Report to the Legislature in 1858, in regard to the State of New York, I said:

"The unsatisfactory working and declining state of the Public School Library System in the State of New York, is a sufficient illustration of the fruits of what is demanded by the Bookselling Assailants of our Public Library System, in a Country where the private Book trade is much more extended in its supplies and operations than in Upper Canada.

"Whether therefore, our system of providing Public Libraries, as well as Maps, Globes and other School Apparatus, be considered in regard to the higher, or lower, grounds above stated, the conclusion is that which was expressed by the President of the American Association for the advancement of Education, at a late anniversary of that noble society, as quoted by the Earl of Elgin in a speech at Glasgow, after his return from Canada. The Report says: "The President made some remarks on the difficulty in the United States of procuring proper Libraries for Schools, and keeping out bad books and procuring good ones at reasonable rates, and he strongly recommended the system adopted by the Education Department at Toronto, Canada West.'"

Examples of the practice in the States, and in Nova Scotia, Australia, etcetera. (which are in the main similar to that in our own Province), will be found on pages 40 and 43 of the Special Report just quoted, and pages 100 and 101 of the Journal of Education for June, 1867.

(5) CAUTIONS AND WARNINGS OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONISTS

We have already cited the opinion of two prominent American authorities in favour of the Depository System adopted in this Province. In the Journal of Education for June, 1867, will be found Regulations similar in effect to those in this Province, which have been adopted in Michigan, Maryland, Nova Scotia and Australia.

We will now quote the following extracts from the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Michigan on this subject. He says (after speaking of some other difficulties in carrying out their Library System):

"But the worse evil grew up in the systematic plans of Peddlers to palm upon the Libraries a mass of cheap trashy and often pernicious literature. One or two. wealthy Booksellers kept their peddling Agents traversing the State. and many are the tricks by which they boasted that they cajoled the Inspectors. A few Libraries were well selected and well kept; but so valueless for the public good, and especially for the education of the young, had the great majority become, that all intelligent friends of education desired a change."

See illustration of the existence of this pernicious system of peddling in our Province, given in The Globe's Book Trade Review for 1862.*

These "wealthy" and other "Booksellers" here mentioned were determined, however, not to permit their "trade" to be interfered with by State authority, and their

* In The Globe Newspaper "Trade Review" for 1862, the Writer states that " for years the Country has been flooded with the lowest and most trashy class of literature from the American press. Books whose only merit was their bulk and binding, have been hawked into every nook of the Province by a migratory tribe of itinerant Peddlers.

next course of action in the interest of the "trade" may be best gathered from the following notice, which the State Superintendent found it necessary to issue to the Schools: :

"CAUTION.-School Officers are especially cautioned against travelling Book Peddlers, who pretending to the Agents of the State contractors, or asserting that they will sell cheaper than the contract prices, palm_on to the Libraries inferior and cheap editions of the works selected, or of worthless Books in their places, and in common and frail bindings.

"Every Book on this list is contracted for at considerably less than the Publisher's retail price for the same in common binding, while the binding provided for by the contract is much more expensive, as well as durable binding, than ordinary cloth or even sheep binding.

"No Book Peddler can furnish these Books in equally good editions, and in equal binding, for the prices given in this Circular.

"It is hoped that this simple and easy method of supplying the Libraries with Books will commend itself to the good sense of people, and will induce a more liberal support of these valuable agencies of popular education. It would be difficult to devise a more simple plan. It is like bringing a large Bookstore home to each district. A large list of good Books-more than twice as large as any Bookstore in the State can showhas been selected, with the aid of some of the best men in the State.

"All orders for Books and stationery must be sent to the State Superintendent through the Secretary of the Board of School Commissioners, the Secretary keeping an account of the same,' etcetera.

Mr. C. S. Stebbins, in his Educational Needs of Michigan, published in 1869, says: "The founders of our School System thought Libraries indispensible to furnish reading to the young. We do not need them now so much to furnish reading as to secure the proper kind of reading. This, our present law, would do but for one fatal defect-a defect as fatal as would be the omission of the connecting rod in a Locomotive.

And what kind of Books were they? Some good ones, doubtless; but generally it were better to sow oats in the dust that covered them than to give them to the young to read. Every year soon after the taxes were collected, the State swarmed with Peddlers with all the unsaleable Books of Eastern houses-the sensational novels of all ages, tales of piracies, murders and love intrigues-the yellow-covered literature of the world."

In the State of New York the Library system has, under the pernicious efforts of itinerant Vendors, as just pointed out, greatly declined. The New York Teacher thus gives some of the reasons for this decline:

"The Trustees refuse to be troubled with the care of the Library, thus consigning it to an unfavorable location in the Section, and often hide it in some dark corner of the garret, or stow it into some out-buildings where its only visitors are Rats, Mice and Spiders. The exercise a low and pernicious taste in the selection of Books. Dark and bloody tales of war and bloodshed, the silly catch-penny publications of unprincipled Publishers, and the dry, uninstructive matter of some cheap old Book, usurp the place of the instructive. and elevating, the refining, the progressive issues of reputable publishing houses. They seem to regard it as a great evil that they cannot divert this sacred fund from its appropriate channel. Almost daily applications are made to the State Superintendent for permission to apply the Library money to the payment of Teachers' wages, and that, too, when the Section is destitute of many useful items of Apparatus; sometimes even of a Globe and Black board."

(6) STEPS TAKEN BY THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT FOR ONTARIO TO SUPPLY OUR SCHOOLS WITH CHEAP AND USEFUL BOOKS, MAPS AND APPARATUS, ETCETERA.

It now remains for me to state what are the steps which have been taken by the Ontario Department to supply the Schools with Prize and Library Books, Maps and Apparatus. In 1850 and 1851. I went to England and the United States, and made special advantageous arrangements with Publishers there to furnish the Department with such Books, etcetera, as might be required, at the lowest rates. These arrange

ments have been revised from time to time. The last revision was made in 1867, when

the Deputy Superintendent was authorized to proceed to England to confer with the leading Publishers personally on the subject, which he did, and made arrangements with about fifty Publishers. From his Report to me on the result of his Mission, I make the following extracts. He says:

"Upon enquiry I found that none of the old Publishers were disposed to offer better terms than I have been enabled to make with them some years ago. The new Publishers, too, were as little disposed as the old ones to offer more than the usual trade terms to exporters. With several of the Publishers I had some little difficulty, when I first called, to induce them to modify their terms. The alleged that they had already given us their best export terms for cash. After sundry conferences and explanations, they were at length induced, with two or three exceptions, to agree to an additional, discount for cash of 21, 5, 7, or 10 per cent. (as the case might be) over and above their former rates of discount to the Department. Five per cent. was the average additional discount which I was thus enabled to secure for the Department, together with the advantage, in most cases, as heretofore, of the odd books, videlicet: --7 as 6, 13 as 12, 25 as 24. This additional discount will be quite sufficient to pay the Customs Duty which has recently been imposed upon Books coming into the Province, and thus enable the Department to supply the Schools with a very greatly increased variety of Books at the old rate, videlicet on an average currency for sterling prices (i. e. 20 cents for the shilling sterling.)"

These arrangements for the purchase of Books, etcetera, having been explained in 1869 to the Committee of the House of Assembly, appointed to enquire into the matter, together with the terms on which the Books are supplied to the Schools, the Committee reported to the House upon the facts as follows:

"Your Committee have also made a thorough investigation of the Depository department, and find that the existing arrangements for purchasing stock are satisfactory and well fitted for securing the same on the most favorable terms. The mode of disposing of the books is equally satisfactory."

XIV-TABLE O.-SUPERANNUATED AND WORN-OUT TEACHERS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

1. This Table shows the age and service of each Public School Pensioner in Ontario up to the close of 1873, and the amount which he receives. The system, according to which aid is given to worn-out Public School Teachers, is as follows:-In 1853, the Legislature appropriated $2,000, which it afterwards increased to $4,000 and then to $6,000; on the adoption of the system of compulsory subscriptions, which increased the revenue of $11,800 for 1873 the vote was again increased, and for 1874 is $23,100 per annum, in aid of superannuated, or worn-out Public School Teachers. The allowance cannot exceed $6 annually for each year the recipient has taught School in Ontario. The recipient must pay a subscription to the Fund of $4 for the current year, and $5 for each year since 1854, if he has not paid his $4 any year; nor can any Teacher share in the Fund unless he pays annually at that rate, commencing at the time of his beginning to teach, or with 1854, (when the system was established) if he began to teach before that time. When a Teacher omits his annual subscription, he must pay at the rate of $5 for that year in order to be entitled to share in the Fund when worn out. The Legislative Grant is now sufficient to pay each Pensioner the full amount permitted by Law, and it is divided among the claimants according to the number of years each one has taught.

2. It appears from the Table that 292 have been admitted to receive aid, of whom 139 have died, have not been heard from, or have resumed teaching, or have withdrawn from the fund before or during the year 1873, the amount of their subscriptions having been returned to them.

3. The average age of the Pensioners in 1873, was 65 years; the average length of time of service in Ontario was 22 years. No time is allowed applicants except that which has been spent in teaching a Public School in Ontario; though their having taught Schools many years in England, Ireland, Scotland, or the British Provinces, has induced the Council in some instances, to admit applicants to the list of worn-out Public School teachers after teaching only a few years in this Province, which would not have been done had the Candidate taught, altogether, only a few years of his life.