Vermont has great numbers of school officials, district prudential committees appearing to be most Besides the officers above mentioned, there are State-superintendents of public schools, or officer of education, for the general regulation of the public-school-system, in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Kausas has a State-board of commissioners for the management and investment of the State-school-fund.

answering to these, in all the States and Territories, except Delaware and Alaska, with State-boards Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. A territorial board of education exists also in Arizona.

COST OF EDUCATION AND OF POLICE.

It has been impossible during the past year to give any special attention to the prosecution of the inquiry into the relation of ignorance* to crime or of educationto morals and public order.

Particular attention, however, is invited to the following very valuable and instructive summary of facts in regard to a number of our cities :

Table showing the cost of police-department and of public schools for one year in several cities.

*Rev. Eleazer Smith, for a dozen years chaplain of the New Hampshire State-Prison at Concord, declares that, of the three hundred prisoners who have entered the institution during his official term, about one in six could not read when they were committed. Of the three hundred, not one has been taken from any of the learned professions-not one lawyer, or physician, or clergyman, known and recognized as such by any of their professions, and not one editor or school-teacher. "I have been," says Mr. Smith, "so long connected with the prison and its records and history, that I can pretty confidently affirm that from its opening, some sixty years, there has not been among its inmates one clergyman, lawyer. physician, editor; not one deacon, steward, church-warden or class-leader; nor one son of a clergyman; and I have been able to learn of but two persons who, at the time of the commission of the crime, were members of any church."

Table showing the whole number of arrests and the number of arrests of persons under 20

The percentage of arrests of persons under 20 years of age to the whole number of arrests was, in Detroit, 14.4; in Chicago, 12.5; in St. Louis, 9.2; in Memphis, 8; in Albany, 6.2; in Buffalo, 5.7; in Boston 5.33; in the District of Columbia, 4.87.

Of the 12,535 persons arrested in Buffalo, 1,414 could neither read nor write and 133 could read only; of 11,781 persons arrested in the District of Columbia, 4,227 could neither read nor write; of 6,273 persons arrested in Albany, 532 could neither read nor write and 93 could read only; of 4,861 persons arrested in Detroit, 668 could neither read nor write and 55 could read only.

The police-records of Boston show that "the increase of minors among the arrests nearly keeps pace with the increase of population."

The San Francisco police-report for 1871-72, while finding cause for congratulation in the fact that, while the population has largely increased during the past three years, the number of arrests has greatly diminished, mentions with regret the increasing evil of "juvenile ruffianism" as the most difficult matter with which the police-department has to deal.

VENTILATION OF SCHOOL-HOUSES.

The increased attentions given to this subject are especially gratifying.

Deeming it very important that this report should carry with it some indication of the progress of inquiries in this direction, I include the following résumé of opinions and facts:

In a notice in the Sanitarian for May, 1873, of a treatise on ventilation, by Lewis W. Leeds, it is remarked that—

The greatest sanitary want everywhere is ventilation, to be supplied in all existing tenant-houses, work-rooms, school-rooms, and all places of assemblage. Many children are taken from school in consequence of headaches, fever, sore throats, and weak eyes, "caused by too close attention to study," when, if the cause be investigated, it will be found that they have been confined in a close room, with perhaps fifty other living, breathing creatures, where there is no ventilation. Consequently they are inhaling over and over again the same impure breath.

In the Sanitarian for January, 1874, the following "life-problem" is presented: Every full-grown adult throws out by respiration about four and a half gallons of deleterious gas and watery vapor per hour; and the children of school-age average,

Total ar

rests.

Arrests

under 20.

each one, about three gallons per hour. Suspended in this deleterious respired air and vapor, there is in every 1,000 gallons 3 gallons of dead decomposing animal matter! Now, if one person throws out four and a half gallons of poisonous air every hour, how long will it take 1,000 persons to fill a church full; fifty children to fill a school-room full?

An article quoted from the Pall Mall Gazette in the Sanitarian for June, 1873, says: The marvel is not how many children die, but how many escape. Work-houses are under (assumed) competent supervision; so are mad-houses; so are prisons; but schools, where the young receive their life's permanent impress, are left out as beyond the range of inquiry altogether, save in that queer jumble of inconsistent half-truths we call education; and the master and mistress may kill the children intrusted to their care with untroubled consciences.

The report of the board of health of the city of Boston for the year 1873 speaks as follows of the defective ventilation of the school-houses of that city:

Let some person who never has thought of it go into some of our school-rooms, even in our own city, about 12 at noon, on a moist winter-day, where some 60 to 100 pupils are climbing the wearisome heights, and the darkest troglodytic dormitories of our city have something of the scent of an orange-grove in full blossom in comparison. You ask about the ventilation, and your eye is directed to two or three holes in the wall, near the ceiling, but you are not told whether moral suasion is to coax, or corporal punishment drive, the deadly poison up there, nor who or what does the coaxing or driving. But you must be persuaded to believe that a mastodon crawls out of a gimlet-hole, when no inducement is offered him to go.

Dr. C. R. Agnew, in an article in the Sanitarian for April, 1873, says:

In the city of New York, with its boasted public-school-system, there is room for reform from the primary schools up to the New York College. I quote from a recent report:

* * * *

"Seventeen school-buildings have been inspected, against all of which reports are made of bad sanitary condition. Six of them have class-rooms so damp and dark that they are declared to be unfit for school-purposes and in one case it is recommended that the entire building be vacated. One of the principals of one of the largest of those public schools has told me that they get on with the primary children very well in the morning, but that it is almost impossible to keep them awake in the afternoon from the effect of mental strain and bad air."

In the Sanitarian for April, 1873, Dr. Jaynes, city sanitary inspector of New York City, details the results of some experiments with the air in the public schools:

From our public schools Dr. Endemann obtained seventeen samples of air, the examination of which determined the presence of carbonic acid, varying in amounts from 9.7 to 35.7 parts in 10,000; or, in other words, from more than twice to nearly nine times the normal quantity. The ventilation in these buildings is generally faulty and can be obtained only by opening the windows-a practice detrimental to the health of the children who sit near or directly under them. The following experiment made in the Roosevelt Street school shows the inefficiency of ventilating-flues in the wall, unprovided with means for creating an upward current. An examination of the air in one of the class-rooms provided with a ventilating-flue was made while one of the windows was opened, and yielded 17.2 parts of carbonic acid in 10,000. The window was then closed, and after the lapse of ten minutes another examination gave 32.2 parts of earbonic acid, or an increase of 15.6 parts. The experiment now became to the teacher and children so oppressive that it was not continued. Dr. Endemann says: "If the accumulation of carbonic acid had been allowed to continue, we might have reached within one hour the abominable figure of 110." The following is a statement of the average result obtained from the several experiments made in each school:

As expired air contains, not only this poisonous gas, but also effete animal matter escaping from the bodies of those present, and in quantities in proportion to the amount of carbonic acid exhaled, it follows that air vitiated by respiration is far more deleterious than air vitiated by the same amount of carbonic acid from other sources; and