From this statement it appears that the number of Normal teachers employed was 1,792, or 19 per cent. of the whole number of teachers returned, and that they were distributed in 265 cities and towns, and in every county of the Commonwealth.

COUNTIES, CITIES AND TOWNS OF MASSACHUSETTS WHICH EMPLOYED NORMAL TEACHERS IN 1874-75.

The importance of a wise and vigorous administration of our school system can hardly be overestimated, in whatever light it may be viewed. As the only source of knowledge, and means of intellectual training, and of moral culture to the vast majority of our youth, who will soon as citizens determine the character and shape the destiny of the Commonwealth, do its voting, control its legislation, and administer and enforce its laws, it would seem the simplest dictate of wisdom to spare no expense, to shrink from no amount of labor needful to give our Public Schools the highest attainable efficiency. Moreover, the vast sums of money annually raised by taxation for their support, would seem to demand, as a sensible business transaction, the

wisest and sharpest supervision of them. No other business, public or private, involving a tithe of the expenditure made for our schools, has been so allowed to take care of itself, as has the conduct of our Public Schools.

Speaking on this aspect of the subject in his first report, Mr. Mann used the following language:

"This State employs annually in the Common Schools, more than three thousand teachers [now more than nine thousand], at an expense of more than four hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars [now more than four millions], raised by direct taxation. But they have not onethousandth part the supervision which watches the same number of persons, having the care of cattle or spindles, or of the retail of shop goods. Who would retain his reputation, not for prudence, but for sanity, if he employed men on his farm or in his factory, or clerks in his counting-room, month after month, without oversight, and even without inquiry?

"In regard to what other service are we so indifferent where the remuneration swells to such an aggregate?"

While this language had immediate reference to town and city superintendence by school committees and superintendents, it loses none of its pertinency or force when applied to those other agencies which modern experience has shown to be indispensable to a thoroughly effective system of school supervision.

AGENTS.

Section nine of chapter thirty-five of the General Statutes authorizes the Board of Education to employ one or more Agents to visit the several towns and cities, for the purpose of inquiring into the condition of the schools, conferring with teachers and committees, lecturing upon subjects connected with education, and in general of giving and receiving information upon subjects connected with education, in the same manner as the Secretary might do if he were present.

No department of labor has been more fully and earnestly advocated in the preceding reports than this, and none has received more hearty commendation from the people of the State. Dr. Sears in the fourteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth, and Gov. Boutwell in the twentieth and twenty-fourth, annual reports, presented their views with equal ability and earnestness. Dur