The Portland daily press., 1874-03-21
The Fabric of n Dream

And now 1t seems that all the fuss is about
nothing. Our contemporaries have been agi-
tatlng themselves about the School Commit
tee, numerous respectable citizens have got
into state of mind about the School Com
mittee, men have desperately exercised them
selves to get on the School Committee and
have been grievously exercised because they
failed, certain parties are reported to have
gone mad at being left off the School Com
mttee, the popular mind has struggled IN
vain with the problems of the School Com
mttee. in fact, that educational body has
been the center of agitation and the topic of
the hour, and this sensational drama has a
truly melodramatic termination in the sudden
disappearance of the whole Institution through
statutory trap-door.
Good Mrs. Camp was shocked to the in
most recesses Of her nature by the desperate
and iconoclastic declaration of her crony
concerning the apocryphai but much quot
ed Mrs. Harris: 81 don't believe there's no
SIGH a person." Portland will be equally
Mortified by the announcement that there's
no School Committee. And yet such appears
IL, section 10, authorized the choice of
committee of not less than three and under
this general law-not under any provisions OF
our charter-a board of twenty-one members
was established. In the revision of 1871,
this section was combined with another and,
as frequently happened in that remarkable
compilation blunder was made by such
change of the language that authority was
given to choose committee of three"
Portland went on in the good old way, choos-
ing annually seven members for three year
terms, and these gentlemen have met to-
gether and gone gravely through the motions
of regularly constituted body, with about
as much legal authority as might have been
exercised by any other twenty-one citizens,
who felt moved to assemble themselves to-
gether and go through similar performances.
Our ''local peerage'', as scoffers delighted
to call it, has been swept from existence more
completely than was the French nobility by
the bloody hand of the Revolution. The
statutory guillotine has spared not commit
teeman's head-old and young, lovely and
unlovey, good, bad and indiferent-all are
gone. Their lnterneciEe strife has ceased,
and the assaults of an Infatuated public can
no more agitate them-they have gone
where the wicked cease from troubling and
the weary are at rest. i -..6a m sal-
This precious ''revision of the statutes,'
which removed the bottom from our Supe-
rior Court, went one step further, and has
laid profane hands on the entity of the School
Committee. We are entitled to three COM
mitteemen, to be sure, but as the present
1ncumbents were voted for by the batch,
seven at time, there is no human power ca
pable of determining which three of the elect
are properly chosen. So the City Council
must wipe the slate and elect anew the
three committeeman. This operation prom
Uses interest, and the lives of our City Fa-
theirs will be made burden to them by the
assaults of competing candidates. If they are
wise, they will find some suitable persons
who are not pushing themselves, and will give
them authority to employ a Superintendent.
There is now an opportunity to establish the
system which good many people have long
thought desirable and conducive to the eff
cheney Of the schools. The MaHnr and Cit.r
Solicitor have the matter under advisement
and will be prepared to make some sugges-
tions to the City Council a. a meeting to be
called on. Monday night.
1t may be slight consolation to Portland
in her afflction that several other cities i'm
Maine are probably in similar predicament
and that several other School Committees are
bodies Hanging on the verge of the govern
ment." 1t is also refreshing to reflect that
it goes out in a food of glory, in the midst OF
one Of the most stupendous tempests that
ever ragged around it-disappearing like the
demon Of the play, in thunder and blue lights.
Ereunf oy,,a,oe