The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-09-24

everything on the desk of the child free
for less than dollar year. per pupil. If
Massachusetts saves $500, 900 a year by
free books, what could she do if she
printed the books? But she can buy very
cheaply. Kansas cannot, it seems. This
winter the combine will be at Topeka
offering their wares cheap. but as soon as
the legislature adjourns up the prices go
again. 1t has always been so and always
will be so until we elect men who will
have honesty enough TO give US books
| printed by Kansas boys on Kansas
presses. Murdock's bill of the last ses-
sion Is defective but can be perfected
TO meet the case. Senator Roe is look
ing into the matter and will take the
| California and other laws and from them
| get the best features. Can't Kansas make
| school books: Haven't we men in our
state institutions who can compile spell
lers, readers, grammars, histories, etc:
Are we less brainy than the men who
compile for the combine? What an in
spiration, what stimulus to independ-
ence and self help would it be to every
pupil if the schools of 1892 should open
all over Kansas and not a book on any
desk save Kansas books! The idea of
Kansas going beyond the Mississippi for
spelling book or reader! Let the leg
islature appropriate 500, 900 for presses
and machinery, 100000 for paper and
material, and $50. 900 for compiling and
engraving, total S250,0 and the re-
turns will come back twice over in one
year, and we will have the plant TO boot.
Superintendent Speer objected that we
would fall behind in improved methods!
1t IS an insult to every wide wake nor
NAL professor in the state, and to every
wide awake teacher! Are eastern fell
lows the only fellows who improve the
methods: Are Kansas teachers so many
parrots to check off what comes to them
from the east and never seeing anything
new for themselves? | don't believe it!
If compilers of readers ever need any
thing more than pair of
shears and pot of paste
L do not know what it is Is
not the Kansas multiplication table the
same as that of Massachusetts,! Is a
sugar hogshead any the less a name in
Kansas than in Connecticut? And in the
sentence: 80! how we are swindled by
the book combine" is the interjectiOn an
adjective in Ohio and a proposition in |
Iowa? Will a geography printed in Kan |
sas make st. Louis the capital of Ohio, or |
St. Paul the capital of New Jersey! And |
will the Kansas made history have Col
umbus land at the mouth of the Kaw, |
and make Gen. TOmlinsOn commander |
of our revolutionary sires? And if Kan |
sas should PRINT the New Testament do |
you suppose Bentley would go in as one
of the apostles? All of these questions
come to mind as / read Superintendent |
Speer's objections that we would not |
keep up! And then he suggests the |
miserable cheat of county uniformity. |
OF all the senseless contraptiOns, the de-
ceitful cOncoctiOns, the contempt BILE,
nonsensical inventions TO relieve a long
robbed public from the school book
swindle. the county uniformity dodge is
the worst. 1t lulls the patron into
fancied security while the robbers 80
through him fore and aft.
Yours truly,
J. w. WRIGHT.
HOWARD. Sent 49, 1890