The record-union., 1891-06-12
Weather Forecast.
Forecast till P. NJ Friday: For Northern
California-Light rains.
wATCHFULNESS FOR OUR SCHOOL,
BOOK SYSTEM.

BOOK SYSTEM.
According TO a resolution adopted some
months ago, the State Board of Educa-
ton at its session to be held to-day will
designate some educational journal as
the official organ of the Department of
Public instruction. In performing that
duty the board, we trust, will see to it that
no journal is named to that distinction
that will not affirmatively stand forward
as the friend of the States system of text
books. 1t were better to have no organ
at all than to select one that either openly
or secretly is opposed to the State school
book system or that is liable to any sort
of control by, or submissiyeness to infiu-
ences whose interests are antagonistic to
the experiment the State is now making.
That system, for which the RECORD
UNION and a few other journals have had
to fight so many years, is not yet free
from danger; it is now well upon the
highway of pronounced success, and, in
deed, has attained a wonderfully good
position when it is recalled that it has
been made the target for unfair and bitter
critical assaults from all quarters, inspired
by the hope of breaking it down. 1t has
no advocate, no one to make its defense,
save here and there an earnest newspaper
anda personal friend. When the books of
private firms were in use they were forti-
fed by defenses such as rich and power
ful houses and shrewd and capable agents
alone can marshal.
II the book rings can by any means
prevent the State textbooks gaining a
permanent footing in California they
will have achieved a triumph worth
millions Of money to them. For failure
in California would tend to prevent other
States declaring their independence of
private publishers and book syndicates,
precisely as success here means the
adoption in many other. Last VIM
ter the rings debauched some of
the leading journals of San Francisco
and procured publication in them of
outrageous slanders against the system
and the financial method underlying it :;
they dug out of official depths an incom-
plete, onesided and incorrect expert re-
port in opposition to the system, the
fallacyof which subsequent expert exam
ination laid bare. All the interests and
incentives of gain, chagrin and revenge
operated during the session to spur
the,book men to efforts both bold and
subtle, specious, cunning and open, to
break down the State system by assault
or by siege in detail.
One powerful Eastern house kept a
practiced political Eastern book agent at
the Capitol nearly the whole of the
late legislative session, who left no
stone unturned to undermine and de-
feat the system by crippling it. No less
than five bills were introduced that would
have had that effect. One of these was so
cunningly constructed, and was appa-
rently so harmless, that it reached the
very moment of final passage, when a
philanthropic citizen discovered what
none of the State officials habitat there
was "bug" in the measure that
would have wrecked the entire State
text book system. This "bug" was the
work of the agent in question. AS we
have said, the State system has never had
self-sacrificing defenders save in the
press and among a few public-spirited
citizens. Despite official coolness, official
opposition and laundering, the cunning
of book-rings and the power of money,
the system has nevertheless won its way
under very discouraging circumstances.
The people therefore have a right to
look to the new State Board of Education
not only to do the perfunctory duty re-
quired by law in promoting the system,
but to look to it to defend if not ardently
advocate the system, and we believe the
board will prove true to the trust reposed
in 1t. The States system is entitled to
trial upon its merits and no one asks
more than that for it; but its merits must
not be hooded or left undeveloped. 1t is
therefore important that no official organ
of the Department of Public instruction
shall be named that will not be in har-
mony with and promote the State text.
book plan, since Endorsement of this
character carries with it acquiesence in
the policy employed by any organ
The people are not concerned espe.
cially as to what journal may be chosen
except that it shall be friendly to the
peoples policy. Certainly we have nc
care or concern about it save to that ex.
tent. The struggle for the present sys.
tenn has been so long and severe ano
against such odds that we are jealous thai
no educational agency shall have State
aid that is not for the States educationa