The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-28
QUAINT sCHOOLBOOKs.
Used by Our Forefathers Contrasted
 With the Present Style.


 With the Present Style. Ethelbert Stewart in The Chicago
 News.
 As the tens of thousands of children settle down to work in Chicago's schools in the fall and the parents make the usual protest about buying the new arithmetic" with it's ques- tionable improvements upon the old, how many think of the strides we have made in reaching the science of num- bers?
 In the early colonial period the mas ter was required to teach his bound apprentice to read, write and cast &C., counts" Casting accounts" was as far as the dame schools" ever went, and while the school that had a man for teacher usually went farther in "fgur- ing" arithmetic In any broad sense of the term was not made compulsory in the schools of Massachusetts until 17S9.
 There were textbooks on the sub ject, however, further back than most people think. A popular book on old time schools gives "Pike's Arithmetic" of l7SS as the first American textbook, and states that up to that time Holder and Hilworth had complete sway of the schools. This, however, is a mistake. Isaac Greenwood's arithmetic as pure ly American, both in authorship and publication as Pike's was printed in Boston in 172s. For sixty years it was in quite general use in the schools. In 1737 The Secretary's Guide, or Young Mans Companion" was publish ed in Philadelphia. Whittier Perkins arithmetic, while never printed. was got out in 17S3 in IA pages of beauti- full pen work, and enough copies were made to secure for 1t a considerable in- fiuence in the schools. Pike's was real ly the fourth American arithmetic. Prof. DeMorgan. in writing of the his tory of arithmetic in 1S47, gives a list of 1,5s0 textbooks, of which only three are American, while in fact over eigh- ty textbooks on arithmetic had been written by Americans and printed in the United States at the time of the publications of DeMorgan's book.
 There was an intensely solemn air surrounding the old-time schoolroom- so solemn that in these less Puritanic days we wonder if it 1t was not intend ed to be funny. Pike for instance. gives as a problem the task of figur- ing out the proportions and tonnage of Noahs ark" But nobody laughed at 1t then.
 lHt OAu BlNe many and few examples. Some of these rules are absolutely unintelligible to us and afford peep into their complicated, not to say absurd, methods of doing business. For instance, here is a rule:
 When tare and tret and cloff are allowed deduct the tare and tret and divide the suttle by 168 and the quo tient will be the cloff, which subtract from the suttle and the remainder will be the neat"
 We wonder today what all this is about. I will venture in this case an explanation quoted from the d-time books: 'Tare is an allowance, made to the buyer. for the weight of the box. barrel or bag which contains the goods bought. Fret is an allowance of two pounds in every 104 pounds for waste. dust, etc. Cloff Is an allowance of two pounds in every 800 pounds. Suttie is when part of the allowance is deduct ed. Neat weight is what remains after all allowances are made"
 The table of long measure" begins, Three barleycorns make one inch ." The table of dry measure" informs us that two quarts make one bottle, two bushels make one strike, two strikes make one coon, two cooms make one quarter, four quarters make one chaI- dron. five quarters make one wey, two weys make one last" We can read with difficulty the English of the CO., lonial sires, and yet if our children met our grandfathers' grandfathers in the common matters of everyday life I doubt If they would understand any thing they said.
 Congress having established the decimal currecy in 17ss. vinalls arlth- metic, published in 1792. Is divided into three parts, two of which are proper ly called natural, the third artificial" Natural arithmetic was considered to treat of whole numbers and natural fractions" while artificial arithmetic deals with decimal fractions" What would those people think of the metric system? Vinalls book is dedicated ITO His Excellency, John Hancock. Esquire."
 Roots arithmetic in 179s eliminates fractions entirely. Not because I think them useless" he says, but be- cause they are not absolutely neces- ary."
 Most examples were based upon Bib Heal topics. True, there was a book called the wicked Arithmetic. :" This was soon offset by the publication of number of moral works" of which the Franklin arithmetic, published in 1882. and that of Willets. published in 1877, are types. In the preface, tile Franklin arithmetic states that in 1t are used only "questinons, the solution of which will convey to the mind some important moral truth. It seems rather out of place" continued this moral work. flor a teacher to sit down with a pupil to calculate the gain or loss on the sale of gin. or lottery tickets. In one of our excellent and popular books on mathematical science there are two or three questions which the scholar cannot solve without knowing how many cards there are in a pack.
 As an offset this book propounds such problems as the following:
 -Four rivers ran through the Gar den of Eden and one through Baby lon how many more ran through Eden than Babylony'
 Judas. one of the twelve apostles. hung himself; how many were there ieft?''
 John Baptist was beheaded after