Year: 1878

The searcher after statistical truth need go
no further than the AstOr Library to discover
that as compared with the liberal ways OF
the Great Republic, the crumbling mOnarchies
of the Old World have very contracted no.
tons about the acreage of public documents
which it is advisable to print and
disseminate. A single modest volume,
for instance, contains the Prussian reports,
issued tiicnnially and embracing statistics of
six separate departments. In this volume 112
pages are devoted to finance, 40 pages to mill
tary and naval affairs, and 134 pages to educa-
ton. This last document is model in its way.
but il H. ludicrously brief when compared with
the immense bulk of printed wisdom which
our own Bureau of Education annually ex-
udcs. The other day the House Committee
on Printing reported to authorize the publish
ing of 5000 additional copies of General
Eaton's report for 1876, and in the debate il
was stated that this document had spread
itself over 1, 100 pages. Ii was admitted by
the committee that 420 of these pages are
hacked with figures which will never he read,
and which can be of no use to any inhabitant
of this planet at least that 472 other pages are
extracts from reports of school officers i'll various
cities, States and Territories, which might
have been omitted altogether or judiclousy
condensed that besides this lumber the volume
contains special treatises on Anglo-Saxon and
Latin and Greek pronunciation, which have no
more right to place in the report than dis
sertation on the Spring fashions; and that the
report proper contains much that has already
been published in the newspapers. OF the
work as q whole it was truly said that it
contained "litte which we might venture
"to suppose could be of considerable
"interest to the educators of the country"
and it might have been added, that in the
Judgment of discreet persons, it is untrust-
worthy from beginning to end, and that as at
present manufactured, the book is mainly
valuable as q gratuitOus advertisement OF the
private schools of the country.


Inasmuch as this bureau keeps magnifying
itself every year, asking for larger approplia-
tions, printing longer reports and more of
them, it would be well for Congress to return
TO first principles and ascertain what was
the original excuse for its existence. 1t
the mastering place for lobbyists for
the great National University; that it
should distribute certain funds of the General
Government among the several States on the
"basis of illiteracy" and take charge of the
State school systems to any extent; that it
should educate the blind, or the ruptured and
crippled, or anybody else; that it should dissem-
mate essays on the Greek accent or imaginary
statistics of 800 universities and colleges"
1t is possible to conceive of a bureau which
would restrict itself to gathering information
and statistics in regard to our public schools,
and reporting from time to time, as was
originally intended, without aiming to
make itself sole guardian and director of
the educational interests of the country.
Indeed, there is published every year an alb


stract of the legitimate operations of the
Bureau. which contains all that is valuable in
the diluted report, and which is ineomparably
superior to 1t in style. If Congress would sit
down very hard on General Eatons inflated
volume, and squeeze out Of it all that is
useless and worse than useless, there would be
nothing left besides this abstract, which is
issued months before the other is prepared.
Perhaps tho artistic dressing down which the
Printing Committee administered to the Com