This policy would have put in the heart
of every township a common field whose rental would have grown with the
development of the country. It would have furnished fruitful data for
comparison between two systems of land tenure. And it would have kept ever
visibly, tangibly before the people their heritage and their obligation.
As it is, one has to use the greatest imagination in translating the
figures in a State treasurer's or county supervisor's report, back into
the little plots that gathered into the soil of their acres the noblest
purposes that ever animated a nation--these spots where one generation
made its unselfish prayer and sacrifice for the next.
That the purpose still exists, despite the passing of the tangible symbol,
and that the prayer is still made in every township of that territory,
where even a few children live, is evidenced by the fact that every two
miles north and south, east and west of settled region there stands a
schoolhouse. I shall speak later of this wide-spread provision, not only
for universal elementary education but also for secondary and higher
education, ordained of the people and for the people, to be paid for by
the people out of their common treasury.
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