When the State of Iowa was admitted into the Union, in 1846, there were
100 log schoolhouses in use, valued each at $125. The latest statistics I
have at hand show that in 1912 the average value of the 13,870 school
properties in the State was $2,170, that the average expenditure for each
pupil was $28.86, and for each inhabitant $6.58, and that of the 507,109
pupils enrolled in the State only six per cent were in private schools--
the average for the States of the west varying from less than one per cent
to sixteen per cent.
The elementary school followed the frontier at even pace. It was usually
the first public building of every community, large or small. That
everybody saw it for what it was, I cannot maintain; but that it was the
symbol of the nation of to-morrow, borne daily before the people of the
present is certain. The westerners carried rails in the Lincoln campaign,
in their pride of his humble birth and vocation; they carried miniature
log cabins in another campaign in exaltation of another frontier hero.
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