Excerpt from Bulletins for the Constitutional Convention, Vol. 2: 1917-1918, Bulletins 17 to 37

If elementary education was to remain in the hands of schools established and controlled by the various churches, one of three results must follow. Either every church must main tain a school for its own children, or the children must attend a school of some other church, or they must remain without edu cation. In many communities there were religious bodies which were not sufficiently strong in numbers and in property to maintain schools of their own. The children of families be longing to such churches must either attend schools where they would be subjected to religious teaching which their parents did not approve or go without formal training. This dilemma was removed by the establishment of the free public school.

Early in the nineteenth century, the country was swept by a wave of democracy which resulted in greatly extending the suffrage and in bringing practically all branches of the govern ment under popular control. This movement was accompanied by the belief that the success of democracy depended primarily upon popular education, and hence that the state itself, as a means of self-protection, must create and maintain suitable schools. The religious and moral aims of education were not overlooked and were sometimes expressly set forth in the State constitutions. The statement in the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory, Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged, has been incorporated in the organic law of several States. Many of them express in some form the duty of the State to provide for education, and contain manda tory provisions as to the duty of the legislature to establish a suitable system of schools. So thoroughly has the conception of education as a secular function been accepted that in many States the former dependence of society upon the church for mental training has been almost forgotten.

In the last hundred years there has been a great change in the view taken as to the duty of the state in matters of philanthropy. As in the field of education so also in the field of humanitarian endeavor, it was the church which was long the most active factor. In the care of the poor and helpless, in ministering to the sick, in the maintenance of institutions for those who need assistance and protection, the church in all its branches is more active to-day than ever before. But the state is not a passive spectator, and through its own agents and by means of public institutions it seeks to relieve the wants of its people who are in distress. Every State in the Union has made some sort of provision for the maintenance of charitable and correctional institutions in which it seeks to do the work which was formerly thought to be possible only when actuated by a religious motive and when under the control of an ecclesiastical organization.

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