ject of education with earnestness and from 1846 to 1856 there was a constant movement towards more and better free schools.
Governor Hempstead in his message of 1852, says:
“The first great object of public schools should be to place within the reach of every child in the State the opportunity of acquiring those indispensable elements of education which shall fit him for the enlightened discharge of social and civil duties to which he may be called.”
Professor L. F. Parker tells us that when Iowa became a State it contained 20,000 persons of school age and one hundred schoolhouses valued at one hundred thirty-five dollars each. During the decade from 1846 to 1856, over 1,300 schoolhouses were built, valued at $266,000; while 2,153 ungraded schools were established and 2,500 teachers were employed of which more than one-half were men.
In his message of 1854, Governor Grimes says:
“The State should see to it that the elements of education, like the elements of universal nature are about, around and beneath all.”
He continues:
“The statistics of the penitentiaries and almhouses throughout the country abundantly show that education is the best preventive of pauperism and crime. Education, too, is the great equalizer of human conditions. Every consideration of duty and policy compels us to sustain the common schools of the State in the highest possible efficiency.”
The first Superintendent of Public Instruction after Iowa became a State, James Harlan, was succeeded by Thomas H. Benton who laid the foundation for our magnificent school system. Although the report of the Commission on revision of school laws in 1856, consisting of Horace Mann, Amos Dean and F. E. Bissell was not adopted, it had great influence in shaping our school policy; the rate bill disappeared and the schools became free
