Page:History of Public School Education in Arizona.djvu/14

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PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN ARIZONA.
Statistical view of the sources of Arizona’s population, 1870–1910.
Born in— 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910
New York 481 1,740 1,755 2,324 3,082
Pennsylvania 275 814 1,023 1,672 2,818
Ohio 235 954 1,234 2,100 3,549
California 156 2,177 3,142 5,099 6,101
Missouri 121 921 1,781 3,187 5,206
Illinois 115 688 1,328 2,659 4,700
Texas 114 525 285 4,510 10,139
Kentucky 107 451 700 1,189 2,168
New Mexico 93 1,153 1,274 3,351 4,477
Indiana 69 373 661 1,248 2,289
Tennessee 63 314 579 783 1,578
Arkansas 32 328 441 814 1,542
Utah 1 1,354 2,836 3,152 2,679
Canada (British America) 112 571 732 1,827 1,269
Germany 379 1,110 2,121 1,247 1,846
Great Britain 686 2,312 2,691 3,255 5,836
Mexico 4,339 9,330 11,534 14,172 29,987

From these statistics it is evident that the majority of the people who came to settle in Arizona were from States where the public school was already established, and for that reason, since these settlers had already been indoctrinated with the public school idea, little opposition from them was to be expected. This was also clearly the case with the immigrants from Europe and from Canada. Those who might be expected to show indifference were the Mexican immigrants from old and New Mexico, but experience has since proved that this assumption was erroneous. It would appear that otherwise little opposition was to be expected except such as was founded on physical and financial conditions and on the very pertinent difficulty arising out of the scarcity of children. On this phase of the problem McClintock remarks:

Schools were slow in coming to Arizona, probably because of the absence of children other than Mexican. Few of the pioneers brought families into the Territory. It is probable that most of the pioneers simply had an idea, like the first California adventurers, of “making their pile” and going “home.” Upon the groundwork they laid, however, was established a more permanent civilization, within which schools were a necessity. The first Territorial legislature passed a school code, but there seems to have been only one school, a small private one in Prescott, and that maintained largely by private subscriptions.[1]


  1. McClintock, James H.: Arizona, II, 495.