infirmary directors chosen by popular vote. There are hospitals for
the insane at Athens, Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland, Carthage (10 m.
from Cincinnati; Longview Hospital), Massillon, Toledo and Lima;
a hospital for epileptics at Gallipolis, opened in 1893; institutions
for feeble-minded, for the blind (opened 1839) and for the deaf
(opened 1829) at Columbus; a state sanatorium for tuberculous
patients at Mt. Vernon (opened 1909); an institution for crippled
and deformed children (authorized in 1907); a soldiers’ and sailors’
orphans’ home at Xenia (organized in 1869 by the Grand Army of
the Republic); a home for soldiers, sailors, marines, their wives,
mothers and widows, and army nurses at Madison (established by
the National Women’s Relief Corps; taken over by the state, 1904);
and soldiers’ and sailors’ homes at Sandusky (opened 1888), supported
by the state, and at Dayton, supported by the United States. The
state penal institutions are the boys’ industrial school near Lancaster
(established in 1854 as a Reform Farm), the girls’ industrial home
(1869) at Rathbone near Delaware, the reformatory at Mansfield
(authorized 1884, opened 1896) and the penitentiary at Columbus
(1816).
Education.—Congress in 1785 set apart 1 sq. m. in each township of 36 sq. m. for the support of education The public school system, however, was not established until 1825, and then it developed very slowly. The office of state commissioner of common schools was created in 1837, abolished in 1840 and revived in 1843. School districts fall into four classes—cities, villages, townships and special districts—each of which has its own board of education elected by popular vote. Laws passed in 1877, 1890, 1893 and 1902 have made education compulsory for children between the ages of eight and fourteen. The school revenues are derived from the sale and rental of public lands granted by Congress, and of the salt and swamp lands devoted by the state to such purposes, from a uniform levy of one mill on each dollar of taxable property in the state, from local levies (averaging 7·2 mills in township districts and 10·07 mills in separate districts in 1908), from certain fines and licences, and from tuition fees paid by non-resident pupils. The total receipts from all sources in 1908 amounted to $25,987,021; the balance from the preceding year was $11,714,135, and the total expenditures were $24,695,157. Three institutions for higher education are supported in large measure by the state: Ohio University at Athens, founded in 1804 on the proceeds derived from two townships granted by Congress to the Ohio Company; Miami University (chartered in 1809) at Oxford, which received the proceeds from a township granted by Congress in the Symmes purchase; and Ohio State University (1873) at Columbus, which received the proceeds from the lands granted by Congress under the act of 1862 for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges, and reorganized as a university in 1878. Wilberforce University (1856), for negroes, near Xenia, is under the control of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; but the state established a normal and industrial department in 1888, and has since contributed to its maintenance. Under an act of 1902 normal colleges, supported by the state, have also been created in connexion with Ohio and Miami universities. Among the numerous other colleges and universities in the state are Western Reserve University (1826) at Cleveland, the university of Cincinnati (opened 1873) at Cincinnati, and Oberlin College (1833) at Oberlin.
Finance.—The revenues of the state are classified into four funds; the general revenue fund, the sinking fund, the state common school fund and the university fund. The chief sources of the general revenue fund are taxes on real and personal property, on liquors and cigarettes, on corporations and on inheritances; in 1909 the net receipts for this fund were $8,043,257, the disbursements $9,103,301, and the cash balance at the end of the fiscal year $3,428,705. There is a tendency to reduce the rate on real property, leaving it as a basis for local taxation. The rate on collateral inheritances is 5%, on direct inheritances 2%, on the excess above $3000. There are state, county and municipal boards of equalization. A special tax is levied for the benefit of the sinking fund—one-tenth of a mill in 1909. The commissioners of the fund are the auditor, the secretary of state and the attorney-general. The public debt, which began to accumulate in 1825, was increased by the canal expenditures to $16,880,000 in 1843. The constitution of 1851 practically deprived the legislature of the power to create new obligations. The funded debt was then gradually reduced until the last installment was paid in 1903. There still remains, however, an irredeemable debt due to the common schools, Ohio University and Ohio State University, in return for their public lands. About one-half of the annual common school fund is derived from local taxes; the state levy for this fund in 1909 was one mill, and the total receipts were $2,382,353. The university fund is derived from special taxes levied for the four institutions which receive aid from the state; in 1909 the levy was 0·245 mills and the total receipts were $582,843. Several banks and trading houses with banking privileges were incorporated by special statutes between 1803 and 1817. Resentment was aroused by the establishment of branches of the Bank of the United States at Chillicothe and Cincinnati in 1817, and an attempt was made to tax them out of existence. State officials broke into the vaults of the Chillicothe branch in 1819 and took out $100,000 due for taxes. The Federal courts compelled a restoration of the money and pronounced the taxing law unconstitutional. In 1845 the legislature chartered for twenty years the State Bank of Ohio, based on the model of the State Bank of Indiana of 1834. It became a guarantee of conservative banking, and was highly successful. There were at one time thirty-six branches. Most of the state institutions secured Federal charters after the establishments of the national banking system (1863–1864), but the high price of government bonds and the large amount of capital required led to a reaction, which was only partially checked by the reduction of the minimum capital to $25,000 under the currency act of the 14th of March 1900.
History.—Ohio was the pioneer state of the old North-West Territory, which embraced also what are now the states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and the N.E. corner of Minnesota. When discovered by Europeans, late in the first half of the 17th century, the territory included within what is now Ohio was mainly a battle-ground of numerous Indian tribes and the fixed abode of none except the Eries who occupied a strip along the border of Lake Erie. From the middle to the close of the 17th century the French were establishing a claim to the territory between the Great Lakes and the Ohio river by discovery and occupation, and although they had provoked the hostility of the Iroquois Indians they had helped the Wyandots, Miamis and Shawnees to banish them from all territory W. of the Muskingum river. Up to this time the English had based their claim to the same territory on the discovery of the Atlantic Coast by the Cabots and upon the Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut charters under which these colonies extended westward to the Pacific Ocean. In 1701, New York, seeking another claim, obtained from the Iroquois a grant to the king of England of this territory which they claimed to have conquered but from which they had subsequently been expelled, and this grant was confirmed in 1726 and again in 1744. About 1730 English traders from Pennsylvania and Virginia began to visit the eastern and southern parts of the territory and the crisis approached as a French Canadian expedition under Céleron de Bienville took formal possession of the upper Ohio Valley by planting leaden plates at the mouths of the principal streams. This was in 1749 and in the same year George II. chartered the first Ohio Company, formed by Virginians and London merchants trading with Virginia for the purpose of colonizing the West. This company in 1750 sent Christopher Gist down the Ohio river to explore the country as far as the mouth of the Scioto river; and four years later the erection of a fort was begun in its interest at the forks of the Ohio. The French drove the English away and completed the fort (Fort Duquesne) for themselves. The Seven Years’ War was the immediate consequence and this ended in the cession of the entire North-West to Great Britain. The former Indian allies of the French, however, immediately rose up in opposition to British rule in what is known as the Conspiracy of Pontiac (see Pontiac), and the suppression of this was not completed until Colonel Henry Bouquet made an expedition (1764) into the valley of the Muskingum and there brought the Shawnees, Wyandots and Delawares to terms. With the North-West won from the French Great Britain no longer recognized those claims of her colonies to this territory which she had asserted against that nation, but in a royal proclamation of the 7th of October 1763 the granting of land W. of the Alleghanies was forbidden and on the 22nd of June 1774 parliament passed the Quebec Act which annexed the region to the province of Quebec. This was one of the grievances which brought on the War of Independence and during that war the North-West was won for the Americans by George Rogers Clark (q.v.). During that war also, those states which had no claims in the West contended that title to these western lands should pass to the Union and when the Articles of Confederation were submitted for ratification in 1777, Maryland refused to ratify them except on that condition. The result was that New York ceded its claim to the United States in 1780, Virginia in 1784, Massachusetts in 1785 and Connecticut in 1786. Connecticut, however, excepted a strip bordering on Lake Erie for 120 m. and containing 3,250,000 acres. This district, known as the Western Reserve, was ceded in 1800 on condition that Congress would guarantee the titles to land already granted by the state. Virginia reserved a tract between the Little Miami and Scioto rivers, known as the Virginia Military District, for her soldiers in the War of Independence.
