for the purpose. The people of Tucson are determined not to be outdone by their young neighbors, and are now making arrangements to build a house with sufficient capacity to accommodate 200 pupils, and we trust that the Sanford [Safford?] and San Pedro settlements will not be behind in the good work. But the most encouraging feature of all is that our late legislature made provision for sufficient school revenue to keep free schools in operation in every school district in the Territory for from six to nine months during each year. With these advantages the poorest children of the Territory are provided with ample opportunities for an education, and if in after years they do not make useful men and women, it will be their own and not the fault of the Territory.
Continuing his remarks in this connection, Mr. Wasson says further:
We think it but right that credit should be awarded to the man whose persistent efforts have brought about the present interest in education. * * * We refer to Gov. A. P. K. Safford, who has worked night and day and traveled all over Arizona in this cause. We know that the people of the Territory will second what we say.[1]
Such was contemporary and later opinion on the school work of Gov. Safford. It seems that with him the schools became almost a religion, for the unknown writer on the history of the public schools in 1894 credits him with using as a school motto:
The school first, the church second; no person can well understand and fulfill his obligations to God and to country without education.[2]
II. THE SITUATION IN 1875.
Gov. Safford’s message to the legislature in 1875 was intended to advance still further the program already entered on and was couched in much the same noble and inspiring terms:
Under the present school law the free-school system has been made a success, and the means are afforded by which every child in this Territory can obtain the rudiments of an education. But a trifling sum is paid to officers for their services, and nearly the entire revenues are applied to the maintenance of schools. Great care should be taken to preserve the same economy now practiced in the disbursement of this fund, and radical changes in a law that has worked well should always be avoided. It is a subject of pride to every citizen that with all the difficulties we have encountered—amid poverty, death, and desolation, occasioned by our savage foes—the people, with great unanimity, have provided the necessary means to educate the rising generation, and upon no other subject are they so thoroughly united.
The legislature of 1875 made an extensive revision of the school act, but without changing its general essentials. The rate of Territorial school taxation was now fixed at 15 cents per hundred as against 10 cents in the act of 1871 and 25 cents in the act of 1873. The county school tax was fixed at 35 cents on the hundred as against 50 cents in 1871 and 25 cents in 1873; the pay of the county super-
