education of the masses, and would lead, as it always has wherever tried, to the education of the few and the ignorance of the many.[1]
The legislature of 1877 was mindful of the governor’s injunction against too much legislative tinkering; only a single school law was passed this session, and it provided for a school census once in two years and required the district trustees to make full reports. The school year was now to begin on December 16; 5 days were made a week and 20 days a month, and no school might receive any benefits under the act unless its teachers had been “duly examined, approved, and employed by legal authority.”[2]
But the heyday of the schools had passed for a time; the guiding hand was being removed. Gov. Safford was succeeded by Gov. John P. Hoyt, who was compiling a code for the Territory and had other interests, and the schools soon showed the ill effects. In 1876–77 Gov. Hoyt could report only 903 pupils in school, as against 1,213 for the previous year, with an average attendance of 580 against 900. The schools had increased from 21 to 28, the teachers from 21 to 31, the length of term to 190 days, but the pay of men teachers had fallen from $110 to $100 and that of women from $90 to $50. This was in keeping with income and expenditure; the former had decreased from $31,449 to $20,708; the latter from $28,744 to $18.407.[3]
III. PROGRESS UP TO 1879—BEGINNINGS IN THE CITIES.
The year 1877 may be counted as something of an era in Arizona. Gov. Safford left the Territory in a prosperous condition. The Indians had in the main been pacified, although outbreaks occurred after this date; the railroad was coming in from the west; many rich mines were being discovered, and prospectors were swarming into the Territory; since there was safety from the Indians, stockmen were bringing in herds of cattle and sheep to graze on fresh pastures, and the export and import trade was growing rapidly. The section north of the Gila received the bulk of this immigration, and this change in the balance of power was signalized by the removal of the capital from Tucson back to Prescott. At this date Mexican representation in the assembly practically ceased. In matters of education also a change was coming; on the one hand, a reaction had set in, but this was not clearly apparent till the guiding spirit of Gov. Safford was removed; on the other hand, the larger schools, like that at Prescott which had hitherto paid all its expenses as it went, now discounted the future by selling bonds to meet the cost of building schoolhouses.
