98 JOHN C. ALMACK
tion. At the same time there has been a falling off in the normal school enrollment (Monmouth reported 240 students, with 22 graduates the first quarter of 1919), and in the num- ber of students taking teacher training courses in high schools.
EARLY SCHOOL CONDITIONS IN OREGON AND THE DEMAND FOR NORMALS 1870-1882
There is no more interesting chapter in the history of edu- cation in Oregon than that which centers around the normal schools. For nearly forty years they have furnished subjects for discussion and controversy; they have occupied the atten- tion of legislators, governors, and educators. They have risen and fallen at the whim of politicians, or at the word of the sovereign people ; they have had brief periods of opportunity and longer periods of despair. The normal school problem has been one of the most perplexing ones the state has been called upon to deal with, and it is still unsolved. Yet Oregon's experience is not unique ; it parallels very closely that of New York and like New York's much of it is valuable chiefly as a warning.
A wonderful development industrial, political, and educa- tional has characterized the state since the origin of the normal school question two score years and more ago. The population was less than 175,000; Portland was but little larger than Astoria is now ; in 1890 there were only eight cities in the state with a population above 2,500: namely Albany, Astoria, Baker, La Grande, Oregon City, Pendleton, Portland, and The Dalles. By far the larger part of the population was con- centrated in the Willamette Valley. Means of transportation were decidedly meager; the state boasted but two lines of railroad ; the automobile with its accompaniment of good roads had not been dreamed of; electric railroads belonged to the remote future. Travel was, except on the railway lines, mainly by horseback, wagon, steamboat, and stage. A county super- intendent reported that he had during the year traveled two
