sed sixty-two per cent, of women
fifty-one per cent, while the whole number of women employed as teachers
had increased fifty-four per cent; one month had been added to the
average length of the schools; the ratio of private school expenditures
to those of the public schools had diminished from seventy-five per cent
to thirty-six per cent; the compensation of school committees had been
made compulsory, and their supervision was more general and more
constant; three normal schools had been established, and had sent out
several hundred teachers, who were making themselves felt in all parts
of the state."[169]

=Love for the Common Schools.=--He believed most fully in the common
school, declaring that, "This institution is the greatest discovery ever
made by man.... In two grand characteristic attributes, it is
supereminent over all others: first in its universality, for it is
capacious enough to receive and cherish in its parental bosom every
child that comes into the world; and second, in the timeliness of the
aid it proffers,--its early, seasonable supplies of counsel and guidance
making security antedate danger."

In his first Annual Report Mr. Mann asserts that, "The object of the
common school system is to give to every child a free, straight, solid
pathway, by which he can walk directly up from the ignorance of an
infant to a knowledge of the primary duties of man." Horace Mann could
hardly have anticipated the kindergarten for the infant years, and the
high school at the end of the course, as they now stand in the common
school systems of our country. And yet, what has already been
accomplished in our educational scheme fulfills the prophecy implied in
his words.

The best known and most important of Mr. Mann's written documents is his
Seventh Annual Report, in which he gives an account of European schools.
Concerning this Mr. Winship says, "He had made a crisis, and his Seventh
Report was an immortal document; opposition to the normal schools was
never more to be heard in the land, and oral instruction, the word
method, and less corporal punishment were certain to come to the Boston
schools."[170]

After severing his connection with the State Board of Education, Mr.
Mann served in Congress from 1848 to 1853, and was defeated in his
candidacy for governor of Massachusetts. At the age of fifty-six he
accepted the presidency of Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, a
position which he held until his death in