out the State, examinations were oral, and in most cases resulted in issuing to everybody who applied a certificate "to teach school one year; now, a new order of things prevails. Every Board of Examination, whether State, city or county, must be composed of professional teachers exclusively; all examinations must be in writing, and in certain specified studies; and certificates are issued for life, or for a length of time proportioned to the grade of certificate issued.

California is the only State in the Union in which teachers have gained the legal right to be examined exclusively by the members of their own profession, and we have just cause to be proud of the fact. It has already done much to make the occupation of teaching respectable. It has relieved good teachers from useless annoyance and humiliation; it has increased their self-respect, stimulated their ambition, and guarded the schools against quacks and pretenders.

Our School Law is the only one in the United States which has taken broad, professional ground, by providing that the diplomas of State Normal Schools in other States shall entitle the holders to legal recognition as teachers in this State.

Strange to say, this new system of professional examinations was violently opposed four years ago, and by none so vehemently as by some common school teachers.

The world moves. Is there a single teacher here who would desire to have the old order of things re-established? But I never doubted that, once established, it would remain a part of our school system as long as schools ere maintained.

It was my sanguine hope, for many years, that in this new State teaching might aspire to the dignity of a profession; that teachers might learn to combine their strength, respect themselves, command the respect of others, and honor their occupation. I have lived already to see the promise of the future. It has been and is my highest ambition to elevate the profession of teaching; for I well know that in no other way can the public schools be made the great educators of the State and the nation. If the citizens of this State desire to have good schools, they must pay professionally trained teachers high salaries.

It is only by raising the standard of attainments that the occupation can become well paid and well respected. Set the standard high, and high wages will follow; set the standard high, and good schools will be the result; set the standard high, and teachers will be content to remain in the schools.

Let all teachers who act on County, City or State Boards of Examination, discharge their duty faithfully, without reference to the pressure of friends, or the complaints of unsuccessful applicants, ever bearing in mind the duty they owe to the schools, the people, and the profession of teaching.

Professionally trained teachers, well paid for their work, will bring the schools up to their fullest measure of usefulness, and will secure from the people the most liberal support.

STATISTICS AND REPORTS.

Four years ago there was not a teachers' library in the State, except a few odd volumes in San Francisco.

Now all the large counties have begun a central library, and some of them have quite extensive ones.

We have a course of study, established by law, by means of which teachers are enabled to pursue an intelligent system of instruction, in spite of the prejudices of those parents who are too ignorant to comprehend the purpose of a school.

We have judicious rules and regulations, established by law, to aid teachers in enforcing discipline and order. In no other State is the authority of the teacher so well established and defined by law. Every district school in the State is placed under a judicious system. of general rules and regulations.

Four years ago school statistics were notoriously unreliable; the records were kept without system, in old blank books or on scraps of paper, and often were not kept at all; now, every school is supplied with a State School Register, so simple in its style of bookkeeping that the most careless teacher can hardly fail to keep a reliable record.

Then, Trustees wrote their orders to County Superintendents on scraps of paper, without much regard to business forms, and often without keeping any accounts; now, the neat order-books, in the style of bank check books, furnished by the Department of Instruction, allow of no excuse for failing to keep a financial record of money paid out.

In 1862, 150 copies of the report of the Superintendent were allowed to the office of the State Superintendent for distribution; now, 4,000 copies are published, and the law requires that a copy shall be sent to each Board of Trustees, each school library, each County Superintendent, and that 250 copies shall be bound for distribution to the School Departments of other States.

SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

Then, there were no school libraries; now, a library is begun in every school district, and a liberal provision is made for their enlargement by a reservation of ten per cent. of the State School Fund annually.

The influence of a library in school is second only to that of the teacher; and, in many instances, the information self-gleaned by the pupils from books, is the most valuable part of their common school education. Books will give them a taste for reading, make them alive to knowledge, and start them on a plan of self-culture through life. A teacher may fail in the discharge of his duty, but the influence of good books is sure and lasting.

Then, most of the county schools were destitute of maps, charts, and globes; now, most of them are supplied.

Then, all school incidentals, such as pens, pencils, ink, and stationery, were furnished by the pupils themselves, and as a consequence, half of the children were generally without these indispensable articles; now, they are furnished by the district to the pupils, free of expense.

PROGRESS.

When we consider the generally depressed condition of business in the State during the past four years; the heavy losses during the mining stock mania; the losses by flood and drought; the gradual working out of placer mines, and the consequent depreciation of property in many places; the falling off in the trade of many mining towns; the unsettled condition of land titles in many of the agricultural sections, and consequently the unsettled condition of the people; the slow increase of population from immigration, and at times its actual decrease in consequence of attractive mines in neighboring territories, and the slow increase of taxable property— we have reason to be proud of the unexampled progress of our common schools.

In the great work of settling and civilizing a new State--in the building of cities, the construction of railroads, the cultivation of farms, the development of quartz mines, the beginning of manufactures, and all the varied branches of industry--the influence of schools is lost sight of in the figures of material statistics; and it is only when we consider that the 50,000 children now in the schools, during the next twenty years will take their place in society as the workers and producers, that we begin to realize the latent power of the schools. They are silently weaving the network of mental and moral influences which underlie civilization; and when the children shall become the masters of the material wealth of the State, the influence of the schools will begin to be evident.

We are apt to consider immediate results rather than their remote causes; and hence the power of the public schools is seldom fully realized.

Light, heat, and electricity build up the material life of the globe out of inorganic matter, yet so slowly and silently that we hardly observe the workings of their subtle agencies. So the schools act upon society, and organize its life out of the atoms of undeveloped humanity attracted to the schoolrooms.

A few weeks since I visited one of the great quartz mills in the interior of the State. I descended the deep shaft, where stalwart men were blasting and delving in solid rock. Above, the magnificent mill, with fifty stamps, like some gigantic monster, was crushing and tearing the white quartz with its iron teeth; and I saw the immediate result of all this work in the heavy bars of pure gold, all ready to be stamped with their commercial value, and to enter into the great channels of trade. Then I entered a public school a few rods distant, where a hundred children were sitting, silently learning their lessons. I realized the relation of the mill and mine to the material prosperity of the State; but the school, what did it yield?

I rode over the line of the Central Pacific Railroad from the. springtime of Sacramento into the snowy winter of the Sierra, and I saw the beginning of the great commercial aorta of a continent. On its cuts, and embankments, and rails, and locomotives, more money had already been expended than has been paid for schools since the history of our State began. I could see the tangible re

sults of the labor expended upon the road; but where should I look for the value received to balance the cost of the schools? After thundering down on its iron rails from the mountain summits, I stepped into the Sacramento High School, and I thought to myself: What are these boys and girls doing, compared with the men who are paving the great highway of a nation?

I go out into the streets of this great city; I hear everywhere the hum of industry; I see great blocks of buildings going up under the hands of busy mechanics; I see the smoke of the machine-shops and foundries, where skillful artisans are constructing the marvelous productions of inventive genius; I see the clipper ships discharging their cargoes; drays are thundering over the pavement; the banks are open, and keen-sighted capitalists are on 'Change; and when I go to visit some little schoolroom, where a quiet woman is teaching reading and spelling to the little children, the school seems to be something distinct from the busy life outside.

A short time ago I saw that ocean leviathan, the " Colorado," swing majestically out into the stream, amid the shouts of thousands of assembled spectators, and glide off through the Golden Gate, to weave a network of commercial interests between the Occident and the Orient; and when, a few days after, I stood in the Lincoln Schoolhouse, where a thousand boys were reciting their lessons, I asked: What are they doing for the city in return for $125,000 invested in the house, and $20,000 a year paid to the teachers? The steamship comes back with its passengers and freight, and makes its monthly returns of net profits; but when will the school show its balance-sheet?

But when I pause to remember that the steam engine was once but a dim idea in the brain of a boy; that intelligence is the motive power of trade and commerce; that the great city, with banks and warehouses, and princely residences, has been built up by intelligent labor; that in the construction and navigation of the ocean steamer so many of the principles of art and science must be applied--I see in the public school, with its busy brains, an engine mightier than one of steam; and the narrow aisles of the schoolroom broaden into the wide and thronged streets of the great city. I know that the school-boys will soon become workers; that one will command the steamship, and one will become the engineer; one will be a director of the Central Pacific Railroad, and one will ride over it to take his seat in the Senate of the United States; one will own the quartz mill; another will build the machinery, and another still will invent some improved method of working its ores; one will be the merchant who shall direct the channels of trade; one will be the president of the bank, and another shall frame laws for the protection of all those varied interests and the teacher, whose occupation seemed so disconnected from the progress of human affairs, becomes a worker on mind which shall hold the mastery over material things.

CONCLUSION.

I sought the office for the purpose of raising the standard of professional teaching and for organizing a State system of free schools. I am willing to leave the verdict to the future.

If, when my present term of office expires, I fall back into the ranks as a private, I shall feel proud of my profession, for I hold none more honorable, and to it I expect to devote my life.

I love the State of my adoption; I am proud of her educational record. I hope to see California as distinguished for her common schools, her colleges, her institutions of learning, as she has been for the enterprise of her people and the mineral wealth of her mountains.

I feel that her future prosperity is closely related to the education of her people, for the solid wealth of any State consists in educated and industrious men and women; and if the common schools are kept up to the full measure of their usefulness, her future glory will be not so much in her mines, her scenery, or her climate, as in the intelligence, integrity, morality, and patriotism of a people that shall make wealth a servant of science, art, literature, and religion.

32. SCHOOL LEGISLATION, 1868-69.

The only change made in the School Law at this session was a slight increase in the maximum rate of district tax voted by the people. The law requiring teachers to take the oath of allegiance was repealed. A local bill was passed, providing that the City Superintendent of Common Schools in San Francisco should be appointed by the Supervisors and Board of Education, instead of being elected by the people, to take effect in two years. A bill was passed to provide for organizing a State University.

33. THIRD BIENNIAL REPORT, 1868–69.

Superintendent Fitzgerald's first report opened as follows: When I entered upon the duties of State Superintendent two years ago, the situation was peculiar. It was just after an exciting political canvass. The wildest surmises and most absurd apprehensions were indulged in on the one hand, and the most extravagant expectations entertained on the other.

My first official utterance reaching the general public was in my address before the State Teachers' Institute, held in San Francisco, June, 1868. In that address I declared that I had no partisan, sectional or sectarian ends to accomplish; that our public schools were not to be considered as either Democratic or Republican, Northern or Southern, Protestant or Catholic; that all parties were taxed alike for their support, and therefore had equal rights and should be treated with equal respect.

This report touched upon the topics of "Objects of Education," "School Trustees," "Examinations," "State Normal