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<noinclude><pagequality level="1" user="Library Guy" /><div class="pagetext">{{rh|{{x-larger|612}}|{{x-larger|MISSOURI}}}}
</noinclude>{{EB1911 Fine Print|no descendants he has an absolute right to one-half of her property,
both real and personal.
''Finance''.—Revenue is drawn mainly from a general property
tax. In 1904 the gross valuation of all taxable wealth was put at
$1,155,402,647, and taxation for state purposes aggregated $0.17
per $1000.<ref>The constitutional provision requiring assessments at cash
valuations is not at all observed; according to the State Revenue
Commission of 1902 the average tax valuation was 40 to 50% of
the real value. The national censuses of 1880 and 1890 (no estimate
being made in 1900) put the total value of all property at
$1,562,000,000 and $2,397,902,945 respectively.
</ref> In the years 1851-1857 a debt of $23,701,000 was
incurred in aiding railways, and all the roads made default during
the Civil War. The state could not meet its guarantee obligations
(hence the strict bonding provisions of the constitution of 1875), and
in 1865 had a bonded debt of above $36,000,000 This was reduced
to $21,675,000 by 1869, and in 1903 was wholly extinguished,
every obligation having been fully discharged. A small debt<ref>In 1902 the bonded debts of counties and townships aggregated
$8,066,878; that of towns and cities (mostly that of St Louis),
$31,193,370.
</ref> (at
the close of 1906, $4,398,839) is carried in the form of non-negotiable
state certificates of indebtedness issued in exchange for money
taken from the educational funds of the state, and is intended as
a permanent obligation to those funds. An amendment to the
constitution adopted in 1908 permitted counties to make an extra
levy of 25 cents on each 100 dollars valuation for the construction
and repair of roads and bridges.
''Charitable and Penal Institutions''.—The charitable and penal
institutions of the state include the penitentiary at Jefferson City,
opened in 1836, which is self-supporting; a training school for boys
at Boonville (opened 1889), an industrial home for girls at Chillicothe
(established 1837), hospitals for the insane at Fulton (1847),
St Joseph (opened 1874), Nevada (1887), and Farmington (1899);
a school for the blind at St Louis (opened 1851); a school for the
deaf at Fulton (opened 1851); a colony for the feeble-minded
and epileptic at Marshall (established 1899); a state sanatorium,
for consumptives, at Mount Vernon (established 1905, opened
1907); a Federal soldiers' home at St James, and a Confederate
soldiers' home at Higginsville (both established 1897).
''Education''.-The expenditure upon public schools is much greater
in Missouri than in any other of the old slave states. Most of the
total expenditure (in 1908, $12,769,690) is made possible by local
taxation. The percentage of the enumerated school-population
(children 6 to 20 years of age) attending school in 1908 was 48,
and the percentage of the total enumeration enrolled was about 71;
the general showing being excellent, and that for negroes remarkably
so. Blacks and whites are segregated in all schools. Various
high-schools scattered over the state are given over to the negroes;
and in 1904 the number of pupils attending these was exceeded
only by the corresponding numbers in Texas and Mississippi{{—}}states
with five- and sixfold the negro population of Missouri.
Illiterate persons above 10 years of age constituted in 1900 6.4%
of the total population{{—}}28.1% of the negroes, 7.1% of the natives,
6.9% of the foreign-born. The idea of providing a university and
free local schools as parts of a public school system occurs in the
constitution of 1820 (and in the Acts of Congress that prepared
the way for statehood), and the occurrence is noteworthy; but the
real beginnings of the system scarcely go back further than 1850.
Nor was very much progress made until a law was passed in 1853
requiring a quarter of the general yearly revenue of the state to be
distributed among the counties for schools. This appropriation
was made regularly after 1855 (save in 1861-1867), and since 1875
has rested on a constitutional provision. The maintenance of a
free public school system was placed on a firm and broad foundation
by the constitution adopted in that year. In the years after 1887
one-third of the total revenue was appropriated to the public
common schools; and in 1908 the total appropriation for public
schools, normal schools and the state university was about three-fifths
of the entire state revenue. Local taxation is another source
of the school funds. In 1908 the total school fund, including state,
county, township and special district funds, was about $14,000,000,
of which the state fund was nearly one-third. The schools of
St Louis have a very high reputation.}}
{{EB1911 Fine Print|Among institutions of higher learning the university of Missouri
at Columbia is the chief one maintained by the state. lit was opened
to students in 1841, received aid for the first time from the state
in 1867; Women were first admitted to the mormal department in
1869, to the academic department in 1870, and soon afterwards to
all departments. In addition to the academic department or
college proper, the university embraces special schools of pedagogics
(1868), agriculture and mechanic arts (1870), mines and metallurgy
(1870, at Rolla), law (1872), medicine (1873), line arts (1878), engineering
(1877), military science, commerce, a graduate school of
arts and sciences (1896), and a department of journalism (1908).
An experiment station supported by the national government was
established in 1888, and is part of the school of agriculture. The
state Board of Agriculture organizes educational farmers' institutes;
and agriculture is taught, moreover, in the normal schools of the
1
2
state. Of these five are maintained as follows: at Kirksville (1870),
at Warrensburg (established 1870), at Cape Girardeau (established
1873), at Springfield (established 1905), at Maryville (established
1905), and there is a normal department in connexion with the
Lincoln Institute, for negroes, at Jefferson City. Lincoln Institute
(opened in 1866) is for negro men and women. The basis of its
endowment was a fund of $6379 contributed in 1866 by the 62nd and
65th regiments U.S. Colored Infantry upon their discharge from
the service; it has agricultural, industrial, sub-normal, normal and
collegiate departments. Among privately endowed schools the
greatest is Washington University in St Louis; it is non-sectarian
and was opened in 1857. Noteworthy, too, is the St Louis University,
opened in 1829, the oldest institution for higher learnin
west of the Mississippi; it is a Jesuit college and the parent schoo§
of six other Jesuit institutions in the states of the middle west.
There are man minor colleges and schools, most of them coeducational,
andy special colleges or academies for women are maintained
by different religious 'sects. Finally, there are various
professional schools, most of them in St Louis and Kansas City.}}
''History''.—The early French explorers of the Mississippi
valley left the first trace of European connexion in the history of
Missouri. Ste Genevieve was settled in 173 5; Fort Orleans,
two-thirds of the way across the state up the Missouri river, had
been temporarily established in 1 720; the famous Mine La Motte,
in Madison county, was opened about the same time; and before
the settlement of St Louis, the Missouri river was known to
trappers and hunters for hundreds of miles above its mouth.
It was in 1764 that St Louis (q.v.) was founded. Two years
before, the portion of Louisiana west of the Mississippi had
secretly passed to Spain, and in 1763 the portion east passed to
England. When the English took possession a large part of the
people in the old French settlements removed west of the river..
Not until 1770, after O'Reilly had established Spanish rule by
force at New Orleans, did a Spanish officer at St Louis take
actual possession of the upper country; another on the ground,
in 1768-1769, had forborne to assert his powers in the face of the
unfriendly attitude of the inhabitants. Spanish administration
began in 1771. French remained the official language, and
administration was so little altered that the people quickly grew
reconciled to their changed allegiance. Settlement was confined
to a. fringe of villages along the Mississippi. French-Canadian
hunters and trappers, and soon the river boatmen, added an
element of adventure and colour in the primitive life of the
colony. Lead and salt and peltries were sent to Montreal,
New Orleans, and up the Ohio river to the Atlantic cities.
The Americans were hospitably received; the immigrants,
even Protestant clergymen, enjoyed by official goodwill complete
religious toleration; and after about 1796 lavish land grants
to Americans were made by the authorities, who wished to
strengthen the colony against anticipated attacks by the British,
from Canada. Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia furnished most
of the new-comers. The French had lived in villages and maintained
considerable communal life; the Americans scattered on
homesteads. With them came land speculation, litigiousness,
the development of mines and mining-camp law, and the passion
of politics, of which duels were one feature of early days. In
1804 there were some 10,000 inhabitants in Upper Louisiana
(mainly in Missouri), and of these three-fifths were Americans
and their negroes. Racial antipathies were unimportant, and
all parties were at least passively acquiescent when Louisiana
became a part of the United States. On the oth of March 1804,
at St Louis, Upper Louisiana was formally transferred. In 1818,
after passing meanwhile through four stages of limited selfgovernmentf
that portion of the Purchase now included in the
state of Missouri made application for admission to the Union as
a state.4 In 1812-1813 a remarkable ea.rthquake devastated the
region about New Madrid. A large region was sunken, enormous
fissures were opened in the earth, the surface soil was displaced
3 In 1804, the District of Louisiana, in the administrative system
of the Territory of Indiana; in 1805, an independent government,
renamed the Territory of Louisiana; in 1812, the Territory of Missouri;
in 1816, another grade of territorial government.
4 Until 1836 the state boundary in the north-west was the
meridian of the mouthof the Kansas river drawn due north to the
Iowa line. The addition of the triangle west of that l 1ne-the
so-called Platte Purchase-violated the Missouri Compromise.<noinclude>
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