derable
headway in many regions of the country.[1] It is now a part of the rural
school system in thirty-two States. Massachusetts, the leader in
consolidation, began in 1869. The movement at first grew slowly in all
the States, not only having local opposition to overcome, but also
meeting the problem of bad country roads interfering with the
transportation of pupils.

During the past half-dozen years, however, consolidation has been
gaining headway, and is now going on at least five times as fast as the
average for the twenty-five years preceding 1906. Indiana is at present
the banner State in the rapidity of consolidation, the expenditure for
conveyance having considerably more than trebled since 1904. The broad
and general sweep of the movement, together with the fact that it is
practically unheard of for schools that have once tried consolidation to
go back to the old system, seems to indicate that the rural education of
the not distant future will, except in a few regions, be carried on in
consolidated schools.

The relative cost of maintaining district and consolidated schools is an
important factor. Yet this factor must not be given undue prominence. It
is true that the cost of education must be kept at a reasonable ratio
with the standard of living of a community. But it is also true that the
consolidated rural school must be looked upon as an indispensable
country-life institution, and hence as having claim to a more generous
basis of support than that accorded the district school.

While it is impossible, owing to such widely varying conditions, to
make an absolutely exact statement of the relative expense of the two
types of schools, yet it has been shown in many different instances that
the cost of schooling per day in consolidated schools is but slightly,
if any, above that in most district schools.

The aggregate annual cost is usually somewhat higher in the consolidated
schools, owing to the fact of a greatly increased attendance. A
comparison made between the cost per day's schooling in the smaller
district schools and consolidated schools almost invariably shows a
lower expenditure for the latter. For example, the fifteen districts in
Hardin County, Iowa, having in 1908 an enrollment of nine or less,
averaged a cost of 27.5 cents a day for each pupil.[2] At the same time
the cost per day in the consolidated rural schools of northeastern Ohio
was only 17.4 cents a day, the district schools being mor