A History of Public Permanent Common School Funds in the United States, 1795–1905
Why this work matters
Swift's 1911 study is the seminal academic account of the public permanent common school funds — the state-by-state endowments that grew, in significant part, out of the federal land grants that began in 1785. It remains the standard reference. No comparably comprehensive successor work has been published in the 115 years since, which is itself a fact worth dwelling on: the field that Swift opened in 1911 has never been fully reopened by a single subsequent author.
The work is in two parts. Part One, designed for the general reader, is a broad survey of the origin, management, loss, and effects of the public permanent common school funds. Part Two is a state-by-state reference: a summary of the origin, condition (as of 1905), and administration of the public permanent common school fund or funds of each state and territory, arranged alphabetically. Swift's original draft included a Part Three with detailed accounts of six typical states (Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, Indiana); only the supporting tables survived publication, appended at the back.
From the preface
The existence to-day of public schools in most of our states may be said to be due directly, though of course by no means solely, to vast endowment funds provided by previous generations. In view of the part these funds have played in nearly every state, it is surprising that they have received so little attention from historians.
Swift, Preface, 1911
Swift began the work in 1902. By his own account he carried on correspondence with state officials in every state across the six years it took to complete. Part Two summaries were submitted, with one exception, to the relevant state superintendent of public instruction or another state official for reading and criticism before publication. The methodological care is part of why the work has held up.
How the library uses it
This library treats Swift 1911 as the foundational secondary-source reference for the school-trust period it covers (state founding through 1905). Where a state dossier on this site cites Swift, it is citing this work. Where a state's permanent-school-fund corpus is described as "in significant part lost" in the late nineteenth century, Swift's Part Two account is usually the source documenting the loss.
For the period after 1905, Heidelberg's 2014 paper (National Agricultural Law Center) provides updated state-by-state data and explicitly cites Swift as the seminal predecessor. Together they form the standard reference pair.
Read the full text
The full work is on Internet Archive, where you can read it in browser, download the PDF (~30 MB), or take it in alternate formats (ePub, plain text, DAISY).
Citation
Swift, Fletcher Harper. A History of Public Permanent Common School Funds in the United States, 1795–1905. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911. Available at America's School Trust Library, /reading/sources/swift-1911/; original digitization on Internet Archive.
