The very classes of taxpayers who control city and other local governments and school boards are educating their own children privately, and thus have a double motive for resisting the further advance of school expenditure.

As if the expense of upkeep during the period of education were not enough of a handicap, those few children of the wage earners who are brave enough to attempt to compete with the children of the middle classes are now subjected to the necessity of attending inferior schools or of traveling impracticable distances.

The building of new high schools, for example, was most rapid in the Middle West in the decades 1880-1899, and in the Eastern States in the decade 1890-1900.

But within a few years after 1900 the rate of increase had fallen in the Middle West to about one half, and in the East to less than one third, of what it formerly had been.[89] It might be thought that, the country being now well served with secondary schools, the rate of growth must diminish.

This may be true of a part of the rural districts, but an examination of the situation or school reports of our large cities will show how far it is from being true there.
In Great Britain the public secondary schools for the most part and some of the primary schools, _though supported wholly or largely by public funds, charge a tuition fee_.