=As Statesman.=--He was called upon to serve his state in the legislature, and later as representative in Congress.[166]
The year 1837 marks a new epoch in the educational history of Massachusetts. "Although Massachusetts had had schools for nearly two centuries, the free school had been, to a great degree, a charity school the country over.... Horace Mann, like Thomas Jefferson, saw clearly that there could be no evolution of a free people without intelligence and morality, and looked upon the common school as the fundamental means of development of men and women who could govern themselves. He saw clearly that the whole problem of the republic which was presenting itself to intelligent educated men rested upon the idea of public education."[167]
=As Educator.=--Accordingly, having secured the passage of a law establishing a State Board of Education, Mr. Mann was made its secretary at a salary of one thousand dollars a year. To accept this work, he gave up a lucrative law practice, fine prospects of political preferment, and probable fortune, as well as professional fame. He entered upon an educational campaign full of discouragement, colossal in its undertaking, and sure to arouse bitterest animosities. Of this period Colonel Parker says, "The story of his early struggles in this direction has not yet been written. When it is, it will reveal a profound depth of heroism rarely equaled in the history of the world." Mr. Mann visited all parts of the state, lecturing to parents and stimulating the teachers. He was often received with coldness, sometimes with active hostility.
=His Annual Reports.=--But he persevered until the whole state was awakened. He continued in this work for twelve years, and presented its results in his Annual Reports, the most remarkable documents of American educational literature.[168] In the meantime, he visited Europe, studied the schools, and gave the results of his investigations in his celebrated Seventh Annual Report.
Mr. Martin summarizes the work of Horace Mann during these twelve years as follows: "In the evolution of the Massachusetts public schools during these twelve years of Mr. Mann's labors, statistics tell us that the appropriations for public schools had doubled; that more than two million dollars had been spent in providing better schoolhouses; that the wages of men as teachers had increased sixty-two per cent, of women fifty-one per cent, while the whole number of women employed as teachers had increased fifty-four per cent; one month had been added to the average length of the schools; the ratio of private school expenditures to those of the public schools had diminished from seventy-five per cent to thirty-six per cent; the compensation of school committees had been made compulsory, and their supervision was more general and more constant; three normal schools had been established, and had sent out several hundred teachers, who were making themselves felt in all parts of the state."[169]