Excerpt from Speech of Hon. Stephen B. Elkins at the Teachers' Institute for Randolph County, West Virginia, September 16, 1909The chief glory of the Republic is its public-school 'system - the best in the world - among the fruits of which is the general intelligence of the people, as a whole, the most enlightened, the best informed, the freest, and the best governed in the world.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.