BY GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN,
U. S. Senator from Illinois.

To bring to light and expose to public gaze our national defects or social deformities is an unpleasant and generally thankless task, but so long as we shirk it, just so long will they remain to our national detriment and disgrace. To be conscious of disease, to locate and properly diagnose it, is to be half-way on the road to good health.

It is not necessary in this age of enlightenment to dwell upon the manifest and manifold advantages to a people and to a nation, of education. They are palpable, and conceded by all men. Illiteracy, then, must as plainly be a disadvantage to a nation, a hindrance to the advancement and welfare of its people, and an evil which should be eradicated.

We Americans boast, and boast rightfully, of the high position in the scale of intelligence we occupy as a people; but pride in that fact should not blind our eyes to our existing imperfections. We are proud of the attainments of our men of letters; we rejoice in the achievements of our scientists and inventors; we glory in our rapid advance among the nations to wealth and power; and we fail to give serious heed to the hundreds of thousands of our people who are growing up every year in clouded ignorance, without even the rudiments of education.

If we examine with care our census returns and the reports of our Bureau of Education, we will be startled by some of the facts they reveal. To follow many of these revelations in detail might lead to an accusation of making invidious distinctions, but there are enough to which the attention of the country may be called without the shadow of justification for such a charge. Let us look at these.

Take the Bulletin of “Illiteracy in the United States,” as returned at the tenth census, and its first line reveals the deplorable fact that of the 36,761,607 persons of ten years of age and upward, 4,923,451 (over one-seventh) are unable to read, and 6,239,958 (nearly one-sixth) are unable to write.

It appears, moreover, from other census tabulations presented[D] to the United States Senate that, of the 50,155,783 persons constituting our population in 1880, there were equally proportioned between the white and colored races, 4,204,363 of both sexes over twenty-one years of age unable to write, or about 2,000,000 “illiterates” out of the 10,000,000 persons at that time entitled to vote; or, in other words, one of every five voters in the United States unable to write his name. From other statistics of that census it appears also that 1,640,000 voters were unable to read. Thus we have the astounding assurance that while one in every five voters can not write the ballot that he wishes to deposit, one in every six voters can not even read the ballot that he places in the box!

It is this one illiterate voter in every five (or six) voters who holds the balance of power at our elections.

While a very large proportion of our population, and also of that portion of it which exercises the elective franchise, can both read and write, yet a great number of these are very little the more intelligent because their limited ability to do either or both is so imperfect and so rarely availed of. Alluding to these, a committee of the United States Senate (Report 101, Pt. 2, first session, Forty-eighth Congress), said: “Of those who can write, multitudes do not place a sentence on paper twice in a lifetime. Thousands never get an idea from the printed page.” Yet these are the men who may at any time subject the country to their control—men who hold the weighty balance of political power.

To the patriot, to the lover of republican institutions, to the advocate of unrestricted individual suffrage, this fact is appalling. But it is none the less a fact that should be known. Nor may the advocates of monarchical systems of government and of restricted suffrage take comfort from that fact. That the deciding ballot in our political contests may be an ignorant one does not prove the evil or folly of unrestricted suffrage. Not at all. Cancer in the breast does not prove the folly of life. Nor is a jammed finger necessarily fatal. These simply remind us that in the one case the knife, and in the other the lotion, should be quickly and efficiently used. So with the ignorant ballot. Its existence merely proves the absolute necessity of prompt and vigorous action to enlighten it—of educating him who casts it—of taking counsel from the past and present and providently guarding the future. It teaches us that while we are properly horrified at any desecration of the sacred right of suffrage—whether by bulldozing, ballot-box stuffing, false counting, or other methods of intimidation or of fraud—it is high time to arouse ourselves to a state of facts existing around us and under our very noses, constituting a sacrilege only differing from these others in degree; to realize, in time to remedy it, that at every election we witness, at almost every voting precinct in the land, a constant, never-failing, almost winked-at desecration by power-clad ignorance of that right; to realize the great dangers from this source that we have thus far happily escaped; to properly apprehend the possible perils thus stored up for us in the bosom of the future, and by timely, energetic and sufficient action to arrest them. Thus the very knowledge that one in every five of our voters exercises ignorantly this undue and prodigious power must nerve a free and enlightened people to make immediate and adequate provision both to aid and to make obligatory the elementary education of those who in due time will inherit from us the right of suffrage.

It can not be too often or too strongly urged, under the light of this revelation from the census returns, that an ignorant ballot is a dangerous ballot, because it may be at once heedless, and easily deceived; that an educated ballot is, to the degree of education, an enlightened ballot—possibly wrong-headed or mistaken at times, but as a rule careful, brave and pure; and that, as the ballot is placed in the hands of all Americans, education—the means by which they may discriminatingly cast that ballot—should be open and free to all.

The very existence of the Republic depends upon the proper use of the potential ballot. Education alone can teach that proper use. Hence it is that “education to all” is the chief corner stone of the Republic; and to make that secure, no effort however great, no expense however large, should be withheld.

Here then, with the fact staring us in the face, that the one potential vote of every five votes that decides all the great political questions of the day—questions involving the most complex and far-reaching principles of government—questions of finance, of diplomacy, of commerce, of trade, of the tariff, of the relations of capital and labor, and others whose solution perplexes the minds of our very ablest statesmen—is an utterly ignorant vote, can the American people hesitate to demand of Congress not only immediate but adequate remedial legislation in the shape of ample national aid to elementary education for all of school age, and obligatory attendance within reasonable limits?

But this is not the only fact bearing heavily upon the question of the necessity of national aid to our public school system. If we examine the details of these census tabulations we shall find that much the larger portion of this illiteracy is found in some thirteen or fourteen states. Taking these states and territories in which the proportion of “illiterates” (those unable to write) to the total state or territorial population of ten years of age and upward exceeds 25 per cent., we find that ratio to be: In Alabama, 50.9 per cent.; Arkansas, 38; Florida, 43.4; Georgia, 49.9; Kentucky, 29.9; Louisiana, 49.1; Mississippi, 49.5; New Mexico, 65; North Carolina, 48.3; South Carolina, 55.4; Tennessee, 38.7; Texas, 29.7; and Virginia, 40.6. Massing these twelve states and one territory together, we find they include a population of 10,079,130 of ten years of age and upward, of which number no less than 4,324,513, or over two fifths, are unable to write—forty-three out of every one hundred unable to sign their own names—while of the 26,682,477 persons of like age in the remaining states and territories, the number of such illiterates is but 1,915,445, or a little over seven in every one hundred.

We are all of course aware that this large proportion of illiteracy in the states named is largely owing to the presence of the colored population. Nevertheless the fact remains that these people, to whom all the rights of citizenship have been accorded, and who will hereafter form a very important and possibly predominating factor in the administration of the affairs of many of these states, as well as an important factor in national affairs, must remain for a long time in ignorance unless some other means of educating them be adopted than that which now obtains.

But let no one deceive himself with the idea that this undue and lamentable ratio of illiteracy in these particular states is due wholly to the presence of the colored population. Unfortunately illiteracy prevails to a very considerable and almost an alarming extent among their native white population also. Thus the census tabulations show that the proportion of “illiterates” (those unable to write), in the total native white population, ten years of age and upward, is: In Alabama, 25 percent.; Arkansas, 25.5; Florida, 20.7; Georgia, 23.2; Kentucky, 22.8; Louisiana, 19.8; Mississippi, 16.6; New Mexico, 64.2; North Carolina, 31.7; South Carolina, 22.4; Tennessee, 27.8; Texas, 13.9; and Virginia, 18.5. Massing them we find that of the 6,010,714 native whites, ten years of age and upward, within the territorial limits mentioned, there are as many as 1,395,441—being 23.2 per cent., or nearly one in every four of the whites—unable to write. It is evident, therefore, that the surprising illiteracy in these states is not wholly attributable to the presence therein of the colored race.

It is somewhat humiliating to have to confess to the world by our own official figures that one out of every four of the native whites over ten years of age in twelve states and one territory of our Republic is unable to write his own name, especially when we compare it with the additional fact, derived from the same tabulation, that the illiteracy of the foreign born of these same localities does not rise in any instance above 10.9 per cent.

Turning to the other side of the picture we may find some grains of comparative consolation in observing the fact that of the remaining 19,775,075 native whites, ten years of age and upward, in the United States only 860,019—or 4.3 per cent., being one in twenty-three—are unable to write. This favorable condition of one part of the country, however, only serves to bring out in sharper contrast the sad condition of the other part, and should spur the philanthropist and statesman to renewed and more strenuous effort to obliterate, or at least ameliorate, this alarming sectional inequality in the degree of illiteracy.

Were it not for the hope of ultimately removing this inequality by attaining an educational homogeneity or equality on the higher level as between the sections, one might almost be tempted to wish for an educational equalization on the lower grade; for as long as that inequality continues to exist, so long must it prove a source of irritation and danger in a thousand forms.

As to the situation in the old slave states, where the colored population is proportionately large, it is not difficult to understand it. We can appreciate the dread on the part of the whites of an “uprising,” as it is termed, of the colored people. But the words of Jefferson[E]—possibly prophetic unless averted by the exercise of wisdom and fairness—have in them a depth of meaning that none but those whites can fully realize when, speaking of the slaves, he says: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among the possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.”

Aside from the overawing influence of a large standing army there is but one thing that can prevent a race-conflict, the very possibility of which we dread to contemplate, and that is the benign and liberalizing influence of education, resulting in a free and untrammeled exercise of the elective franchise. Give the former and you will unquestionably secure the latter.

That the local as well as sectional inequality in education can be overcome by no other means than by national aid, will be further demonstrated. Nor is it just that we should expect or ask it to be otherwise. No matter now what may have caused this inequality, the fact that it exists is that which now momentously concerns us. We know it can not be removed by recurring to the cause; and it will become more and more evident as we examine the subject that only by speedy and efficient congressional action can we now insure that future educational equilibrium, not only between the races and between the sections, but also between the people in each state, which will have so important a bearing upon the destinies of this nation, and is so essential to the continued peace, prosperity and contentment of its people.

Another fact of great importance, as bearing upon the necessity for national aid to education, is revealed by the census returns. It is a curious as well as an important revelation, because it shows that the ratio of children or persons under twenty-one years of age to the adults, is considerably larger in some states than in others, and correspondingly increases the educational burden.

The principle involved in this condition of affairs may be simply illustrated thus: Suppose the head of each family had to pay directly for the education of his own children. Then, even with an equality of means, the burden would, as a matter of course, fall heavier on the one with a numerous than the one with a small progeny.

To make apparent the effect of this inequality in the proportion of minors to adults in different parts of our common country, let us suppose that the mean average cost of schooling is four dollars per annum for each child.

It appears that in Connecticut, out of every one hundred persons, fifty-nine are adults, and forty-one are minors. At this supposed rate, then, the fifty-nine adults would have each to pay two dollars and seventy-eight cents per annum in order to make up the one hundred and sixty-four dollars per annum needed for the education of the forty-one children. It appears also that in South Carolina, out of every one hundred persons, forty-three are adults and fifty-seven are minors. At the supposed rate, then, these forty-three adults would have each to pay five dollars and thirty cents per annum in order to make up the two hundred and twenty-eight dollars per annum needed for the education of the fifty-seven children.

Now, this is a very important fact, indeed, and must lead all fair minded advocates of education to modify somewhat the criticisms they may have made touching the expenditure in the South for education as compared with that in the North and West; for here it becomes palpable that two dollars and seventy-eight cents per adult in Connecticut is equivalent to five dollars and thirty cents per adult in South Carolina for the schooling of the children respectively, in those states. Nearly twice as much in one state as in the other.

But this result is from an assumed uniform mean average standard of the cost of educating each child in the Union. Let us test the matter by a comparison founded on actual cost. Take, for instance, the states of Maine and Mississippi.

In Maine there are fifty-eight adults to forty-two minors in every one hundred persons. In Mississippi there are forty-three adults to fifty-seven minors in every one hundred persons. In Maine[F] the educational expenditure per capita of the school population is four dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum. This enforces an annual expenditure for this purpose of three dollars and thirty-eight cents by each adult. An equal school tax of four dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum for each scholar, imposed upon the adult population of Mississippi would call for six dollars and nineteen cents from each adult—or nearly twice what the adult of Maine must pay.

The effects of this disparity will be more fully dwelt upon at a later period. But it must surely be already apparent that this inequality of the educational burden created by the disparity existing between the populations of various portions of our country can alone be met and remedied by some aid from the general government.

It is true that the facts thus far adduced indicate rather the necessity for national assistance to certain sections or states than for general and uniform aid to all. But a further study and the development of other facts will, as we proceed, more fully reveal, not alone the wisdom and necessity of such aid to all, but the character and extent of the aid required.

Before we reach that period, however, there are facts touching other phases of inequality of burden that are worthy of close and careful consideration.

Careful tabulations from the census returns show that a school enrollment of 22.4 per cent. of the total population of Missouri amounts to but 88.6 per cent. of the school population of that state, fixing the standard of school age as between six and sixteen years; while a school enrollment of 22 per cent. of the total population of New Jersey is equal to[G] 101.5 per cent. of her school population. Hence, although Missouri has a somewhat larger percentage in school of her total population than has New Jersey, yet she lacks more than 11 per cent. of having all her children of school age enrolled as scholars; while a slightly smaller per cent. of her total population places more than all the school age children of New Jersey in school. So also with Vermont, where a school enrollment of 22 per cent. of the total population gives 109.5 per cent. in school, of all of school age.

Comparing Nebraska and Connecticut, we find that while 22.3 per cent. of the total population of the former state enrolled in the schools amounts to but 95.4 per cent. of her children of school age, 21.3 per cent. of the total population of the latter state enrolled in the schools is equivalent to 110.3 per cent. of her children of school age.

Massachusetts has to send 19.2 per cent. of her total population to school in order to equal 104.8 per cent. of her children of school age, while Illinois has to send to school 24.5 per cent. of her population to reach a like ratio of enrolled scholars to children of school age.

Even in states situated so near to each other as Pennsylvania and New York we observe this inequality. In the former, where the school enrollment is 22.8 per cent. of the total population, it is but 99.4 per cent. of the children of school age, while in New York 23 per cent. of the total population enrolled in the schools is 112.4 per cent. of her children of school age.

Thus far have been selected for comparison some of those states the ratios of whose school enrollment to the total population were about the same. But while these contrasts bring out very clearly the inequality in the burden of educating the children of our country, yet there are more marked illustrations at hand.

Take Arkansas, West Virginia and New York, for instance. In Arkansas the school enrollment is 13.5 per cent. of population, and but 51.3 per cent. of the children of school age. At the same ratio a school enrollment of 23 per cent. of total population in Arkansas would be but 87.4 per cent. of the children of school age. West Virginia has a school enrollment of 23.3 per cent. of total population, which is only 87.9 per cent. of her children of school age. Yet New York, as we have already seen, by an enrollment of 23 per cent. of her total population secures schooling for 113.3 per cent.—more than all—of her children of school age.

Comparing other states, one with the other—such as Alabama with Maine, Georgia with New Hampshire, Tennessee with Rhode Island, Mississippi with Massachusetts, etc.—we see similar, and in some cases even greater inequality.

Let us now apply these facts practically, and thus reach a clearer understanding of the effect of this great disparity.

The actual mean average cost of the schooling of each public school scholar in the United States is about ten dollars. Assuming then that the adult population of each state bears the burden of educating its children, and that all the children of school age in each state are enrolled in the schools—as they should be—let us ascertain how much the tax per capita would be on the adults bearing this burden in each state and territory. In other words, let us discover how much in each state and territory must every adult (male or female) pay every year in order to supply the ten dollars per annum that it costs to educate each and every child in that state or territory.

It would cost each adult in Montana, $1.95; in Wyoming, $2.12; Nevada, $2.12; Colorado, $2.20; Arizona, $2.34; New Hampshire, $2.78; Idaho, $3.00; Massachusetts, $3.23; Dakota, $3.30; Rhode Island, $3.22; California, $3.33; Connecticut, $3.27; Maine, $3.43; Vermont, $3.46; New York, $3.56; District of Columbia, $3.77; Washington, $3.94; New Jersey, $4.02; Michigan, $4.15; Oregon, $4.29; Delaware, $4.31; Pennsylvania, $4.26; Ohio, $4.55; Maryland, $4.55; Nebraska, $4.77; Minnesota, $4.70; New Mexico, $4.65; Wisconsin, $4.86; Illinois, $4.88; Indiana, $5.00; Iowa, $5.10; Missouri, $5.28; Kansas, $5.32; Louisiana, $5.54; North Carolina, $5.67; Virginia, $5.59; Texas, $5.86; Kentucky, $5.65; Florida, $5.78; Utah, $6.07; Alabama, $6.12; Arkansas, $6.12; Georgia, $5.98; South Carolina, $5.98; Tennessee, $6.00; West Virginia, $5.86, and Mississippi, $6.28—while, massing the entire Union, the cost to each adult in it would be $4.70.

Thus we find that while the school tax on each adult in New York would be but $3.56, in the adjoining state of Pennsylvania it would be $4.26; that while in Massachusetts it would be but $3.23, in Illinois it would be $4.88—a difference of $1.65 per capita to the adult; that while in New Hampshire it would be but $2.78, in Mississippi it would be more than double that amount. But the reader can himself, by a glance at the list presented, perceive even more glaring inequalities than these in the relative burdens which would be imposed upon the adult population of the various states and territories, were that burden to be placed entirely on their shoulders.

If it be the true policy of a nation to equalize, as far as possible, the necessary burdens imposed upon its people, then we certainly have before us in these statistics, a condition of facts demanding serious consideration and efficacious action by the general government.

If inequality in the burdens imposed in order to educate our children be any argument in favor of national aid to education—and who will venture to deny it?—then we have in these statistics positive evidence of very great and possibly hitherto unsuspected inequalities; inequalities of which none could be aware without a close and critical analysis of the figures, the developments of which as previously hinted, may well cause us to modify somewhat the reproaches we may have felt inclined to cast upon some of our states for what seemed to be a lack of proper effort on their part in the direction of education.

While, however, reproachful criticism of them still appears to some extent justifiable, yet the deductions from rearrangement and classification of the census and educational bureau tables show that the fault does not altogether lie at the doors of those among whom the greatest amount of illiteracy is found.

In order to make this clear let us examine the ratio of children enrolled in schools, not to the state, but to the adult population. That ratio is, in Alabama, 34.6 per cent.; Arkansas, 31.4; California, 35.2; Colorado, 17.7; Connecticut, 36.1; Delaware, 34.6; District of Columbia, 32.1; Florida, 35.8; Georgia, 42; Illinois, 50; Indiana, 54.3; Iowa, 56; Kansas, 53.8; Kentucky, 36.3; Louisiana, 19.8; Maine, 40; Maryland, 31.4; Massachusetts, 33.5; Michigan, 44; Minnesota, 47.8; Mississippi, 48.6; Missouri, 47.7; Nebraska, 45.5; New Hampshire, 31.3; New Jersey, 40.7; New York, 40.3; North Carolina, 40.7; Ohio, 47.8; Pennsylvania, 42.2; Rhode Island, 30.2; South Carolina, 32.3; Tennessee, 49.1; Texas, 25.2; Utah, 44.4; Vermont, 38; Virginia, 35.4; West Virginia, 51.8; Wisconsin, 50.4, and in the entire Union, 42 per cent.

Now, the mean average number of children in the United States enrolled in the schools being forty-two to every one hundred adults, what is our surprise to find, in the figures just given, that every New England state, as well as New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, falls below this average, while on the other hand, every northwestern state (including Ohio, Missouri and Kansas), as well as Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, stands above it!

That in proportion to the adult population of those states, there are more children at school in Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, than in any of the New England states, is, indeed, an astounding revelation.

Supposing, then, the cost of educating a child in those states to be the same, it follows that each one hundred adults in Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia are paying more to educate their children than is paid by the same number of adults in any New England state!

At first sight these statistical results fairly stagger one, and give rise to doubts of their accuracy. But a careful examination of them will satisfy any reasonable mind that these developments are veritable facts, if the census returns and the school enrollment reported by the Commissioners of Education are to be accepted—being based upon and directly calculated from them. Even supposing the existence of some deficiencies in the returns or some minor errors in the calculations, the general facts they reveal must be accepted as true.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]