Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/131

Rh "should be in part established and, temporarily at least, supported by contributions from the overflowing Treasury of the United States." The word "temporarily" here will raise a smile on the lips of those who remember how often temporary protection for "our infant industries" has been applied for, and how invariably the protection so accorded has become a permanent thing. Infant industries that are nourished on "protection" never emerge from the infant condition. However they may extend and expand, they never voluntarily forego the leading-strings or the pap-bottle; and so we shrewdly suspect it would be with the schools "temporarily" assisted by the Federal Government. If, in the course of a few years, they demonstrated their ability to dispense with such assistance, they would do what has seldom been done in this world. It is a most unusual thing for any organism to close an easy channel of alimentation, in order to depend exclusively upon one more difficult. Let the Treasury of the United States once begin to overflow in the way of aid to education "on the basis of illiteracy," it may go on overflowing. The "basis" is not likely to contract, but rather to widen out from year to year.

The question, however, deserves careful consideration. Is the stability of our institutions threatened by the ignorance of the electorate? By "illiteracy" is understood the condition of being unable to read or write; and we are asked to believe that our system of government stands in peril on account of the extent to which illiteracy as thus defined prevails. The language used would point to the conclusion that illiteracy is now a more serious evil than at any previous period of our history. The facts, however, do not support any such conclusion. The census of 1870 gave the total number of white males of voting age unable to write as 748,970. From 1870 to 1880 our population increased thirty per cent. Had the number of illiterates remained, therefore, relatively stationary, we should have had in 1880 not less than 973,661 white voters unable to write; instead of that, the census for that year shows the number to be 886,659 only, a decidedly reduced proportion. It is true, on the other hand, that, among the colored population, education is not keeping pace with the natural increase of numbers, but this fact alone does not justify the interference of the Federal Government to supplement the educational work that is now going on.

What has not been shown as yet, so far as we are aware, is that the so called illiterate classes are a specific source of danger to our institutions. If we review the several crises of our history, we shall probably find that those who have done most to bring on these crises have been, for the most part, men quite able to read and write. The Tilden-Hayes imbroglio could not certainly be traced to the ignorance of the electorate. Maine is a highly educated State, and yet it was precisely there that a few years ago a condition of war almost supervened in connection with the State elections. The false returns which kept this city, and in a less degree the whole Union, in a condition of fever-heat for days together last fall, had nothing to do with illiteracy, quite the contrary. Even the Cincinnati riot was not the work of men who could not read or write, but rather of citizens quite competent in these respects, but who had momentarily lost their heads. The fact is, the citizens who can read and write have everywhere the power in their own hands, and if they are only willing to discharge their duties, private and public, in a proper manner, the non-reading and non-writing element in the population will give them comparatively little trouble.

There is, however, another view to be taken of the matter. If our schools are not as efficient as they should be, and if an undue proportion of the whole population escapes the civilizing influence of education, what is the