Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/339

Rh is further noted that twenty per cent were total abstainers from intoxicants, showing very clearly that a perfect mastery of self is by no means necessarily allied with an honest regard for the rights and property of others.

But if the education of the masses is accompanied by no diminution of vice, crime, and insanity, what shall we say of the effect illiteracy may have upon our institutions by the abuse or misuse of the suffrage? The following extract from the address of the Rev. J. C. Hartzall, delivered before the National Education Assembly at Ocean Grove, in August, 1885, which, with other extracts, is incorporated in the speech of Senator Blair on his Educational Bill, delivered in the Senate, February 8, 1886, presents a fair example of the rather extravagant statements often made by publicists and statesmen concerning the dangers attending the exercise of the elective franchise by illiterate voters. The reverend doctor thus appealed to the Assembly: "I simply call your attention to what may be the injurious effect of their (illiterates) silent action at the polls. The members of our respective political parties believe in the Tightness of their principles, and seek to make their appeal to the reason and the consciences of the people; but the figures disclose the alarming fact that in eleven States these illiterate voters outnumber the votes cast in the last presidential (1884) election by either of the political parties. Thus, should they unite under any strong, impassioned, successful leader, they would have absolute control of legislation and offices in those States, and of the election of twenty-two members of the United States Senate."

Only a moment's thought is necessary to expose the folly of such ill-founded fears, for the suggested peril is contravened by the very conditions set forth as dangerous, as the inability to read and write affords a complete and absolute bar against the possibility of such concerted action; for what means of communication are to be employed to unite, for a single purpose, the illiterates of eleven States, who can neither read letters, circulars, documents, nor newspapers, and, still further, are unable to write answers in return? It requires the most perfect organization, careful canvass, and the expenditure of vast sums of money, to bring out a full vote where conditions are the most favorable for it, in the enlightened and thickly settled portions of the Union, and only where States are very evenly divided is the organization so perfected, at great cost, as to make a full vote possible.

But the election returns themselves are sufficient to prove that the voters in the illiterate States adhere more closely to the two great parties which are said to "appeal to the reason and consciences of men" than do the voters of the States affording the best facilities for the education of the masses; and in the election