Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/340

326 referred to in the address, the fifteen super-illiterate States combined cast but twenty-five per cent of the Greenback vote polled by the single State of Michigan, while in the late presidential election the same fifteen States cast but ten per cent more Labor Union votes than were cast in the State of Kansas alone, and nine of the super-illiterate States fail to record the polling of a Union-Labor vote.

Far from mental stimulation being essential to moral development, the most perfect order and deepest sense of justice are often found associated with the densest ignorance among the lowest races of humanity. Turn your attention to the Papuan-Islanders, the Veddahs, the Dyaks of Borneo, the Fuegians, and other barbarous races which, in the absence of rulers or organized societies, with no learning and but little acquaintance with even the rude arts of many primitive people, have developed the highest degree of tribal piety, integrity, chastity, and regard for covenants almost unknown to civilized man. The testimony of early travelers proves conclusively that intense poverty and deep ignorance are by no means incompatible with honesty, integrity, and virtue.

The table shows that where the extremes of poverty and wealth prevail, as in the Eastern States, there is found a maximum of moral and mental derangement, as exhibited in insanity, crime, and vice. Where wealth is more evenly distributed, as in the Western States, there are noted less insanity and crime, but almost as high a ratio of saloons as in the East. In the Southern States, although having a low per capita of wealth, yet the mental and moral forces of development are more nearly in