OUR NATIONAL ILLITERACY. The above table, prepared at the request of Hon. H. W. Blair, chairman of the Senate Committee on Education, is respectfully submitted to the Superintendent of the Census, with the statement that while its figures are believed to be in most instances correct, they are entirely preliminary, and therefore subject to such changes as may result from the final revision. HENRY RANDALL WAITE, Special Agent Statistics of Education, Illiteracy, Libraries, Museums and Religious Organizations. The preceding table was prepared in the month of June, 1882. We use it now because of its greater convenience for comparison in some respects than the later tables in the Compendium of the Census. 309 are, by reason of ignorance to a dangerous degree, unfitted to exercise the functions of government. "Fourth. That this mass of ignorance is increasing and not diminishing, although there has been a slightly greater increase of population than of illiteracy, relatively, during the decade from 1870 to 1880 in the country as a whole. "Fifth. That in many parts of the country conditions are growing rapidly worse rather than better, and that the evil is of that peculiar nature that the local power and disposition to apply the remedy grows less as the necessity for it increases. "Sixth. That the danger to the country is everywhere, although the disease may be largely local; that ignorance anywhere circulates everywhere, and poisons the political and social life of each State and of the whole people. "Seventh. That the remedy must be applied by those who perceive the danger; that if there is anywhere indifference to the remedy, it proves that there is the more occasion for its use, and that the insensibility of the patient requires at once such measures on the part of those still in relatively sound health as will prevent the spreading of the plague; and that the cry of physicians and nurses for help should control our action rather than the convulsions or the stolidity of the patient. १९ Eighth. But in this case there is neither indifference nor stolidity; there is simply an inability to combat the plague unaided, and a cry of distress. Ignorance is worse in a republic than the pestilence. "Ninth. That the exceptional degree of illiteracy prevailing in some parts of the country, as it constitutes a common danger, so it is the result, historically, of causes for which the whole country is responsible, and that those portions of the land which have been free from the immediate presence of the institution to which we trace the evil, are not without participation in the guilt as well as the lucre which appertained to it. "That everywhere the pharisee business is played out, and the prayer of the publican is in order. "Tenth. Those parts of the country where there is least illiteracy have, as a rule, received already very largely pecu |