material improvements, and more to protect and secure the rights of all classes of citizens there than the presence of the whole regular army of the United States. The Southern States contain 317,281 illiterate white adults, and 820,022 illiterate colored adults a dead weight that threatens to sink both free govern 'ment and prosperity there; and what sinks the South sinks us, for we are one national body, and no single member can be injured or benefited without in like manner affecting the whole body.

The Northern States would receive a just share of this money, for we have among us 411,399 illiterate adult whites, nearly all foreign-born, but yet, the males, endowed with the ballot, to the great peril of good government, and 34,463 illiterate colored adults, total 445,862; enough to carry nearly every contested election; an ignorant class, who supply nearly all our criminals and paupers. (See tables A, B, and C, below, for the number of illiterate adults, white and colored, in each State and Territory.)

A.

ILLITERACY ABOVE THE AGE OF 21 IN the SouthERN STATES IN 1870.

ILLITERACY ABOVE THE AGE OF 21 IN THE NORTHERN STATES IN 1870.

C.

ILLITERACY ABOVE THE AGE OF 21 IN THE TERRITORIES IN 1870.

New York, with her 77,120; Pennsylvania, with her 67, 108; Illinois, with her 44,770; Ohio, with her 48,970; and Indiana, with her 39,513 illiterates, need more teachers and more schools, and less labor strikes, and would get a just proportion of this national bounty.

One of the highest duties imposed upon the National Government by the Constitution is, "To promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." How can Congress do this more surely, economically, and safely than by appropriating the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to lifting the nation out of the depression, dangers, and difficulties, financial, political, and social, caused by having as a constituent part of our national body 1,600,000 illiterate adult citizens? That is a load no free government can long carry; it is a disease so wide-spread that, unless cured, it will certainly be fatal to liberty; and its only cure is the free common school. This is a question more vital to the interests of a free government than tariffs, banks, money, or politics. Compared with it they lie upon the surface, while this goes to the very root and marrow of the Republic.

The restoration of the Southern States to equal prosperity with the Northern, though it may be aided from without, yet it must spring from within themselves, and not from without; the vis medicatrix naturæ must be their own readiness and willingness in public education to march up abreast of the most enlightened nations of the nineteenth century, and keep step with them. This healing power must come, if it comes at all, through the education and training to industry and foresight of her ignorant and indolent masses. These States now have full opportunity to do whatever they wish to do and can do; and the rest of the country is willing to aid them in all right efforts. But neither they nor we should expect their restoration, that is, their regeneration, in

less than at least one generation. Ignorant suffrage can in that time be extirpated by laws so just to the individual as to deprive no one of a right he now possesses, and so preservative of free government as to admit no one to the right of suffrage, after a certain date, who has neglected to learn to read and write. Peace, prosperity, and genuine democratic republican freedom will then return to these States, and capital and immigration will no longer go two thousand miles west to find a home, but will seek to enjoy the mild climate and prolific soil of our Southern States.

The foregoing address was extensively republished in the winter of 1878 by the newspaper press of the Cotton States; and their editorials indicated its general approval.

In harmony with the suggestions therein contained, a bill was introduced into the last Congress to devote to public education the whole proceeds of the sales of the public lands, and to distribute the interest of the same for ten years to the States, according to the number of illiterate adults in each. It passed the Senate, but was not reached in the House. It is to be hoped that the next Congress will make it a law. It would, in a few years, give this country a school fund of fifty millions of dollars, and, in one generation, a school fund of a hundred millions. The income of that, supplemented by state legislation and state taxes, would enable us to extirpate adult illiteracy and make every voter intelligent.

The late Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing, in 1838, in his celebrated Franklin Lecture on self-culture, expressed himself as follows on the use of the proceeds of the sale of the public lands for public education:

"There is another mode of advancing education in our whole country, to which I ask your particular attention. You are aware of the vast extent and value of the public lands of the Union. By annual sales of these, large amounts of money are brought into the national treasury, which are applied to the current expenses of the government. In this application there is no need. In truth, the country has received detriment from the excess of its resources. Now, I ask, why shall not the public lands be consecrated to the education of the people? This measure would secure at once what the country most needs, that is, able, accomplished, quickening teachers of the whole rising generation. The present poor remuneration of instructors is a dark omen, and the only real obstacle which the cause of education has to contend with. We need for our schools gifted men and women, worthy by their intelligence and their moral power, to be entrusted with a nation's youth; and to gain them, we must pay them liberally, as well as offer other proofs of the consideration in which we hold them. In the present state of the country, when as many paths of wealth and promotion are opened, superior men cannot be won to an office so responsible and laborious as that of teaching, without stronger inducements than are now offered, except in some of our large cities. The office

of instructor ought to rank and be recompensed as one of the most honorable in society; and I see not how this is to be done, at least in our day, without appropriating to it the public domain. This is the people's property, and the only part of their property which is likely to be soon devoted to the support of a high order of instructors for public education. This equal instruction to all classes, has peculiar claims on those where means of improvement are restricted by narrow circumstance.

"The mass of the people should devote themselves to it as one man, should toil for it with one soul. Mechanics, Farmers, Laborers! let the country echo with your united cry, 'the Public Lands for Education.' Send to the public councils men who will plead this cause with power. No party triumphs, no trades-unions, no association, can so contribute to elevate you as the measure now proposed. Nothing but a higher education can raise you in influence and true dignity. The resources of the public domain, wisely applied for successive generations to the culture of society, and of the individual, would create a new people, would awaken through this community intellectual and moral energies, such as the records of no country display, and as would command the respect and emulation of the world. In this grand object, the workingmen of all parties, and in all divisions of the land, should join with an enthusiasm not to be withstood. They should separate it from all narrow and local strifes. They should not suffer it to be mixed up with the schemes of politicians. In it, they and their children have an infinite stake. May they be true to themselves, to posterity, to their country, to freedom, and to the cause of mankind."

The census of 1880 shows we have a population of over fifty millions, of which 15,000,000 are of the school age, and 9,500,000 are actual attendants upon schools, taught by 272,686 school teachers.

What a magnificent standing army for a republic to sustain! And all fighting ignorance, and elevating and enlightening the people and fitting them the better to make their way in the world, not oppressing and enslaving them!

European nations exhaust themselves in feeding and clothing millions of soldiers, and providing them with the best arms and ammunition for destruction. We enrich ourselves in supporting and equipping with books and school apparatus nine and a half millions of school children, marshaled by more than a quarter of a million of instructors. Let us have more school money, and a conscription that will draft into the ranks of the army of learners the 5,500,000 that still remain outside of the school

rooms.

The possible average school period in the free public schools in this country is fourteen and one-half years, while in European countries it is, on an average, only eight years.

The effect of this upon our people is to make them, as a class, the most intelligent and productive laborers on the globe. They not only work to better advantage, but excel all others in the number and variety of their labor-saving inventions. They have, in ten years, from 1870 to 1880, as the census shows, doubled the food products of the country. In 1870 the grain crop was 1,387,299,153. In 1880 it was 2,716,326,495.

Though the tables are not fully made up for the other products of industry, yet the indications are that they have increased in like ratio. In six years we have sold a thousand million dollars' worth of products more than we have bought. Our extraordinary progress for the last ten years, while facilitated by our climate and soil, is yet largely due to the superior intelligence of the laborers. And we are all laborers of some kind.

This intelligence has been brought about by establishing and maintaining, in twenty-six of our thirty-eight states, the free public school within reach of every child, and, in a large part of these states, requiring children to attend for a certain number of years, unless taught elsewhere.

The prosperity, progress, industry, and wealth of each state, other things being equal, are almost in the direct ratio of the excellence of public education. A tour through Massachusetts and North Carolina, or Ohio and Louisiana, or Colorado and New Mexico, will show this to the most casual observer; an examination of their statistics from decade to decade demonstrates it.

The young people of the Southern States, who have come of age since slavery was abolished, are fully alive to the importance and necessity of the free common schools as a means of securing to their States the great prosperity to which their natural resources entitle them.

Generous men and Christian denominations are contributing money by millions to establish in those states universities, colleges, and academies. But they lack the broad support that comes only from a general diffusion of knowledge among the common people. These institutions of higher education do not reach the masses.

For the want of the free common school, like an all-pervading nursery in which to germinate the seeds and start the young plants, these institutions are obliged either to remain without students or lower their standards of admission.

The immediate need of the South for common schools is native teachers and normal schools in which teachers may be trained, and standard educational or pedagogic literature for these teachers to study.

The Rev. Dr. Mayo, who has just spent nine months as an educational missionary and public school apostle in the Southern States, says, that if every normal school, academy, college, and university there could be provided with a set (fifty volumes) of the educational works of Dr. Henry Barnard (the editor of this journal), it would be of inestimable benefit to both students and professors, in showing them how to do, in the most effective way, the great educational work that is now before them.

Cannot generous friends, at the North, of these institutions, be found who will provide money and send on the books? D. A. H.

JUNE 24, 1881.