persistently refused to enact compulsory attendance laws as have been enacted by practically every other State in the Union, and by the majority of the leading culture lands of the world. These other States and countries have had their compulsory laws long enough to test their efficiency and their value. Let us compare results, confining ourselves to that part of our population which furnishes the safest standard — the native whites. TABLE A-Native white illiterates over ten years of age: North Atlantic Division, all under compulsory laws... 1.6 per cent. 2.3 per cent. 2.7 per cent. South Atlantic Division, all but three without compulsory laws.11.4 per cent.1 South Central Division, nearly all without compulsory laws....11.2 per cent. Southern States alone, all without compulsory laws, 959,790, or 12.4 per cent. TABLE B-Showing the rank of each Southern State in the percentage of illiteracy of native whites ten years of age and education reduces illiteracy, and that the South sorely needs to In 1907 North Carolina passed a local option compulsory law. So far it is effective in only a few small areas, and has not had time to show results. have her illiteracy reduced. No sound-thinking man would for a moment claim that education, in the common acceptation of that term, is a panacea for political and social ills, nor can it be said that an illiterate man is necessarily not a good citizen. But in a democracy where manhood suffrage prevails, institutional life must suffer when twelve per cent of the voting population is unable to read even the names printed upon the ballots which they are supposed to cast intelligently for the government of the State. Ignorance stands for narrowness, bigotry, selfishness, and stagnation; intelligence stands for liberty, liberality, tolerance, sympathy, and growth. The claim is repeatedly made that the younger generation of whites in the South is going to school. That is not true. Statistics show that in 1900 the South Atlantic States had 2,472,895 white children between the ages of five and twenty years. The school attendance for the same year shows 1,176,976 white children in school, or more children out of school than were in school. Of course, allowance must be made for a considerable number between five and six, not entitled to enter the public schools. The same statistics show that the Southern States had 262,590 native white illiterates between the ages of ten and nineteen, Virginia alone contributing 23,108, while Ohio had but 4,083, and Minnesota but 242. The opponents of compulsory education tell us that our people will send their children to school without being compelled to do so, if they are only shown their duty and their obligation to their children. For nearly twenty years our ablest and safest leaders, men and women, have been tireless in their efforts to get the children of the South into the schools. Yet more than twenty-five per cent of the native white children between ten and fourteen, that crucial age, are not in school at all. I know that there are among us many who contend that the educational conditions in the South are subjects for congratulation. I yield to no one in the matter of pride over what the South has done in the past forty years. To me it is a source of constant delight to see and hear the many reports of excellent educational progress in the Southern States. Increased taxation for schools, new buildings, large equipment, longer school terms, and better paid teachers occupy enviable places in all these pictures. But how many of these reports dare to mention a substantial decrease in illiteracy? Increased enrollment and increased attendance do not necessarily prove decreased illiteracy. The increased enrollment and the increased attendance do not always keep pace with the increase in population. The truth is that in some of the Southern States the total white illiteracy has remained practically unchanged for thirty years. Of what value are all your taxes, and your elegant school buildings, and your improved schools, to your thousands of boys and girls who never enter a school? Southern people, are we willing to permit twenty-five per cent of our young white boys and girls to grow up in the bondage of illiteracy? Can we afford to thrust 262,590 illiterate white boys and girls at the age of sixteen out into a world enriched by the progress in the arts and sciences reaching back over a century itself rich in discoveries and inventions? How can we expect them to win with untrained hands and vagrant minds? Poverty and stress of war can no longer be urged as a palliative for the illiteracy of the children who ought to be in school to-day. Many of these children are the descendants of Walter Page's forgotten men. They became the neglected mass; and the neglected mass has in turn become the indifferent mass. When any considerable number of people in a State become indifferent to the intellectual, and moral, and social conditions of themselves and their offspring, the situation becomes alarming, for illiteracy, like every other evil, tends toward perpetuating itself. Has the State the right to compel a child to go to school? What is the answer to this question? Years ago we accepted, without much question, the doctrine that popular education is necessary to the growth and permanence of our republican institutions. Since all classes of our heterogeneous society are active factors, the State maintains schools for all the children of all the people. The schools exist primarily for the benefit of the State, rather than for the benefit of the individual. The State seeks to make every citizen intelligent and serviceable. The State compels the rich man to pay taxes to support the schools, not because he owes the poor man an education but be cause the State needs the intelligent services of that child. The schools are democratized by compelling the rich and the poor alike to pay taxes according to their ability for something necessary to all. When the State has provided schools for all the children, it has performed only a part of its duty. If a school tax is justifiable on the ground that popular education is a necessity, it follows that compulsory attendance by the State is also justifiable. The State has no right to levy and collect taxes for a specific purpose, then permit that purpose to be defeated at the hand of indifferent or selfish parents. In this connection we hear much about the sacred rights and personal privileges of the parent who neglects or refuses to send his child to school. No one reregrets more than I do the tendency to shift from the home the functions which properly belong there. One of those functions is to train the children for their duties and responsibilities in the social organism. £ciety itself is imperiled whenever its members are unfitted. One of the essentials of fitness is what we call education. Therefore, whenever the home refuses or neglects to prepare the child for society, it is not only the privilege but the duty of the State to see that the child is fitted for his part. Argument against the right of the State to send a child to school is specious and superficial. Those who make such argument would not for one moment deny the right of the State to compel the parent to feed and clothe his child, or to compel him to fight for his country, and to shoot him if he deserted. The State has the right to carry the law-breaking child to the reformatory or to the jail to protect society. Has not the State as much right to carry the child to the school house to save him from the reformatory or the jail, and to train him to benefit society? Those who deny the right of the State to compel the parent to send his child to school are too frequently the offending parents themselves, or those who fear unpopularity at the hands of the voting mob. When the State compels the parent to send his child to school, it is simply compelling the parent to put the child in possession of his own rightful inheritance. In a narrow sense that inheritance is his right to the benefit of what the State has col lected and set apart for him; wider and truer sense it means his opportunity to make of himself all that his God-given abilities will permit him to become; in a still wider sense it is his becoming fitted to take his place in the State to perform the sacred duties of an intelligent citizen in the broadest meaning of that term. Objection is often made that compulsory attendance would work hardships in the homes of the poor. Is it not a fact that the poor child is the very one who most needs the aid of the State to bring him into possession of his own? He it is who must soon face the complexities of modern life and the insistent demands of citizenship with none of the advantages common to birth or wealth. He is the very one whom the State ought to help, because he himself is helpless. The child of the poor must work, and it is right that he should work, but it is neither right nor humane that he should be forever denied his share in his inheritance in order to be made a bread-winner for a lazy, selfish, unfeeling father, as is so freque tly the case. Over and over we are told that compulsory laws could not be successfully enforced. To my mind that is begging the question. Why not the same skepticism about the enforcement of any other law? The opponents insist that a compulsory law could not be enforced, because the people are not ready for such a law. Would there be any use for this law, or any other law if all the people were ready and waiting to obey it? Laws are enacted to compel men to do that which they ought to do but will not do voluntarily. Tens of thousands of people in America are not obeying the Ten Commandments. Are we to justify this disobedience on the ground that the people are not quite ready for the Decalogue? Or is the Decalogue a piece of unwise and premature legislation, because some of us do not obey it? Will any law enforce itself? Will any law be enforced until an honest effort has been made to do so? And what is meant by successful enforcement? Can the enforcement of a law be called unsuccessful so long as it is violated by anyone? In every civilized land there is law against homicide. There are many violations of that law. Shall we say that the law is not a success? Shall we repeal the law until violations of it cease? |