The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-03-20
PUSH EDUCATION

The Importance to Virginia Of carrying
out and perieeting her common school sys-
TEN Of education wherever it is practicable
to do so-that is, wherever population and
territory will admit of establishing and
maintaining schools-will be conceded by
all wcll-informed and right-thinking persons
in the State. There are certain indisputa-
BILE facts which must force conviction from
every mind that gives itself to their investi-
cation. In every state in the Union it will
be found that the ratio of crime diminishes
with the removal of illiteracy from among
the people. The criminal statistics of New
England show that full eighty per cent. of
the crimes are committed there by
those who have no education, or
none sufficient to serve them valuable
purpose in life, and that but very small
percentage of the whole amount Of crime is
committed by the native educated popula-
ton. The statistics of crime obtained by
the last census, which were more complete
ly gathered, because more Systematically
kept in New England than anywhere else,
show that full seventy-fve per cent. of the
crime committed there was by persons Of
foreign extraction, that is, either by illiterate
parents of foreign birth, or their children
brought up in illiteracy after they came
here. 1t is shown moreover that about
twenty per cent. of the population fur
nishes full seventy-fve per cent. of the
crime committed, and that very large per-
centage of these connect their career of
crime with intemperance, always pre-
dominant vice among the illiterate OF uned-
ucated. The statistics furnished by the
juvenile reformatories of the country show
that full ninety-fiye per cent. of the Offend
ers in such institutions come from idle, ig-
norant and vicious homes.
As in New England, so in all parts of
the country, from eighty to ninety per
cent. of the criminals have never learned
any trade or mastered any branch of skilled
labor; which leads to the conclusion that
education and labor bear the same ratio to
exemption from crime as education in our
public schools. Another important fact
bearing directly on the question of illiteracy
and crime, is shown in this: that almost
all the children guilty of crime are truant
from school at the time of the committal of
| their offences, and that most of the tru-
ants are children of illiterate parents.
These children furnish the future inmates
of our prisons; for criminals are not made,
they gro'e. From these facts, which the
report of the Commissioner of Education,
as compiled from the statistics of 1870,
show to be thoroughly well established, no
other conclusion can be gathered than that
| ignorance breeds crime, and that education
is the remedy for the crime that imperils the
existence Of the state.
Now, the census of 1870 shows the
illiteracy of this State to be as follows,
viz: that there are l23, 53s whites, and
1922, 1886 colored, who cannot read or
write. What greater incentive can the
people of Virginia have, looking as they
should to the best welfare of the State,
than to extend the blessings of our COM
mon school system of education to all
classes of the people, colored as well as
white? For the same relation of illiteracy
to vice and crime must exist among the
colored population of the State as is known
to exist in the white population, both
native and foreign, in the other states of the
Union. Let no community hesitate, then,
as to the duty devolving upon the whole
people to educate this mass Of ignorace and
illiteracy which is everywhere among us.
The future welfare and prosperity of the
State depends upon it, and duty so im-
perative as this cannot be thrown off as an
idle obligation.
| .