The progressive farmer., 1903-01-20
The Education of all the People Necessary to ST.
Growth.

the arlstOcratic system and the ecclesiastical sys
tenn of education to show for themselves?
First, what did they do for their own favored
classes, and what did they do for education?
North Carolina is one of the old thirteen States.
The aristocratic system had free play here for
nearly a hundred years, and the ecclesiastical
system has had free play for at least two genera
tions They established our University and our
denominationa1 colleges. Excellent as these are
they do not rank with the best institutions
most of the other original thirteen States-of
Virginia, nor of New Jersey, nor of New York.
nor of Connecticut, nor of Massachusetts,. Nor
have they trained even a select body of scholars
that have been or are in any way famous. Make
another test: There are no great libraries in the
State, do the people yet read, have the
publishing houses ever yet reckoned them as their
patrons, except the publishers of school books
By any test that may be made, both these systems
of education failed even with the classes that they
appealed to. One such test is the test of emigra-
ton from the State. In 1890 there were living in
other States 293 900 persons who were born in
North Carolina. One in eight of every native of
the State then living had gone away. When
remember that almost every one of those emf
grants went to States where taxes were higher
and schools we're more numerous and better and
where competition is fierce, and when
remember that they went away from State that
is yet sparsey settled and richer in natural oppor
tunities than the State to which most Of them
went, the failure Of these systems becomes tragi-
cally obvious.
If a slave brought $1,000 in old times, it ought
to be safe to assume that every emigrant f.
the State has an economic value of $1,000. TIL
emigration, therefore, had up to 1890 cost
$293,OOO,OOO-a fact that goes far to explain why
we are poor. To take the places Of these 293, 900
emigrants after twenty years of advertising and
organized effort to induce immigration, $4,000
immigrants born in other States had come here;
a large proportion of whom, of course had come
for their health. But, counting the sick and
dying at 81 900 each we had still lost $241 100000
by the transaction. This calculation gives
slight hint of the cost of ignorance, and of the
extravaganza of keeping taxes too low.
Next, what did these systems of education 10
for the masses? In 1890, twenty-six per cent of
the white persons of the State we're unable even
to read and write One in>every four was wholly
forgotten. But illiteracy not the worst Of it;
the worst of it that the stationary social CON
dition indicated by generations of illiteracy had
long been the general condition. The forgotten
man was conten- to be forgotten. He became
not only dead weight, but definite opponent
of social progress. He faithfully heard the poll
ticians on the stump praise him for virtues that
he did not always have The politicians told him
that he lived in the best State in the Union, told
him that the other politician had some hair
Drained plan to increase his taxes told him a
consolation for his ignorance how many of his
kinsmen had been killed in the war, told him to
distrust anybody who wished to change anything.
What was good enough for his fathers was good
enough for him.. Thus the forgotten man be-
a dupe, became thankful for being neg
lected. And the preacher told him that the ills
and misfortunes of this life blessings in dis
guise, that God meant his poverty a means