Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-04-30
Kentucky's Governor Summons
Whole State to Sunday School
Doubling Attendance in a Single Day, by Concerted
Campaign of All Forces
(By The Religious Rambler, j.,

inaugurated at the Men and Religion
Congress in New York in April. 1912.
Out of these publicity plans grew the
"Go-to- o-Church-Sunday" with a great
variety of methods for melting attend
ance: and from this plan, which has
since become nationwide. evolved
easily the 'tGo-to Sunday -School-Sun
DAY. In all this, many persons who
feel responsibility for citizenship
perceive real stimulation to patriot
ism.
Moonlight Schools vs.. Moonshine Stills
Always proud of their State. Ken
tuckians are now in the throes of a
new experience in self-realization and
self-service. Largely because a great
host of primitive Americans have be-
come sequestered in the Southern APP
palachian Mountains apart from the
modern movements of life and prog
ress, there is a high percentage of IL
literacy in the State. with consequent
lawlessness, 'moonshine" stills. and
so forth. AS the Kentucky Forward
Movement expresses 1t. there are
more than two hundred thousand
Kentuckians. past school age, who can
neither read or write; eighty-seven
thousand men who cannot read their
! ballots and ninety thousand women
who cannot read their Bibles.
Now. with something like a surge
Kentucky has set herself. definitely to
the task of eradicating adult illiteracy
by the year 1920. More than two
| thousand men and women have volun-
teered as teachers in this work. In
one county ii was said that any edu-
Gated person without a pupil was
mighty lonesome" The State Govern
! ment and various welfare, patriotic
and religious bodies have got behind
the movement and il Is already
spreading TO other States. Kentucky
, is the fifth from the bottom of the
list of States in proportion of white
| illiteracy.
Moonlight schools" which are
nothing more nor less than night
schools in the country. have been the
! popular method adopted for combat
| ting illiteracy. Mrs. Cora Wilson
Stewart, superintendent of schools in
! Rowan county. began the movement
in 1918. In the first year, there were
/ twelve hundred persons attending
moonlight schools in her county. The
work has spread to sixty counties, and
now there are one hundred thousand
| illiterates receiving instruction.
Amazing incident are told by Mrs.
| Stewart as of four Baptist preachers
! taught TO read and write. and two
! United States postmasters, whose
work had really been done by their
| daughters. One school trustee sat on
| the same seat with his twelve-year-
! old child at a moonlight school and
; learned TO read and write. In a
! friendly rivalry, one man OF eighty
seven learned faster than a woman
of eighty-siX. One class consisted of
! persons aged from seventy-five TO
ninety-four years. One man learned
| in four evenings.
Some districts, once high in IL
| literacy, are now freer from il than
| Boston. An accurate census of the
! State has been made. Rowan county
! had 1,156 illiterates three years ago
| now II has only three.
When the people as whole get to
moving. democracy is vindicated
! THE RELIGIOUS RAMBLER.