FEE Oclaimed by Office
of First Assistant
of New York

RMS

JUN

5

9

14

30

MISCELLANY

When a missionary asked Horace Greeley for a sub-
scription to help keep people from going to hell, Hor-
ace refused, saying "there aren't half enough of
them going there as it is." I confess I feel just that
way about Secretary Wilbur's demand that the church-
es join in a great drive to eliminate illiteracy. It
seems that the 1920 census reported nearly five million
illiterates in our population, and the Secretary of the
Interior is worried about it and wants to get them all
taught to read. When I think of the kind of thing they
would be likely to read, and how little good it would do
them, I am disposed to congratulate them warmly on
their present immunity, and to wish there were many
more like them.

Theoretically, reading is supposed to stimulate and im-
prove thought; and so indeed it does, if pursued with
that purpose to guide it. Otherwise it is nothing but
a waste of time. Hence literacy is not an absolute
good in itself—far from it. The idea that it is an ab-
solute good is one of the oddest and most indefensible
superstitions rampant in our superstition-ridden so-
ciety. To prove this, one has but to look at what our
literates mostly read, and what their reading-habits
are. Our periodicals and our lists of best-sellers are
monumental testimony that our reading public is adept,
as Bishop Butler said, at "passing things through their
minds, rather than thinking about them"—and that our
writers and publishers meet this aptitude somewhat
more than half way. Mr. Wilbur is the victim of sheer
superstition, and should be firmly discouraged. One
turns from him impatiently to contemplate once more
the admirable wisdom of Mr. Weller's charity-boy at
the end of the alphabet, who wondered whether it was
worth while going through so much to get so little.

I am of much the same frame of mind, also, towards the
proposed drive of five hundred small self-styled

the new FREEMAN

105

GEORGIA O'KEEFE
P. O. Box 201,
Lake George, N. Y.

Room 1710

Alfred Stieglitz
Labsu Georgi
Newyork

Box 201

JUN 13
5 PM
1930

Alfred Stieglitz
Labor George

Box 201
New York

Alfred Stiegler
Tabr George

New York

Box 201

UNITED STATES POSTAGE

Alfred Stiegletz
Lola Georgia

New York

Box 201 ~

Alfred Stieglitz

Laprr Georgia

Newyork

Box 201

Alfred Stieglitz
Laba George

New York

Box 201

T.A.FONDK.
OLD SANTA FE · NEW MEXICO

Georgia Shoutz

Box 201 - Jan 24 - Mar 24, 1930

Box 201

SANTA FE
AUG 12
8 30PM
1930
N. MEX.

(Hefred Stiegler)

Sobr Georep

Newyork

• LA • FONDA •
• OLD • SANTA • FE • NEW • MEXICO •

Box 201

Alfred Stieglitz
Sad George
New York -

SANTA FE
AUG 14 1930
1:30PM
N. MEX.

03-71-8