There is nothing in life more pleasant than to feel that you are living for the benefit of humanity and to contribute to the welfare of men and women.
I respect and admire you for devoting your intellect and energies to your good work among adult illiterates in Kentucky.
The Governor appointed J. G. Crabbe, President of the Eastern Kentucky State Normal, H. H. Cherry, President of the Western Kentucky State Normal, Miss Ella Lewis, Superintendent of Grayson County schools and myself as members of the newly created Illiteracy Commission. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction was a member ex officio.
Here was a Commission new to the world, without chart, guide or compass, starting to attack adult illiteracy, a thing supposed to be invincible. Nobody had even undertaken to abolish adult illiteracy before, so there was no precedent and no literature. The State had not appropriated a dollar for the Commission’s work and there was not a dollar in hand. Scoffers stood on every corner predicting dire failure. Illiteracy statistics were challenged and disputed and much energy that could have been used in the fight on illiteracy was used by the opposition in trying to disprove the statistics, while the proof was lying buried in a vault in the Federal Census Bureau at Washington. The enlightening of public opinion, the quickening of the missionary spirit, the arousing of state pride and the opening of pocketbooks to finance the movement were some of the tasks which confronted this Commission of volunteers besides the actual instruction of illiterates.
The public school teachers being already at the helm were in better position to influence the people than any others. They must be the soldiers in this bloodless war against illiteracy but soldiers in the trenches must have organized and intelligent support from those back home. It was everybody’s war and volunteers from every profession and every walk of life must be enlisted.
The Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs led out. In recognition of the service rendered by those pioneer teachers of Rowan County, they sent them on a vacation trip to Niagara Falls and to visit the cities in the northern part of the United States and Canada. It was a novel thing to see public-school teachers traveling in a private car at the expense of the grateful people of a State and being sung to and fêted along the route. It served the purpose of more than a merited reward; it was a stimulus to other teachers and inspired a large number to volunteer.
The Colonial Dames and other women’s organizations made a whirlwind campaign for funds; editors agitated through editorials and news items on illiteracy; ministers celebrated, “No Illiteracy Sunday” in the churches and attacked the evil in sermon, song and prayer; bankers were on the alert for illiterates who made their mark on checks and made a campaign to teach each to read and write; jailers put their prisoners to the book; traveling salesmen carried the slogan of the crusade as stickers on their baggage and talked “no illiteracy” as enthusiastically as they talked dry-goods, notions, boots and shoes; college students placarded the walls of the colleges with illiteracy statistics, used illiteracy as the theme for their finals and each pledged to go home and teach someone to read and write. We even enlisted the politicians and put them to some use. A galaxy of speakers, headed by the Governor and State officials and composed of men and women prominent in politics and in other professions, went out over the State at their own expense fighting illiteracy and urging the establishment of moonlight schools. What these prominent ones advocated so openly, many great souls carried further in some quiet way, either by organizing a moonlight school in some isolated spot, by talking for the cause at some country store, or by going over the hill or across the field to teach some neighbor to read and write.
The Governor had issued a proclamation against illiteracy, and much of this activity was in response to it. As the first proclamation of its kind in history, it is a paper of unusual interest, and is here reproduced: