At the last meeting of the General Assembly of Kentucky, I recommended that a Kentucky Illiteracy Commission be appointed and authorized to inquire into and alleviate the conditions of the adult illiterates in the State, and Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart, Chairman, Miss Ella Lewis, Doctor J. G. Crabbe, and Doctor H. H. Cherry were appointed as members of the Commission. This Commission has inaugurated a State campaign, Mrs. Stewart being the accepted leader in the efforts to stamp out illiteracy through moonlight schools and other methods.

Upon their call for volunteers about one thousand teachers offered their services and are teaching or making arrangement to teach at night, and others are daily offering their services.

The aim of the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission is noble and exalted and of the greatest benefit, and there is no subject of more importance or of more far-reaching influence than the elimination of illiteracy from our State. We should educate all of our people, those under twenty-one years of age, and those upward of twenty-one years of age. The perpetuity of our free institutions depends upon the intelligence and virtue of the people.

There are 208,084 men and women in our State who cannot read and write, and of whose intelligent efforts along the lines of education, religion and general development and advancement the State is deprived, and this constitutes a deplorable situation and presents a great and urgent need which should be promptly met and relieved.

Instruction should be offered to the mothers for their own sake and for the sake of the children and the benefit of the State; it should be offered to the fathers for their own sake and for the sake of increasing their earning capacity and of promoting home comforts, and for the sake of a more intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage so as to help maintain good government for the State. Instruction should be offered to the young men and young women who have missed opportunities earlier in life, but may yet take hold of instruction and make achievements.

The instruction of all the illiterates in the State will not only give to Kentucky a higher rank, educationally, among the states, but will give her a new and distinct position as the first Commonwealth which has ever attempted to accomplish such a great and important work.

I call upon all to help in the cause of education of those under twenty-one years of age and those upward of twenty-one years of age, and I appeal to every public and private school teacher, every professor in our high schools, colleges and universities, all public officials, every representative of the press, every professional man, every farmer, mechanic and business man and every woman who loves the blessings of education, and to all who desire to promote religion, science, literature or art, or to advance progress or improvement in any line, all who desire to lessen crime, to help in the great work of teaching adult illiterates, both male and female, to read and write and spell and to encourage them to seek knowledge and to add to their acquirements through moonlight schools in illuminated school houses where education is as free as the air we breathe, and where all may come to edify themselves and to drink of the water of life freely.

In testimony whereof, I have caused these letters to be made patent and the seal of the Commonwealth to be hereunto affixed. Done at Frankfort the 21st day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fourteen, and in the one hundred and twenty-third year of the commonwealth.

James B. McCreary,
Governor.
C. E. Crecelius,
Secretary of State.