Dr. Thomas E. Finegan, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Pennsylvania, is a well-known champion of the illiterates of the nation and their cause and the State of Pennsylvania is making great strides in reducing illiteracy under his leadership. An extensive program of instruction for the illiterates and the Americanization of foreigners has been carried on in the state since 1918. The State Department of Education reported 20,378 taught during the year 1919 alone. The name of every illiterate taken by the census enumerators in 1920 is on record in Pennsylvania, having been obtained from the Federal Census Bureau. With the stimulus of achievement back of her and with splendid organization, plans and leadership, Pennsylvania bids fair to realize her slogan—“Pennsylvania a literate state in ten years.”
Ohio is engaged in the fight on illiteracy. Much skirmishing has been done by the State Department of Education and by Dr. S. K. Mardis, of Ohio University, a pioneer crusader in that state, and in 1922 a State Illiteracy Commission was created and the work among illiterates started as a state-wide campaign.
Maine, under the leadership of Dr. Augustus O. Thomas, State Superintendent of Schools, has a five-year program for wiping out illiteracy. Maine has 20,240 illiterates and this five-year program will include the teaching of some four thousand each year, a thing easily possible of accomplishment. Maine thus expects to free herself from illiteracy by 1926. The politicians watch Maine closely in election times and have a saying, “As goes Maine, so goes America.” If the Nation can afford to follow Maine in things political, it can well afford to emulate her in the emancipation of its illiterates.
North Dakota wages war on illiteracy in a determined fashion and with the avowed intention to surpass all of the other states. “No illiteracy in 1924” is her goal. She has 9,937 to teach and practically her whole population has entered into the crusade in a plucky spirit, resolved to get at least half of them taught before the end of the year, 1922. The spirit of these North Dakota crusaders was illustrated by two young teachers who were asked, “Have you any illiterates in your districts!” and replied with eagerness, “Oh, we hope we have.” They, like all of North Dakota, want to play their part in making their state the first literate state in the Union.
Massachusetts and the other New England states, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island, have extended the opportunity to their adult illiterates under certain ages and conditions.
Virginia has had moonlight schools in her remote sections, West Virginia in her coves, Texas on her ranches, Louisiana in her parishes, Michigan in her lumber camps and the Dakotas on their plains. Moonlight schools have ministered to illiterate fishermen on the coast of Maryland, illiterate immigrants on the coast of California, illiterate Swedes in Minnesota, illiterate Indians in Oklahoma, illiterate Mexicans in New Mexico and illiterate white and colored people through the mountains and valleys of the South.
With the slogans, “Illiteracy in Alabama—Let’s remove it,” “No illiteracy in New York State,” “Pennsylvania a literate state in ten years,” “No illiteracy in North Dakota in 1924,” “Let South Carolina secede from illiteracy,” “Let’s sweep illiteracy out of Arkansas,” “Illiteracy in Mississippi—Blot it out,” “Illiteracy in New Mexico must go,” the states have sounded a battle-cry which means the death-knell of illiteracy in the Nation.