"If we continue to neglect them, there are influences at work that will sooner or later convince them who now fail to appreciate the worth of our Government that the Government itself has failed—crowd the melting pot with class hates and violence and befoul its yield.
"We must not be tried by inquest. We demand the right to vindicate the merit of our systems wherever their integrity is questioned or maligned.
"We demand the right to regulate the cheating scales upon which the Republic is weighed by its ill-wishers.
"We demand the right to protect unintelligence from Esau bargains with hucksters of traitorous creeds.
"We demand the right to present our case and our cause to the unlettered mass, whose benightedness and ready prejudices continually invite exploitation.
"We demand the right to vaccinate credulous inexperience against Bolshevism and kindred plagues.
"We demand the right to render all whose kind we deem fit to fight for our flag fit to vote and prosper under its folds.
"We demand the right to bring the American language to every American, to qualify each inhabitant of these United States for self-determination, self-uplift, and self-defense."
Dr. Philander P. Claxton, Commissioner of Education, in his analysis of the illiteracy figures of the census, said:
"Illiteracy is not confined to any one race or class or section. Of the 5,500,000 illiterates as reported by the census of 1910, nearly 3,225,000 were whites, and more than 1,500,000 were native-born whites.