For the entire population over ten years of age, the following table gives the percentage of illiteracy: Foreign Foreign Native or Mixed born Native Parentage Parentage Whites Negro[A] United States as a whole....... 3-7 1.1 12.7 30.4 The North...................... 1.4 0.9 12.7 10.5 The South...................... 7.7 4.3 18.8 33.3 The West....................... 1.7 0.8 9.5 7.0 For the children of school age from ten to fourteen, the following table shows the percentage of illiteracy: United States as a whole....... 2.2 0.6 3.5 18.9 New England ................ 2.2 0.6 3.5 18.9 South Atlantic................. 5.0 0.8 5.3 18.9 East South Central............. 5.8 0.9 11.4 20.7 West South Central............. 4.1 11.2 34.6 22.4 Etc............................ --- ---- ---- ---- [Footnote A: United States Census for 1910]. In some Western states the percentage of illiteracy is as low as one-tenth of 1 per cent. * * * * * An examination of schools in fifty-two cities representing with fairness the entire United States, shows that the majority of children who enter complete only the fifth grade; of one thousand children of school age, only one hundred and twenty graduate from the grammar school and six from the high school. [Footnote: Henry C. Vedder--The Gospel of Jesus and the Problems of Democracy.] It is axiomatic that if children are to be spared by law the strain of enforced labor upon immature bodies and minds, and to be properly conserved because they are the most precious of the nation's resources, they must be prepared by suitable training for the life work that lies ahead--"making a living being an indispensable foundation for making a life." Through special circumstances certain parts of our country have been slow in developing the free school so as to make possible even a most elementary education for their children. This is notably true of sections in the South. From the early days when the University of Virginia entered upon its honored service to higher education, the schools and colleges of the South have been influential, but through the force of peculiar economic condition these have ministered to the privileged classes, while the great masses of Negro and white children in the isolated regions were given few opportunities for even the most elementary schooling. The devastation of war left an impoverished South, and as free schools depend upon the generosity of the individual states, many, though desirous, were utterly unable to make suitable school provision for their children.