Many of these men, by their own confession, had gone wrong simply because they had had so little to fill their lives. In a class of beginners one evening, the men were requested to stand and tell why they had not secured an education. When all had finished, the story they told could have been summed up in these few words, “I never had no chance.” The illiteracy campaign was being waged for the removal of illiteracy which already existed but it was, also, creating sentiment for the prevention of illiteracy in the future. Those who led the fight to remove illiteracy had never doubted that “it is better to build a fence around the precipice than to wait with the ambulance below,” but so many had already gone over the precipice that in mercy’s name they must be succored. The very act of rescue had attracted sufficient attention to the calamity, it was hoped, to insure the building of the fence--the creation of school attendance officers who would enforce the compulsory attendance law. The county illiteracy agents had been given permissive power by the Legislature of 1918 to act as attendance officers and had pioneered such a measure and created sentiment for regular attendance officers with full power. This sentiment must be crystallized before the approaching Legislature convened. To this end two thousand speakers went into the field to urge the people to their utmost efforts in teaching all to read and write and also to advocate two kindred educational reforms--the attendance officer as a preventive of another crop of illiterates, and a living wage for those who had “borne the heat and burden” of the campaign--the public school teachers of the state. When the Legislature convened the following January the sentiment was overwhelmingly favorable and it was a mere matter of phrasing the laws, creating attendance officers and increasing teachers’ salaries, which were promptly passed.