As State Superintendent of Education, I called the attention of our Legislature to this subject four years ago, but met with no encouragement, the belief being expressed that these illiterate grown-ups could not be taught with any degree of success. To prove that this feeling was erroneous, our five state rural school supervisors were directed to see what could be done with these classes and five counties were selected for the purpose. Very good results were obtained by these supervisors. The best work in the state, however, was accomplished by Mr. I. S. Smith, an educator, who was then Superintendent of Tattnall County schools, who had more than six hundred adults taught to read and write. Fortified with these facts and the proof that it could be done successfully, the Legislature was again requested to authorize the work and to give financial aid for its support. In compliance with Mr. Brittain’s request, the Georgia Legislature created an Illiteracy Commission in 1919. Governor Hugh Dorsey became the President and Mr. Brittain was made Secretary and Director of this Commission. Seven state organizers were employed, six white and one colored, and the five regular state school supervisors were directed to give much of their time to the illiteracy campaign. In his official report of 1920 Mr. Brittain says: Another 1919 law that reflects credit upon the legislature is that of teaching the illiterates. Our records show that we have, since August, enrolled 31,545 illiterates and taught 17,982 to read and write. [Illustration] [Illustration: LETTER FROM A GEORGIA MOONLIGHT SCHOOL PUPIL] The State of Washington, under the leadership of Mrs. Josephine Corliss Preston, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, enacted a law in 1915 which enabled all school districts to have night schools. Finding that the illiteracy campaign was necessary to arouse the illiterates to their opportunity and the public to co-operate, an Illiteracy Commission has since been created with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction as Chairman and with members chosen from the various state organizations. This Commission has appointed county illiteracy commissions and is engaged in a campaign to remove illiteracy from the state. The illiteracy movement, which was started in South Carolina in 1913 by Miss Julia Selden, a patriotic Southern woman, took the form of a crusade in Laurens and Newberry Counties in 1914 and blossomed into an Illiteracy Commission in 1916. The Legislature appropriated $10,000 for the work in 1918 and increased the appropriation to $25,000 in 1910, when it became a branch of the State Department of Education, the Illiteracy Commission assuming the position of aid and ally. South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union before the Civil War, chose as her slogan in the illiteracy crusade, “Let South Carolina secede from Illiteracy.”