The problem of illiteracy in Chile is a serious one, the estimated figures for 1917 showing 959,061 illiterates out of a total population of 3,249,279. Since the year 1900 the struggle against it has grown in vigor. The National Educational Association has shown especial efficiency, and has worked through committees having the following phases in charge: Compulsory school attendance, the legal requirements, condition of the schools and the teaching force, school revenues, school buildings and sanitation, and special education. This steady pressure prepared public sentiment for the leadership of the most influential agency ever invoked in the fight against illiteracy, viz. the conferences organized by the powerful newspaper El Mercurio. Under its auspices these conferences were held in a 3-days’ series in July, 1917, and were attended and participated in by men and women identified with every phase of national education. The following topics were the salient ones of those discussed: 1. Comparative study of illiteracy statistics in various countries. 2. Means of combating illiteracy in leading nations. 3. Practicable means of action in Chile. 4. Means of contribution, and proportion in which the State, the municipal authorities, and the Provinces may contribute to the budget necessary. 5. Cooperation of private initiative. 6. Means of making school attendance compulsory. 7. Regulation of child labor. 8. Reforms necessary in actual plans of study and in classification of schools. 9. Necessity and practical means of giving the schools a more Nationalistic character. 10. Minimum of knowledge to be required by compulsory attendance law. 11. Place of night schools, Sunday schools, and traveling schools, in the struggle against illiteracy. While no action of a legal character resulted from these conferences, yet the impetus given to the cause was powerful, and had weight in bringing about the decree and the projected law already outlined. Such a move, combining at once social and economic as well as educational characteristics, seeking to bring public opinion to bear on the solution of a problem underlying the life of a nation, and launched by a newspaper, is unique in the history of education.