The following paragraphs are from the paper read by Dr. Rankin at the anniversary at Syracuse. It was intended that it should be printed with the proceedings, but, by accident, it was not left in the hands of the committee. We hope to publish it in full in a series of documents which we have in preparation. After valuable historical statements, and a vivid picture of the needs, and of the progress already made, among other good things, the Doctor says: The southern portions of this country cannot always remain blind to the truth that their _material prosperity_ depends upon the employment of _educated labor_. Sociologists claim that an educated laborer will produce twenty-five per cent. more than an uneducated one. If a colored man is worth $100 a year without an education, he is worth twenty-five per cent. more with one. The thrift of New England has been largely dependent upon the common-school houses there. Give a man education enough to transact ordinary business, to enable him to keep his accounts in writing, to improve his mind daily by reading, to understand the institutions of his country, to have an insight into the laws which shall govern him in relation to his neighbors and his God, to know his rights and his duties, and he is twenty-five per cent. better as a _producer_ than he was before. The necessity of keeping the colored man ignorant, of keeping out discussions relating to human rights, involved the other necessity of keeping a population unintelligent, unthinking and, so far forth, unproductive, as appeared in the very implements employed for tilling the soil. The southern portions of this country cannot long remain oblivious of the fact that the _illiterate_ class are largely the _criminal_ class; that ignorance fosters crime. In New England only seven per cent. of the population—and these almost entirely of foreign birth—are illiterate. Eighty per cent. of all the crime committed, is by these illiterate persons. It really comes to this: “Which is the wisest outlay of public money—that put into schools and school-houses, or that put into almshouses and jails?” It is not merely intelligence which prevents crime. It is the early formation of habits of industry. It is the pre-occupation of the mind, so that it does not become the devil’s workshop. And when one considers a late slave population, free but without the training which freedom especially requires, inheriting all the evil tendencies which slavery engenders; and then, on the other hand, a white population, largely dependent for support upon the labor of others, indolent from habit or from pride, and largely inheriting analogous tendencies—it is easy to see that here is a state of things especially favorable to crime.