I know very well that you will find among these thirteen hundred thousand illiterate voters not a few men of great natural shrewdness and considerable general information, who may be fairly qualified to discharge the duties of citizenship. There are men to whom all print is shut, who can see quite as far into public questions as many of those to whom print is as wide open as it was to Silas Wegg. The alphabet test is by no means an infallible test. Some who could not pass this test are well qualified for citizenship. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of those who are reported among the literates, who are put down as being able to read and write, and who are yet utterly ignorant. They can manage to scrawl their names, perchance, or to skip and tumble about a little among simple words in a primer: but the reading and writing of which they boast is of no sort of use to them as fitting them to vote intelligently. You would need to add a great many figures to that array in the census if you should state fully the facts in regard to the illiteracy of the Southern States. I think we shall all agree with Dr. Haygood when he says, as he did at the meeting of the National Educational Association in Washington last winter, “This is bad enough.” And perhaps we should also be able to agree with him in the further statement that it “is far from being the worst of this sad case. The worst,” he says, “is this: the illiterate vote in these States is increasing. From 1870 to 1880 the increase of this army of ignorant voters in the South amounted to 187,671.” Of course this is worse, in one sense; for the more we learn of this illiteracy the worse we are off, no doubt. But there is a brighter side to this picture, thank God! It is dark enough, at best; and I want you to see it in all its blackness; but I do not want to paint it any blacker than it is. After you have seen the facts just as they are, you will still find on your hands a stupendous task; but you will have, I trust, some reasons for believing that it is not a hopeless task. It is true, then, as Dr. Haygood says, that there was a positive increase of illiterate voters in the South between 1870 and 1880. He makes this increase in round numbers 197,000; the figures I have found increase it a little to 208,000. But that is not a _relative_ increase. The increase in the illiterate vote does not keep pace with the increase of the population. The population increased 30 per cent. in the ten years; the illiterate vote increased less than 20 per cent. In 1870, more than 40 per cent. of the voters of the South were illiterate; in 1880, only 32 per cent. were illiterate. This is what I call very substantial gain. Under the circumstances I am inclined to call it a splendid gain, one that is quite worth singing the doxology over, one that should cause us all to thank God and take courage.