About ninety per cent, of the whole colored population of the South, and about forty-five per cent. of those above ten years of age, are illiterate. In 1880, nineteen per cent., or about one in every five, of the white people of the South, and seventy-three per cent. of the colored people, could neither read nor write; and this estimate is far too large. After fifteen years of the ballot, seventy-three per cent. of the colored race of the South could neither read nor write. Much is being done to promote education by schools and charities, but what are these among so many? To meet the ignorant condition of things, the Government is doing nothing. The State governments are doing only a little. In the Southern States previous to the war there was no system of common schools. After the war there were not even old foundations to build upon. Everything had to be started _de novo_ by those who had nothing with which to start. "We must remember," said Dr. Mayo, "that nine men out of ten of the South never saw what we call a good public elementary school. It has been said that the public school-buildings of Denver alone exceed in value all the public school-buildings of the State of North Carolina." The average school year throughout the South, in 1880, was less than one hundred days; the average attendance less than thirty per cent. of those within school age. In a belt of States where seventy-three per cent., and probably ninety per cent., of the population are illiterate, where they are too poor to do much except keep up the struggle for existence, where there are no traditions of culture, where it has been a crime for a black man to read, where the Nation is doing nothing, and where the State, when it does its best, provides instruction which reaches only thirty per cent. of those of school age for one hundred days in a year, and where the population is increasing so rapidly that in 1900 the blacks will be in a decided majority, charity and religion are doing--what? The progress under the circumstances is amazing, but how long will it take to educate the nineteen per cent. of Southern whites, and seventy-three per cent., of Southern blacks? There is more illiteracy now than at the close of the war, because education has not kept pace with the increase of the race.