But let no one deceive himself with the idea that this undue and lamentable ratio of illiteracy in these particular states is due wholly to the presence of the colored population. Unfortunately illiteracy prevails to a very considerable and almost an alarming extent among their native white population also. Thus the census tabulations show that the proportion of “illiterates” (those unable to write), in the total native white population, ten years of age and upward, is: In Alabama, 25 percent.; Arkansas, 25.5; Florida, 20.7; Georgia, 23.2; Kentucky, 22.8; Louisiana, 19.8; Mississippi, 16.6; New Mexico, 64.2; North Carolina, 31.7; South Carolina, 22.4; Tennessee, 27.8; Texas, 13.9; and Virginia, 18.5. Massing them we find that of the 6,010,714 native whites, ten years of age and upward, within the territorial limits mentioned, there are as many as 1,395,441—being 23.2 per cent., or nearly one in every four of the whites—unable to write. It is evident, therefore, that the surprising illiteracy in these states is not wholly attributable to the presence therein of the colored race. It is somewhat humiliating to have to confess to the world by our own official figures that one out of every four of the native whites over ten years of age in twelve states and one territory of our Republic is unable to write his own name, especially when we compare it with the additional fact, derived from the same tabulation, that the illiteracy of the foreign born of these same localities does not rise in any instance above 10.9 per cent. Turning to the other side of the picture we may find some grains of comparative consolation in observing the fact that of the remaining 19,775,075 native whites, ten years of age and upward, in the United States only 860,019—or 4.3 per cent., being one in twenty-three—are unable to write. This favorable condition of one part of the country, however, only serves to bring out in sharper contrast the sad condition of the other part, and should spur the philanthropist and statesman to renewed and more strenuous effort to obliterate, or at least ameliorate, this alarming sectional inequality in the degree of illiteracy. Were it not for the hope of ultimately removing this inequality by attaining an educational homogeneity or equality on the higher level as between the sections, one might almost be tempted to wish for an educational equalization on the lower grade; for as long as that inequality continues to exist, so long must it prove a source of irritation and danger in a thousand forms.