Southern States -- Social conditions; United States -- Race relations
When the whole South together, including such rich states as Maryland and
Missouri, is compared with an equivalent population group in the North,
the figures are more favorable to that section: 28,000,000 Southerners
furnished an average daily attendance of 3,700,000 children; the same
number in the North furnished 4,200,000. The South has 127,000 teachers;
the North, 200,000. The total value of Southern school property is
$84,000,000; of Northern, $294,000,000. A comparison of per-capita
expenditure in the year 1900 showed an average school tax in the United
States of $2.84 per head; but not a single state south of Washington
raised above $2.10. Alabama raised only 50 cents, and even the rich state
of Texas only about $1.50, as against $4.80 in North Dakota. Tennessee
spent $1,800,000 a year in public education; Wisconsin, with an equivalent
population, spent $5,500,000; South Carolina, with a population nine
tenths that of California, spent one eighth as much. The state of
Mississippi spent $6.17 per pupil annually; the state of Vermont spent
$22.85.
Inasmuch as the Negroes contribute several million school children and not
very much in taxes, it will be instructive to compare the 12,000,000
Whites of the Lower South with 12,000,000 Northwestern Whites, in those
forms of education which are referable chiefly to the Whites. The Lower
South, on this basis, furnished in 1906 68,600 pupils in public secondary
schools against 172,600 in the equivalent North; the secondary school
plants in the South cost $23,000,000; in the North $52,000,000. The
college students in the South were 27,800; in the North, 27,200. The
Southern college income was $6,000,000; the Northern, $7,500,000. Here,
again, the comparison of the whole South with 18 million Whites against 18
equivalent millions in the Northwest is somewhat more favorable. The
secondary plant costs $40,000,000 against $77,000,000 in the North. The
normal schools of the South have an income of $1,400,000, those of the
North $2,400,000. The Southern college students are 38,000 against 42,000;
and the college income, $9,000,000 against $12,600,000.
The inevitable inference from these figures is that the South still needs
to bring up its equipment and its expenditure if it is to educate as
efficiently as its neighbors; and this presumption is strengthened by
observation of schools of various grades. The Southern city schools are
good, especially in the former border states; St. Louis, Baltimore, and
Louisville come close up to Cleveland, Indianapolis, and St. Paul in the
outward evidences of educational progress. Statistical comparison of a
group of Southern cities with a group of Northern cities of the same
aggregate population shows that in externals they are not far apart; the
Northern schools have more schoolrooms, more teachers and more plant, but
the annual expenditures are about as large in the Southern as in the
Northern group.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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