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Press, Volume LX, Issue 18185, 23 September 1924, Page 8

A commission which has been investigating the extent of illiteracy in tho United States has made the discovery that there are five million American citizens who cannot read and write. The number may not seem large in comparison with the total population (about 105 millions, including negroes) but it is larger than we should expect' in a nation which we have been accustomed to regard as educated. Popular conceptions, however, are not always in line with facts. Eussia, for example, most people would class at once as an illiterate country, yet there is a corner of it, the Transcaucasian republic of Georgia (which is suffering now at the Bolsheviks' hands), where 8a per cent, of the inhabitants can both read and write. The five million American illiterates, also, are selfconfessed ones; the commission itself, basing its opinion on tho facts and conditions revealed to it, concludes that there arc probably another five millions unconfessed.

It is serious enough, when wo consider what it means, that a great nation like America should have fivo million illiterates. Begarded merely from a commercial standpoint, it is bad business. Illiterates do not buy magazines or books or pictures, and do not travol or patronise theatres. The most tempting advertisement means nothing to them. Their wants are limited to the bare necessities of food and clothing and shelter, and, more important, so are their interests. All the things that niako life worth while are beyond their understanding. In the factory they are exposed to dangor because they cannot read warnings and instructions, and in public they are a source of "dangor to others becauso they are ignorant of the elementary requirements of public health and sanitation.

America cannot blame hgr immigrant population for her burden of illiterates, as about 3,200,000 of the five million are native born. But she has at least this excuse, that until recently, she did not know.that these illiterates existed. Americans themselves wore the most surprised by the result of the enquiry. Time after time the commission had proof of an unshakable belief that if there were illiterates they were always in some other State. Tims the Governor of Indiana, when asked to cooperate in the commission's work, replied that illiteracy was not a problem in his State. , Yet the census takers found fifty-two thousand citizens in Indiana who could not read and write. The first result of the enquiry was a proposal that tho various States should appoint directors of adult education and require school boards .to organise day and night classes for illiterates. Congress has yet ,to deal with the matter, but time, if Congresß fails, should put it right, for America's illiterates are nearly all adults.