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Show ILLITERACY FIGURES. hi view of the faot that congress las passed an immigration measure containing the literacy te?t, a bulletin it issued l'v i he department of the interior is timely and instructive. It has been prepared by "Winthrop Talbot and is entitled ' Adult Illiteracy."' The purpose of the immigration law , is to exclude illiterates from all countries coun-tries but the effect will lie to exclude a high percentage of one race and a very Miiall percentage of some other race. Percentages, however, do not tell the whole story. .The illit-eraov illit-eraov of the Portuguese, for ex-ample, ex-ample, is the highest of . al). but' Portugal sends less than 1 per cent of ; all immigrants. Mure than Co per cent of the Portuguese immigrants would be rejected when put to the literacy tests, but the o f fee t w o u Id not be a p prec i -able, because Portugal sends such a small proportion of all the immigrants. The important feature is the total number ul' illiterates of each raoe admitted. ad-mitted. The coming of i'S.f'OO illiter-' illiter-' ate Hebrews from a people with a percentage per-centage of illiteracy of :.'". 1 means more ! To the cities of 'cw York, Philadelphia j and Chicago than does the much small- : er number of .3-, '"'00 Portuguese with ' their illiteracy rate of lio.l per cent. j fo the countries of northwestern Eu- ! rope there arc few illiterates. The j number of English, Irish, Scotch, .Scan- j , -iinavians and Finns debarred by the j liters cv test is almost negligible, when J ,nro. f with tn total number nf im- J migrants from these, countries. The percentages of illiteracy in France and Germany are somewhat higher. j Twenty-five years ago 5 '5.5 per cent j of all immigrants to the United States I came from tho countries of northwest-, 1 crn Europe. In 1910 the percentage J hail fallen to I'j.S, the remainder com-I com-I ing from southern and eastern Europe j and from the orient. Among Hebrews coming in increasing ; numbers from eastern Europe one-fourth one-fourth are illiterates. Magyars or Hun- . gurians, who are related to the Finns in racial type, have a comparatively low percentage of illiteracy, 11.1 per j cent. . . , The races hardest hit by the literacy les-t will be the Slavs and Italians. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude con-clude that all Slavic, peoples would be 1 equally or almost equally affected. The 'Bohemians and Moravians, who arc I Slavic peoples, are among the most ' highly literate racns admitted to the United Stales, the percentage of illiteracy illit-eracy among them being only l.'i per cent. It should be noted that, 'owing to the almost universal lack of public schools, immigrant illiteracy from eastern Europe, including most Slav countries, in general, averages more than 30 per cent. A distinction must he drawn, too, between be-tween northern and southern Italians. The percentage of illiteracy among the northern Italians is only 5 and 6 per cent, whereas it is slightly higher than 47 per cent among the southern Italians. Ital-ians. Illiterates are those wholiave not learned to write iu any language. This is the definition on which American and most foreign statistics are based. Sometimes the test leads to queer results. re-sults. For some reason or other, many Lithuanians can read but not write, but those who can read and yet not write are classed as illiterates. In his introductory remarks Mr. Talbot Tal-bot makes some necessary qualifications qualifica-tions when he says: "Before analyzing illiteracy in the United States it is important to distinguish dis-tinguish clearly between illiteracy and ignorance, terms by no means the same, yet often used as though synonymous. "Illiteracy clearly is not. ignorance. Many a man who makes an X for his signature knows more, is better equipped for citizenship, and is more fully prepared to battle with life than some who have graduated from high 1 scbtol or college. ' ' Schooling supplements, but can never replace, worldly wisdom and experience; ex-perience; nevertheless, the ability to read and write is fundamental, and lack of this equipment is such a handicap that illiteracy implies ignorance. Some ignorant persons may be illiterate, but most illiterates are ignorant.'' |