Page Six
THE UNITED AMERICAN
and shall endeavor to enlist the services of any and all com­
munity agencies of the state for the removal of illiteracy.
The work of the division is defined thus:
This division, subject to the approval of the State Superin­
tendent of Education, shall have charge of the organized work
of the State Board of Education for the removal of illiteracy
in Alabama, and of the educational work in the special child­
caring institutions of the State.
The schools for the “old folks” were popular from
the beginning. In 1915 Mr. Johnson, previously quoted,
said after learning to read and write: “I would be
proud I have learnt this if I just knowed I had twelve
months even to live.” The schools have offered efficient
help in real situations. In 1924 a woman attended
school for the second summer. She was entering’
school the second time to learn enough arithmetic to
keep accounts of the farm products which she raised
herself. She did her farm work and drove three miles
to school every day. Even a certain Mrs. Fisher
gave an excellent reason for the teaching of illiterate
adults. She presented her husband to the teacher of
the first such school in her community with this plea:
cent, are included in the thirty-three counties making
the highest reduction of adult white illiteracy.
The thirty-three counties making the highest reduc­
tion of illiteracy among negro children within the
same period include within the list seventeen counties
that have made the highest reduction in illiteracy of
those twenty-one years old and over. Chambers County
has conducted vigorous illiteracy campaigns among
the adult negroes for five consecutive years with in­
creasing success, and Chambers made in the nine
y§ars 83.2 per cent reduction in illiteracy within the
ages of eight to twenty years. Chambers ranked first
in reduction of illiteracy among negro children, and
first in actual number of adult negroes taught.
Alabama stands fourth from the bottom in the
literacy rating of all the states but from 1910 to 1920
Alabama made the third largest reduction in total
illiteracy. Over a period of twenty years, Alabama
has made the highest reduction of any state in adult
negro illiteracy.
WHAT DO WE PLANT?
By Henry Abbey.
What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the ship, which will cross the sea.
We plant the mast to carry the sails.
We plant the planks to withstand the gales —
The keel, the keelson, the beam, the knee;
We plant the ship when we plant the tree.
Miss, I want you to teach Ben Fisher to read an’ write.
I didn’t know when I married him that he couldn’t read an’
write. He done all his courtin’ by word of mouth, and if
I’d a knowed he couldn’t write I’d a never married him.
For white adults fifty-two counties, and the cities
of Mobile and Birmingham have conducted 658 schools
for white illiterates and near illiterates and aliens.
They have enrolled 17,399 pupils. Several corpora­
tions have financed schools from which the department
received no report. Three counties have had schools
for six sessions and six counties have had schools for
five sessions. For negro adults, forty-two counties and
the city of Birmingham have had schools. A total of 686
schools have been conducted with an enrollment of
18,339 negroes. One county has had schools for six
years and seven counties for five years.
The plan for making state appropriations to the
counties for support of the opportunity schools for
adults was somewhat changed for 1925. The number
of counties to receive aid for the schools was limited
to thirteen and campaigns conducted for raising funds
adequate to place schools in these counties in every
community having fifteen illiterates. The unification
of the citizens of a county for raising funds has accom­
plished the two-fold purpose anticipated. Not only
has the county raised the quota required by the State
in giving state aid, but the educational condition of
the county has been advertised where it should be in
the county. Two counties will each have twenty schools
for negroes, one county will have twenty schools for
white people and ten counties will have schools for
both races. By 1930 similar campaigns will have been
conducted in each of the sixty-seven counties of the
State. Illiteracy among children of school age decreases
with the decrease of illiteracy among adults. This
fact is conclusively proved by a study of the 1924
school census. Thirty-three counties reduced illiteracy
among white children of the ages eight to twenty
by percentages ranging from 84.6 to 50 during the ten-
year period of 1914 -1924. Of the 33 counties making
such reduction, twenty-four have conducted schools for
adults. Sixteen of the thirty-three counties, or 48.4 per
JULY 1925
What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the houses for you and me.
We’ plant the rafters, the shingles, the floors,
We plant the studding, the laths, the doors.
The beams and siding; all parts that be;.
We plant the house when we plant the tree.
What do we plant when we plant the tree ?
A thousand things that we daily see.
We plant the spire that out-towers the crag.
We plant the staff for our country’s flag.
We plant the shade, from the hot sun free;
We plant all these when we plant the tree.
A FOREIGN WRITERS’ HUMOROUS PHILOSOPHY
ON LIFE
this rule.
HE ETERNAL CYCLE seems to be that everything bites
its own tail and we human beings are no exception to
Certainly we are not doing it literally — provided a man
is not a snake-being or accidentally should happen to seat
himself on his own image — we engage in these practices
“figuratively in a certain sense” as written in a German
grammar.
,
With all due respect it must be conceded that in type
we are intellectually speaking nothing else than a tribe of
tail-negroes of high caste, more or less automatic in this or
that respect. Press a button and instantly there is an auto­
matic reaction in the direction indicated. If it’s a butcher,
you will propably receive a pound of meat. If it’s a doctor,
you will likely learn that you have appendicitis or mouth-and-
hoof desease. A Drygoods Merchant will possibly respond
with a bill for dresses to your wife.
A left-partisan will automatically let loose a tirade of non­
sense and coined expressions, a communist will create fire­
works, verbally and otherwise, and a prohibitionist will drown
you in water, etc.,' etc.
There is practically no variation in the program. It is
the same phonograph record played uninterruptedly. Year
in and year out the needle of time scratches the worn record
while we poor hearers sit like statues, listening to the noise
of all this unmelodious discord that is called life.
— (Translated from Korsaren.)
T