essentially different. The Mexican peon has found thrift only an unprofitable practice which made him eligible for further exploitation; why should he save? Ownership has never been included in his list of possibilities; how could he plan to own a shack on a city lot? He lacks temperament and experience in organization; how shall he comprehend his neighbors who excell in it? His home is the center of his universe; how shall he interpret a civilization of labor barracks, hotels, apartment houses and tenements? He is kindly, ingenious, amiable, strong in the elemental virtues; how shall he compete in a contest where the awards go to shrewdness and cunning? He He has been brought, but he is not welcome. He is necessary, but that necessity is hateful both to the needy and to the needed. Education of an elemental type is the only road out of his plight but he does not know his need of it and his industrial foster nation has not perceived clearly that he must have it. Life has compelled him into standards of living which are a menace to any environment. He is powerless to alter them alone; his employer is too harassed by the acute problems attendant upon the successful issue of a new project like the introduction of cotton in a new country to give accurate attention to him or his troubles. Between the upper millstone of an engrossed employer and the nether millstone of a community that sees its social integrity threatened is ground the feckless human atom.

Neither this unskilled laborer nor any other adult alien can be fitted into any scheme of education by teachers. who lack both training and temperament for the stupendous task. To build a corps of workers who have some notion of the technique of the business, general courses in immigration have been supplemented by spe

cial courses in the University of Southern California and the Southern Branch of the University of California. The cumulative product of such training in the half decade since the supervisor of immigrant education gave the first course in immigrant education in what was then the Normal School is an incalculable good not only in its effect directly on all the conscious processes of the integration of the immigrant but also in its indirect relation to the liberalizing of all educational activities. So far as is possible in a city system the teachers have been selected for their personal fitness for their particular piece of work. They form a distinct group of marked type and quality. To them, as a matter of course, is the rather unusual result due.

Such teachers find, naturally, the available textbooks and other teaching materials hopelessly inadequate for even the simplest of the multiplicity of needs. Singly and in conferences and committees they developed no less than fifty separate distinctly excellent sets of lessons in different phases of English alone. Charts, flash cards, display devices, leaflets, drill materials for illiterate American groups, have been evolved, usually out of their own resources and at moments when they should have been playing.

As a result of this condition the department has found itself at every step of the work-but especially in beginning English-under a heavy load of obligation to the Director of the Elementary School Library and to her staff of assistants. Out of an already limited library space a workroom for teachers of adult classes has been given over. With meager facilities and a ridiculously small expenditure of money, the committee of teachers and principals in charge of the workroom has organized under the librarian's ex

pert direction an orderly housing for an inchoate mass of experimental teaching equipment. The workroom rapidly became an informal conference center which contributed immeasurably to the growth of the individuals using it. The type of assistance rendered by the librarians is indicative: 1. Advising teachers in their choice of text and reference books. 2. Recommending devices for housing materials in class rooms and cottages. 3. Instructing committees and conferences of teachers in expert method of mounting, filing, indexing and preserving unbound teaching paraphernalia. 4. Providing for the circulation of charts and similar devices on the same basis as books and pamphlets. 5. Actually contributing a large part of the picture material and discarded books for leaflets. 6. Guiding the professional reading of teachers by providing in easily available form current pamphlets, bibliographies and monographs not otherwise readily accessible. In a reactionary school system there is no place for such service.

This modern point of view and its simplicity of procedure is an important factor not only in the rehabilitation of the night school but also in the growth of work with foreign women-industrial workers and housemothers. The foreign woman, along with her humble spouse, has been the subject of a belectured sympathy almost maudlin; in her name executive committees and Americanization funds have been organized funds expended in the maintenance of elegant offices, in large amounts for travelling and other administrative details-funds which should be expended directly on the simple approaches nearest to her interest.

the great majority of foreign neighborhoods. The housemothers especially must be very gradually drawn to them or any other imposing place. So they have been attracted in groups first to modest, often dingy, little rooms or houses where they learn slowly to come out from the shell of shyness or fear or distrust or loneliness. School authorities have not yet found a method of recording these slow awakenings to a comprehension of the really neighborly intent (despite all the evidence to the contrary) of the great bulk of our native groups toward their foreign neighbors. School registers can show at best only the tabulations of names of the persons who have learned to laugh and play with their neighbors in these small, intimate, unforbidding gatherings, yet this utterly simple thing is the heart of all assimilative processes.

These tiny units of social aggregation are the electrons of all permanent community organization. This practice is, of course, at the opposite pole from the theory that community councils or other forms of group expression are developed by plastering a leader and a machinery of organization onto a district from the outside,—from the national capital, for example, or the national metropolis, or from the state capital. These tiny groups are first led by the slowest, simplest possible steps to a self-realization and a self-confidence; then they are led to join themselves-this also slowly and simplyto other similar neighboring social nucleii. The common meeting-place of several cottage groups is, in one instance, a library; in another case, it is the school house; in yet another it is a vacant store building. It is superfluous, perhaps, to say that these rather delicate and rare plants can hardly be grown in an old-fashioned school system and by old-fashioned school

teachers who believe that public school conventions and traditions and school district boundary lines were fixed at the beginning of time to last unaltered through the life of the race.

In and out through this network of integration and assimilation, the home teacher weaves a thread of vital and personal contacts. She perhaps more

than any other one agency ties the homes of the neighborhood not only to the school and to each other but also to all the general civic and social agencies which those homes need. Like the function of the rehabilitated night school, like the growth of the cottage groups, her work is humanly simple because it is simply human.

AMERICA is now reaping the

results of her failure to adopt a sound policy in dealing with the illiterate immigrant who has been welcomed to our shores for more than a century. From the beginning of our national life until 1882 there was no restriction whatever upon immigration into this country. Our doors were thrown wide open to all who desired to come. Through the enactment of a federal law in 1882, the Government undertook to establish a policy of selective immigration. This law had been greatly strengthened by enlarging the list of those denied the right of admission to the United States until that list included convicts, lunatics, idiots, those liable to become a public charge, contract laborers, persons suffering from a loathsome or contagious disease, polygamists, anarchists and prostitutes.

The subject of immigration has been one of extensive Congressional investigation. President Roosevelt presented the subject to Congress in broad, comprehensive messages, and laid down the general proposition that our immigration laws should be amended in a way that would enable the Government "to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens."

In 1897 the immigration laws were vitally amended, the excluded classes were definitely described, and the authority and power of the Government officials dealing with immigration were materially enlarged. Notwithstanding all these efforts of the Government to restrict immigration, the number of immigrants coming into this country increased at a rapid rate, and in 1914 the number who came to America was 1,218,480.

There has, of course, been a constant increase in the number of illiterates among these newcomers until the number has assumed proportions which have proved a menace to the social, economic and political interests of the nation. During the year preceding the outbreak of the war, the number of illiterates increased in eighteen of the leading states of the country, including Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, California and Pennsylvania. An investigation by the State Superintendent of Prisons in the state of New York in 1914 showed that one-third of all the prisoners in the state prisons were aliens, and that one-half of these aliens, or one-sixth of all the prisoners in the state, were not able to read and write. The cen sus of 1920 shows that the approximate

number of adult illiterates in this country is 7,000,000. The number would undoubtedly have been much greater had there not been a suspension of immigration during the period of the

war.

The statement is made by reliable authority that one-fourth of the young men within the draft ages in the recent war did not possess sufficient education to interpret properly the orders from their superiors and were thus unprepared to become efficient soldiers. If a young man, because of lack of the fundamentals of an education in English, is disqualified to discharge his duties as a soldier in times of war, is he not also for the same reason disqualified to perform his obligation in the civil affairs of citizenship in times of peace? Can an uneducated man be more effective in civil affairs than he can be in military affairs? Should we not as a nation in times of peace prescribe intellectual standards of citizenship which are the equal of such standards prescribed for soldiers in times of war?

Students of social and political problems have anticipated the embarrassment which was bound to come to this country through the admission of these illiterate immigrants without a definite policy requiring them to meet educational standards after entering the country. For some years those giving this subject careful thought have advocated a literacy test. Senator Lodge introduced in 1896, twenty-six years ago, an immigration bill containing a literacy test. This measure proposed the exclusion of all persons between fourteen and sixty "who can not read and write the English language or some other language." The Lodge measure passed Congress in modified form, but was vetoed by President Cleveland. In his veto message, the President clearly stated his

opposition to a literacy test. President Taft vetoed a similar measure in 1913, and President Wilson vetoed one in 1915 and again in 1917. Congress passed the 1917 measure over the veto of the President, and the provisions of this Act became effective on May 1, 1917.

Under the terms of this law, all aliens are to be excluded who are over sixteen years of age, who are physically capable of reading but who can not read. This law exacts that a test shall be given each alien before being admitted, and that such alien must be required to read "not less than thirty or more than eighty words in ordinary use." The law does not exact that the alien shall be able to read English. The law is satisfied if the alien reads in English or some other language or dialect. The law furthermore exempts those from this test who seek admission because of religious persecution and certain others who are relatives of American citizens or of admissible aliens. Data is not available to show the number of aliens denied admission as a result of the operation of this law, but our general knowledge of the subject warrants the prediction that the literacy test prescribed under this Congressional Act will prove a feeble defence against the continued admission of illiterates.

In all the discussion which has taken place upon this subject, there has been a common agreement that the initial step necessary to dissipate the pending evils in this subject is to teach these illiterates to speak and write the English language. These people can not become happy, contented, useful citizens until they are able to express their needs, desires and thoughts in the common language of the country. They must also become interested in and able to inform themselves upon the social, industrial and political ques

tions which are fundamental to the progress and prosperity of a democracy. We are therefore confronted with the problem of giving instruction to a vast army of 7,000,000 illiterate adults in the fundamentals of an English education. The question therefore naturally arises, upon whom does the obligation rest of assuming the burden and responsibility of providing educational facilities for this great body of illiterates?

All questions related to and growing out of the immigration problem are national. The national Government controls every phase of the immigration question. It determines what aliens may be admitted to this country, the conditions upon which they may be admitted, and it also prescribes the basis upon which they may be naturalized and admitted to American citizenship. The whole problem of adult illiterates is therefore a national and not a state problem. The Government should therefore recognize the necessity of attacking this problem without further delay, and should enact such laws and provide such funds as are necessary to construct an organization and execute a plan which shall, within a reasonable period of time, wipe out adult illiteracy in this country. There should be immediate. action without further delay or compromise in dealing with this problem.

Had Congress responded to the call of President Grant one-half century ago, and adopted the policy which he recommended, we should have no problem in adult illiteracy in this country today. Grant's vision enabled him to see the evils which would accumulate under the policy of the Nation admitting to its shores from year to year a large body of adult illiterates. Grant saw the wisdom of insisting that all foreigners, literate as well as illiterate, who came to this

country should be trained to acquire a usable knowledge of the English language. His recommendation to Congress was as follows:

The compulsory support of free school and the disfranchisement of all who can not read and write the English language, after a fixed probation, would meet my hearty approval. Foreigners coming to this country, who are educated in their own language, should acquire the requisite knowledge of ours during the necessary residence to obtain naturalization.

There is reason to believe that the national Government will provide funds within the next year to aid the states in the accomplishment of this work. The situation is one of such peril to the social and economic interests of each state that the several states should, in my judgment, adopt a definite policy in dealing with this subject. Each state should enter upon a specific and definite program contemplating the teaching of every person within her borders to read and write in English who can not at the present time read and write such language. The problem should be approached in a serious and earnest way and under a plan which contemplates that within a definite period of time, from five to ten years, for instance, adult illiteracy shall be practically eliminated.

We make the error of thinking that adult illiterates are to be found only in the great industrial centers where our foreign population generally resides. A careful analysis of the distribution of illiterates in the states where the greatest numbers are to be found will show that such illiterates are spreading into all parts of such states. For instance, there is not a county in the state of Pennsylvania in which illiterates are not to be found. The following table gives the population of each county in Pennsylvania and the number of illiterates: