lightened by no ray of learning. That would never do. We need them as “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” And in the meanwhile, this is what the richest country on earth offers to ruthlessly exploited people as a training for life:

[13]

Before the Twelfth Annual Conference for Education in the South (1910) Mr. Charles L. Coon, superintendent of schools in North Carolina, read a paper on Negro Education in the South. His investigation extended over eleven states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee. In these states the Negroes make up 40.1 per cent of the population, but receive only 14.8 per cent of the school fund. He showed that even if the school fund as disbursed were apportioned to each race according to taxes paid the colored people of Virginia should receive $507,305 in[14]stead of the $482,228 which they now receive; in North Carolina they should get $429,127 instead of $402,658, and in Georgia $647,852 instead of $506,170. So that these three states expend for Negro education $93,278 less than what the Negroes themselves pay for—and that sum is contributed by Negroes to the white children of the state!

[14]

But, as a matter of fact, in no modern country is education made to depend upon the tax-paying power of the parents. If that were so, the children of 40,000,000 American proletarians would live and die without schooling. So that the case is really much worse than it seems.

South Carolina spent in 1910 $10.34 for the education of each white child and $1.70 for the education of each colored child. In Lawrence county the state gave to each colored child 97 cents worth of education that year; in Lexington county, 90 cents; in Bamberg, 89 cents; in Saluda, 68 cents, and in Calhoun, 58 cents worth. The smallest sum spent on a white child for education that year was $4.03. In Georgia it was quite as bad. One county of this state owned 19 of the 27 school houses for Negroes. The valuation of the entire 19 was $2,500; that is, $131.58 for each school house for Negroes! The annual cost of the education of a Negro child in six counties of this civilized state was 39 cents. Meanwhile the whites of Baltimore were protesting against the building of a new Negro school! In Louisiana the report of the Department of Education shows that the average monthly [15] salary of white male teachers is $75.29, while that of colored male teachers is $34.25. The average monthly salary of white female teachers is $50.80 and that of the colored female 

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