APPENDIXSOUTHERN TAXATION AND EDUCATION.
As small as may appear to be the amount expended by the South on public education, those who have not known conditions there can have little idea as to the strain upon her resources which this amount has caused. In “The Present South,†pp. 42, 43et seq., Edgar Gardner Murphy says:
“The figures of our national census show that from 1860 to 1870 there was a fall of $2,100,000,000 in the assessed value of Southern property and that the period of Reconstruction added, in the years from 1870 to 1880, another $67,000,000 to the loss.
“In 1860 the assessed value of property in Massachusetts was $777,000,000, as contrasted with $5,200,000,000 for the whole South.
“But at the close of the war period Massachusetts had, in 1870, $1,590,000,000 in taxable property, as contrasted with but $3,000,000,000 for the whole South.
“It is interesting to note that in 1890 there was ‘expended for public schools on each $100 of true valuation of all real and personal property’22.3 cents in Arkansas and 24.4 cents in Mississippi, as compared with 20.5 cents in New York and 20.9 in Pennsylvania. See Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1902, Vol. I. p. xci.â€
The following is taken from Publication 8, Twelfth United States Census:
“The illiteracy of the native white population of the Southern States ranges from 8.6 per cent. in Florida, 8 per cent. in Mississippi, and 6.1 per cent. in Texas, to 17.3 per cent. in Louisiana, and 19.5 per cent. in North Carolina, as contrasted with 0.8 per cent. in Nebraska, 1.3 per cent. in Kansas, 2.1 per cent. in Illinois, 1.2 per cent. in New York, and 0.8 per cent. in Massachusetts. A far juster comparison, however, is that which indicates the contrast, not between the South and the rest of the country in 1900, but between the South of 1880 and the South of to-day.’
TABLE SHOWING THE RANK OF EACH STATE IN PERCENTAGE OF ILLITERACY OF THE NATIVE WHITE POPULATION TEN YEARS OF AGE AND OVER:
1900.
POPULATION AT LEAST TEN YEARS OF AGE AND NUMBER AND PER CENT. ILLITERATE FOR THE NEGRO AND WHITE RACES: 1900 AND 1890.
“There are 352 counties in the United States in which one-half the Negro population at least 10 years of age was illiterate in 1900. With the exception of New Madrid County, Mo., all these counties are in the South.
“If the educational facilities of the country should remain up to their present standards, but not improve, and should impart the elements of education to as large a proportion of the rising generation as they have done to those between 10 and 14 years in 1900, then, at the end of the generation, illiteracy among the Negroes in the country will have sunk from 44.5 to 30.1 per cent.; that is, nearly one-third of it will have disappeared. At the same time, illiteracy among the whites in the country will have sunk, immigration aside, from 6.2 to 3.5 percent.; that is, about three-sevenths of the illiteracy among the whites will have disappeared.
“At the present time, nearly one-half of the Negroes in the Southern States are unable to write, but if educational facilities for that race remain about as they are at present for another generation, and be availed of to the same extent, the proportion would sink to one-third. The illiteracy of the Negro at the present time is about four times that of the white in both the North and the South; in the North a little less, in the South a little more.â€
COST OF VIRGINIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Actual statistics for 1891 show the following facts:
The U. S. Census for 1890 shows the population of Virginia to be as follows:
Thus showing that while the Negroes comprise nearly four-tenths of the population, they furnish less than one-tenth of the amount expended on public schools.
The number of Public Schools for the year 1898-90 was
Now, if we use the percentages on preceding pages and allow all the taxes paid by Negroes (on both personal and real property) to go into the School Fund, we will see that there was a deficit of $256,824.33 to be made up from the taxes paid by white people, or, in other words, the total amount of taxes on personal and real property paid by the Negroes will cover less than half the expense of their schools alone.