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Kansas, and Missouri, there are common schools, leading up through secondary schools to State universities, as in Iowa and Michigan.
In all these sections, there is close and constant effort on the part of some, weakened by indifference on the part of many, to give the people that aliment, without which, according to President Grant and Secretary Delano, the republic cannot live.
Yet, after all, the main interest in this intellectual struggle lies in the South, so long neglected by the ruling race; and in the Southern States, the chief scene of conflict is Virginia.
The new race of Virginians are facing the demon of Illiteracy with the same high spirit as they showed in fronting the great material power of their enemies in the war.
Ten years ago there were no such public schools in Richmond as there were in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.
A lady of the First Families could not send her boys and girls to an institution where they might have to mingle with “white trash.”
It is the sentiment of a ruling class, common to all countries, not more obvious in Richmond and Raleigh than in Geneva and Lausanne, in Brighton and
1875.
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