Speech #490020600

So these States went into this new system of education not only with the values of real estate destroyed. not only without the capacity to obtain the means of establishing their agricultural industries except by enormous rates of interest. destructive rates. such rates as was stated by the Senator from Mississippi as required the sale in every Southern State of from onefifth to onethird of the whole real estate of the country for taxes. They went into it also without that magnificent provision for education given by the United States to some other States in the shape of land which was always unequal and is today not only in the specific amounts but in the fact that the lands donated by Congress to the States of Kansas and Iowa and the other Northern and Western States became immensely valuable and were worth from ten to twenty dollars an acre. while in the Southern States they were worth nothing. They never were worth anything more than one or two or three dollars an acre on the average. while because of the increasing immigration to the Northwestern States the donation of Congress was five. six. ten. twenty times more in actual available money than it was in the Southern States. Now. the true test of the fidelity with which these States have applied their money to the education of both races is to be found in the attendance upon the schools. Take the State of Florida where there is only a partial return. but the proportions are as good as if the returns were complete.