Illiteracy
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Illiteracy. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
inability to read and write. The term is applied usually to grown up people. The degree of illiteracy in a number of countries is shown in the following table. The number of people per thousand of population who were over twelve years of age and were unable to read and write was in 1900-05 about: Germany 10 Norway 10 Sweden 10 Switzerland 10 New Zealand 40 France 50 United Kingdom 60 Australia 90 Holland 100 United States 100 Belgium 120 Austria 310 Italy 440 Russia (in Europe) 780 Portugal and Spain 790 The low rate in Germany and Switzerland is due to laws requiring attendance at school until the rudiments of an education have been acquired. The high rate in the United States (1900) may be understood by the following analysis. Illiteracy is seven times as great among the colored people as among the whites, but the native whites with over 1,000,000 adults unable to read and write have no call to throw stones at immigrants or at a race lately held in bondage. According to race and parentage, American illiterates are: White Total 2,554,787 Native white 1,468,348 Native parents 1,324,751 Foreign parents 143,597 Foreign white 1,086,439 Colored Total 2,669,439 Persons of negro descent 2,546,891 Chinese 24,372 Japanese 4,249 Indian 93,927 Aggregate 5,224,226 The following table, based on the census of 1900, gives the number of children per thousand between the ages of ten and fourteen, who could neither read nor write; and also the rank of each state in child illiteracy: Nebraska . . . . . 3.4 1 Iowa . . . . . 3.7 2 Oregon . . . . . 4.2 3 Ohio . . . . . 4.9 4 Kansas . . . . . 5.2 5 Indiana . . . . . 5.5 6 Connecticut . . . . . 5.7 7 Utah . . . . . 6.6 8 Massachusetts . . . . . 6.7 9 Michigan . . . . . 7.0 10 Washington . . . . . 7.0 11 Minnesota . . . . . 7.1 12 Wisconsin . . . . . 7.3 13 New York . . . . . 7.4 14 Illinois . . . . . 8.2 15 Wyoming . . . . . 9.2 16 Vermont . . . . . 9.5 17 South Dakota . . . . . 10.0 18 California . . . . . 10.1 19 Pennsylvania . . . . . 10.1 20 New Jersey . . . . . 11.9 21 Idaho . . . . . 12.3 22 Colorado . . . . . 15.2 23 New Hampshire . . . . . 16.9 24 District of Columbia . . . . . 17.5 25 Rhode Island . . . . . 18.8 26 Montana . . . . . 19.3 27 Maine . . . . . 20.8 28 North Dakota . . . . . 23.5 29 Oklahoma . . . . . 27.4 30 Missouri . . . . . 33.6 31 Delaware . . . . . 45.1 32 Maryland . . . . . 46.4 33 West Virginia . . . . . 52.6 34 Nevada . . . . . 81.2 35 Kentucky . . . . . 84.4 36 Texas . . . . . 92.6 37 Florida . . . . . 137.6 38 Tennessee . . . . . 149.2 39 Virginia . . . . . 156.7 40 Arkansas . . . . . 162.0 41 New Mexico . . . . . 199.3 42 North Carolina . . . . . 217.5 43 Arizona . . . . . 221.1 44 Mississippi . . . . . 223.8 45 Georgia . . . . . 227.9 46 Alabama . . . . . 288.9 47 South Carolina . . . . . 295.6 48 Louisiana . . . . . 328.8 49 II Penseroso. See Milton ; John
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ACY, inability to read and write any language. In the United States the census officers consider those who cannot write, but can read, illiterate. In the United States inquiry is made of all persons as to their literacy and those persons above 10 years of age who cannot write are considered illiterate. The European countries differ in their methods of securing their statistics in this matter and the age limit is not always 10 years. Of the European countries, Germany, with but one-half of one per cent. of her population illiterates, heads the list, closely followed by Switz erland. Illiteracy is the greatest in southern and southeastern Europe. In Spain, Portugal, Servia, and Rumania a considerable per cent. of the population, in the case of the last named country country nearly 90 per cent. of the population, is illiterate. While comparison between nations is on an insecure basis due to the different methods of collecting statistics used in the various countries, it is clear that those nations which send the greatest number of immigrants to this country are those with a high proportion of illiterates. According to the census of 1910 the illiterates in the United States numbered 5,516,163, or 7.7 per cent. of the population. The draft of 1917-1918 revealed a slightly higher percentage, but in the main confirmed the census figures. The greatest percentage of illiteracy is reached among the negroes, who make up 40 per cent. of all the illiterates of the nation; 30 per cent. of the illiterate group are foreign-born whites, 28 per cent. are native whites, and two per cent. of them are Chinese and Indians. As might be expected, the rural population is more illiterate than the city, because of the relative scarcity of schools. Of the adult male population there are 2,273,603 illiterates, those cities having the greatest percentage of illiterate males over 21 being Fall River with 15.6, Birmingham with 10.4, Scranton 8.9, Nashville 8.8, Atlanta 8.6, and Richmond 8.2. These cities have this relatively large percentage because of large foreign or negro populations. The five largest cities in the United States compare in the percentage of illiterates above 21 years of age thus: New York 6.4, Chicago 5.1, Philadelphia 4.7, Boston 4.5, St. Louis 4.1. The States having the lowest percentage of illiteracy are Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon and Washington; in all these the percentage is under 2 per cent. The highest percentage of illiteracy is reached in the Southern States with their large negro population, and in those States along the Mexican border: Louisiana (29.0), South Carolina (25.7), Alabama (22.9), Mississippi (22.4), Arizona (20.9), New Mexico (20.2). ILLUMINATI (il-yū-mē-nā'ti or ilöm-e-nä-te), a Spanish sect, known vernacularly as Alumbrados. Their founders were Catherine de Jesus, a Carmelite nun, and John de Willelpando, a native of Teneriffe. They rejected the sacraments, and held that by mental prayer they might attain such perfection as to dispense with good works, and that they might commit any crime without sin. Ignatius Loyola, while a student at Salamanca (1527), was tried by an ecclesiastical commission for sympathy with the views of this sect, but declared innocent. Also an obscure sect of French Familists, which arose in Picardy in 1634. The Rosicrucians were so called, but generally by this title are designated the members of a society formed at Ingolstadt, in 1776, by Adam Weishaupt, Professor of Canon Law, and an ex- Jesuit. It had some resemblance to, and received substantial support from, Freemasonry. Its objects were religious and political emancipation, its ideal form of government republican, and its religion . The order was suppressed by deistic edict, March 2, 1785, and Weishaupt was degraded and banished.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's reckoned in 1910 that 780 of every 1,000 adults in European Russia could neither read nor write, and Collier's in 1921 put Romania near 90 per cent illiterate, such rates were normal for southern and eastern Europe; today literacy in all those countries is effectively universal, Russia's transformation coming through the Soviet 'likbez' literacy campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s. The 5,516,163 American illiterates of the 1910 census — 7.7 per cent of the population, with the sevenfold gap between white and Black rates that Aiton's frankly noted — shrank so far that the Census Bureau dropped its literacy question after 1979. Worldwide the picture has reversed rather than vanished: UNESCO now counts roughly 86 per cent of adults as literate, with the remaining illiterate population numbering in the hundreds of millions and about two-thirds of it female, a gender imbalance neither account mentions. The modern debate has also moved from the old yes-or-no test to 'functional literacy', surveys asking whether adults can actually use everyday text rather than merely sign their names.
Written for this edition, 2026.