lso Minnesota and Wisconsin, whose returns I
have not at hand, there were 8,364,841 school population, while the
average daily attendance was only 3,720,133, a trifle over 44 per cent.

In the United States there is practically no compulsory attendance upon
school. Schools are provided by the State, and the children attend or
refrain from attendance as suits the convenience or wish of the pupils
or their parents. That compulsory attendance upon school is productive
of a wider and more thorough diffusion of knowledge is probably conceded
by all. At least, educators so urge. What would Professor March have?
Does he expect to find education as thorough and general among a people
of whose school population less than one-half are in usual attendance at
school, and less than two-thirds even enrolled as occasional attendants
at school, as among a people with whom over 95 per cent. of the school
population are in constant and habitual attendance? When we consider the
published school statistics of this nation, it is no wonder that about
one-seventh of the whole are unable to read and write. Shall we give no
credit to compulsory systems of education, and still insist that the
illiteracy of the United States is caused in any appreciable degree by
the "difficulties of English spelling"?

Early in 1879, Professor Edward North assured us that the Italians and
Spaniards have discarded _ph_ for _f_ in _philosophy_ and its fellows.
Professor March gleefully records that "the Italians, like the
Spaniards, have returned to _f_. They write and print _filosofia_" for
_philosophia_, and _tisica_ for _phthisica_. Professor Lounsbury, in his
elaborate articles in _Scribner_ lately, commends the Italians for
writing _tisico_ and the Spaniards for writing _tisica_. These of course
are commendations of those peoples for the simplicity of their
orthography, and they are mentioned as worthy examples for us. Yet we
are not advised by either of the three professors named that the
Italians and Spaniards are for that reason gaining upon the English
people in intelligence, educational progress and culture. No statistics
are advanced disclosing the narrow percentage of illiteracy found in
Italy and Spain, and a comparison made between that narrow percentage
and the wide percentage already advertised as existing in
English-speaking states. If "the difficulties of English spelling" be a
serious cause of illiteracy in England and the United States, the
si