248 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY I3TH ANNUAL REPORT 



this reason.* The lowest white illiteracy percentage in the table 

 is that for the east coast, which has probably the most cosmopol- 

 itan population (and also the most intensive farming, as will be 

 shown in a later chapter), but that in the Middle Florida hammock 

 belt is next lowest, for a different reason, namely, the large per- 

 centage of negroes available for kinds of work that require no ed- 

 ucation. 



Compulsory school attendance laws, which are now in force to 

 some degree in every state, tend to reduce illiteracy among the na- 

 tive population, but if unskilled laborers are still needed they are 

 simply imported or invited from countries with low standards of 

 living to take the place of the forcibly "uplifted" natives, as has 

 happened on a large scale with disquieting > results in many north- 

 ern and western states. f 



SCHOOLS. 



The biennial reports of the State Superintendent of Public In- 

 struction contain a vast amount of information about the public 

 schools of Florida and its counties, that has never been utilized 

 as fully as it mlight be. The statistical data are probably even 

 more accurate than the average census returns, for schools and 

 pupils are not easily overlooked, and educators have long been ac- 

 customed to keeping exact records of enrollment, attendance, ex- 

 penditures, etc. Furthermore, the present State Superintendent 

 is an experienced statistician and a stickler for accuracy, and he 

 has probably kept the typographical errors (which mar so many 

 other State publications) in his reports down to a minimum. 



The school statistics used here are tfiose for year 1915-16. 

 Soon after that the world war made conditions somewhat abnor- 



*Ellsworth Huntington, in his book "Civilization and Climate" (1915), 

 noticed that Florida had a very low native white illiteracy percentage for such a 

 supposedly "enervating" climate, and tried to explain it on the ground that "so 

 many northern people have moved there to raise oranges." That is only a par- 

 tial explanation, though, for northerners constitute only about one-eighth of the 

 population of the whole State, and an equal number of people coming from 

 Georgia to run sawmills or turpentine stills would have about the same effect. 



tThis was discussed in the comparison of rural and urban population, a few- 

 pages back. See also Geog. Review 8:274-275. "Oct.-Nov., 1919" (January, 

 1920.) 



