Note 59 — Chapter IX

According to the last census, there were twenty states below Michigan, and only five above her. But even this estimate, favorable as it is in the scale of states, does not allow Michigan an opportunity to appear in her true light, for it is well known that a great proportion of the illiterate population of this state is confined to a few counties. In Mackinaw and Chippewa counties there is one white person over twenty years of age to every five of the entire population that is unable to read and write. In Ottawa, one in fourteen; in Cass, one in twenty-two; in Wayne and Saginaw, each, one in thirty-six. On the other hand, there were eight organized counties in the state in which, according to the census referred to, there was not a single white inhabitant over twenty years of age that was unable to read and write. It is an interesting fact, at least to persons residing in the Northwest, that in Ohio also (on the Western Reserve) there were seven such counties, making fifteen in these two states, while in all New England there were but two—Franklin in Massachusetts, and Essex in Vermont.