The net result was that “One in every four was wholly forgotten”—­that is, was unable to read and write.  And the worst of it all was that the victim of this neglect was not disturbed over his situation.  “The forgotten man was content to be forgotten.  He became not only a dead weight, but a definite opponent of social progress.  He faithfully heard the politician on the stump praise him for virtues that he did not have.  The politicians told him that he lived in the best state in the Union; told him that the other politicians had some hare-brained plan to increase his taxes, told him as a consolation for his ignorance how many of his kinsmen had been killed in the war, told him to distrust any one who wished to change anything.  What was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him.  Thus the ‘forgotten man’ became a dupe, became thankful for being neglected.  And the preacher told him that the ills and misfortunes of this life were blessings in disguise, that God meant his poverty as a means of grace, and that if he accepted the right creed all would be well with him.  These influences encouraged inertia.  There could not have been a better means to prevent the development of the people.”

Even more tragic than these “forgotten men” were the “forgotten women.”  “Thin and wrinkled in youth from ill-prepared food, clad without warmth or grace, living in untidy houses, working from daylight till bedtime at the dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of equal slovenliness, the mothers of joyless children—­all uneducated if not illiterate.”  “This sight,” Page told his hearers, “every one of you has seen, not in the countries whither we send missionaries, but in the borders of the State of North Carolina, in this year of grace.”

“Our civilization,” he declared, “has been a failure.”  Both the politicians and the preacher had failed to lift the masses.  “It is a time for a wiser statesmanship and a more certain means of grace.”  He admitted that there had been recent progress in North Carolina, owing largely to the work of McIver and Alderman, but taxes for educational purposes were still low.  What was the solution?  “A public school system generously supported by public sentiment and generously maintained by both state and local taxation, is the only effective means to develop the forgotten man and even more surely the only means to develop the forgotten woman. . . .”  “If any beggar for a church school oppose a local tax for schools or a higher school tax, take him to the huts of the forgotten women and children, and in their hopeless presence remind him that the church system of education has not touched tens of thousands of these lives and ask him whether he thinks it wrong that the commonwealth should educate them.  If he think it wrong ask him and ask the people plainly, whether he be a worthy preacher of the gospel that declares one man equal to another in the sight of God? . . .  The most sacred thing in the commonwealth and to the commonwealth