For Alabama White Boys

Fourth most illiterate of the United States is Alabama; 16.1% of its total population (2,573,000) can neither read nor write.* Alabama education has had no great patron like Delaware's Pierre Samuel du Pont or New England's Edward Stephen Harkness. Last week, however, it was revealed that Alabama would get some $7,500,000 worth of brand new boys' schools, bequest of the late Harvey G. Woodward, Birmingham real estate and iron man who died last November.

Terms of the will were explicit, tightly limiting the use of the money. Each Woodward school is to be built at least 15 miles from the nearest town each will enroll up to 200 youths. They must be U. S.-born sons of U. S.-born or British-blooded parents. Students will enter between the ages of 12 and 18; preference wil be given to those who plan to take a full course of high school and college work. All the teachers must be northerners (to show Alabamans that damyankees are little different from themselves). There will be no formal grades or rating by classes, no foreign language instruction, no graduation exercises, no interschool games, no secret societies, no religious instruction, no building for any Godly purpose.

Harvey G. Woodward made a fortune in Birmingham and Manhattan real estate and in his family's Woodward Iron Co. Bluff, hearty, he scorned any show of wealth, frequently wore khaki trousers, woolen shirts. In life he made known his views on education and religion to only a few intimates. Born of an Episcopal family, of British ancestry, he was never a church member, never a Ku Kluxer. He believed that religion is a personal matter, that church dogma should not be taught as fact. His reason for placing his chain-schools in the country, for restricting enrolment to native or British-blooded whites, was that isolation and a common background would give his youths a better chance to study, his schools a better chance to succeed. First two school wil be started on farm lands included in the foundation. In charge is a board of trustees, all of them Mr. Woodward's close friends. Should they decided 25 years hence that the schools are not successful, the foundation will be divided between Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Woodward's alma mater) and a loan fund for students under 25 years of age.

* More illiterate are Louisiana (21%), South Carolina (18.1%), Mississippi (17.2%). In respect to illiteracy among native whites, Alabama ranks seventh after New Mexico, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina (1920 census).

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