In any real sense there was no publicly supported system for training the child.

A few wretched hovels, scattered through a sparsely settled country, served as school houses; a few uninspiring and neglected women, earning perhaps $50 or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers; a few groups of anemic and listless children, attending school for only forty days a year--such was the preparation for life which most Southern states gave the less fortunate of their citizens.

The glaring fact that emphasized the outcome of this official carelessness was an illiteracy, among white men and women, of 26 per cent.

Among the Negroes it was vastly larger.
The first exhortation to reform came from the Wautauga Club, which Page had organized in Raleigh in 1884.

After Page had left his native state, other men began preaching the same crusade.