In connexion with the ignorance of the American Middle West
over here an American friend sends me the following :- " In view of the prevailing impression in London that the Middle West is behind the rest of the country, or at least the people of the Eastern coast, let me point out one or two facts.
Iowa, the State forming the heart of the Middle West, has the lowest rate of illiteracy in the Union, if not in the world—only 1.1 per cent of the entire population of 2,404,000. It is the greatest tax-paying State in the Union. There is not a single township in the State that is not circulated efficiently by one or more news- papers, printed daily, and containing telegraph dispatches from all over the world.
Far from being out of sympathy with Great Thitain, the Middle Western farmers are the very people in America who hold the highest respect for Great Britain and British traditions. It is a grave mistake to minimize the intelligence or the judgment of the rural sections of America. The New York Press is always prone to patronize the Middle West as being provincial and uninformed, when as a matter of fact New York is almost as provincial as any other place. The two Chicago papers, the Tribune and the News, maintain a lar&e,, r foreign staff of correspondents than all of the newspapers in New York combined."
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