antedate for 'literacy', 1880

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

This from MOA; the OED gives 1883. My guess is that Fred or someone
else has already scooped this one, though.

Geoff

For the census returns show that crime, immorality, and insanity are
greater in proportion
to population in those communities which have been long under the
influence of the public-school system than they are in those which
have been without it. The system, be it remembered, is of New England
origin, and the New England States have been longest under its
influence. The States south of the Potomac are those which were
longest without it; and, indeed, in them it has hardly yet obtained
favor or foothold. Let us compare the statistics of population, of
literacy and illiteracy, and of crime in these two classes of States,
carefully eliminating from our calculation the influence of foreign
immigration upon the criminal record of the Northern States, which
the particularity of the census returns enables us to do.

The Public-School Failure, by Richard Grant White: The North American
review. December 1880, pp. 537-551

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