passed a law requiring a certain number of schools in each of the 79
provinces: this requirement being below the very low standards
prevailing at that time in other European countries. Yet in 1909 it
was found that only four provinces had the required number of
elementary schools, and at the rate of increase then prevailing it
would have taken 150 years to catch up. Seventy-five per cent of the
population were wholly illiterate, and 30,000 towns and villages had
no government schools at all. The government owed nearly a million and
a half dollars in unpaid salaries to the teachers. The private schools
were nearly all "nuns' schools", which taught only needle-work and
catechism; the punishments prevailing in them were "cruel and
disgusting."

As to the location of the schools, a report of the Minister of
Education to the Cortes, the Parliament of Spain, sets forth as
follows:

More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many of
these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There
are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with
slaughter houses, with stables. One school forms the
entrance to a cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the
master's table while the last responses are being said.
There is a school into which the children cannot enter until
the animals have been sent out to pasture. Some are so small
that as soon as the warm weather begins the boys faint for
want of air and ventilation. One school is a manure-heap in
process of fermentation, and one of the local authorities
has said that in this way the children are warmer in winter.
One school in Cataluna adjoins the prison. Another, in