Part of that I think was due to lack of materials with which to learn as well. Paper was a luxury that many didn't have much of. Schools had the students use slates and chalk when learning because it would have been too expensive to provide paper just for practice writing and doing math back then. That's assuming that there was a school in the area of course and that the kids weren't busy helping out on the family farm since most areas were agriculture based. Of course books were very cheaply priced around the turn of the 20th century too. I've seen ads in a replica of the old Sears catalog from around 1910 where a book cost 5 or 10 cents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
I can believe that the typical college graduate of a bygone era read more and better than today's. But weren't a lot of people semi-illiterate in those golden days? I can't believe that they did much reading.
It seems to me that often the proletariat of today is being compared to the upper classes of yesterday. Naturally it is going to appear that people read less.
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