Literacy is not a deus ex machina descending helpfully from the clouds to usher successful a new, much conscionable governmental order. At the opening of the twentieth period Germany had been regarded arsenic 1 of the astir literate and civilized nations connected world and yet successful the 1930s it descended into barbarism—hence the aged cliché of the attraction campy defender relaxing with Goethe aft a hard time of slaughter. Communications technologies are not the lone origin (or frankly adjacent the astir important factor) shaping the workout of power.
Many things tin spell incorrect with a nine and its politics: war, famine, pestilence, economical collapse, hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding and clime change. Literacy volition not invariably sphere sanity and ideology successful the look of a clime catastrophe oregon a devastating economical crisis. But, for each this, I judge that past shows america that people tends to assistance marque a nine much rational, much egalitarian and much antiauthoritarian wide and successful the agelong term.
It would astir apt beryllium going excessively acold to echo the sentiment of the Victorian historiographer Thomas Carlyle, who is expected to person proclaimed, with diagnostic confidence, that to invent the printing property was to marque ideology inevitable. But it is nary mishap that modern ideology arsenic we cognize it today, successful which each adults tin ballot careless of enactment oregon class, archetypal arrived successful the property of wide literacy successful the precocious nineteenth and aboriginal twentieth centuries. It was past that working-class movements, organized and made articulate done print, began to triumph concessions from their governments successful the signifier of pensions, healthcare, workplace protections and, crucially, voting rights.
I judge that past shows america that people tends to assistance marque a nine much rational, much egalitarian and much antiauthoritarian wide and successful the agelong term.
It is worthy re-emphasizing what a caller improvement a literate, politically informed nationalist is. The eighteenth-century detonation of journals, newspapers and scandalous pamphlets is simply a marvelous communicative but it passed galore laboring radical by. As precocious arsenic the extremity of the nineteenth century, the Victorian writer George Bourne was capable to observe that his gardener had “first heard of the American Civil War immoderate 30 years aft Appomattox, erstwhile helium learned that a comparative was collecting a widow’s pension for her husband, who had fought and died successful the conflict.” To galore moving radical the satellite of antiauthoritarian politics, acold distant successful Westminster oregon Washington oregon Paris, existed astir beyond the realm of imagining. The aboriginal British Labour Party person J.R. Clynes, calved successful 1869, reckoned that to the fabric spinners of Oldham, among whom helium had grown up, “the remainder of the satellite was a shadowy spot merging into the boundaries of unreality.”
But by the extremity of the nineteenth period things had already begun to change. Newspaper readership exploded successful the Victorian era. Already, betwixt 1760 and 1820, the yearly income of London newspapers had accrued from 9.5 to astir 30 million. And this was lone the beginning: determination were akin developments connected the Continent. “The circulation of the regular property successful Paris mushroomed from 1 cardinal successful 1870 to 5 cardinal successful 1910,” writes the historiographer Richard Evans. As newspapers dispersed and communications improved, the ‘public sphere’ expanded acold beyond the mediate class, to encompass laborers and mill workers: “The summation successful literacy, the dispersed of education, the standardization of nationalist languages, the hold of communications done railways, newspapers, magazines, mass-produced pamphlets and flysheets—all this drew the municipality and agrarian masses into the wider governmental discourse,” Evans writes. This was captious substance for democracy.
Democracy and rights were the explicit purpose of galore extremist writers. In the aboriginal nineteenth period successful Britain, a fig of extremist newspapers sprang up which aimed to equip their readers with the cognition and ideas indispensable to wrest powerfulness from their societal betters. As the working-class polemicist and exertion of The Poor Man’s Guardian James Bronterre O’Brien argued, “The cognition astir wanted by the radical is simply a cognition of their rights and duties arsenic members of society, and the wrongs committed connected them by those who person usurped the Government to their exclusion.”
According to the historiographer Kevin Williams, a emblematic extremist insubstantial of the 1830s mightiness transportation “accounts of trials of governmental activists, reports of nationalist meetings, addresses of celebrated orators, articles connected spiritual abuses, critiques of parliamentary debates, correspondence from readers.” Newspapers not lone informed their readers; they aimed to assistance them signifier politically. As good arsenic articles, they announced collections for important causes alongside each mode of governmental “meetings, events and occasions.”
Newspapers and books besides joined the dots betwixt seemingly disconnected events and items of gossip, helping readers to spot their problems successful abstract, systemic and governmental terms. As Williams explains, the pioneering working-class writer William Cobbett liked to archer his readers that their force was a ‘two-headed monster’ which helium called ‘The Thing.’ Its heads were “the ‘old corruption,’ the privileges of the Church and State, which had a deep-seated hatred for the poor, and the ‘war-profiteers, the merchants and bankers’ who placed intolerable burdens connected the mediocre labourers of Britain.” “Only betterment of Parliament,” Cobbett argued, “could decision the monster.”
Many historians are prone to presumption the extremist property of the aboriginal nineteenth period with dewy-eyed admiration and to deplore the aboriginal erosion of standards arsenic newspapers grew much commercialized and sensationalist. As always, literacy should not beryllium over-romanticized. Intellectuals were not being wholly absurd erstwhile they recoiled successful dismay from the trashiness of newspapers astatine the extremity of the nineteenth century. To work the fashionable property of the clip is not invariably to beryllium impressed by the sober and enlightened cognition of that era’s journalists. Examining an contented of Joseph Pulitzer’s paper the New York World from 1897, 1 historiographer turned up specified disappointingly unimproving items arsenic “Baby Elephants astatine School,” “Fire-Horse Saves a Child’s Life. With a Girl Nesting astatine His Feet He Refused to Respond to Gong’s Call” and “Her Dream Came True. Mrs Mueller Had Warning successful Her Sleep that Her Place Would Be Robbed.” Pulitzer aimed to people “what is original, distinctive, dramatic, romantic, thrilling, unique, curious, quaint, humorous, odd, apt to beryllium talked about.”
But the dissemination of adjacent sensationalized cognition could beryllium captious for the governmental information of mean people. The World ’s commercialized aspirations were not astatine each astatine likelihood with Pulitzer’s purpose to “expose each fraud and sham,” “fight each nationalist evils” and “battle for the radical with earnest sincerity.” His was a crusading paper. The World campaigned connected each mode of societal issues: babe deaths caused by contaminated milk, conditions successful intelligence hospitals (one newsman was told she could person a occupation astatine the insubstantial connected the information she successfully infiltrated an insane asylum), much progressive taxation.
An progressively divided, polarized and poorly informed nationalist lacks the accusation indispensable to clasp its leaders to account. Today, each excessively galore of america hazard becoming the prey of governmental tricksters and knaves.
In Britain, George Bourne observed first-hand the value of the increasing power of adjacent downmarket newspapers successful agrarian communities successful the aboriginal twentieth century. “Thanks to the inexpensive press,” helium wrote, “ideas and accusation astir the full satellite are uncovering their mode into the cottages of the valley.” For Bourne,
newspapers, too giving information, promote an acceptance of non-parochial views. The scholar of them is taken into the nationalist confidence. Instead of a constrictive colony tradition, nationalist opinions are astatine his disposal, and helium is helped to see, arsenic it were from the outside, the wide facet of questions which, but for the papers, helium would lone cognize by his idiosyncratic acquisition from the inside.
This meant, for instance, that a laborer mightiness statesman to recognize that “unemployment is simply a world-wide evil, which spreads similar an infectious disease, and whitethorn beryllium treated accordingly.” As Jonathan Rose comments: “Coal-heavers could present beryllium amazingly knowledgeable astir moving conditions, wages, royalties, transport, and commercialized unionism successful the mining industry.” For arsenic good arsenic circulating information, people dispersed habits of analytic thought. As Bourne noticed, “all unawares, the radical autumn into the momentous wont of reasoning astir abstract ideas which would person been beyond the scope of their forefathers’ intelligence power.”
In the twentieth period galore nationalist newspapers sold millions of copies each day. In 1937, 90 per cent of Americans described themselves arsenic regular paper readers. There were greeting newspapers, evening newspapers, play newspapers, specializer newspapers and section newspapers. At 1 point, seventeen abstracted newspapers covered New York alone. Six were dedicated to Chicago. Never had accusation been much wide diffused among mean people. In 1942, Britain’s Mass-Observation programme recovered that “the precocious moving classes did not lag excessively acold down the mediate people successful their quality to sanction authorities ministers.” They had travel a agelong mode from the relatives of J. R. Clynes for whom the wider satellite was ‘shadowy’ and unknowable, and an adjacent longer mode from the Roman plebs we encountered successful Chapter Two who believed their person was the mythical Agamemnon.
The narration betwixt speechmaking and ideology is not nonstop oregon simple. It has ne'er been the lawsuit that a federation of liable citizens has rushed down to meal acceptable to use its captious and literate quality to elaborate paper reports of past night’s statement successful Parliament oregon Congress earlier dashing disconnected a missive to the section MP oregon Representative. But the communicative of twentieth-century ideology from Watergate to the Pentagon Papers is inconceivable without print. To work adjacent a downmarket newspaper, particularly 1 from the mid-twentieth period earlier newspapers were compelled to vie with TV, is often to beryllium amazed astatine the serious-mindedness of its journalism.
Tabloid newspapers, for each their much-lamented faults, study connected authorities successful depth, gully attraction to obscure overseas conflicts, transportation connected investigative journalism and pb campaigns to overturn injustices. As precocious arsenic the aboriginal 1970s, the British tabloid the Daily Mirror ran a four-page supplement ‘Mirrorscope,’ which aimed to little its working-class readers connected “international affairs, politics, industry, science, the arts and business.” And adjacent if wide literacy did not crook each national into an anxious breakfast-time browser of the latest deliberations of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, it gave the much ambitious members of the moving people a accidental to get the cognition and critical-thinking skills indispensable to efficaciously advocator for their interests. Highly literate moving men and women were astir ever successful the vanguard of campaigns for societal and antiauthoritarian change. The memoirs of twentieth-century working-class politicians crossed the Western satellite echo with testimonies to the powerfulness of words.
“Ideas are power,” argued the national activistic John Brophy, who had begun moving successful Pennsylvania’s ember mines astatine the property of twelve. Education and speechmaking were required to nutrient the “leaders, the tacticians [and] the philosophers” of the labour movement. In Britain, J. R. Clynes reckoned that words were the “mighty levers whereby the powerfulness of the full satellite could beryllium much evenly and reasonably distributed for the payment of my kind.” In his days moving successful a mill helium saved up his scanty income to bargain books—first a dictionary, past a Bible, followed by Shakespeare’s plays and the essays of Francis Bacon.
These men understood that a colonisation that does not work volition find itself ripe for exploitation by the affluent and powerful. Charles Duncan was different of the pioneering and highly literate Labour politicians of the aboriginal twentieth period who “invested his spare currency successful books, promoted the instauration of nationalist libraries, and urged workers to work the past classics.” He believed that “the unread antheral has a constrictive outlook, and easy goes astray; helium is the athletics of governmental tricksters and the instrumentality for each knaves.” In the surface age, inequalities of cognition we erstwhile thought we had banished are returning. An progressively divided, polarized and poorly informed nationalist lacks the accusation indispensable to clasp its leaders to account. Today, each excessively galore of america hazard becoming the prey of governmental tricksters and knaves.
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From The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society by James Marriott. Copyright © 2026. Published by Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC.
English (US) ·