ABSTRACT

But what created that view, and did the 1914 generation differ from its predecessors? Several influences created this global view. First, nearly the entire working class was literate by 1914. By 1893, 95 per cent of workers could read. Twenty years earlier, the figure had been 78 per cent.4 Furthermore, the type of literacy differed between the two generations. The earlier generation’s literacy was minimal and unequal to the task of regular reading. It had been only what historian R.K. Webb called ‘a potential reading public’.5 The generation of 1914, by contrast, enjoyed a near universal, functional literacy. It was an actual reading public. This mass literacy spurred the growth of mass, national newspapers. National papers with circulations of over 500,000 became common.