In The Book of the Journeyman, Albert Jay Nock shares a few thoughts on illiteracy:
When a missionary asked Horace Greeley for a subscription to help keep people from going to hell, Horace refused, saying “there aren’t half enough of them going there as it is.”I confess I feel just that way about Secretary Wilbur’s demand that the churches join in a great drive to eliminate illiteracy. It seems that the 1920 census reported nearly five million illiterates in our population, and the Secretary of the Interior is worried about it and wants to get them all taught to read. When I think of the kind of thing they would be likely to read, and how little good it would do them, I am disposed to congratulate them warmly on their present immunity, and to wish there were many more like them.