Keskustelu:Quote mining examples

I guess I have to take a little exception to the premise here: "...Or that education, book reading, and scholarship were higher in Palmyra than London? Can anyone take this assertion seriously?" My understanding of the literacy rate in the United States in comparison to the literacy rate in England, at this time in history, is that the vast majority of white Americans were literate, while in England this was nowhere near the case. Before printers became more common in English America, a large part of the trade between England and America was, in fact, books. The notion that there was a larger proportion of people in Palmyra who not only read, but also owned books, than in London, is not at all unlikely. Of course, the sheer number of book-owning people in London definitely exceeded the population of Palmyra and its surrounds, but as to literacy rate Palmyra would have had London beat all around. It is always a mistake to simply assume that because something might be true today that it was true a hundred and fifty years ago. And consider that in little Podunk Palmyra there was a printer who could print major books! That was the case because there was a local market for the product of E. B. Grandin's press; Palmyra was not full of ignorant, unlettered, country bumpkins. Well, maybe there were a lot of country bumpkins, but in contrast to Mother England at the time, almost all our country bumpkins could read. Mike Clark 14:50, 6 Nov 2005 (EST)