Making U.S. Readers in the Early Twentieth Century by Kathryne A. Bevilacqua A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in the University of Michigan 2016 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Megan L. Sweeney, Chair Professor June M. Howard Professor Mary C. Kelley Professor Susan Scott Parrish © Kathryne A. Bevilacqua 2016 To my parents ii Acknowledgements Research for this project was supported by a Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant, which allowed me to travel to archives in California and Illinois. Special thanks to the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University, in particular Tim Noakes, who confirmed that John P. Wolden’s copy of the Country Life Reader had indeed found a home in Palo Alto and provided the photographs appearing in Chapter 2. Thanks to the American Library Association Archives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in particular Cara Setsu Bertram, who helped during my visit and later reviewed the permissions for the images in Chapter 4. Thanks to the University of Kentucky, in particular Matthew Harris, who provided a digital copy of a draft version of the Indian’s First Book from the Cora Wilson Stewart Papers. Thanks to the University of Michigan libraries, whose stacks and catalogues proved to be full of serendipitous discoveries. Finally, while no materials from the Fanny Butcher Papers made it into this version of the project, I am grateful to the Newberry Library in Chicago for providing my first real archive experience back in October 2010. The excitement of that trip has sustained this work throughout. In addition to these physical archives and the archivists who manage them, I must also acknowledge that this project would have been all but impossible without the digital archives and search tools provided by ProQuest, HathiTrust, and Google Books. My deepest thanks go to my committee, who, in their mentorship and scholarship, have been unparalleled models of curiosity, generosity, and care. Mary, Scotti, June, and Meg have each left their mark on this project in obvious and imperceptible ways, and the timely, trenchant questions they have asked of me and my work will continue to shape my thinking on reading, history, and literature. I am especially thankful for Meg, who has been my most “critical reader” in every possible positive sense of the term. Her patience and willingness to see the possibilities of my work when I could see only the problems has been an unwavering source of support throughout this process. Thanks to the American Studies Consortium at the University of Michigan for sponsoring a fruitful workshop of a draft of Chapter 4. Special thanks to Christie Allen, Lizzie Hutton, and especially Julia Hansen for the exchanges of writing, ideas, and encouragements. To the rest of my cohort-mates and colleagues—in particular, Adam Sneed and Anna Sheaffer, John Paul and Ryan Hampstead, Emily Waples and Anthony LoSapio, and Kristin Fraser—thank you for making Michigan feel like home. Special commendation goes to Logan Scherer, who, in our year as housemates and six years as friends, taught me that while graduate school isn’t all diamonds and rosé, it should be. And thank you to Sarah Mass, who I hope will keep accepting my final acknowledgement in many more projects to come. Finally, thanks to my family for their unconditional support. To my sister Lauren and my friend Ty, thank you for ensuring that California remains “home” no matter how far I wander. My Aunt Lynda remains the original English major in the family, and I thank her for all she has done to instill a love of words in me from an early age. And of course, I thank my parents, who have done so much for me with so much love. iii Table of Contents Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................v List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ix Introduction Reading to Become, Becoming Readers ....................................................................................1 Chapter 1 “Do what it says to do”: Standardized Reading and Silent Reading Tests ..............................29 Chapter 2 “What a farmer reads shows in his farm”: Learning to be Literate with Adult Reading Primers ..............................................................75 Chapter 3 “To guide the right readers to the right books”: Newspaper Book Reviews and Typologies of Ordinary Reading .........................................123 Chapter 4 “A reading army as no army ever was before”: The American Library Association’s Campaign for Books and Reading in World War I ....173 Conclusion What Can Reading Do For You? ...........................................................................................235 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................247 iv List of Figures 1.1: Part of the Ayres Handwriting Scale ......................................................................................40 1.2: Passage 1 from the Starch Silent Reading Test ......................................................................42 1.3: Scoring Key for Brown’s Silent Reading Test, “The Long Slide,” using the idea-counting method ...............................................................................................................................42 1.4: A scoring scale for the short response section of Thorndike’s Reading Scale demonstrating the possibility for partial credit ..........................................................................................50 1.5: Answers from a completed Thorndike exam bound in Laura Ada Savage’s MA thesis, “A Comparison of Certain Reading Tests and their Correlation with Intelligence” ...............53 1.6: An “Eskimo who lives in the far north” from Burgess’s Picture Supplement 1 test ..............59 1.7: A “savage Indian” in war regalia from Burgess’s Picture Supplement 1 test ........................59 1.8: A classroom wall chart made of movable name cards ............................................................64 1.9: An individual progress chart in reading comprehension ........................................................64 1.10: Two histograms showing the distribution of reading ability in a control group and a group of “defect cases” ................................................................................................................66 1.11: An individual student’s age and ability on various reading and general intelligence tests ..66 1.12: An “error profile” chart showing errors in different dimensions of reading ........................66 2.1: First lesson of the Country Life Reader First Book, “I can read and write” ...........................93 2.2: “We will read at home” ..........................................................................................................93 2.3: Illustration of “Keep your wagon under shelter” ....................................................................96 2.4: Illustration of “Lazy, shiftless people live in dirty, ugly homes” ...........................................96 2.5: Full page of “Keep your wagon under shelter” ......................................................................97 2.6: Full page of “Lazy, shiftless people live in dirty, ugly homes” ..............................................97 v 2.7: “Results of Keeping Children From School” .......................................................................110 2.8: Lesson plans from The Home Teacher showing the conjugations of household verbs .................................................................................................................................113 2.9: Lesson plans from The Home Teacher showing the conjugations of household verbs .................................................................................................................................113 2.10: A copy of Stewart’s Country Life Reader First Book, inscribed by John P. Wolden .............................................................................................................................122 2.11: A copy of Stewart’s Country Life Reader First Book, inscribed by John P. Wolden .............................................................................................................................122 3.1: Image of the Tribune’s “literary critic” from the Pictured Encyclopedia of the World’s Greatest Newspaper .........................................................................................................152 4.1: March 1918 American Library Association campaign for books at the New York Public Library..............................................................................................................................173 4.2: March 1918 campaign for books at the New York Public Library,