The role of literacy in the social mobility of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), born in Boston, left school at the age of ten to assist his father. Franklin was self-taught intellectual, reading Xenophon, Plutarch, Bunyan, Locke, etc., which gave him the social mobility working in a printing shop, and later having his own printing shop. Franklin had a famous publication called "Poor Richard's Almanack", he made discoveries in the science of electrostatics and he was a member of the Federal Constitutional Convention. Thanks to literacy, Franklin became an accomplished and important man in the history of the United States.