One of the great difficulties I had to encounter was the large number of families that could not read. These I found every day. When I would show my books and urge them to buy, the reply was, “_Oh, none of us can’t read._” I soon saw the necessity of planning some means to remedy this evil, and began to establish little Sunday-schools in each neighborhood. I would hunt up the best reader I could find for a teacher, furnish them with a small library of books, give them the best direction I could how to conduct it, and set them to work. Although some of these schools were very superficially conducted, and in many cases there was nothing done in them but teaching young and old to read, still they had the effect of rousing the mind to the acquisition of knowledge, and preparing the way of the Lord. Many of these schools accomplished great things, and resulted in the establishing of little churches. Others seemed to fail, except so far as they woke in the minds of some a thirst for knowledge.
Some families I could not prevail on to take a book as a gift, for fear there was some trick about it. Clock pedlars had been through some portions of the country a while before, sold the cheap clocks at thirty dollars apiece, and took notes for the pay, which had been collected in many cases by distress-sales. They would tell me how they had been treated, and that they were afraid I should send some one for the pay. I often avoided this objection by lending the book, and writing on it, “Loaned till I call for it.”
Another great difficulty we had to encounter with these unlettered masses was their prejudice against education. Almost every day I had to meet this objection: “Oh, I don’t want my children learned to read; it will spoil them. I have got along very well without reading, and so can they.”
I had now been about ten months in the colporteur work, and seeing the great necessity for scores of men to engage in it, I thought I could raise the salaries, and employ one or two others to carry it on. I soon raised $150 to pay a man for a year, and Providence directed me to a good man to do the work. I then succeeded in finding another good man, and raising his salary; and in one month, by the Divine blessing, I raised and paid over for the support of colportage $750, and these efforts were continued till the colporteur work was extended throughout the more destitute regions in all Western Virginia.