William McGuffey: Mentor to American Industry

Sound Bite

Thanks to William Holmes McGuffey, frontier America s literacy rate was the world's highest, producing four generations of American leadership in the arts, science, and engineering. In his much-loved series of "readers, McGuffey revolutionized education in America, merging basic principles with classic readings. Throughout Prof. Skrabec s research on American industrialists, the name William McGuffey kept popping up. William McGuffey was clearly the mentor of many of America s greatest capitalists. Almost all had been educated using the McGuffey Reader and developed their belief systems in one-room schoolhouses. Now his story, too, is told.

About the Book

McGuffey Readers were best sellers only surpassed in America by the Bible and Webster s Dictionary. In 2008, the McGuffey Eclectic Reader was ranked with Thomas Paine s Common Sense and Alexander Hamilton s The Federalist Papers as books that changed the course of U.S. history. Published originally in the early 1830s, by 1920 over one hundred fifty million had been sold. Even today, sales average about thirty thousand a year. No single series of books dominated America as the McGuffey Readers did from 1836 to 1920. The texts were the source of knowledge and motivation for American industrialists such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, H. J. Heinz, George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as the founder of Kroger Company A. H. Morrill. McGuffey instilled the basic principles of capitalism and democracy, while promoting the basic virtue of giving to and helping the poor. The McGuffey Readers are as much the root of American philanthropy as they are the root of American capitalism. Many American presidents, such as Lincoln, Harrison, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, Harding, Garfield, McKinley, Truman, and Roosevelt attributed their scholarship to the McGuffey Reader. The list of Supreme Court and Federal judges is just as long. McGuffey approached education as a moralistic adventure. He interwove morals, American history, religion, and virtues into basic lessons. McGuffey more than anyone helped defined the American psyche.

Introduction

While McGuffey’s nationalism stood out, the suggested role as a proponent of capitalism is not direct. McGuffey promoted fundamental rights that led to America embracing capitalism, but he placed charity far ahead of making money. McGuffey’s capitalism was far from survival of the fitness, so popular at the time. McGuffey felt the right of property was at the core of America, but with that right came a duty, the duty of property owners to help and care for the less fortunate.

In fact, McGuffey spends a disproportionate amount of effort on the duties of capitalists to those less fortunate. McGuffey did not use Christianity to justify or promote capitalism but to modify the very soul of capitalism, in particular, to morph the root individual greed of capitalism into charity for the community, to measure the capitalist not by how much he made but how much he gave.…Another area of new research emphasis was in the Scotch-Irish background of McGuffey, which was shared by many of the Reader alumni. The “Scotch-Irish” or “Scots-Irish” defined early American beliefs, philosophy, and its economic success. The term Scotch-Irish designated a loose amalgamation of the Ulster Scots- Irish, lowland Scotch, Presbyterians, and a mix of Protestant Scotch and Irish in America.1 Even some early Irish Catholics took to calling themselves Scots-Irish to avoid discrimination.

The Scots-Irish dominated the colonial frontier, and the formation of the American system in all aspects. Fifteen American presidents have claimed Scotch-Irish ancestry including three of pure Ulster Presbyterian lineage: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, and Chester Arthur. Recent presidents include Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Philosophers and other leaders included Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, James Madison, John Calhoun, Daniel Boone, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston, and twenty-one signers of the Declaration of Independence.It was the American Scotch-Irish enlightenment followed the great Scotch enlightenment of the 18th century. Inventors, thinkers, and creators of Scotch-Irish flourished such as Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Francis Scott Key, Adam Smith, Dave Hume, Charles Wilson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and countless Scottish-born writers. The basic ideas of capitalism were embodied in the writings of Scottish philosophers. The Scotch-Irish excelled in all phases of trade and American industry, claiming the likes of Thomas Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford.

The Scotch-Irish started and dominated industries such as pig iron, steel, whiskey, hemp, cotton, and wool. Especially in business, these Scots-Irish recognized each other like an informal clan of Scottish reciprocity going back to frontier days. This forgotten American race, more than any other immigrant group, is responsible for our way of life.While it is often discussed in famous biographies, no book has addressed the broader picture of this group’s heritage and legacy as chronicled by William McGuffey. William McGuffey was a reflection of his Scotch-Irish heritage. His belief in property rights, thrift, common schools, moralistic education, political free education, hatred of taxes, state-rights, charity, and giving are directly traceable to McGuffey’s heritage.The lessons of politics tearing the Presbyterian Church apart inspired McGuffey’s non-sectarian approach to education. McGuffey’s own sect of the Covenanters had opposed all political issues from being discussed in church.While McGuffey Readers were profoundly Christian, they remained non-denominational and could be used in common public schools. Understanding William McGuffey and his times requires an understanding of the Scotch-Irish American. This once dominant segment of America has now blended into the melting pot becoming the “lost tribe of America.”