Word: libraryless
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Wesley bade his U.S. followers use the printing press too. Here it worked still better. Backbone of its success: circuit riders who stuffed their saddlebags with Methodist literature, supplemented their slim stipends by doubling as book peddlers. Methodism's strength in the Middle West dates directly to libraryless days when preachers' saddlebags were a valued source of reading matter. Every minister was also a subscription agent, and by 1830 the Methodist Christian Advocate had the largest circulation of any U.S. periodical -30,000 (its 1941 circulation: 275,000). It grew so rapidly that the post office...