belt.

"There has always been, on the part of the Illiterate public, some
resentment against organized Literacy. In part, it has been due to the
high fees charged for Literate services, and to what seems, to many,
to be monopolistic practices. But behind that is a general attitude of
anti-intellectualism which is our heritage from the disastrous wars of
the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Chester Pelton has made
himself the spokesman of this attitude. In his view, it was men who
could read and write who hatched the diabolical political ideologies
and designed the frightful nuclear weapons of that period. In his
mind, Literacy is equated with '_Mein Kampf_' and '_Das Kapital_',
with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, with concentration camps and blasted
cities. From this position, of course, I beg politely to differ.
Literate men also gave us the Magna Charta and the Declaration of
Independence.

"Now, in spite of a lunatic fringe in the Consolidated Illiterates'
Organization who want just that, Chester Pelton knows that we cannot
abolish Literacy entirely. Even with modern audio-visual recording,
need exists for some modicum of written recording, which can be
rapidly scanned and selected from--indexing, cataloguing, tabulating
data, et cetera--and for at least a few men and women who can form and
interpret the written word. Mr. Pelton, himself, is the owner of a
huge department store, employing over a thousand Illiterates; he must
at all times have the services of at least fifty Literates."

"And pays through the nose for them, too!" Pelton growled. It was more
than fifty; and Russ Latterman had been forced to get twenty extras
sent in for the sale.