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.