In a short paragraph, explain the role of literacy in the social mobility of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin's Autobiography is considered the quintessentially American autobiography as it describes the author's self-made "way to wealth". Franklin has also been hailed as the prototypical American man of the Enlightenment. His initial journey in the book from Boston to Philadelphia is considered symbolic of the transition from Puritan to Enlightenment values. The Autobiography revises Puritanism's moral virtues in a secularized way stressing the importance of industry and temperance in the path towards "moral perfection".