READING, a city of south-eastern Pennsylvania, U.S.A., the county seat of Berks county; on the Schuylkill river, 58 m. N.W. of Philadelphia. It is on Federal highways 22, 222, 422 and i20 ; has a municipal airport ; and is served by the Pennsylvania and the Reading railways, interurban trolleys, motorbus and truck lines. Pop. (1920) 107,784 (9o% native white) ; 1930 Federal census 111,171. An unusually large proportion of the population (88% in 1920) are natives of the State, and the "Pennsylvania German" element predominates. The city occupies 9.5 sq.m. on the east bank of the river, at an altitude ranging from 242 to 1,100 feet. To the east rises Mt. Penn (I,Ioo ft.) and to the south Neversink mountain (878 ft.). There are several summer hotels and sanatoria on the neighbouring hills. The city's parks and play grounds cover 600 acres. Penn Common (5o ac.) is a recreation ground in the heart of the city, reserved for the public when the town was laid out. On the eastern slope of Mt. Penn is a park of 63 ac. and a boulevard winds along the southern slope of the mountain to the pagoda on the summit, which commands a wide view of the surrounding country. Among the interesting landmarks in the environs are several colonial farmhouses, the Conrad Weiser farm and sites of early forts and iron furnaces.
The public-school system comprises continuation, evening and summer schools, in addition to the usual instruction from kinder garten through high school. Pennsylvania State college and the University of Pennsylvania maintain extension centres in Reading, and it is the seat of Schuylkill college (Evangelical; 1926). The public library contains over 5o,000 volumes and has three branch stations; the county historical society has a building full of inter esting exhibits ; and the public museum and art gallery occupy a beautiful new building, completed in 1926. Among the displays in the museum is a fine private collection of butterflies, owned by the curator. The city supports a symphony orchestra. It is also noted for the cultivation of rare peonies and irises. There are two daily papers ; weeklies published in Polish and Italian and one devoted to the interests of labour and socialism; and the monthly organ of the retail coal merchants of Pennsylvania.
Reading has operated under a commission form of government since 1912. It is the centre of Pennsylvania's first super-power system, which supplies electric current to the region extending from Harrisburg to eastern New Jersey. The water-supply is filtered mountain water, stored in reservoirs with a capacity of 216,000,00o gal., and the city's daily consumption averages 20,000,000 gallons. The assessed valuation of property for 1927 was $161,260,000. Reading has a large retail and wholesale trade, and is an important shipping point for agricultural produce. It is within a short haul of the anthracite fields, and also of some of the richest bituminous coal-fields of the State. The classification yards of the Reading company are a vast distributing centre for anthra cite shipments consigned to the East, West and South. Indus
trially, Reading ranks third among the cities of Pennsylvania, with an output in 1927 valued at $121,094,958. There are some 700 manufacturing establishments in the city and its immediate suburbs, including the shops of the Reading railway, and the largest plants in the country producing wrought iron pipe, glove silk underwear, full-fashioned hosiery, glass door-knobs, goggles, optical goods, children's shoes, narrow silk fabrics, and certain kinds of hosiery knitting machines and lace-making machinery. Reading is the principal centre in the country for the manufacture of wool felt hats, and ranks second in the production of hosiery and knit goods and builders' hardware. There is a large propor tion of skilled mechanics in the population, and many of the trades are organized. The proportion of women employed is rela tively large (30.5% of all ten years of age and over in 1920) ; the proportion of boys and girls (1 o to 15 years of age) working for wages is 13% and the proportion attending school is also high. (68% of all 7 to 20 years of age). Bank clearings in 1927 aggre gated $223,700,000.
Reading was founded in 1748 by Thomas and Richard, sons of William Penn, and was named after the county-town of Berk shire, England. It was incorporated as a borough in 1783, as a city in 1847. Though there were many Germans among the first set tiers, the control of local affairs remained in the hands of the Eng lish colonists until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, after which, as the English were largely Loyalists, it passed to the Ger mans. In the French and Indian Wars Reading became a military base for a chain of forts along the Blue mountains. During the Revolution it was a depot of military supplies, and was the site of a prison camp in which the Hessians taken at the battle of Trenton were detained. This region was one of the first in America to manufacture iron and iron products. Cannon for use in the Revo lution were made here, and Reading supplied much of the heavy ordnance used by the Northern Army in the Civil War. The first cooking stove made in America was cast in the Hereford furnace, 20 m. E. of the city, in 1767. The industrial development of the town was greatly stimulated by the opening of the Schuylkill canal to Philadelphia in 1824 (abandoned in 1922), the Union canal to Lebanon and Middletown in 1828 (abandoned about 1880), and the Philadelphia and Reading railway in 1838. A company of Reading and Berks militiamen was the first unit to report to Gen. Washington at Cambridge in response to the call for troops by the Second Continental Congress; and the Ringgold light artillery (later known as "the First Defenders"), largely recruited from Reading and Berks county, was the first volunteer company to reach the national capital when Lincoln called for troops.