That's how the anarchist, modern liberal and socialist ideas spread through Europe. You had this guys doing a manual job while someone was reading for them the classics and the new books on Politics and Philosophy, then you had a powerful and organized working class. Amazing.
Why did the factory owners pay for (or at least allow) those sorts of books to be read? Wouldn't they view it as against their interests?
I think most lectors were paid by workers pooling some of their money, not by a factory owner.
The capitalist didn't always know what was going on in their factories. Besides that, workers used to pay somebody to read for them, or they would select someone from their own group.