914 F597 UC-NRLF B 3 SM3 T3 .;VrT- ITbe "dntvetBit^ of CbtcaQo FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFBLLEK MAGAZINES OF A MARKET-METROPOLIS BEING A HISTORY OF THE LITERARY PERI- ODICALS AND LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY) BY HERBERT E. FLEMING A Reprint of Papers Entitled "The Literary Interests of Chicago," from The American Journal of Sociology, Vols. XI and XII Chicago, 1906 ' TLbc Xllntversitg of CbicaQO FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER MAGAZINES OF A MARKET-METROPOLIS BEING A HISTORY OF THE LITERARY PERI- ODICALS AND LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (department of sociology) BY HERBERT E. FLEMING A Reprint of Papers Entitled "The Literary Interests of Chicago," from T^e American Journal of Sociology, Vols. XI and XII Chicago, 1906 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS TABLE OF CONTENTS VOL. PAGE I. The Pioneer Periodicals of Prairie Days, 1845-1862 XI, 377 II. Periodical Literature Following the War 1865-1871 . XI, 396 III. Literary Periodicals Following the Chicago Fire, 1871-1880 XI, 499 IV. Journals for Letters in the Market-Metropo- lis, 1880-90 XI, 512 V. -Esthetic Periodicals of the World's Fair City, 1890-1900 XI, 784 VI. The Commercialized Magazines of a Cosmopoli- tan Center, 1900 to Date XII, 68 VII. Summary of General Conclusions, Including Statistics of the Periodicals XII, 112 1B5266 VERSITY OF THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO. I HERBERT E. FLEMING University of Chicago I. THE PIONEER PERIODICALS " We shall be slow to believe there is not talent enough in the West to maintain a character for a work of this kind." — From the Western Magazine, Chicago, October, 1845. " Present indications seem to show that we did not overrate the literary taste of the West, when we believed the western people able and willing to support a magazine of their own." — From the Western Magazine, Chicago, November, 1845. " * The literary interests of Chicago ' — they belong, do they not, in that important category where one discovers the historic ' snakes of Ireland ' ? " This whimsical question, put to the col- lector of material for these papers by a distinguished New York publisher, suggests a long-standing estimate of Chicago character. This city, the second in America and the metropolis of the Middle West, has not been noted for traits of aesthetic interest. Ever since the days of its earliest prominence as a small market-town, and through the quick years of phenomenal growth into a great business center and world-mart, the name " Chicago " has been the one above every city name standing for materialism. As a rough characterization, this has been accurate enough. And yet, from common knowledge, everyone knows that there have been in this community some manifestations of the aesthetic interest, including the literary interest. Just exactly what are the variations of the universal literary interest which arise in such a market-metropolis? That is the question which may well lead to a detailed search for more than the commonly known facts concerning this particular interest. The term " interests " is much in vogue among the leading pro- fessors of general sociology in America, as well as with the sociologists of Europe. Interests may be defined as the concrete, 377 378 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY working expressions of those constant forces generated by the daily desires of men, women, and children. The concept may wxll serve as the starting-mark for an endeavor to describe and explain the social process in whole or in part. It leads to the selection of some particular interest. The one thus picked out from the congeries of interests that go to make up the life of Chicago, as the subject for the reports here submitted, is a sub- division of the aesthetic interest. The main query as to the char- acter of the literary interest in this commercial city unfolds into many subsidiary questions. And since the idea of interests con- notes their interdependence in the social process as a whole, some of these questions are directed at tracing the relations of the literary interest to the other interests of Chicago; for example, to the business interests. Half are inquiries about literary pro- duction ; the others, on the reading done by all classes of people to satisfy the desire for the artistic through literary form — liter- ary consumption. In getting answers, the collection of facts for narrative reports on merely a few phases shows that in Chicago the literary interest has been greater in quantity, and more varied and interesting in quality, than is generally supposed, even among the local litterateurs. Efforts to establish literary magazines and periodicals in Chi- cago wxre begun as far back as the early prairie days. These attempts were the earliest budding of the creative literary desire in this locality ; and similar undertakings have been its most con- stant expression s^'nce then. All told, at least 306 magazines and journals, whose generic mark is an appeal chiefly to the aesthetic or artistic sense, have sprung up in Chicago ; and there have been some fifteen distinct varieties. Of this large crop, twenty-seven, or 9 per cent, of the total, germinated, lived their lives, and died in the forties and fifties. About these pioneer magazines and journals, as of those in each decadal period, one may ask many questions : What was the character of the typical literary periodicals ? What were the social factors in their origin? How go the stories of their struggles for permanence ? What were the interrelations between these publishing enterprises and other interests ? Was the literary THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 379 interest always engrafted on a business interest? What were the causes for the brevity of duration and early death of these periodicals? In reply, a half-dozen dusty files, to be found in the library of the Chicago Historical Society, will tell an interesting story. It is often said that Chicago is the graveyard of literary magazines. And it is true that in the vaults of the Historical Society library, the Public Library, the Newberry Library, and other institutions of Chicago, the remains of fifty-five such literary creations lie buried, the relics filed for all the periods. In gathering data on the magazines of the later periods, thirty-three men and women who were connected, as publishers, editors, or contributors, with forty-three Chicago literary periodicals, have been interviewed. Only three living witnesses of periodical events in the pioneer times could be found ; and two of these were merely newsboys in those days. General James Grant Wilson, of New York city, is the only surviving literary man who was among the editors directing campaigns for the periodic publication of literary efforts in the Chicago field before the Civil War. From his present liter- ary headquarters. General Wilson sent on illuminating recollec- tions of these undertakings. The histories of Chicago are more instructive concerning the literary development of the earlier periods than of the later, and they also furnish side-light on the economic and social conditions. However, they give no adequate literary history of Chicago. Even Rufus Blanchard, having himself, in 1858, undertaken the establishment of an ambitious quarterly, made no mention of literary magazines when he wrote a history of Chicago. It is, then, to the old files that we turn for the story of the pioneer periodicals. Although the impulse to write and to publish is a phenomenon of the individual, the constant reflection of environment, both physical and spiritual, or social, has shone in the literary maga- zines and papers of Chicago and "the West." This was clear and simple in those of the forties, the days of the western prairie pioneers. In the magazines of today it is clear, but complex. The keynote to which the literary publications of the midland metropolis have been attuned is westernism. In the sweep of six 380 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY decades of local, national, and international development, the character of this western spirit has unfolded in various modifica- tions. It has passed, with shading emphasis, through western sectionalism to national westernism and western nationalism, and has come, finally, to cosmopolitan westernism and western cos- mopolitanism. We find this at once apparent by dipping into these published records by periods. Nothing is stamped so clear on the pages of all the literary magazines and journals of Chicago, however, as the picture of the prairies and the expression of the western Zeitgeist of this section filling those of the period prior to our nation's Civil War — those of the forties and fifties. The titles proclaim this fact. The first weekly of predomi- nantly literary character was named, in response to the stimulus of environment, the Gem of the Prairie. This paper retained its prairie name from the founding in 1844 until it became the Sun- day edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1852. Before it was started, the Prairie Farmer, 1841-1905 — an agricultural journal which, during its pioneer stage, was largely literary in leaning — had set the copy for titles derived from the fields and lands. Sloan's Garden City, 1853-54, a weekly, achieved considerable prominence because of a serial story, by William H. Bushnell, entitled " Prairie Fire." This " tale of early Illinois " attracted many subscribers, and was copyrighted in January, 1854, and reprinted in pamphlet form. Finally, for a few months in 1856, D. B. Cooke & Co., booksellers, published the Prairie Leaf. The word "western" or the name "Chicago" appears in the titles of nearly all the early periodicals not named from the prairies. Only one in this period had a caption of dictinctly national significance ; and that one was most ephemeral. The first literary magazine, in standard magazine form, to be published in Chicago was the Western Magazine — October, 1845, to September, 1846 — from which quotations appear in the headpiece to this paper. In later decades there were two magazines given the same name. Other early ones with typical titles were the Garland of the West, July, 1845; the Lady's Western Magadne, 1848; the Youth's Western Banner, 1853; and the Western Garland, published simultaneously at Chicago, Louisville, and St. Louis for a short THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 381 time in 1856. The Chicago Ariel was a short-lived sprite of 1846. The Chicago Dollar Weekly, a Hterary journal of merit, existed through a part of the year 1849. The Chicago Record, 1857-62, was the longest-lived periodical during the latter part of the pioneer season, and one of the most important containing the city's name in its title. Both the Chicago and western sentiments were among the features, which — if we may quote a salutatory — " the Iron-willed Press has forever stamped" upon a meritorious literary-historical magazine having five monthly issues in 1857. Its name, printed in large letters, was the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is. This western interest the editors and publishers consciously avowed. It was heralded with virility in many salutatories and editorial announcements. The Literary Budget, a journal of truly high standard, on changing from a monthly to a weekly, said, January 7, 1854: The West should have a marked and original literature of its own. Writers of fiction have used up all the incidents of our glorious revolutionary period. The romantic scenery of the East, too, has been made to aid in the construction of some of the best romances ever written. We do not object to this. On the contrary, we rejoice — are thankful it is so. But a new field is open to authorship. We wish to present its advantages. The Great West, in her undulating prairies, deep-wooded highlands, mighty rivers, and remnants of aboriginal races, presents topics teeming with interest to every reader, and big with beautiful scenes for the artist's eye. The West is full of subject-matter for legend, story, or history. Sublime scenery to inspire the poet is not wanting. All that is lacking is a proper channel. This channel we offer. The Budget claims to be a western literary paper, and we invite writers to send us articles on western subjects, for publication. Such unqualified western sectionalism had its roots in the economic and political situation, and the facts regarding the popu- lation of Chicago and its environing prairies. In the late forties and early fifties Chicago was the growing center of a more or less isolated western or northwestern empire. Despite the lake trans- portation, which began in 1835, as Blanchard says, in his Dis- covery and Conquest of the Northwest, with a History of Chicago, "up to the era of railroads, the Mississippi River was a more important channel of trade to the state of Illinois than the lakes," 382 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY It was not until 1852 that lines of railroad giving connection with the eastern states entered Chicago. For four years before that time the engine "Pioneer," brought here on a brig, had been hauling trains on the Galena & Chicago Union Railway, which was the nucleus of the Northwestern system. Ever since 1837 the citizens had been active over a big internal improvement scheme for a railway system to cover the state as a unit ; and by 1850 a charter had been granted the Illinois Central, assuring a Mississippi Valley system centered in Chicago. The population when the first magazine was established, in 1845, numbered 12,083. ^^ grew rapidly to 84,113 by 1856. In the early part of this period the people composing it were chiefly native-born, the adventurous sons of Yankees in the seaboard section. When the foreign immigration set in heavily, during the later forties, the newcomers did not produce any marked effect by giving a varied, cosmopolitan character, such as masses of men from other lands have since contributed. These men from the states near the eastern seaboard had brought with them a tradition of American magazines which dated back to 1741, when Benjamin Franklin had established, on English models, the General Magazine and Historical Chronicle. But that recollection was of magazines that were, almost neces- sarily, of, by, and for a distinct section, many of them having had state names, such as the Massachusetts Magazine. And the magazines which came from the East for Chicago readers in the ante-Civil War days were emphatically of the East. But even these did not begin to come regularly to the West until 1850, after ten literary periodicals had already been attempted in Chi- cago. It should not be surprising that in their literary isolation these pioneers should have undertaken the creation of their own literature, and that their literary journals should have been as sectional in spirit as those they had known in their earlier homes. This tone in Chicago periodicals was not changed, but really heightened, by the coming of the seaboard city magazines which were then so markedly eastern in character. Mr. George H. Fergus, an old gentleman who today, at an office in Lake Street, continues the business of his father, Robert Fergus, Chicago's THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 383 first printer and the printer of several of Chicago's first peri- odicals, talks vividly of the first arrival of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. That was in 1850, when Harper's was founded. Getting copies from \V. W. Dannenhower, who two years later started publication of the Literary Budget, Mr. Fergus sold them at an eight-cent profit. By 1854 the Literary Budget contained notices of Putnam's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, and Knicker- bocker Magazine, which latter, by its very name, showed its sectionalism. The Atlantic Monthly, with its emphasis on the Atlantic idea, w^as not begun until 1857, the same year that saw the advent of the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is. In an article on "American Periodicals," October i, 1892, the Dial, a recognized authority, says : It is a little surprising that the eastern magazines should so long have exemplified the provincial spirit. Until about twenty years ago they rarely took cognizance of the existence of any country or population west of the Alleghanies. In the founding of magazines and literary journals in early Chicago is perhaps to be seen an example of the principle " imita- tion," made so much of by the French sociologist, Tarde. And his " invention " and " adaptation " may be found in some of the developments and in the westernization of these periodicals. Western sectionalism was the counterpart, in magazinedom, of New England and Knickerbocker sectional spirit. Nevertheless, more than one of these pro-western publishers expected an eastern circulation. " Devoted to western subjects — consequently more interesting to distant readers and equally so to western people" — this quiet assumption is quoted from No. i. Vol. I, of Sloan's Garden City. It appeared in 1853. By 1857 Chicago and the West found themselves leaping forward in such a rapid pace of growth that self-confident boasting became a char- acteristic of the city and section. " We believe failure was never yet wedded to Chicago," declared the editor of the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is, in his " Introductory," which appeared during March of that year. Then, concerning the breadth of the field for circulation, he went on to say : 384 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY We propose to fill these pages with such matter as will make this publica- tion a Chicago-western magazine. We shall aim to make it a vade mecum between the East and the West — a go-between carrj'ing to the men of the East a true picture of the West which will satisfy their desire for informa- tion on the great topics connected with this part of their common country. We therefore bespeak for our work a place in the eastern market, and some offset there to the competition we must meet with in the circulation of eastern periodicals in the western field. The West will learn to patronize this monthly for the love of its own ideas ; the East will read it to get that knowledge of us which they cannot get from any other source. In the April number the publisher said : " Buy extra copies to send east." In the August number, which was the last, there appeared an advertisement addressed to " Men of the West," urging them to purchase copies of the magazine, and thereby aid in establishing a literature of their own, and a monthly magazine, also of their own, "as good as Harper's, Putnam's, or Godey's" An exclusively western support was all that the periodical publishers of the forties and earlier fifties had sought. The Gem of the Prairie, 1844-52, in its editorial columns from time to time asked for " such support as it might receive from the people of the northwestern states of the Union." In 1851, the last year before its identity was submerged in that of the Tribune, the editor announced that for six years the periodical had enjoyed such support. As a result, the Gem of the Prairie could then be regarded as " established on a permanent basis." The publisher of the Western Magazine, 1845-46, Chicago's initial venture in magazine form, rated the western demand for a western periodical of that type as large enough to furnish permanent support. Many subsequent projectors of western magazines have held to the same belief. The Literary Budget, 1852-55, expected western sub- scribers only, and called upon " the friends of western literature " to organize clubs for co-operation " in the maintenance of a good literary paper in this section of the country." The number of copies in the Literary Budget's first issue on becoming a weekly, January 7, 1854, as recorded in an editorial announcement, was 3,000. This is the only figure on the circu- lation of ante-bellum periodicals that could be found. The first of the annual Newspaper Directories, which are the chief source THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 385 of the statistics compiled for these reports concerning the dis- tribution of the magazines and periodicals of the later periods, did not appear until 1869. The figure given by the Budget, however, undoubtedly indicates the average number of copies printed for the prairie periodicals of western circulation. A lack of businesslike estimates, and an abundance of over- optimistic speculations about the geographic extent of the market for them, have been constant causes of death for literary pub- lishing projects in Chicago. In general, those publishers who have sought only, or mainly, a western market for their output have had a measure of success. Those who, like the editor of the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is, expected readers in the eastern states eagerly to accept their literary product, have, until recently, been altogether disappointed. They have found that, while the people of the states east of Illinois wish to know of the West, they want a literary presentation of western life made from their own point of view. The outlook of the writers for the early periodicals of Chicago was too restricted. A detailed story of each of these early efforts, however, would show that the central motive of the men making them was not commercial success. Seriously and earnestly they strove to create a literature. Some even were so devoted that it might truly be said they were the high-priests of a fetish, the idol being a Litera- ture of the West. Of the twenty-seven literary periodicals started at Chicago in the decades before i860, 44 per cent, may be classified as purely literary, while 33 per cent, were of the literary- miscellany type, and 11 per cent, of the literature-information variety. The proprietors were not publishers, not highly devel- oped captains in the industry of manufacturing and marketing letters. They were, rather, or strove to be, editors. William Rounseville, of Rounseville & Co., the founder of the first literary magazine published in Chicago, was such an editor. He literally unfurled the banner of western literature, in the Indian summer month of 1845. The cover of his magazine was illustrated with two large trees, an Indian and his tepee at the base of one, and a prairie schooner at the base of the other. A streamer was strung from tree to tree. This streamer bore the 386 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY words Western Magazine. The name of William Rounseville, as author, appears in the first number at the head of five articles, including the first instalment of a serial story entitled " A Pioneer of the Prairies." The development of western literary talent was the chief task which this editor undertook. Since his day editors and publishers in Chicago have discovered and brought out many writers, though some have not laid so much emphasis on that part of their work. Mr. Rounseville's first editorial chat with his public was headed "Our Contributors." He cited the fact that several entire strangers to him had contributed, as evidence of the interest in literary efforts here. William H. Bushnell, a journeyman printer who was the most prolific of the pioneer writers, contributed a "Legend of the Upper Mississippi," entitled " Ke-O-Sau-Que," and a poem on "The Dead Indian." J. T. Trowbridge, another prairie poet, was the contributor of some verses on " The Prairie Land." The number contained a few woodcuts. The best of the illustrations was a picture of Starved Rock, accompanying a legend of that historic spot. The style of many of the contributions to the Western Maga- zine was crude, though in some the literary form was excellent. Without doubt, Rounseville & Co. paid little or nothing for articles and stories. Mr. Rounseville sold out after issuing ten numbers, and the purchaser suspended publication after the twelfth num- ber of the magazine. The founder's belief that " the western people were able and willing to support a magazine of their own " had not materialized in cash. Lack of attention to the commer- cial side of the enterprise was a prime cause for the brevity of its life. The name of Benjamin F. Taylor, a brilliant literary man, is given in the histories of Chicago as chief editor of the Lady's Western Magazine. This periodical, which came out for a few months in 1848, was in imitation of several "ladies' magazines" published in New York and Philadelphia. Mr. Taylor was a genuine poet, a westerner of rare genius. From the forties until after the great Chicago fire, in 1871, he wrote verses which first appeared in the literary periodicals, and also the newspapers, of THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 387 Chicago. His work attracted the attention, not only of western readers, but also of the literary critics, who pronounced it to be poetry that had the quality of real literature. But Mr. Taylor had none of the executive ability required for the business of editing- and publishing a periodical of any kind ; hence the short life of the Lady's Western Magazine. In contrast with the direction of the foregoing magazines, the strict attention to business in the management of the Gem of the Prairie, a paper devoted to literary miscellany and information, stands out most sharply. Founded before them, it lived after them. It endured as the Gem of the Prairie for nearly eight years, which was longer than any other early periodical of pre- dominantly literary turn continued to exist. "To Please Be Ours " was the motto of the publishers through changing owner- ships. The proprietors on January i, 1848, John E. Wheeler and Thomas A. Stewart, said editorially: We mean to, and we believe we do, give the people who buy our literary wares their money's worth, and therefore we do not pay them so poor a com- pliment as to call them patrons. Nevertheless, they expressed themselves as " not satisfied with mere pecuniary compensation," and mentioned those " more subtle ties connecting with the World of the Highest." This connection was striven for in departments called " The Muse," " The Story," "Miscellany," "Variety," and "Local Matters." Bushnell and Taylor were among the more able contributors. Many contribu- tions came from those whose chief interest in life evidently was something other than letters. Not a few stories were selected from the magazines of the East and of England. The depart- ment called " Miscellany " was typical of the channels for literary flow provided by all kinds of newspapers and periodicals in the era of American journalism prior to that of specialization. It contained bits of prose and verse culled miscellaneously and thrown together in a kind of literary salad. This combining of appeals to the desire for aesthetic pleasure through the use of stories, poems, and literary miscellany, and to the desire for knowledge through general information and local news, was an evidence of business sagacity on the part of the publishers. 388 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY In order to meet a growing demand for news alone, in 1847 the proprietors established the Chicago Daily Tribune, as an off- shoot to the Gem of the Prairie. They continued the Gem of the Prairie as a literary miscellany until 1852. By that time the offshoot had become bigger than the original trunk. The Gem was changed from a week-day weekly to a Sunday weekly, and its name became the Chicago Sunday Tribune. The idea of publish- ing a secular weekly to appear on Sunday had been gaining ground, though slowly, since the founding of the Sunday Morn- ing Atlas at New York in 1838. Publishers must aim to catch readers during their hours of leisure. These Sunday weeklies, though largely literary, were one factor in the development of the Sunday dailies of today devoted primarily to news. The first exclusively Sunday paper to appear in Chicago came out in 1856. It was the Sunday Vacuna, named from the goddess of rural leisure. The first exclusively Sunday paper of any permanence, according to the historian Andreas, came out in the spring of 1857. It was the Sunday Leader, and had able men connected with it. Among them were Bushnell, and Andrew Shuman and Rev. A. C. Barry, who turned off a department called " Whittlings from the Chimney Comer." But neither of these exclusively Sunday papers lasted long. Without a doubt, the competition of the Chicago Sunday Tribune was too strong. Up to the exciting days of the Civil War, however, there was a strong conviction on the part of substantial, church-going citi- zens that Sunday papers should not be read. But with their hearts burning for the success of the northern cause, and aching for loved sons at the front, the first demand of every man and woman, on Sunday as on a week day, was for news. This was supplied and the habit of reading news on Sunday was begun. It has grown since then, and today the first appeal of the Sunday edition of a daily paper is the appeal of news. Yet in the supple- ments of the Chicago Sunday Tribune today, containing stories, comic pictures, "Worker's Magazine" features, and miscellane- ous reading, one can see the outgrowth of the old Gem of the Prairie. The development of those pages in the Chicago Sunday Tribune which broadly may be classed as literary in character is THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 38Q typical of morning dailies in Chicago and elsewhere. This type of growth has reached its highest form of specialization, as we shall see later, in the Sunday Magazine of the Chicago Record- Herald, and newspapers of other cities associated in its publica- tion. Incidentally, the points about the course of development in the Gem of the Prairie and the Chicago Sunday Tribune show, in outline, the history of the only periodical of a literary char- acter established in prairie days which has continued in any form and retained such character to the present time. The Prairie Farmer, established in 1841, has altogether lost its literary flavor, although it has retained its name and identity, and has become a highly specialized paper of agricultural technique. In January of the year when the Gem of the Prairie lost its original name, the Literary Budget, which grew into a journal of the same type, made its first appearance. The establishment of the Literary Budget gives the first example of a phenomenon which has frequently appeared in Chicago publishing. This may accurately be termed " engraftment." And " engraftment " may be defined as the dependence of one interest upon another previ- ously established. W. W. Dannenhower, the " editor and proprie- tor" from the first flash to the snuffing out of this publication, was an old-fashioned bookseller. At his bookstore in Lake Street he gave counsel tO' his patrons and helped to set the literary fashions for the commmunity. He established the Literary Budget as a medium in which to advertise books and periodicals. For seven numbers it appeared as a monthly. It then grew into a weekly literary journal of distinct merit, and as such was even more effective as an aid in selling books. And by the increase of book business the periodical was helped. The character of the journal as a literary miscellany is shown by the frequent appearance of noms de plume — "Paulina," "Katy Darling," and "Daisy Poet." It is said by the early his- torians that the first music ever printed from movable type appeared in this paper. Each issue contained a page or two of printed music. To accompany some of this, Benjamin F. Taylor, who was a corresponding editor, wrote verses. T. Herbert Whipple, another of these editors, wrote for the Literary Budget 390 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY an original " nouvellette " entitled " Ethzelda ; or, Sunbeams and Shadows: A Tale of the Prairie Land as it Was," which was afterward published in covers by Rufus Blanchard. On every page the Literary Budget tried to give that " marked and original literature of its own " which Mr. Dannenhower had " dipped his nib in ink " to declare the West should have. After two years and a half of editing, Mr. Dannenhower deserted literature for politics. In the summer of 1855 ^e became state leader of the "Native American" or "Know-Nothing" party, which had during the year preceding carried two eastern commonwealths, and had shown strength in the middle states. He announced that the Budget would " close its existence," that he would " launch his bark " once more, and that his numerous readers would receive the Weekly Native Citizen. As a spokes- man of the reaction against the immigration due to the Irish famine and the continental revolutions of 1848 and 1849, he wrote vehemently. With the Budget's last breath, he said : We trust that our future exertions will be such as to exemplify to the world that the pure fire of American sentiment is sweeping over our vast prairies ; that hereafter America shall and must be governed by Americans. There was not a sigh for the literature of the West. We shall see how minutely history repeated itself — in the periodical America four decades later. Sloan's Garden City, another literary miscellany, was started as a graft, in the original sense of that word. Walter B. Sloan, the publisher, was a vender of patent medicines — "Sloan's Remedies" — and had advertised in the Gem of the Prairie. In the first few numbers of his own periodical he printed a " Sloan's Column," which told the great merits of " Sloan's Family Oint- ment," " Sloan's Instant Relief," " Sloan's Horse Ointment," and " Sloan's Life Syrup." Later Oscar B. Sloan, a son, became editor. The patent-medicine notices disappeared. The periodical became a pro-western literary organ of genuine merit, having, however, a trend toward the family-story type of literary appeal. In 1854 it was merged with the People's Paper of Boston, which lived until 1870. But throughout its last years it contained only a few advertising notices, the subscription price of $2 a year afford- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 391 ing sufficient revenue. The history of this periodical has interest, however, chiefly on account of its origin in advertising. The Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is, the literary- historical magazine of highest tone, expressed the pioneer senti- ment on advertising. In the second number, April, 1857, it said: We respond to the wish of a contemporary, that we might be able to dis- pense with this avenue of pubHc patronage. But at present the law of neces- sity must overrule the law of taste. As in the other early periodicals, the only advertisements in this magazine were those of local firms, including a " Business Direc- tory," and those of the railroads. The well-deserved price of this magazine was 25 cents a copy. And the circulation was " all that the publishers asked." The publishers looked for another source of revenue in their illustrations. The magazine was profusely and beautifully illus- trated. The cuts, portraits, and pictures of buildings and towns were made from daguerreotypes. In presenting their " true pic- ture of the West," the proprietors considered it their first duty "to daguerreotype" the towns and the leading citizens. This was done at great expense. But in their second number the pub- lishers complained that no pecuniary aid had been received from that class of citizens whom they had undertaken to daguerreotype — the long-resident, wealthy and prominent men. They also expressed disappointment because the towns written up were slow to respond. It was almost a sacrifice of the dignity of this fine magazine thus to expect revenue from articles bordering close upon that species known among publishers as " write-ups." Write-up schemes, some of them really hold-up schemes, have caused the disrepute, decline, and death of not a few publishing ventures in Chicago, as elsewhere. The proprietors of the Chi- cago Magazine: The West as it Is, however, did not solicit pay- ments for its excellent biographical and historical sketches in advance. They merely voiced disappointment that the publication of such articles had not met with recognition in the fonn of the cash the magazine so much needed. This magazine was founded by and published for the Mechanics' Institute. It was engrafted on a culture agency. The 392 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Mechanics' Institute was an organization for night study, which brought lyceum lecturers to the city and estabhshed a hbrary. One object in founding the magazine was to secure exchanges for this Hbrary gratis. The serious money panic of 1857 in Chicago embarrassed the institute, and further hurt the magazine's circu- lation. In John Gager & Co., publishers of maps, the magazine had able business managers. Zebina Eastman, the editor, was a distinguished lawyer as well as writer. But he was a prominent abolitionist; and his interest in political affairs may have taken some energy from his literary efforts. An outside passage on " the world's literary omnibus " was all they asked in March. In April they announced that the magazine had conquered for itself a place in the literary omnibus. The May and June numbers were late in coming out. The July number was omitted. The August number was the fifth and last. Andreas, the historian of Chicago, says the failure was a great loss to the literary interests of the cicy. The last of the prairie-day periodicals were brought out under the editorship of James Grant Wilson, then a young pioneer mak- ing his literary debut at Chicago; now, in 1905, with more than three-score years and ten to his credit, a conspicuous figure in the Authors' Club, Century Association, and other circles of literary men at New York. He was the editor of two literary periodicals which closed the pioneer period. With a literary bent inherited from his father, a poet-publisher, and an educational equipment secured at College Hill, Poughkeepsie, Mr. Wilson took Horace Greeley's advice to young men, and came west in 1857. Andreas in his History of Chicago, 1884, says, on p. 41 1 of Vol. I : "In March, 1857, James Grant Wilson, editor (Carney and Wilson, publishers), began the publication of a monthly magazine desig- nated the Chicago Examiner, devoted to literature, general and church matters." In a letter written October 9, 1905, Mr. Wilson informs us that this is an error, saying: "The title Chicago Examiner is new to me, and I think no paper or periodical could have appeared at that period without my knowledge." In April, 1857, however, Mr. Wilson, as sole editor and pro- prietor, founded a rather enduring journal, the Chicago Record. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 393 In an introductory editorial salutation he called attention to the springtime advent of the birds, and asked for this journal a wel- come like that given to the April songsters. With artistic Old English lettering in its title, the Chicago Record was consecrated to literature and the arts, and, although conducted by a layman, was also " devoted to the church." It was an example of engraft- ing, the literary interest being made dependent on the interests of the Chicago diocese of the Protestant Episcopal church. It may perhaps be significant that, along with the advertising notices of books and reading which it contained, there were advertisements of stained-glass windows. The contents of the Record's neatly printed pages were, however, distinctly literary in character, and of excellent quality, having a polish which the news oi the Epis- copal church only helped to emphasize, as one can readily see on looking at the file which the founder presented to the Chicago Historical Society. The articles were written in pleasing essay style. The editor himself contributed "Wanderings in Europe," narrative accounts of experiences in the summer of 1855. Another series of papers told of " Painters and Their Works " in a manner that was interesting, although the journal had no illus- trations. Poetry and "miscellanea" were interspersed. Among the poems " Written for the Record" were several by Benjamin F. Taylor; and of those evidently reprinted were many from the pen of William Cullen Bryant. All of the literary periodicals of the pioneer period, excepting the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is, which was undertaken contemporaneously with Mr. Wil- son's first effort in March, 1857, had already died, or else lost their character and identity, by the time of his arrival. There- fore, General Wilson is under the impression that the Chicago Record " was the first literary periodical to appear in Chicago." While still bringing out the Chicago Record, Mr. Wilson became the editor of the very best magazine among those which have left merely first-number mementoes in the library of the Chicago Historical Society. This was the Northwestern Quar- terly Magazine, a volume of 104 pages in thick paper cover, which was published by Rufus Blanchard, the cartographer and historian whose death occurred in 1904. It was a heavy maga- 394 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY zine of the North American Review type, the most ambitious of the kind ever attempted in Chicago, and quite pretentious for so early a date as October, 1858. Mr. Blanchard, in a conservative announcement on the last page, said : On the issue of the pioneer number of this magazine the publisher would beg leave to state that he is as well aware that no high pretensions can sustain a feeble attempt, as that a worthy effort would be successful without them. The Northwestern Quarterly is now before the tribunal of public opinion to stand or fall as its merits shall determine. In the course of telling what would be the aims of the magazine, he said " the broad fields of literature " were to be traversed, and " the progress of fine arts to be traced." The contributions which had been selected by his editor were printed without authors' signatures attached, but were of high character both as to critical insight and literary style. Typical articles in the number bore the following titles : " The North- west," " Padilla," " A Trick of Fortune," " The Home of Robert Burns," "The Broken Pitcher," "About Painters and Their Works," " Puns and Punsters," and " The Atlantic Telegraph." The " Literary Notices " contained a review of Tit comb's Letters to Young People. Three local book stores, including " the largest book-house in the Northwest," were represented by full-page advertisements of a character in keeping with the literary merit of the periodical, for which the booksellers thus signified their approval. General Wilson cherishes many recollections of the Northwestern Quarterly. Being president of the Biographical Society in New York, and the author of various works on memorabilia, historical recollections are his great delight. Among reminiscences concerning the Northzvestern Quarterly Magazine, the most pleasing, told in his own words, is as follows : Both Washington Irving and James K. Paulding, and also William Cullen Bryant, in letters to the editor, commended it, Paulding saying it was " the best first number of any magazine ever published in this country." But although Mr. Wilson had the material for a second number in proof, it never was published. And this was not because either the " high pretensions " mentioned by the publisher or contribu- tions of genuine merit were lacking. Mr. Blanchard was over- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 395 taken by financial troubles in his chief business of map-publishing ; so the magazine was brought to a sudden end, and sent to the oblivion of ephemeral publications. Mr. Wilson, however, continued the editing and publishing of the Chicago Record each month. This journal lived, under his fostering care, for five full years, until March, 1862, when it was purchased by a clergyman, through whose literary ministrations it lasted only a brief period longer. In " A Word at Parting " Mr. Wilson said of the Chicago Record: It was the pioneer paper of its character in the Northwest, and various were the expressions in regard to its success : " Some said, Print it, others said, Not so ; Some said, It might do good; others said, No." It has been a success — we humbly trust it has done some good. Other demands upon our time compel us to relinquish, most reluctantly, a post that we have endeavored to fill to the best of our ability. The other demands, mentioned but not described in this edi- torial valedictory, were those felt by all men at the time in response to the nation's call for volunteers. Mr. Wilson quite literally left the pen for the sword. He entered the Union army as a major in the Fifteenth Illinois Cavalry, served in the Vicks- burgh campaign, and resigned as a brigadier-general in 1865. While in the war. General Wilson absorbed the material for his printed addresses on Lincoln and Grant, and was led on into the literary work which he has since done continuously in New York, his last book, Thackeray in the United States, having come out in 1903. But it was the war which ended his training-school days in letters at periodical editing and publishing in pioneer Chicago. The war put a temporary stop to the founding of literary periodicals. As we have already seen, at least one publication of literary interest was begun in each year after 1841 until 1858. And since the war, new ones have sprung up every year. But between 1858 and the end of the war in 1865, only one periodical of literary character was attempted in Chicago. Even that one was first announced in a prospectus issued at Washington, D. C, and it proved to be a direct engraftment on the national interest in the war. This unique bit of war-time literary effort bore as its 396 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY name the words National Banner. No. i of Vol. I, having a Chicago imprint, appeared in May, 1862; the last number issued at Chicago came out in December of that year; and then the headquarters were again located in its place of origin at the national capital. The National Banner was a sixteen-page journal " devoted to art, literature, music, general intelligence, and the country." The objects of the venture, as framed more fully by Miss Delphine P. Baker, the proprietor, and proclaimed through a standing announcement, were in part, as follows : First, to create a patriotic fund for the relief of disabled soldiers and their families; second, to diflfuse a high-toned moral literature throughout the land; and, third, to bind with the golden chain of love all hearts together in one grand, glorious national cause. The National Banner held out a novel inducement to prospective subscribers in the form of a promise that a good part of their payments would be turned over directly to "the patriotic fund." Still, the dominant interest aroused by the contents of the peri- odical was of a literary nature. A leading feature from month to month was a continued story entitled " Olula : A Romance of the West." Among the contributors mentioned, in announce- ments frequently made, were George D. Prentice, Benjamin F. Taylor, James Grant Wilson, Horace Greeley, James W. Shea- han, and William Mathews. Although sounding the new national note, the periodical paraded its contributions from "the most eminent northwestern clergymen," and paid special attention to literary efforts designed for the western section of the country. II. PERIODICAL LITERATURE FOLLOWING THE WAR " Born of the prairie and the wave — the blue sea and the green — A city of the Occident, Chicago lay between. " I hear the tramp of multitudes who said the map was wrong — They drew the net of longitude and brought it right along, And swung a great meridian line across the Foundling's breast, And the city of the Occident was neither East nor West." — Benj. F. Taylor, in the Lakeside Monthly, October, 1873. The effect of the Civil War in lessening sectional antagonism throughout the North, especially the sectionalism of West versus THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 397 East, was reflected in the literary periodicals of Chicago. This impulse toward the national standpoint showed itself in the magazines and journals undertaken in the period between 1865 and the great fire of 1871. There was also the influence of an intensified local spirit. Chicago was growing like an adolescent giant. The population had increased from a little more than 100,000 in i860 to over 200,000 in 1866, and by 1870 it was more than 300,000. This growth was matched by a buoyant movement in commerce and industry. A flood of energy which had been diverted to the war was directed anew to these channels. The name " Chicago " appeared on thirteen periodicals of literary appeal in the late sixties and early seventies. The Chicagoan, a literary weekly coming out on Saturdays in the years 1868 and 1869, was one of the best of these. But in tracing development, the beginning of a tendency toward nationalization is more impor- tant. It is to be found in the magazines that were published east as well as west. The establishment of agencies for distributing periodicals and newspapers aided in widening their scope. Mr. John R. Walsh founded the Western News Co. in 1866. This machine for Middle West distribution of periodic publications was built upon the growing web of railway lines centered in Chicago. The Western News Co. became an organic part of the American News Co., which had been established in New York ten years earlier. Like every branch agency at a subcenter, the Western News Co. proved a great aid to the magazines of New York in securing national circulation. Mr. Walsh held then, as he does today, in 1905, that there can be only one literary center in a country. He cites the shifting of literary production from Edinburgh to Lon- don, in Great Britain's experience, as evidence. At any rate, but few promoters of western publishing ventures have had capital enough to send out through the news company, for display at the newsstands, many copies which might be returned unsold. The news company holds back the collections on three issues of a new periodical as a guarantee that the publishers will fulfil their agree- ment to take back copies not sold. Nevertheless, Chicago pub- lishers, except those of the present decade, have complained that UNfVERSiTY OF -fFCRNV^ 398 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY the Western News Co. has not been an aid in estabHshing west- ern literary periodicals. Within the five years following the close of the Civil War, a periodical was started in Chicago which stands today as the most notable in the city's literary history. This was a monthly maga- zine which, crudely begun as the Western Monthly, became the classic Lakeside Monthly. Of all the periodicals undertaken in Chicago, the Lakeside Monthly remains the one most distinctive in unalloyed literary appeal, the one most chaste and finished in form. Its history is rich in significance. In its first number the Western Monthly announced that it was " intended to be purely an institution of the West." The western tocsin was again sounded lustily as in the Western Magazine of prairie days. The worth of the magazines of the East during the preceding decades in affording an outlet for eastern writers, and thereby placing American literature side by side with the best of the Old World, was loudly praised ; but, said the announcement, the West, with her vast resources, her intellectual men and growing genius, is not represented by any magazine whose mission is to explore the fields of literature and gather the ripe fruits of her pioneer talent. It was declared that western writers looked with an " unbecoming awe " upon those of the East, and " feared to compete with them in the literary arena as then established." The fault was laid at the door of the West for not publishing a magazine of its own. Hence the advent of the Western Monthly and the concluding words : We believe the proverbial go-aheaditiveness of the western people will be demonstrated in literary as well as commercial matters, now that the oppor- tunity is presented. All this appeared in the number of January, 1869. Not long before that time, Mr. Francis Fisher Browne, truly a pioneer of American culture then and today, arrived in Chicago, coming from Buffalo and the East, by steamer on the lakes. Mr. Browne had served in the Civil War with a Massachusetts regi- ment ; and, having seen many men from many sections marching to the nation's common battlefields, he had come out of the war THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 399 with an enlarged experience and a broadened point of view. As a boy, he had learned the printer's trade in his father's news- paper office, thus acquiring knowledge of the aid that typographic art can give to literary form. Like many literary men, he had also studied law — first in an office at Rochester, New York, and then at the University of Michigan. Ever since his boyhood days in the newspaper office and in a New England high school, he had, however, been keenly interested in letters. After locating in Chicago, his tastes again turned to them. His alert eye saw possibilities in the Western Monthly; and, after three or four numbers had been published, he purchased an interest in the magazine and joined the projector of it, Mr. H. V. Reed, in its management. After a time Mr. Reed withdrew from the enter- prise, and Mr. Browne became its sole director. The beginning of Mr. Browne's work in the management of the magazine was marked by immediate improvement in its style and character. The typographical dress of the periodical was changed, and its appearance became at once more dignified and elegant. Biographical features were dropped out, and its appeal became purely literary. The interest in form and subject-matter was not then, or afterward, given auxiliary strength by the use of illustrations. But the typography became so nearly perfect that the Inland Printer has declared it to have been the best in any Chicago periodical excepting only that influential journal of literary criticism, the Dial, which Mr. Browne himself established later. The change in the name of the periodical was probably the most typical single act of a Chicago publisher during the post- bellum period. The adjective "western" in a magazine title bespoke something provincial, something narrow and restricted in aim and scope. Other publishers evidently felt this. Besides the Western Monthly, only three Chicago literary periodicals started in these years contained the word " West " in their names ; and they were journals of a low literary order. A broader and more inclusive title was needed to make the magazine expressive of the spirit of the times. A study of its files and of the history of the period suggested the idea that the editor had doubtless gone 400 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY through an interesting personal experience in creating the new name thus called for by the social movements following the Civil War. A call upon Mr. Browne in the Dial office at the Fine Arts Building was rewarded with a vivid narration of this important incident. Looking out over the green space bordering Michigan Boulevard to the great blue lake in the distance, Mr Browne con- sented to give his recollections of the transforming of the West- ern Monthly into the Lakeside Monthly. Soon after his advent into the magazine, he felt the narrowness of the word " western," and began feeling for a name which, while it might retain the flavor of locality, would first of all connote a wide interest in the aesthetic. The title of the Atlantic Monthly had some such con- notation. Mr. Browne devised a long list of possibilities, com- pounding words to suggest beauty and fertility — the lake and the land. And one day, in 1870, he struck off the word "Lakeside" — a name which, perhaps because it so clearly mirrors the most beautiful physical feature of the Chicago environment, has become h. popular favorite for many ambitious enterprises. For its first use Mr. Browne chose it as the looked- for title, and the magazine became the Lakeside Monthly. Under its new name the magazine made rapid advances in influence and reputation, so that it became the nucleus of a large publishing and printing house organized in 1870 for the avowed purpose of making Chicago as important a center for the manu- facture of book? and periodicals as it had already become for their marketing and distribution. The magazine gave its name to the new house, the Lakeside Publishing and Printing Co., for which it became the literary organ. In November, 1870, it announced editorially that the Lakeside Monthly would hold such a relation to this company "as does Harper's Magazine to the great publishing house of Harper Bros, of New York." The new publishing company was a successor to the magazine company and the printing firm of Church, Goodman & Donnelly. It started with a capital stock of $500,000, and had, besides the magazine and other literary interests, a large and well-equipped printing-plant. It also erected the Lakeside Building, which, THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 401 rebuilt, still stands at the corner of Clark and Adams Streets, materially reminiscent of the high enterprise. The great fire of 1 87 1 destroyed the new building and seriously crippled the busi- ness, so that book and magazine publishing in Chicago did not then assume the proportions reasonably promised at the outset of the new organization. A division of interests was made, and from that time on the sole responsibility of the magazine rested with Mr. Browne. The character and quality of the Lakeside became notable, and its distinctive literary tone became pronounced, editor and contributors seriously striving to maintain the point of view of the creative artist. An endeavor was made to present the con- tents in such form as to interest American readers not only resid- ing in the Middle West, but in all parts of the country, and also the English-reading lovers of beauty residing in the Old World as well. This outlook was from a height which no previous periodical in Chicago had attained. The appeal to the aesthetic interest was supplemented with an appeal to the interest in knowl- edge, through the publication of many profound articles of solid information. A scholarly tone resulted. The men connected with the popular and sensational magazines today, on reading the files of the Lakeside, are inclined to ridicule this characteristic. They call it didactic. Such didactics, however, served to empha- size the fact that the purely literary contributions to the magazine were measured critically by a standard derived from classic literature. The retention of a decidedly western character was another marked feature of the Lakeside. Mr. Browne tried always to get material that was indigenous, racy of the soil, expressive of the fertility and virility of the Mississippi Valley. The fiction, poetry, and essays in the files of the Lakeside show success in expression of the life of the Midland West. In the Far West the picturesque freshness of the mountains inspired a like use of local color in Bret Harte's Overland Monthly, which was contemporary with the Lakeside Monthly, as it in the Middle West was with the Atlantic Monthly in New England. Most of the men and women who wrote for the Lakeside lived in Chicago and the Middle 402 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY West, although some were from the South and a few from the East. Many of them were brought out by the Lakeside, and much in their first manuscripts was rewritten in Mr. Browne's office. An article on " Literary Chicago " in the New England Magazine of February, 1893, states the result, by saying that The Lakeside Monthly early took high rank among the first-class literary magazines of the country, and elicited the warmest praise, not only from American organs of critical opinion, but from such foreign authorities as the Saturday Review and la Revue des Deux Mondes. The circulation, according to the newspaper annuals, reached 9,000 in 1871, 10,000 the next year, and in 1873, 14,000, its maximum. While the bulk of this was in Chicago's supporting market, west and northwest, a part was east of the Alleghanies. The pages of the Lakeside, with their portrayal of mid-western character, proved to be one source of satisfaction for a widespread desire to read the literature of locality — a desire which was one effect of the war and the growth 01 the nation. Before that time, publishers in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia had generally disregarded western subjects and western authors. The few remaining literary workers who were active then say it is impos- sible for the present generation to appreciate the indifference which eastern publishers then felt for the West. With the advent of the Lakeside, Scribne/s Monthly, the forerunner of the present Century, began to give attention to western subjects, and to seek the work of western writers. During the years of the Lakeside's growth other eastern publishers began to glean in Mid-West fields, and the competition among them for the virile western productions, which has since become so keen, was fairly on by the time the magazine had reached the zenith of its career. Such an influential position came only from years of patient perseverance and indomitable energy. Unlike the publishers of 148 literary ventures of various orders in Chicago lasting only a year or less, Mr. Browne went into this undertaking prepared to stay. Although loving literature for its own sake, he knows well its commercial side; that even the highest grade of literary out- put, like grosser wares, must be marketed as merchandise. Mr, Browne was prepared to carry on his chosen enterprise with the THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 403 highest literary ideals, but with practical business methods for reaching the market made by those who appreciate the higher literature. The recognition of merit was sought, and it was the recognition of such an effort of merit, as that which critics say today puts the Atlantic Monthly in a class by itself, Mr. Browne evidently felt that this policy, if followed out with patient devo- tion, was bound to win in time ; and it did win for the Lakeside, in spite of business changes and ordeals by fire during years of work and waiting. In October, 1870, the Lakeside Monthly had a fore- taste of fire, from flames which, though confined to its office, burned up an entire issue just off the press, and inflicted other serious damage. Then, in October, 1871, the great Chicago con- flagration nearly obliterated the magazine, not only weakening the new publishing house which had grown out of it, but redu- cing the office furniture and subscription list to ashes. But the spirit of the Lakeside survived. Mr. Browne passed through all this undaunted. The magazine, omitting only the November and December issues, went on its way. Not, however, until its fifth year, in 1873, did it reach a self-supporting basis. The revenues were chiefly from sales and subscriptions at 35 cents per copy and $4 a year. The advertising patronage was small, in comparison with that of the popular magazines of today. It came mainly from local merchants, since the general advertising agencies had merely been started in a small way by that time. Nearly all of this advertising support and 40 per cent, of the circulation fell off in the fretful times following the "Black Friday" of the Jay Cooke panic toward the end of 1873. The struggle had been hard, the strain long and severe, and when, on account of these general financial conditions, additional resources of capital and energy were called for, Mr. Browne broke down, and, in the spring of 1874, was ordered away by his physician. As sole proprietor and editor, Mr. Browne had not specialized the establishment sufficiently. There was no one at hand trained to take his place either in business management or in editorial direction. At this time the publishers of Scrihner's Monthly made a proposal for consolidation, which was a unique recognition of Chicago publishing on the part of New York publishers. But 404 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY this was declined, Mr. Browne deciding that, if the magazine must die, it should go down as it had Hved — the Lakeside Monthly. In February, 1874, it suspended publication — a measure of necessity which at the time was thought to be only temporary. But it proved otherwise; and thus was closed the career of an enterprise in periodical literature which, in many respects, was the most important in the history of the literary- interests of Chicago. A publication of magazine form, generally called the Chicago Magazine, came out in the period of prosperity following the war. Its complete name, however, was the Chicago Magazine of Fashion, Music, and Home Reading. It was created by a coterie of fashionable ladies. Mrs. M. L. Rayne, who today contributes " Fun and Philosophy " to the editorial page of the Chicago Record-Herald, was the editor and leading spirit in the company. This magazine was the jfirst of several Chicago periodicals designed to couple an interest in aesthetic writing with the aesthetic interest in dress. Possibly the fashions then did not call for tailor-made gowns. At any rate, the literary style of the poems, short stories, and serials, the printed trimming for the substantial material on modes, was characterized by something of looseness. The magazine secured a circulation of 3,000, chiefly local. It first appeared in 1870; numbers in the file of the Historical Society run to 1 872 ; and the name appears in newspaper annuals until 1876. • One of the military titles used by boys at play in the Civil War time was stereotyped on the cover of a remarkable journal of juvenile literature, the Little Corporal. This little periodical was begun in Chicago the second month after fighting men came, from Appomattox, to their homes and children. The Little Cor- poral's slogan, shown in the files for 1865 and 1866 at the His- torical Society's library, sounded forth as follows : " Fighting against Wrong, and for the Good and the True and the Beauti- ful." The authors of the periodical resided in Evanston, the suburban center of culture. Alfred L. Sewell, of the Evanston Index, was the publisher; Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller was the THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 405 editor; Miss Frances Willard was a contributor. The Little Corporal was not, however, a temperance or religious organ. Nor did it uphold any sectionalism as the only papers for children attempted in the prairie period had done. There had been two of these, one in each decade of that period. The first, a weekly attempted by Kiler K. Jones, who later founded the Gem of the Prairie, antedated all but two of the quasi-literary periodicals for adults started in Chicago's young days, being begun in May, 1843. A tattered copy of its last number, dated July 26, 1843, which is one of the Historical Society's curios, contains, besides the pioneer projector's farewell words to the effect that he had done his best at " editor, compositor, pressman, and devil's duty," the original prospectus. Its significant line is this : " The Youth's Gazette: devoted expressly to the interests of the youth of the West." The other early paper for children, begun at Chicago in 1853, and lasting only a short time, was christened the Youth's Western Banner. But in 1865 no western modifier was given to the name of the Little Corporal.. In the nationalizing which marked the social process in the United States at the time, it was even easier to find common ground for the children than for older people, especially when the ground taken was the universal inter- est in story. The paper, a monthly in journal form, was filled with secular, juvenile literature, of the best quality. The Little Corporal became permanent by accident. It was originally published for the United States Sanitary Commission in connection with a fair. But it proved to be so popular and successful that it was continued, enduring for an entire decade. It quickly attained a national circulation, being the first periodical from Chicago to secure wide attention, and the first juvenile in the country to be read by children everywhere. It was the forerunner of St. Nicholas, which magazine was established at New York during the Little Corporal's sixth year. From it the Youth's Companion, though established long before, in Boston, made adaptations which have promoted the popularity of that paper. The enormous circulation of the Little Corporal is historic in the records of Chicago publishing. The first American News- paper Directory, issued in 1869, by George P. Row ell & Co., New 4o6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY York, rated it at 80,000. But in the recollections of Mr. Francis F. Browne, Mr, John McGovern, and others who were among its readers, the Little Corporal is credited with having reached a cir- culation of 100,000 in its first or second year. This large circulation was unhappily the cause of its decline and cessation. The price of subscription for twelve monthly numbers was $1, one of the first instances of low prices in pub- lishing. But the thousands and thousands of subscribers added to Mr, Sewell's lists did not bring proportionate additions of thousands of dollars from advertisements. In periodical pub- lishing the unit on which advertising rates are based is each 1,000 copies per issue. And for each of the added units of circulation the publisher must get additional revenue from his advertising pages, especially if he is publishing at popular prices. Mr, Sewell, with his long list of subscribers in hand, found himself ahead of the times. Advertising had not yet become extensive and the first source of success in business. The local firms which gave him advertising notices would pay only small sums; for they cared to reach but a part of his readers. With a small circulation these sums would bring a profit; but, after a certain point was reached, every copy demanded was printed at a loss. Everybody's Magazine, of New York, was threatened during the past year, on account of the increase in circulation caused by the Lawson articles on " Frenzied Finance," with a similar predicament, but could immediately raise the selling price per copy, and at the expiration of advertising contracts secure their renewal at a higher rate. Many a Chicago publisher since Mr. Sewell's day has sighed for such a circulation. A squad of juvenile publications, in imitation of the Little Corporal, sprang into existence. Fifteen such were started between 1865 and 1871. Eight of these were not revived after the fire, and all except the Little Corporal and two others were very short-lived. Little Folks, begim in 1869, lasted until 1877. This was advertised as a monthly of " illustrated juvenile litera- ture," but was sold for 30 cents a year. The Young Folks' Monthly, undertaken in 1870, continued until 1883. An adver- tisement in a newspaper annual for 1880 said it was "a live. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 407 Sparkling, illustrated magazine for boys and girls, and older people with young hearts, containing thirty-two pages of illus- trations and reading matter best calculated to amuse and instruct the young." This advertisement, with its tone of commonness, has a meaning for this essay. It helps to show the range of inter- est people have in literary productions, from the classic to the common. In these juveniles we readily see one tendency toward the development of the " family-story " periodical — a type which not long after this period became well known to the printing trade. Another part of this " family-story " line of specialization appeared in the periodicals for adults. Back in the prairie period some of the pioneer publishers of general literary-miscellany periodicals had called attention to the "family reading" in their columns, and had emphasized the special interest it had for families in homes on the farms. But in 1868 home papers with home titles made their first appearance. The Home Eclectic came out, and continued monthly until 1870, acquiring only a small constituency. The Chicago Western Home also was started, secured 20,000 subscribers by 1870, and disappeared in the dis- aster of 1871. In 1869, A. N. Kellogg, the inventor of "patent insides," the printed sheets sent to country newspapers for com- pletion with local items, founded the Evening Lamp. This is a large co-operative newspaper, printed from the best plate-matter of the A. N. Kellogg Newspaper Co. It is filled with serials, stories, sketches, and miscellaneous matter of interest and of fair quality. It is sent out weekly to this day. Three other family fireside papers were started in time to be burned out by the fire. Chicago's famous holocaust destroyed the files of some maga- zines and journals from the earlier period, and a majority of those originated after the war. Many periodicals lived only long enough for their names to be put into the newspaper directories published in New York and Philadelphia. This is true concern- ing not a few of the 306 in the bibliography of literary publica- tions attempted in Chicago up to 1905, compiled during the course of investigation for these papers. The newspaper annuals are the one source of information about them. And at least one such directory for every year since the first was brought out, has been 408 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY consulted. These records are not altogether satisfactory on the point of duration. The founding dates which they contain are sometimes inaccurate. They do not give the dates of suspension. And often the name of a periodical and data concerning it have been repeated in the annuals for one or two years after its publica- tion has ceased. But when no corrections from files or interested persons were obtainable, the first and last years of a publication's appearance in the directory lists have been taken for the statistics herein given. Andreas commented that for his History of Chi- cago (1884) it was occasionally impracticable to decide whether some of the publications announced " had assumed form or remained inchoate in the minds of the projectors" because the records in newspaper directories were inaccurate. He said it was impossible to get specific dates, the fire having destroyed printed evidence, and memories proving unreliable. Paul Selby, in preparing a section on "Defunct Newspapers and periodicals" for Moses and Kirkland's History of Chicago ( 1895), drew heav- ily on Andreas for the early period, and then devoted only a column and a half to the periodicals after 1857, saying: "The records of subsequent years are even more imperfect than the preceding." In no history of Chicago has the ground been cov- ered. The Inter Ocean s History of Chicago, Its Men and Insti- tutions (1900), dismisses the subject with a brief paragraph stating that Chicago has made a number of attempts at high-grade literary magazines, but that "none has met with noteworthy success^ probably owing to the fact that literature is not of a local character." A list of 107 newspapers and periodicals destroyed in the fire was compiled in 1872 by James W. Sheahan and George P. Upton, who' complained that they had tO' depend solely on memory in getting it ready for their volume. The Great Confla- gration: Chicago, Its Past, Present, and Future. [To be continued] THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO. Ill AND IV HERBERT E. FLEMING University of Chicago III. LITERARY PERIODICALS FOLLOWING THE CHICAGO FIRE " I found Chicago wood and clay," a mighty Kaiser said, Then flung upon the sleeping mart his royal robes of red. And so the swift evangels ran by telegraphic time, And brought the cheer of Christendom from every earthly clime; Celestial fire flashed round the globe, from Norway to Japan, Proclaimed the manhood of the race, the brotherhood of man ! They all were angels in disguise, from hamlet, field and mart, Chicago,s fire had warmed the World that had her woe by heart. "Who is my neighbor?" One and all: "We see her signal light, And she is our only neighbor now, this wild October night ! " — Benj. F. Taylor, in the Lakeside Monthly, October, 1873. The whole nation and the whole world centered attention upon Chicago on October 8 and 9, 1871. On these days flames, starting on the West Side, swept through the heart of the busi- ness district to the very shore of tVie lake, like prairie fire through stubble; then leaped over the Chicago river, traversed the North side, died away there; and left the lusty, young giant city of marvelous growth burned and prostrate. A stream of sympathy from the people of the New World and the Old World poured in upon the citizens of Chicago. The effect is shown in the pages of the literary periodicals which survived the catastrophe, and in those of the many new ones started in the years of the seventies following the fire. From them it may be seen that the fire melted some of the barriers of western sectionalism. The world-wide sympathy caused the Chicago literary men to feel after a world-wide point oi view, more 499 500 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY consciously than they had done before under the merely nationalizing influence of the Civil War. The outside aid was a great stimulus to local energy, helping the ambitious rebuilders of the city to start upon a remarkable period of business enterprise; a period which, along with success in more material lines, led to the establishment of literary periodicals of kinds that were money-makers. Not only food and clothing for the sufferers, but goods for the merchants on long- time credit, and capital on easy terms, came in large quantities from other parts of America and from Europe. All this, added to their own determined spirit, led Chicago men not merely to rebuild on a larger scale, but also to launch new enterprises. Among such were papers of the "family-story" literary order. That the typical ventures of this period were not of a higher literary type is explained by the fact that the "family-story" paper was the most promising for quick returns in cash. In fact, it is because investments in high-grade publishing in general do not yield returns more quickly that the development of serious publishing has continued to be comparatively slow in Chicago. In an article on "Chicago as a Publishing Center" in "The Com- mercial Association Number" of the Chicago Evening Post, March 8, 1905, Mr. T. J. Zimmerman, managing editor of System, a successful Chicago magazine of information on busi- ness, puts this point as follows: The whole history and present condition of the publishing business in Chicago may be summed up in this statement : the westerner is looking for quick profits ; when he makes an investment of money and labor, he wants to know what it is going to bring, and he wants to see the results at once. In the publishing business — that is, real, sincere publishing — this is impos- sible. The initial investment in a book or magazine is heavy. And not only this ; returns are spread over a long period of time. Westerners have not gone into the publishing field to a greater extent, because there have been so many opportunities at hand for quick returns into which their energies could be turned. Twenty years before the Chicago fire it had been discovered in New York that a popular story paper would bring returns to an investor. And we have already seen in the Chicago periodi- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO S^l cals of the sixties a drift toward this "family-story" type. In 1872 the Chicago Ledger was founded in direct imitation of the Nezv York Ledger. Concerning the "Popular Story Papers," in a section on "The Weekly Literary Press," Mr. S. N. D. North, commissioner for the special Census Report on "The Newspaper and Periodical Press" (1880), says in part: The most notable successes attained by American publications not of a purely news character are found in the type of periodical of which Robert Bonner, of the New York Ledger, may be said to have been the fortunate discoverer. Mr. Bonner purchased the Ledger in 1851, and shortly there- after converted it from a commercial sheet into a family newspaper, excluding from its contents everything relating to the business and news of the day, and substituting therefor a series of continued and short stories, not generally of the highest class of fiction. But he attracted public attention to his venture by engaging the best-known literary men of the country to write for the Ledger over their own signatures. It rapidly rose to an enor- mous circulation, which at times has reached as high as 400,000 per issue. The Ledger may be said to be the original of that class of literary publications. The imitations of the Ledger have been numerous, and frequently their publication has been attended with great pecuniary success. The Chicago Ledger has met with such success. This paper was begun in connection with a newspaper plate supply business. For about twenty years Samuel H. Williams, a man of ability, was the editor. Like the New York Ledger, the Chicago Ledger, during its first few years, made a leading feature of stories which were literary in the accepted sense of that word. Containing this grade of literature, printed on cheap paper, and sold at $1 for fifty-two numbers, it met with immediate favor, especially in the rural districts, during the seventies. By 1879 the Chicago Ledger had a circulation of 10,000, which was a paying start for it. Little by little, however, the higher class of well-written fiction was dropped. One reason for this was competition intro- duced by the advent of the "Lakeside Library," published by Donnelly, Lloyd & Co., 1875-77. The books of this "library" were tri-monthly pamphlets, the first of the kind, containing cheap reprints of standard fiction, selling at ten cents per copy and attracting millions of readers. The stories of the Chicago 502 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Ledger took on that more thrilling tone which is retained by those appearing in the current issues of 1906. Although selected by an editor who is the author of contributions accepted by high-grade magazines, their form is unfinished. The contents, however, are not of an immoral tone. In fact, the stories, like the melodramas of the cheap theater, often point a moral, with a not harmful effect. The motto of the W. D. Boyce Co., the present publishers, as stated by Colonel William C. Hunter, the secretary and active manager of the Chicago Ledger, is : "The higher the fewer." In more positive terms it might be put : "The lower the more." At any rate, this paper, listed in the newspaper annuals as "literary," has, according to their figures, since 1900 enjoyed a regular circulation of nearly 300,000 a week. For "Boyce's Weeklies" — the Chicago Ledger and the Saturday Blade, a weekly imitation of a metropolitan daily — an average circulation of 631,869 copies is claimed; and for the Woman's World, a monthly which has grown out of the success of the Ledger, 829,982 copies. Although but few of the residents of Chicago have ever heard of these periodicals, these figures show the banner circulation of "literary" periodical publishing in Chicago. It was not until in 1891 that Mr. Boyce acquired the Chicago Ledger. Since then its growth has been remarkable. It is the basis of success with a paper mill and a city office building, which fact, like many of the points already made in this series of papers, again shows the engraftment of interests. In "the trade" such periodicals as the Chicago Ledger have come to be more commonly called "mail-order" papers than "family-story" papers. It is thus recognized that they are run primarily for revenue. With the development of houses selling all kinds of goods direct to people in country homes, on orders by mail, the Chicago Ledger and the "mail- order" papers have been used for advertising by such firms. These mail-order houses, of which the original, that of Montgomery Ward & Co., started during the same year as the Chicago Ledger, in 1872, were among the new ventures in the period of enterprise after the fire. Their proprietors wanted to reach the country popu- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 503 lation. The Chicago Ledger managers often point out that 69 per cent, of the people of the United States live outside of the cities, and that the circulation of the "mail-order" papers is in the country tOM^ns, villages, and rural communities. In the seventies the percentage of the population classed as rural was even larger. And since the Chicago Ledger and the "family- story" papers have never been much read in the cities, they were used from the start to get advertisements to the country people. The general advertising agencies were becoming an important factor in certain lines of business by the late seventies. For the large campaigns which they conducted, the first mediums they used, after the local newspapers eyerywhere, were the "family- story" papers, whose publishers were thus saved from great outlay in their organization for securing advertisements. This aided greatly in a quick realization of profits. However sensational the call for a reader's attention, and despite the country reader's interest in the advertisements, the Chicago Ledger still appeals to the aesthetic interest broadly defined — to the interest in story. Incidentally this journal has lived for thirty-three years, and maintained its identity, char- acter, and name. No other Chicago periodical having some sort of a dominant literary character can boast as much. Thirty per cent, of the literary periodicals begun in Chicago during the period after the fire were of this "family-story" type, a larger percentage than the figures for those of its kind started in any decadal period since then. Among the ventures of this class in Chicago following the fire were the following papers : Our Fireside Friend, 1872-75; the Cottage Monthly, 1873; Turner's Minaret, 1873-75; Western Home, 1874-75; the Old Oaken Bucket, 1876; and Sunset Chimes, 1876-87. One of the newspaper annuals contained a standing line which described the contents of these and similar periodicals as "entertaining literature." The relative permanence of the literary periodicals started in Chicago after the fire, including those of the higher as well as those of the lower literary orders, is one notable feature of the period, despite the fact, pointed out by E. Steiger, of New York, 504 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY in a compilation of American periodicals for the "ephemeral intellectual department" of the Vienna exposition in 1873, that in general "literary enterprises are ephemeral" — a generalization also brought out by the census of 1870. Statistics compiled in the course of study for these papers show that eight of the forty-seven periodicals of a literary character started in Chicago after the fire and before 1880 lived for more than fifteen years, and that four started in that period are extant. This is all the more remarakable when it is pointed out that, as the result of the financial panic of 1873, ^ dozen periodicals died. But in 1876, in Rowell's list prepared for the national Centennial Expo- sition, there were titles of twenty literary Chicago periodicals. Following the panic there was a new spurt of energy injected into the business activity Avhich followed the fire. In the establishment of the profitable, low-grade story periodicals the indirect influence of world-wide assistance to the burned-out city has been traced. Ito more direct effects, through enlarging the point of view of Chicago editors, may be found in the journals and periodicals of a higher literary order during the fire decade. The most notable direct aid from the Old World to the literary interests of Chicago came in a gift from England, a contribution which was the beginning of the Chicago Public Library. In the fire the semi-public libraries were destroyed, and the people lost the books of their homes. Moved by the thought of such a loss, Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown at Oxford, led his countrymen in collecting a large library of fiction and general works. This was sent to Chicago and accepted gladly, the whole community being deeply impressed by an act of such refined sympathy. Dr. W. F. Poole, a pioneer in the public-library movement, was called as librarian. And in October, 1874, with the bookwise doctor as editor, W. B. Kern, Cooke & Co., booksellers and pub- lishers, brought out a three-column folio entitled the Ozvl, and subtitled "A Literary Monthly." In No. i, to be found in a file at the Newberry Library, there appeared a dialogue, in which the Public said to the Owl: "Qui vive?" The O^c/ gave the THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 5° 5 countersign "A pure literature." And the Public said: "All right, and all hail," As "an organ of all that is good and true, and an enemy of all that is bad and false in this age and country," the Owl was devoted chiefly to new books. The essays by Dr. Poole were a feature in which he carried out his policy oi impressing on the community high standards, and at the same time a belief in popular fiction reading, an influence from him which was recently acknowledged by the Dial. There were many manifestations of the striving toward metropolitan breadth of view-point in Chicago literary periodical ventures during the later seventies. This was so, notwithstand- ing the fact that in population Chicago was not yet the metropolis of the Mississippi valley. St Louis, with 310,864 inhabitants, outranked Chicago, the fifth in the list of cities, with 298,977 at the census of 1870. The Inland Monthly Magazine, i2)y2-yy, advertised as "the only magazine of the West and South devoted to literature, science, art, humor, sketches, etc.," had its main office at St. Louis, and merely a branch in Chicago. By 1873 Chicago had reached such a stage of metropolitan sophistication as to have its first periodical devoted exclusively to humor. "Carl Pretzel" was the nom de plume of C. H. Harris, the editor. He began with Carl Pretzel's Magazine Pook, in which the sketches, like all his works, were written in the style of Leland's Hans Breitmann. This Pook was a weekly folio, filled with good fun on local topics, phrased in a pseudo- German-English lingo. In this form of expression is to be seen one influence of Chicago's large and important German popula- tion. Many anglicized German expressions and many ger- manized English phrases have made fun in the ordinary conversation of Chicago people. Hence "Carl Pretzel's" form of humorous expression met with a specially ready welcome. In attitude his humor was of the comic variety, which, as is seen in the current work of Ade, McCutcheon, and Dunne, is the characteristic Chicago humor — the comic as against the cynic of more sophisticated New York. Mr. Francis F. Browne, Mr. John McGovern, and Mr. John R. Walsh, from their varying points of view , agree in recollections that "Carl Pretzel's" 506 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY "stuff" was decent, clever humor, not in the least coarse. The only file of his periodicals available, a sample of Der Leedle Vanderer, 1876, in the "Number i Book" at the Historical Society Library, gives the same impression. From his beginning with the use of local material, Mr. Harris branched out, and in 1874 established Carl Pretzel's National Weekly, which later had the word "illustrated" in its title to advertise its cartoons, and was published regularly until 1893. After a time "Carl Pretzel" was more or less written out, and his paper gave considerable attention to politics, Robert G. Ingersoll and John A. Logan being among the contributors. It also became an organ of some secret society interests. It never reached a circulation of more than 5,500, which shows that its constituency was more local than national. In 1886 an advertise- ment showed that it kept something of its original character. This announcement read as follows : Subscription price, $2 for one year, or $150 for 100 j-ears. By subscribing for 100 years, subscribers can save $50. Anyone can see that here is an excellent opportunity to save money. Twelfth year and the largest circula- tion of any weekly newspaper in Chicago. Changes made in the name of a journal devoted to stories and news of sportsmanship, which was begun in 1874 and is continued today, are significant of movements toward a wider outlook. The founder, Dr. N. Rowe, who always signed himself "Mohawk," first called this periodical Field and Stream. The next year he changed the name to the Chicago Field. Then in 1879 it became the American Field; and from 1883 on it has been dated from New York as well as Chicago, although the main ofiice has been in the Masonic Temple at Chicago. Since the death of its founder several years ago, the periodical has been carried on with Mrs. N. Rowe as editor. Another sign of the stir toward metropolitanism was seen in a literary periodical based on the social stratification then developing. There was a joining of interest in literature, art, and music with the news of the local society sets, in this journal. the Saturday Evening Herald, founded in 1874 by Lyman B. Glover, who later became a newspaper dramatic critic, having THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 507 a wide following. This paper is still published, although devoted almost exclusively to society. In its first years., however, with John M. Dandy and G. M. McConnell doing editorial work in addition to that of Mr. Glover, the paper was distinguished for essays and other literary efforts of excellent quality. Among the quasi-literary journals of Chicago it was, in its day, one of the most influential. More important, however, as an index of an expanding point of view, was the advent of a periodical founded in 1873, by a group of liberal, literary preachers — Professor David Swing, Rev. Robert Collyer, Dr. Hiram W. Thomas, and others. To symbolize their getting together, they named the periodical the Alliance. It contained a faint religious dye. But it was first of all colored with an effort at literary expression, chiefly in the essay form. The denominational religious press in Chicago, although it has been most successful and has been marked by the incidental use of material appealing to the literary interest, is not a subject for treatment here. In a more general account of the aesthetic interests of Chicago such religious-literary periodicals should be given attention, because the purely religious desires and the most purely aesthetic desires are closely allied. But the main features of the denominational papers are the items of church news. The Alliance, however, was primarily literary — so distinctly literary that, at one time, Mr. Francis F. Browne, in the latter part of the decade, con- sented to be its managing editor. At the inception of the Alliance the literary clergymen attempted to settle their editorial problems in meetings as a board of editors. This proved fatal to any progress. Soon Professor Swing became the editor-in- chief and chief contributor. His weekly essay was one of the literary treats of the period, and was later continued when the Alliance was merged with the Weekly Magazine in 1882. According to the testimony of those concerned, the Alliance lost its identity from deliberate wrecking by its business manager, who is alleged to have taken advantage of the allied ministers' lack of business experience. A western magazine from the newer West moved east to 508 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Chicago in 1879, drawn by the centripetal force the city was exerting as the growing metropoHs of the West. This was the Western Magazine — the third in Chicago to bear that name. It had been established in Omaha three years before. The periodical was of regular magazine form, with two columns of neatly printed matter on each page, and many excellent wood- cuts illustrating mountain scenery and the towns from "British Columbia to the Gulf of Mexico." It was divided into two departments, whose character was told by the following headings : "The Original Department of 'The Western Magazine/ con- taining Select Articles from Our Best Western Writers;" and, "The Eclectic Department of 'The Western Magazine,' contain- ing the Cream of European Literature." Although containing original stories, the leading feature of the "original department" was illustrated articles and historical sketches on the towns of the western states, in the form of travel letters from John H. Pierce, the publisher. One of these referred to Kansas City as "the new Chicago of the West." These articles were accom- panied by local advertisements from the places written up, and thus brought the publisher his principal receipts, which were augmented by subscriptions secured in these towns, at $1 a year. Like Chicago's pioneer literary journals, the Western Magazine, while at Omaha, said, May, 1879: Give a prompt and willing support to the only periodical that illustrates our western country; and in the not far distant future we will furnish a magazine equal in size and variety of attractions to the standard monthlies of the eastern states. When the Western Magazine came to Chicago, Mrs, Helen Elkin Starrett was engaged to be its editor. Mrs. Starrett, having in her youth contributed to Holland's Springfield Republican, in Massachusetts; having written a volume of poetry; having later edited a newspaper at Lawrence, Kans. ; having written editorials and literary criticisms for Joseph Pulitzer's St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and having been before the public as a lecturer on literary and social topics, particularly in the western states, was regarded as especially well qualified for THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 5^9 the position. Mrs. Starrett, who today conducts a school for g-irls in Chicago, teaches Hterature, and writes poetry for an accredited New York publisher, gave many interesting sug- gestions on the period treated in this paper. The files of the Western Monthly show an immediate improvement in its literary quality after its transferrence to Chicago. The Burlington (Iowa) Hawkeye, in the reviewers' comments, reprinted by the Western Magazine, said: "Mrs. Starrett is eminently qualified and will be to the western literary interests what Mary Mapes Dodge and other eminent lady editorial workers are to eastern literature." The same paper quoted the Chicago Tribune as declaring that the Western Maga- zine would be "the foundation of great things in the literary history of Chicago." "A Welcome Suggestion," from a "Well-Wisher and Reader," which is most significant of the Chicago desire for a literary organ of metropolitan character, was published in the September, 1880, issue of the Western Magazine. It turned out that this anonymous suggestion had come from Frederic Ives Carpenter, now a professor of English literature at the University of Chicago, at that time a Chicago high-school boy. The contribu- tion said, in part : Since the days of the Lakeside Monthly and the Chicago Magazine, it has seemed to many of the literary and semi-Hterary people of this city as though the day must be a long way off when Chicago might hope to have any exclusively literary organ of its intellectual interests. Now, your magazine is the rising sun of our hopes. Will it be long before the Western Magazine is recognized as a worthy representative of our literary interests, before you allow it to become metropolitan? Rushing, trade-maddened Chicago is well supplied with periodicals that uphold its myriad trade and labor and religious fields of activity. Yet not a sheet for its literature. Why should New York have its Scribner's and Harper's, Boston its Atlantic, Philadelphia its Lippincott's and we only our dailies and the denominational religious weeklies? The Western Magazine can make a career. Broaden your interests; admit fiction (the modern home of geniuses) and literary criticism; or at least, if we are not ready for that — literary gossip. Do this for the sake of the cosmopolitan culture that any metropolis like this possesses, and which calls for this. 510 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY The publication of this significant communication was made the occasion for opening a new department in the magazine, called "The Club." Mrs. Starrett declared editorially that there was "no more significant sign of social progress than the spread of literary and social organizations known as clubs, whether woman's clubs, art clubs, social science clubs, or study clubs." The Chicago Philosophical Society, really a literary society in which Mr. Franklin Head, Mr. Lyman J. Gage, and other prominent business and professional men interested in reading, met for discussions, was the most important club in Chicago at the time. The Saracen Club, the Fortnightly, the Chicago Woman's Club, and the Athena, of which Mr. Carpenter's mother was president, were notable, the woman's- club movement having become well started. Mrs. Starrett says that Chicago people interested in letters were much more closely associated in those days than has since been possible in the enlarged city. A sub-title was added to the name of the Western Magazine announcing it to be "A Literary Monthly." The editor was flooded with manuscripts from local writers and from writers in other cities, for both "The Club" department and the general literary pages. Much of the material was amateurish. But some of it was done in promising style by authors, who, through their start in tliis medium, later attained some prominence, among them being Lillian Whiting. After one of the later issues, Professor Swing sent a note to Mrs. Starrett in which he said : There is no better-edited magazine, nor one containing finer writing, east or west or anywhere, than our little magazine which has just come to my desk. But at that time the interests of Mrs. Starrett, who had previously found 75,000 readers for an article on "The House- keeping of the Future," in the Forum, turned more keenly to social and economic questions than to form in literature. The contributions to "The Club" department soon were almost exclusively along these lines — the reproductions of essays read at club meetings by studious women. For this reason, among others reflecting the general situation, it is not surprising that THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 511 on merging the Alliance in March 1882, the Western Magazine became the Weekly Magazine, and announced that thereafter it would present to its readers each week the same choice collection of literary matter, with an added department of great interest devoted to discussions, by able and well-known writers, on the important political, social, and economic topics. While the weekly sermon-essay by Professor Swing, written after the manner of Addison in The Roger de C overly Papers, was the leading literary feature, and there were some stories and poems, the main source of interest in the contents of the Weekly Magazine came more and more to be inquiry about social ques- tions. A regular letter from Washington was sent by Gail Hamilton. James G. Blaine contributed an article on "The South American Policy of the Garfield Administration." Mr. William A. Starrett, Mrs. Starrett's husband, at first associate editor, wrote such acceptable reviews of political events that in the later numbers his name was put above Mrs. Starrett's in the lines naming the editors. The circulation of the Weekly Magazine reached 23,450 in 1883, not equaling, however, the 50,000 credited to the Western Magazine in 1880. It was backed to an extent by prominent Chicago business men. George M. Pullman and C. B. Farwell contributed $1,000 each for stock, and Marshall Field $500. The editors had no part in the business management. The business manager, who had previously been in charge of the Alliance, got the affairs of the Weekly Magazine into such a hopeless tangle that it became bankrupt, and ended its career in 1884. The history of the Western Magazine and the Weekly Maga- zine gives another example of the diverting of the aesthetic literary interest to the knowledge interest. But the story of its attraction to Chicago from the farther West, and of its develop- ment thereafter, shows the movement toward metropolitanism in Chicago, and carries us over into a period of greater develop- ment toward that characteristic in the eighties. 512 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY IV. JOURNALS FOR LETTERS IN THE MARKET METROPOLIS, 1880-90 " It is universally conceded that Chicago is rapidly achieving world-wide reputation as the great literarj"^ center of the United States." — From Culture's Garland, Being Memoranda of the Gradual Rise of Literature, Art, Music and Society in Chicago, and Other Western Ganglia, by Eugene Field (Ticknor & Co., Boston, 1887). Chicago arrived at the rank of a metropoHs during the decade of 1880. A position of metropolitan character was reached, as far as the groundwork of materiaHstic supremacy in a large terri- tory is concerned. In tracing the origin and character of the literary periodicals outcropping in these years, and the interplay of literary and other interests, the first requirement is a picture of Chicago as a material metropolis. It has often been said by the citizens of older centers that a nation can have only one metropolis, only one "mother-city." Unquestionably, New York city has been the metropolis of America for many decades. But the essential idea of metropolis is that of the relation of the city center to an expanse of its sur- rounding country. The United States covers so large a sweep of country that several European cities of metropolitan rank, along with their supporting empires, could be set down in it. In posi- tion Chicago is the center of the most fertile and extensive expanse of valley and prairie in the North Temperate Zone — a territory which by 1880 had become populous. And in every way before the close of the eighties Chicago had become the chief city of the West, and also the first of the nation, and indeed of the world in not a few phases of business and commercial command. The foremost of the chief positions of which Chicago men could and did boast was the rank attained as the greatest railroad center. Ever since the prairie days Chicago had been growing rapidly as a railroad center. This growth had come out of the food-supply industry, and had been reared on the bringing of wheat and cereals to Chicago for shipment over the lakes, and of live stock to the Union Stock Yards, the greatest wholesale meat- market in the world. Established in 1865, after commissary work for the Civil War had demonstrated the importance of THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 5 ^ 3 Chicago as a point for supplies, this market had grown to immense proportions by 1880. On the bread- and meat-supply business had been built the so-called "Granger Railroads," and their development was followed by the locating in Chicago of manufacturing plants for the making of all sorts of goods. All this called for more railroads. Seven new main lines were built into the city during the eighties. This made the total number of trunk lines with ter- minals in Chicago an even twenty, which, according to Blanchard, was the full quota of " railroads entering Chicago on their own tracks August i, 1900." Chicago became not only a receiving point for raw materials, but the growth of the railway systems made the city the center of a most striking example of that which was defined by Herbert Spencer in his elaborate analogy between the structure of society and that of an animal organism, as the "social distributing system." As it took a multitude of people to handle all this market, manufacturing, and railway business, the number increased so rapidly that by 1880 Chicago had, in population, become the metropolis of the West. The census of 1880 showed that in num- bers of people Chicago had far surpassed St. Louis, which had before led in the states west of the Alleghanies. In that year Chicago's population was more than half a million by several thousand. This meant a large distribution of any marketable commodity for consumers within the city itself. But the popu- lation of the Middle West, Northwest, and Southwest, increasing proportionately, made a larger market. Chicago became the chief inland distributing center, not only for life-sustaining products — food, clothing, druggists' supplies, and lumber for housing — but also for material luxuries, and finally for those classes of goods designed to satisfy the aesthetic interest. Among the many jobbing-houses which had grown to large proportions by 1880, one of the most notable was that of a firm whose largest business was in book- jobbing. This was the McClurg house, known since 1886 by the firm name of A. C. McClurg & Co., which today, in a nine-story building, does, besides a large retail book-selling business and a good amount of 514 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY original publishing, the most extensive book-distributing business for all publishers by any single house in the United States. In 1880 this house was the most conspicuous among three large book-stores in adjoining buildings on State Street, known to residents of the city, to visitors from the Middle West, and to tourists as " Book-Sellers' Row." The immense book-distributing business of the McClurg firm was built up in conjunction with, and as an engraftment upon, another line of jobbing. The retail book-sellers of the small towns throughout the West are the druggists, who, in addition to proprietary medicines and drugs, sell a varied line of sundries. Such a retailer would often ask the McClurg company to deliver an order of books to some Chicago house jobbing these sundries, so that shipment could be made in one box. Therefore the firm decided to supply these articles direct. And today, in addition to a Monthly Bulletin of Nezu Books, A. C. McClurg & Co. send out a large annual volume, the cover of which says: Catalogue of Blank Books and Tablets, Stationery, Typewriter Paper and Sup- plies, Hair and Tooth Brushes, Druggists' Sundries, Pocket- Books, Pipes, Pocket Cutlery, etc." More than one floor of their large building is filled with such prosaic supplies. Directly out of this book-distributing agency, so built up, ramifying to drug-stores and book-stores in all towns of the West, and centered in the McClurg house, there originated a journal of literary criticism — the Dial. In 1880 the McClurg firm started this periodical in conjunction with Mr. Francis Fisher Browne, who from its first number until the last of the current volume in 1905 has been in charge of its editorial management. At the time, Mr. Browne, whose work in editing and publishing the Lakeside Monthly had been so notable, was connected with the book-house as literary adviser in its publishing department, which General A. C. McClurg was then personally making special efforts to develop. Devoted exclusively to literary criticism and information con- concerning new books, the Dial did not and does not make the appeal of literary form direct to the aesthetic interest, although the style of its contents is excellent. Its appeal is to the interest THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 5 I 5 in knowledge about the form and contents of literary works. The Dial was raised up for keeping time on the knowledge of current productions of literature. Nevertheless, the Dial is significant of Chicago and western literary interests as they devloped in the decade of its founding, and as they have grown to be since then. With Chicago having attained a metropolitan prominence in materialistic things, one characteristic of the majority of Chicagoans in the eighties became self-confident boasting about their city. It was the crass clamor of a puissant metropolitanism of the market-place. When this note became most strong, many citizens, with material achievements accomplished, began to have some doubts as to whether business success is all of greatness possible. The appear- ance of the Dial marked the fact that the central inland market for grosser products had become a great central market for liter- ary goods. In a section where literary appreciation was much more predominant than the creative literary interest — writing and publishing — it is perhaps remarkable that such a journal as the Dial did not come earlier. The West was buying books. The West began to criticise books. And incidentally other journals of literary criticism, among them being a short-lived magazine called the American Critic, were started at this time. Of course, from the earliest days of periodical-publishing in Chicago^ there had been some literary criticism. But the attitude of appraising quality had not been a characteristic of Chicago until the decade of the eighties, when this element found a place in the public mind of a community which had reached a material metropolitanism, and was growing toward a broader and higher metropolitan spirit. The history of the Dial during the eighties and later tells of the advance toward, not only breadth, but also independence in the judgment of letters. During the entire decade of the eighties, and for two years in the nineties, the business success of the Dial was made easy because A. C. McClurg & Co. were heavy whole- sale purchasers from all of the large publishing-houses of the East. Naturally the publishers were quick to place advertise- ments in the Dial. Furthermore, the Dial, published by Mc- 5l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Clurg's had to criticise books from the publishing department of McClurg's. The effect of these relationships was to arouse dis- belief in the independence of the journal; and in July, 1892, the interest of A. C. McClurg & Co. in the Dial was sold to Mr. Browne. At the time the Dial was disconnected from their house, A. C. McClurg & Co. made the following statement through its columns : • The change looks wholly to the good of the paper, which, it is believed, will be better served by its publication as a separate and independent enter- prise. It is perhaps natural that a critical literary journal like the Dial should be to some extent misunderstood through its connection with a publishing and book-selling house. To relieve the paper from this disadvantage, and to make its literary independence hereafter as obvious as it ever has been real, is the prime object of the present change. From the first, Mr. Browne, though a prophet of Western literature, had maintained, besides a broad critical outlook, the high ideals of editorial independence for which he had been respected while editing the Lakeside Monthly. With Mr. Browne as sole proprietor, The Dial has grown in prestige until today, in 1906, it stands as the only authoritative American journal devoted exclusively to literary criticism that is not connected with a book- publishing house. While in the eighties its circulation was in largest part western, today it is national, although not large as compared with the popular magazines, because the constituency of publishers, reviewers, librarians, teachers, ministers, and gen- eral readers deeply interested in literary criticism is relatively small. The character of the editor, and the fact that experts on special topics are paid for reviews expressing their opinions freely, have made the independence of the journal have meaning. It is safe to say that the Dial, although published in the inland metropolis, is the leading journal of literary criticism in the nation. After all is said about the Dial as a symbol of the growing metropolitan independence of criticism in Chicago, that which stands out as most striking concerning the developments of the eighties is its origin in a book-distributing agency erected, like other freight-distributing houses, along with the railway systems THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 517 which made the dot on the map marked " Chicago " a metro- poHtan center. The distributing of people as well as packages by the railway systems centering here brought the Arkansaw Traveler and Opie Read, who had founded this periodical at Little Rock in 1882, to Chicago in 1887. It might appear that the name Arkansaw Traveler was given in a punning mood, because its contents were prepared for the amusement of railway travelers. But it was taken from a tune made familiar in Arkansas by a local character, one " Sandy " Faulkner, who as a candidate for the legislature had gone about the state playing a "fiddle" and reciting a monologue. The contents of the paper were of a humorous char- acter — sketches and jokes, drawn chiefly from the lives of southern dialect characters, with whom Mr. Read had made him- self familiar when local editor of the Little Rock Gazette. While during the early eighties the comic papers of New York were, according to Frederick Hudson, the authority on American jour- nalism, first becoming successful, the Arkansaw Traveler, still at Little Rock, leaped into popularity, first in the Southwest and then through the North, attaining a circulation of 85,000 in its second year. The year 1887, in which the headquarters of the Arkansaw Traveler were removed to Chicago, was one in which the last two of the seven lines of railroad coming into Chicago in the eighties were opened. Mr. Read, in an interview given to contribute material for these papers, said : Chicago had become the great railway center. Our paper was sold chiefly on railway trains. We moved to Chicago so as to be in position for reaching the largest number of railway passengers most easily. The mailing facilities of Chicago, as the central point in a spider's web of railways, also led us here. In those days schoolboys were not used extensively for the sale of weekly papers. Besides making sales on the trains through the news companies, we had a subscription list. For years Chicago had been a great point for the sale of subscription books. For our weekly of general circulation the business manager, P. D. Benham, my brother-in-law, found that it was not possible to get advertising in the same proportion to the number of subscribers as with a local newspaper. The advertising patronage came from the general agencies, and in those days magazine advertising was not done so generally as it is today. We counted on sales and subscriptions. For five years after its migration to the western railway Sl8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY metropolis, the Arkansaw Traveler held its own. In fact, it is still brought out regularly from a bookkeeping supply house. But it has lost its unique characteristics, and has an insignificant circulation. Mr. Read resigned from the editorship in 1892, and has not since contributed to the paper. His resignation was made partly because some promoters acquired control of the organization of the periodical, converted it into a stock company, and proposed to put Mr. Read, its creator, on salary. But a more important rea- son was that Mr. Read had come to the conclusion that humor and character sketches put into ephemeral form in a weekly periodical were more or less wasted. He aspired to write books, and had been encouraged by Ticknor & Co., of Boston, who had already published one of his southern dialect productions, entitled "Len Gansett." For thirteen years, since resigning from the periodical whose interests brought him here, Mr. Read has been in Chicago writing for publications chiefly in book form. He has probably been the most prolific user of the fiction form working continuously in Chicago since the eighties. A score of his books of fiction are to be found in the Public Library. Most of them have been published, by Chicago printing-houses, between paper covers. The news-company boys on passenger trains east and west will tell you that Opie Read is the author most popular among train readers. He has held and enlarged the audience before which he secured his first hearing with sketches and jokes in the Arkansaw Traveler. And recently eastern magazine and book publishers have solicited and secured his output. From the day of his arrival, Mr. Read has been the personi- fication of the fact that the growing mid- American metropolis has been constantly drawing to itself men with unique points of view — writers whose outlook is first of all that of some other locality. To busy Chicago Mr. Read brought the point of view of quaint and quiet southern life, the eye and ear of an interpreter of the dialect characters in the region from which he came. Always picturesque in character, wearing a long black coat, black string tie, long locks, and a broad-brimmed hat, Mr. Read has visited the Press Club almost daily, and, meeting the younger news- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 519 paper men, as well as those of "the old guard," in avowed and democratic freedom and simplicity, has imparted his point of view to others. Men from other places in America having distinct local color have brought other variations in point of view. The attraction of such men was specially notable in the eighties. Since then more men trained to the cosmopolitan view of letters and art derived in Europe have come to the Chicago field. But in that decade these various local view-points, along with the atti- tude of men versed in classic English literature, such as Mr. Browne of the Dial, fused with the virile mercantilism through which those in the roar of Chicago's busy streets saw life into a new composite metropolitan outlook. It affected the writers and publishers of Chicago in the eighties. The conspicuous patronage of artistic endeavor, in various mediums, by citizens who had acquired wealth with the city's growth into rank as a great mart, worthy of satire as it was in some aspects, was another factor in creating a metropolitan attitude. The Art Institute by 1882 had a brick building, and in 1887 erected for school and museum the excellent four-story Romanesque structure of brown stone, on Michigan Boulevard, at the southwest corner of Van Buren Street, now occupied by the Chicago Club. There, in the heart of the market city, on a boulevard which was fast becoming the fine-arts avenue of Chi- cago, was a material temple fixing in the public mind the idea of art. Theodore Thomas and his orchestra, besides filling winter engagements in Chicago, had been giving long series of summer- night concerts in the Exposition Building which stood on the Lake Front until 1887. Grand opera was annually presented by foreign companies, and the drama, exceptionally well patronized for years, was presented by the best of visiting American and English actors. All this told on the attitude of the literary workers and publishers of periodicals. But the most interesting expression of the growing metro- politan literary consciousness of the decade was "the Saints' and Sinners' Corner." Engene Field, the poet and prose humorist, who had been in newspaper work in Missouri and Colorado for ten years before he was drawn to Chicago, in 1883, was the 520 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY voice of this unique group. The "Saints and Sinners" were a score of bibHophiles — clergymen, general readers, and literary workers — who held meetings, imaginary for the most part, in the rare-book corner of the retail department of the house of A. C. McClurg & Co., from another section of which, as we have seen, there emanated a journal of literary criticism. It was really a corner in the Daily Nezvs, where Field had a column devoted to gossip about "The Saints and Sinners," and local literary and artistic topics, under the caption " Sharps and Flats." This was widely read and had a great effect on the ideas of the community. From it, in 1887, Field culled selections, which were published in book-form by Ticknor & Co., of Boston, under the title: Culture's Garland — Being Memoranda of the Gradual Rise of Literature, Music and Society in Chicago, and Other Western Ganglia. The garland with which Field wreathed Chicago culture, as shown in a frontispiece, was a string of sausages. He made a reference to the time " when Chicago's output of pork swept the last prop from under the old Elizabethan school at Cincinnati ; " and said, on p. 168: Here in Chicago " a hand well known in literature " is a horny, warty but honest hand which, after years of patient toil at skinning cattle, or at boiling lard, or at cleaning pork, has amassed sufficient to admit of its mas- ter's reception into the crime de la creme of Chicago culture. Besides the extreme expression of satirical criticism which he gave to sham in literary patronage, Field also' played with super- ficiality in efforts at literary and artistic production, including some fun at the expense of three ambitious literary periodicals started in Chicago during the decade. All this was the expres- sion of an attitude that is typical of metropolitan centers, and which in older, cosmopolitan capitals attains a degree of frigid or flippant cynicism never yet reached by Chicago. The three periodicals noticed by Field, while not devoted to satire, were more metropolitan in character than any which had preceded them in the succession of those started in Chicago. These were the Current, a weekly begun in 1883 and lasting until 1888 ; Literary Life, a monthly magazine, 1884-87 ; and America, a literary and political weekly journal, 1888-91. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 52 1 The Current was the creation of Edgar L. Wakeman, a brilHant newspaper man. Magazinedom is a kingdom of heaven of which many newspaper men, in Chicago as elsewhere, often fondly dream. Mr. Wakeman's venture stands as one of the most conspicuous efforts to get over the wall. As Chicago corre- spondent for the newspaper of Colonel Henry Watterson, Mr. Wakeman had, by the use of postal cards which he sent out to prominent people, saying, "You will be interested in such and such a number of the Louisville Courier," attracted much atten- tion to his work in a paper that allows scope for individuality. Both in promotion and character the Current was sensational. In an early number the Current declared that it was "the weekly, literary, news, and family journal of our time." Its ambitious ideal was stated as follows: "The Current is yet a model of brevity and does every week what the pretentious magazines aim to do once a month." While a family journal, the Current was far above the plane of the " family-story" type of papers in literary quality. Its con- tents had distinct literary merit. And yet they were not of the classic character approached in such a magazine as the Lakeside Monthly. It was a magazine of popular literature. It may with approximate accuracy be listed as the first of that type undertaken in Chicago. And by Mr. Forrest Crissey, the western editor for two current eastern magazines of the popular literature type, its career of five years is rated as the most significant of efforts at periodical publishing in Chicago prior to those of the present decade. Its popular character is to be seen by dipping into a file at the Public Library. For example, a serial story by E. P. Roe, entitled " An Original Belle," is to be found in its pages. The field from which Mr. Wakeman gathered serials, short stories, poems, and articles was not confined to the city limits, nor by the boundaries of the Middle West, nor yet by those of America. The management of the Current was the first among Chicago publishers to seek manuscripts from England. While not so well favored with results as has been the editor of the Red Book of the present day, the effort shows a metropolitan breadth approached by Chicago publishers in the eighties. 522 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY In securing contributions from American authors of estab- lished reputation the Current was more successful. James B. Cable, with " Southern Silhouettes," James Whitcomb Riley, and Joaquin E. Miller were among the contributors. In its early career the Current was reported to have $100,000.00 worth of excellent manuscripts pigeon-holed. From the first, however, Chicago men were important contributors. Eugene Field, Ernest McGaffey, Colonel William Lightfoot Visscher, and John Mc- Govem were among them. Field played with the pretensions of the editor of the Current in the report of a "Convention of West- ern Writers" at Indianapolis, where he said literary workers would be asked : "But have you never written anything for the Current f' He remarked that the implication was: "If you have, you must be all right." In 1885 Mr. John McGovern, a vivid imaginative writer, who honestly believes that the "West is in literary rebellion against the East," and that " General McClurg's chief office was to command a literary blockhouse and keep down the Indians of the frontier," became editor of the Current. The periodical became an avowed exponent of the literary interest of the people in Chicago and the West, and their support was asked. As an experiment to see if such support could not be secured, in 1885 a beautiful Easter edition was prepared. With the enterprise backed by Mr. George Wiggs, a member of the Board of Trade interested in the patronage of local letters, 100,000 copies, four times the normal number, were printed. The paper bill alone was $3,000. But the bulk of the issue went to the ragman. Under Mr. Wakeman's administration the circulation and advertising had been sufficient to give promise of success. With the magnetism of enthusiasm, Mr. Wakeman had interested able financial supporters. But by the end of his second year the finances were in a tangle. Mrs. Starrett, who characterizes the Current as "a flash in the pan," says that Mr. Wakeman pro- posed to sell the Current to the owners of the Weekly Magaj:ine, which had grown in metropolitan character and was continued until 1884. The proposition was rejected. Mr. Wakeman left town. The Current, embarrassed financially and narrowed to THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO S^3 "its chosen field as a representative of western literature" dragged out a profitless existence until 1888, when it was merged with America. In the meantime, Literary Life, a contemporary of the Current, attracted attention. It appeared in regulation form, and was advertised as "an illustrated magazine for the people; only $1 a year, ten cents a copy." Charles Dudley Warner was quoted as having written to the publisher saying : " I am amazed that you can afford to publish such a very handsome periodical at so little cost to the subscriber." There was nothing local about the contents of Literary Life. Essays on literary topics, biographical sketches and portraits of well-known authors in America and England, with engravings to show their "homes and haunts," appear to have made up the material sought for the magazine, which also announced a somewhat broader ambition — namely, to be "the Century of the West." To what degree the aspirations it advertised were realized cannot be ascertained in Chicago. There is no reliquary file in the libraries here. The name of Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, sister of President Grover Cleveland, was conspicuously connected with Literary Life. Miss Cleveland was the editor of some of the early num- bers. But although a Boston organ was quoted as saying, ''Literary Life helps to make Chicago one of the literary centers of the country," Miss Cleveland never came to this literary center. All her work as editor was done at her home in New York state. Perhaps this arrangement for long-range editing may be inter- preted as a sign of a broad, metropolitan outlook on the part of A. P. T. Elder, the publisher. Miss Cleveland, in a letter recently sent for use in these papers, said : I was interested in Literary Life for three months, and then dropped it because of a wide divergence between myself and its business manager as to policy in its management. During the three months in which I did my rather amateurish " editing " it was quite successful, and would in the hands of a more discriminating manager, or a less fastidious editor, have been a profitable enterprise. 524 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY The close of its career was chronicled by Field in 1887, with the following paragraph : For the information of our public we will say that the Atlantic Monthly is a magazine published in Boston, being to that intelligent and refined com- munity what the Literary Life was to Chicago before a Fourth Ward con- stable achieved its downfall with a writ of replevin. The efforts of the editor-publishers of America, the literary- political weekly, 1888-91, are of more interest in many ways than any others by periodical publishers at Chicago in the eighties. Mr. Slason Thompson and Mr. Hobart Chatfield-Taylor were the founders of America, and Mr. Thompson stuck to it as editor and publisher to the end of its career. At the time of its founding, Mr. Thompson, as he is today, was a strong journalist. Mr. Chatfield-Taylor, now a novelist and prominent society man, was then a recent college graduate of independent means, just begin- ning a career of literary endeavor. Mr. Thompson is one of the men drawn to Chicago by the growing importance of the north-central American metropolis. Educated for the bar at the University of New Brunswick, ad- mitted to practice in that Canadian province, and later to the bar in California, he had entered journalism at San Francisco, served on the New York Tribune, and, after coming to Chicago as agent for the New York Associated Press, had been one of the founders of the Chicago Herald, and had held numerous important editorial positions. While in San Francisco, Mr. Thompson had been an admirer of the irgonaut, published there by Frank Pixley. He believed that if a serious literary periodical published on the Pacific coast could succeed, one brought out in Chicago should surely do so. Mr. Thompson was one of the " Saints and Sinners," an intimate friend of Field, and in later years the collator of some of that author's writings. In " Sharps and Flats," Field, referring to an imaginary sale of pews in the famous corner, made the following remark : Mr. Slason Thompson, boiling over with indignation, declared that if the Rev. Mr Bristol and General McClurg intended to form a trust on pews, they must expect to feel the castigatory torments of the nimble pen and sar- castic pencil wielded by the facile editor of America. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 525 In America Mr. Thompson was strong in writing castigations. His supreme interest was in political questions, and he made them all hinge on one — that of immigration. Mr. Taylor had just come home to Chicago from Cornell University, where he had been connected with the undergraduate journals. Today he laughingly says : " Having been on the col- lege papers, I thought I could set the world on fire." Mr. Taylor was not greatly interested in political and sociological questions. His supreme interest, as an editor, was in literary form. Although the endeavor to combine the literary and political interest was a striking phenomenon in America, during the first few months a remarkably strong, cosmopolitan literary character in a large part of its contents was the feature which attracted wide attention. The greatest array of contributions from noted American authors ever secured for a Chicago periodical was spread in the pages of America during the first few weeks of its publication. Some, also, were from England. The file in the Chicago Public Library would please any reader fond of the works of American authors. A poem by James Russell Lowell, contributions from Charles Dudley Warner and Julian Haw- thorne, and an instalment of a serial by Frank R. Stockton are among the contents of the first number. Hawthorne conducted a department of literature for many weeks, and was succeeded in that by Maurice Thompson. Andrew Lang, the English essayist, was a frequent contributor. Swinburne was among the authors of poems. Poetry by Holmes, Scollard, Morris, McGrath, Riley, Garland, and Waterloo was printed. Eugene Field wrote his "Little Boy Blue" for America. Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Louise Chandler Moulton were among the contributors. The aim of Mr. Taylor was not to secure material with which to make the popular type of magazine, but to get for America the best of the current American literary output. Fabulous prices were paid for these contributions. For Bret Harte's "Jim" the sum of $500 was given. Mr. Taylor is said to have sunk from $50,000 to $100,000 in the America venture; and a good part of that sum went for manuscripts. America's outlook over American litera- 526 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY ture was broader than that of any literan- magazine containing fiction and poetry undertaken in Chicago during the eighties. The publication of this representative American Hterary out- put, secured at such extravagant prices, was continued for only a few weeks. It did not pay. But few copies of America circulated east of the Alleghanies. *' Literar\- trade- winds blow from the east," says Mr. Thompson today. The circulation of America was for the most part western, and at no time did it exceed 10,000. After the period of high prices for contributions. Mr. Taylor wrote nearly all of the literan,- contents under a series of noms de plume. In recounting this part of his experiences with America, Mr. Taylor said : '' That is where I gained my literary training." Two local writers who have since attained national promi- nence in lines of artistic production were assistant editors of America during parts of its cpxeer as a training school — Ranald De Koven, composer, and Harr\- B. Smith, light-opera librettist Writing as ''Quaver," ^Ir. De Koven conducted a department of musical criticism. Of Mr. De Koven's column, Bel ford's Maga::ine, a Chicago contemporary of America, said: His notes will be read with much interest, for he is an eminently qualined musician; a graduate of Oxford University, Elngland, and essentially cosmo- politan as regards his education. Mr. Smith, who was beginning his literan,- work, was at first listed as assistant editor and later as business manager, although Slason Thompson says the periodical never had any business management in the present-day sense. Mr. Smith was a frequent contributor of verse. While starting out with a notable character as to genuine American literature, America from the first was distinguished for the \-irile political interest and the vigorous personality of Mr. Thompson, which stood out in its pages most emphatically. The very title, while suggesting the literary interest was conspicuous for its political significance, and a sub-title dec\a.red America to be " a journal for Americans." Articles by Seth Low on " American Patriotism," and by Theodore Roosevelt on "Americans Past and Present, and the Americanization of Foreigners." appeared THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO S^7 in the first numbers. In editorials, and in a department headed " Americanisms," Mr. Thompson hammered away continually in favor of the restriction of immigration and of limiting the influence of the Roman Catholic church in American affairs. The literary character of the weekly faded away with the twenty-third number. By mutual agreement, Mr. Taylor retired, and Mr. Thompson became sole editor and publisher. In an editorial announcement, Mr. Thompson remarked that there would be "no deviation from the high literary entertainment," and then laid all emphasis on a statement that America would continue to urge the restriction of all immigration by consular inspection and a per capita tax, the making of citizenship essential to the privilege of suffrage, and the limitation of the right to vote to citizens who can read and write; and other propositions for the protection of " America's free schools, American morality, and American nationality." To enforce these ideas, in some of the later numbers there was a use of cartoons, the first and only illustrations published in America. One of these was sublined, " America for the Irish." Another, a lurid thing with much black ink, done by the famous Thomas Nast, was called " Foreign Thrones among Us." But the advocacy of such sentiments did not prove popular enough to bring large business returns, and with the number of Septem- ber 24, 1891, the transfer of America and all that pertained to it, except the " personal opinions of the editor," was announced by Mr. Thompson. In penning his farewell editorial he said : " In respect to several subjects too much slighted in the daily press, America has been a voice crying in the wilderness; " and declared that the policy had been to put forth " a firm but moderate opposi- tion to the political and educational policy of the Roman Catholic church in the United States," and to give expression to faith in the American common school as an "alembic" for the varied nationalities represented in American population. While the mixture of representative American literature and national political policy in America makes it stand as an index of the growing metropolitan spirit of Chicago in the eighties, it was this mixture, and the gradual increase of the political element 528 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY — the advocacy of a cause — which brought failure to America. Mr. Taylor says : Besides our inexperience, the fact that the periodical was published in Chicago and not in New York kept it from gaining a sure foothold. Mr. Thompson, also, says : Of course, there was a prejudice against a journal from Chicago; and the labor organizations here made prices of printing higher than in New York. But these magazine failures are not peculiar to Chicago. There has been no greater extinction here than those of Putnam's and the Eclectic in New York. Nevertheless, the chief reason for the disappearance of America remains the decline of its appeal to the pure literary interest, and the phenomenal persistence and increase in its appeal to interest in one political idea. In forsaking literature to follow the anti- immigration will-o'-the-wisp, America followed the line of extinction taken in Chicago in the earliest period by the Literary Budget, founded in 1852 and transformed in 1855 to the short- lived Native Citizen. It is difficult to make a literary tree grow out of a political platform. That America in dying was transferred to the Graphic was in line with the developments of periodical publishing at Chcago in the decade following the eighties. The Graphic was an Illustrated weekly of about the same age as America. " With the World's Columbian Exposition coming," said America's editorial valedic- tory, " during the next two years, the Graphic, having the facili- ties, will render valuable service to Chicago." Other weeklies with metropolitan earmarks springing up in the eighties were those of the smart variety. These contained a melange of clever comment on current events and local society news, verse, and other material of interest for its form of expres- sion. The Rambler, started in 1884, by Reginald De Koven and Harry B. Smith, and carried on until 1886 by Elliott Flower, was the most interesting of these weeklies. It was " A Journal of Men, Manners, and Things." Mr. Flower, in an interview for these papers, said : We wanted to do for Chicago what Life does for New York. The manager of the Western News Co. said : " Put a New York date line on it, or the West won't take it." We did not do so. But he was right. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 529 The Rambler never secured more than 5,000 readers, and the experiment cost its promoters several thousand dollars. Its chief result of permanence was the training Mr. Flower had through it for writing the humorous sketches and fiction which he has since contributed to magazine- and book-publishers elsewhere. Vanity Fair was the name of a " literary and society weekly " which was of sufficient interest to be listed in the newspaper annuals for 1885 and 1886. Appleton's In the Swim, a "literary, travel, and society weekly," engrafted on an advertising trav- elers' bureau, flourished from 1887 to 1891. And a "pictorial weekly " having the name Life was attempted in 1889, but did not survive. A monthly in regular magazine form, designated the Society Magazine, and filled with selections from the periodicals of England, came out during the entire calendar year 1888, and left a file in the Public Library. A most creditable monthly for "gentlemen of wealth and culture," as its advertising read, was Wildwood's Magazine, edited by "Will Wildwood" (Fred E. Pond), and undertaken in Chicago in 1888. During its first year it was devoted to "the higher literature of manly sport." " To readers seeking reflection of the charms of woodcraft we offer the work of contributors whose genial essays partake of the breezy character of forest and field," said the initial number, which commented on the expansion of the literature of sport during the twenty years just then past. Perusal of a file in the Newberry Library shows that the magazine contained charming tales, essays, and memoirs of sportsmen. Both in subject-matter and in form its pages made a pleasing appeal to the play instinct, which some of the authoritative psy- chologists say is essentially the same as the aesthetic interest. But at the end of a year, Charles Hallock, the former editor of Forest and Stream, became associated in the editorship, a philosophy of the serious interest in outdoor activity was announced, the name was changed to Recreation, and " geological picnics " were organ- ized from a branch office at Washington. This brought public ridicule. An editorial retort in the magazine listed the national capital as "the graveyard of journalism," and a delightful 530 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY aesthetic publication of high hterary quality went to pieces on the dry rocks of a knowledge interest. A phase of the increasing complexity in the character of Chicago — complexity growing out of the industrial magnitude of the city in the eighties — was reflected in the starting of several magazines devoted to serious subjects but appealing to the popu- lar literary interest through the form of essays, supplemented with fiction and, in some, with illustrations. Questions on the relations of capital and labor began to be the subject of much talk and action in Chicago — questions whose consideration has since grown to such importance here as to make the city one of the caldrons in which much of social import is seething. In 1886 a violent manifestation of this came in the anarchist riots at Hay- market Square, which, it may be mentioned incidentally, were pictured with large wood cuts in the Illustrated Graphic News, published simultaneously in Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Kansas City, in that year. But the riots and the execution of the anarchists were merely the extreme expression of elements constantly stimulating serious thought. A monthly magazine called the Commonwealth, started in 1888, was recorded in the newspaper annuals until 1892. But Bel ford's Magazine, of which No. i, June, 1888, bore the imprint " Chicago, New York, and San Francisco," is the most significant serious periodical of the decade which is represented among the files. It appears that, during its second year, the periodical was issued from New York, that in 1892 its headquarters were moved back to Chicago, and that it died in 1893. A statement on American life and serious periodicals was made by the editor, in June, 1889. In an editorial he said: When the best blood of Europe sought these shores as laborers or pirates, they sought to conquer a continent. The victory achieved between the first landing and now is simply a marvel of industry, endurance, energy, and enterprise. In this struggle of man versus matter we have become materialists. Out of sixty odd millions of population, about three million read books, and these mainly novels. To attempt the publication of a monthly devoted to the discussion of grave subjects, to be to the thoughtful reformer of this country what the Westminster of London has been to the Liberals of England, would be commercial insanity. Successful American magazines are devoted to THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 53 1 pictorial exhibits, which, aUhough they are artistically done, yet make only picture-books, to be looked at, not read. The file shows, however, that in Belford's Magazine an endeavor to popularize serious subjects was made. On the occa- sion of locating in Chicago again in 1892, the magazine editorially- declared that "the literature of the West has been acted, it has been done" — not written. Another type of serious magazine broadly to be classed as literary, which grew up in the eighties at Chicago, was the home- study journal. Some of these were : the Correspondence Uni- versity Journal, monthly, 1884-86; the University, 1885-86, biweekly, claiming to be a successor to the Weekly Magazine; the Home Library Magazine, monthly, 1887; and the National Magazine, published by a so-called " National University " from 1889 to 1894. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO. V HERBERT E. FLEMING University of Chicago V. ESTHETIC PERIODICALS OF THE WORLD'S FAIR CITY 1890-1900 "All this time there had been building the beautiful city of white palaces on the lake, and it was now open for the world to see what Chicago had dreamed and created. Although it had made me impatient to have Mr. Dround spend on it his energy that was needed in his own business, now that it was accomplished, in all its beauty and grandeur, it filled me with admiration. "There were few hours that I could spend in its enjoyment, but I remem- ber one evening after my return from the East, when we had a family party at the Fair. May and Will were spending their vacation with us during the hot weather, and the four of us, having had our dinner, took an electric launch and glided through the lagoons beneath the lofty peristyle out to the lake, which was as quiet as a pond. The long lines of white build- ings were ablaze with countless lights ; the music from the bands scattered over the grounds floated softly out upon the water; all else was silent and dark. In that lovely hour, soft and gentle as was ever a summer night, the toil and trouble of men, the fear that was gripping men's hearts in the market, fell away from me, and in its place came Faith. The people who could dream this vision and make it real, those people from all part? of the land who thronged here day after day — their sturdy wills and strong hearts would rise above failure, would press on to greater victories than this triumph of beauty — victories greater than the world had yet witnessed !" E. V. Harrington, packer, in The Memoirs of an American Citizen, by Robert Herrick, 1905. Basking in a new light reflected over their trade city by the "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition, the men attempting to publish periodicals at Chicago during the nineties opened their eyes to many new influences. First they adopted the appeal of pictorial art. The World's Fair was a magnificent picture. Graphic presentation was the form used to attract aesthetic interest in several journals begun just before, during, and after 1893. The copper-plate half-tone did not come into 784 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 785 general commercial use until that year. The cheapening of this process started the wave of popular illustrated magazines from other centers, which has since become an inundation. But in Chicago this turn toward emphasis on illustrations was quickened by the Fair, which even prosaic visitors from western prairie soil likened to the "heavenly vision." Men ambitious to be publishers went into ecstasies over its suggestions. In imagina- tion they saw heaps of gold as the reward for publishing pic- tures, supplemented with literary material. Besides the effect of the panorama, there was the finer influence from the exhibitions of the fine arts. The subtleties of architectural decoration, even though done in ephemeral staff; the grace of form from the hands of the great sculptors, although the statues were but casts; and, above all, the original paintings from the brushes of Old and New World masters, hanging in hall after hall of the Fine Arts Building, revealed to the people of Chicago and the West the beauty of universal art. Foreign members of the artist group inspired in their Chicago hosts en- thusiasm for art in all of its manifestations; and the judging for awards stimulated the habit of criticism on the basis of merit, tending to suppress praise from local pride. Magazines devoted to the fine arts, and literary magazines edited in the spirit of the artist class, followed the Fair. The World's Columbian Exposition alsoi brought historic per- spective to the new and still crude western metropolis. On one bright day during that summer the vessels from Chicago harbors were, as usual, marking the sky-line of the lake to the east with their clouds of smoke, the pennants of commerce. Three caravels, picturesque imitations of those in which Columbus had sailed to America in 1492, and, like those of the discoverer, having come slowly over from old Spain, moved past the lake craft and into the Jackson Park lagoon, where they still stand moored today. These caravels, and the exposition in nearly all its sections, gave to the people of the new western market-metropolis the vivid impres- sion that the life of their community is but a chapter in the epic of world-wide civilization. Nearly all the general literary and 786 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY pictorial magazines established in Chicago during the Fair decade showed the effect of this impression. Finally, for a season the World's Fair transformed Chicago the inland center into Chicago the cosmopolitan center. This city, being far from a seaport, normally cannot have in it a kaleidoscopic company of transients from all the world, such as assembles daily in New York, London, and Paris. But for the one brief summer the down-town streets and the wide ways at the Fair grounds were thronged with visitors, not merely from many localities of the United States, but from all countries. On the Midway Plaisance, a boulevard of the nations and races, bordered for a mile by groups of the natives of Europe and of the Orient in settings from their distant towns and villages, thou- sands of men and women from everywhere touched shoulders in one common interest. Not one of the seventy periodicals of aesthetic character undertaken in Chicago during the decade of this cosmopolitan gathering contained the word "western" in its title. In every period before this there had been "western" literary journals attempted at Chicago. But the World's Fair made for a breadth of view which repressed the western spirit. All types of literary and artistic periodicals became more cosmo- politan in their outlook, and in some of the general literary maga- zines of the decade unique efforts at the world-wide character were made. During the thirteen years since the exposition was a reality, the tradition oi it has had a vital influence on Chicago. But, £.s with reading a novel, the effects are most vivid while one is going through its pages and just after the book is closed, so the enlarging influence of the World's Fair was felt most forcibly by Chicago publishers during the year of the Fair and immediately after the closing of its gates. Illustrated journals, in form though not in periodicity like Harper's Weekly, were the most conspicuous of the mushroom periodicals at Chicago in the first few years of the World's Fair decade. In most publications illustrations are used to supplement literary features. In these journals material in printed form designed to give literary entertainment was used as an auxiliary THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 787 to the illustrations. The most important of these periodicals were HaUigan's Illustrated World's Fair, Campbell's Illustrated Columbian, and the Graphic. The first number of HaUigan's Illustrated World's Fair, put out for promotion, appeared in 1890. Mr, Jewell Halligan, its originator, came to Chicago from Denver, and in this advance issue announced plans for a most pretentious publication. The second number was published in August of the next year, and the periodical was issued monthly until December, 1893. "To carry the undeniable news of the eye to the ends of the earth," was one phase of the publishing policy announced by Hal- ligan's paper. Its pages were of unusually large size. Most of them were filled with half-tone illustrations. An advertisement, in 1893, said that the magazine was "the first to exclude all other forms of picture save photographs on copper called half-tones." Undeniably the illustrations, done by the new process and printed on extra-fine paper, were well executed. The journal's pictorial record of the Fair was so complete that two editions of extra copies were printed for sale in bound volumes. In this form the magazines made such an attractive World's Fair picture-book that one set was added to the collection of volumes in the art- room of the Chicago Public Library. A distinct literary flavor was to be found in the printed material on the pages containing the smaller illustrations. This was due to the fact that Mr. John McGovem was the editor. Of an ebullient, imaginative turn of mind, a reader who has roamed over many fields of world-lore and literature, Mr. McGovern was spurred to most characteristic endeavors by the spirit of the World's Fair times, when all the currents of thought ran large. Having graduated into newspaper work and letters from the printer's case, he had written ten volumes of essays, poems, and novels. All of these had been published at Chicago. And some of the exposition directors who had been patrons of these pro- ductions had urged him to take the editorship of HaUigan's Illus- trated World's Fair. Always an advocate of "western litera- ture," he spoke of editor and publisher as "western men," and 788 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY announced that they would "strive to doi their work in their own way, aping no fashion of any other region." Declaring that "original literature is original literature," and that "the fleeting, capricious thoughts of a creator lie betewen him and the Great Creator," Mr. McGovern made the following signed statement concerning the contributions literary men might send him : "I will not edit their copy. This pledge I kept sacred in The Cur- rent; it will not be more difficult to make it more sacred in maturer years." Although asking for "a pleasant godspeed for Western Literature," Mr. McGoA^ern voiced the larger outlook, calling attention to the fact that the Fair was not Chicago's, but the world's, and declaring that the journal was to have dignity and "to perfect a proper subjective." Literary material of more interest from the ideas in the subject-matter than from form of presentation was the result of this policy. An excellent little poem on some theme suggested by thoughts of Christopher Columbus appeared in nearly every number. For instance, "A Mother's Song in Spain, A. D. 1493," was contributed by William S. Lord, an Evanston business man who has done some writing and independent publishing from time to time. E. Hough, Ernest McGaffey, and Charles Eugene Banks were among those who wrote Columbus verses for the Illustrated World's Fair. Opie Read^ of whom Mr. McGovern is an intimate friend, contributed a sketch entitled "Old Billy at the World's Fair." The literary ministers, David Swing, Robert Mclntyre and W. T. Meloy, wrote many essays for the journal, and Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll supplied an article captioned "The Effect of the World's Fair on Human Progress." A total of ninety-nine contributors was listed. While many were Chicago men, not a few in the list were residents of other places in America, and some, including Alphonse Daudet, of distant countries. In all the contributions and editorials the western element was illuminated with league-like leaps of the imagination, showing appreciation of historic perspective. A general world's magazine was expected to be the out- growth of Halligan's Illustrated World's Fair. In the Decern- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 789 ber, 1893, number the publisher announced that the name of the magazine would thereafter be the Illustrated World, to be a literary journal containing "the larger views of the earth's surface." But that number was the last. Mr. Halligan lost some $30,000 in the Illustrated World's Fair venture. The cost of the extra-large half-tones was too great to be easily met with receipts from subscriptions at $2.50 a year, and the expense for the half-tones used in the advertising pages was so heavy that every increase in advertising meant an increase in the net loss. The republication of the numbers for sale in bound volumes did not meet with a large demand. Special patronage in some form was needed. A fight for special support from the exposition directorate was lost by Mr. Halligan. Unfortunately for him, between 1890, when his promotion number, copyrighted as Halligan' s Illustrated World's Fair, made its appearance, and the opening of the Fair in 1893, the ofificial name adopted for it was "World's Columbian Exposition" instead of "World's Fair," the name originally contemplated. Hence, although the exposition was generally spoken of as the "World's Fair," the name of his magazine would not have been correct for an official organ. In the meantime, a monthly designated the World's Colum- bian Exposition Illustrated was started, in February, 1891, by Mr. James B. Campbell, a Chicago man in the printing business. A collection of old copies of the Historical Society library shows that this, too, was an excellent illustrated journal, although not so large nor so artistic as Halligan's. But Mr. Campbell succeeded in securing official support. His paper became the organ of the exposition directors, publishing official documents. It was consequently profitable to the publisher. The magazine also was declared to be the prize history of the exposition and was awarded a first premium. Besides stating that he proposed to make the World's Colum- bian Exposition Illustrated a "complete encyclopedia of the great enterprise," the editor and publisher said : "In addition we will devote a proper amount of space to the art and literature of 790 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY the day." A standing sub-line to the title made the same promise. The journal's pages, however, contained nothing of aesthetic interest except the pictorial display. The World's Columbian Exposition Illustrated ran as such until February, 1894. Out of it grew an illustrated monthly magazine which has endured until the present day. This is called Campbell's Illus- trated Journal. In the number before its change of name an announcement said that in the future the magazine would devote much space to art. In it, however, chief attention has been paid to the various expositions which have followed that of 1893 in America and abroad. In 1900 Mr. Campbell received a gold medal at the Paris exposition. Today his journal is advertised as a high-class illustrated magazine for home reading. But it has never been given a strong literary character, although it has been so conducted as to be a successful business enterprise. The Graphic, which rose on the World's Fair wave, was broader in scope, and higher in artistic and literary quality, than either of the illustrated papers nominated as exposition journals. It was published by Mr. G. P. Engelhard, who is today a suc- cessful publisher of medical books. During two of the years of its existence it was edited by Mr. J. A. Spencer Dickerson, now publisher of the Baptist paper, the Standard. Although the Graphic was a national news and general liter- ary weekly, it grew out of a local suburban newspaper owned by Mr. Engelhard. This paper was published in Hyde Park, the suburb in which the grounds for the then projected fair were located. When Hyde Park was annexed to Chicago in 1890, Mr. Engelhard converted his paper for local items into a national illustrated weekly of most general character. At one long jump this change was made, in the hope that, from a start which illus- trating the World's Fair was expected to give the Graphic, a permanent foothold for a nation-wide circulation would be se- cured. When, in 1892, the Graphic absorbed America, which on its part had absorbed the Current, the new journal possessed whatever remnants of strength there were left from all the THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 791 last preceding ephemeral periodicals of merit published in Chicago. While the Graphic was a general newspaper, containing editorial reviews of independent Republican leaning, literary ma- terial of interest because of its form made up a considerable share of its contents. There was serial and briefer fiction, also some poetry, in every week's issue. Mary Hartwell Cather- wood, whose romances have received general recognition, con- tributed a continued story of Canadian life entitled "The Children of Ha Ha Bay." The first ambitious work of Vance Thompson whose character sketches have made his name well . known to magazine readers, was done for the Graphic. Florence Wilkin- son, who writes verses for the leading magazines, had her first experience in writing for a periodical while serving as one of its editors. Thus, like other short-lived literary journals in Chi- cago, the Graphic was a training-ground for some of those enter- ing the literary lists. This bringing-out of local talent was even more marked in reference to illustrators. The illustrations of the Graphic were not confined, like those of the avowedly World's Fair journals, to reproductions of photographs. Every piece of fiction was en- livened with original illustrations. Decorative borders illumi- nated the pages. T. Dart Walker and Henry Reuterdahl, illus- trators now in New York, did some of their initial magazine work for the Graphic. Will Bradley, an artist also now of New York, did borders and headpieces for it. Others who later went from Chicago to "Gotham" were discovered by this Chicago illustrated periodical. For the reproductions of photographs which were a stable feature of the Graphic, at first zinc etchings, showing only lines, were used. But in 1893 the new half-tones, capable of making shadings show in printer's ink by means of etching the dotted surfaces of copper plates were adopted. They were especially good for picturing the white buildings and dark crowds of the fair. But the process was then expensive. Mr. Engelhard had to pay 40 cents a square inch for half-tones — a high price compared with the 12^ cents charged today. 792 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY The yearly subscription price was put at $4. Nevertheless, the magazine attained a bona Me circulation of 13,000; the advertisers' annuals quoted it at 40,000; and advertising was received in such amounts that for one twelve-month period the Graphic's books showed a profit of $10,000, although that was not enough to offset the losses of earlier years. Then came the panic of 1893, which during the height of the Fair business men had felt to be impending. The circulation of the Graphic dropped 50 per cent., throwing what had been a favorable balance to the other side. Its publication was soon after suspended. Interviewed for this historical sketch, Mr. Engelhard said : The Graphic would have lived through this reverse if it had been started in New York, for two reasons : First, because New York is the home of great successes in higher-class journalism. With a showing like that which the Graphic had made here, if made there, scores of men of wealth would have been ready to step in and keep it g^ing as a business investment. Sec- ond, because of the aggregation of art talent and literary talent in New York. All we had here was what we discovered and created. The thing that makes the New York magazines today is not that the people of the country care particularly to patronize New York, but that the talent is there. New York is distinctly the utilitarian art center, just as Battle Creek is the national center for sanitaria and health foods, and Detriot for medical supplies. When certain interests once secure lodgment in a locality, they find a natural development along easiest lines in that place. Men of talent for illustrating, discovered by the Art Institute, daily newspapers, and short-lived magazines of Chicago, naturally migrate to New York. It was so with those who did work for the Graphic. The names of two other illustrated periodicals, recorded as having originated in 1892, the year in which it was first intended the World's Fair should be opened, appear in the newspaper annual lists of Chicago. One was the Illustrated Sun, a weekly appearing on Saturdays for a year. The other was the Ameri- can Illustrated, a monthly of magazine form, devoted to litera- ture and education. Its name appeared in the annuals as late as 1901, when it announced a sworn circulation of 100,000. Puck, one of the well-established New York humorous week- lies, was published at the Columbian Exposition grounds in Chi- cago from May i to October i, 1893. It bore the name World's THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 793 Fair Puck, and also a Chicago post-office entry for thirty-six numbers, but its nature was not changed. There was merely a summer's variation in the subject-matter. The scenes and char- acters for the illustrated jokes and sketches were taken from the Fair. A frequent trick of the caricaturists and cartoonists for the World's Fair Puck was to make the exposition statutory appear animated. Incidentally, through receiving visitors at a temporary Puck Building at the Fair, the publishers pushed their circulation. A weekly printed for the most part from plates prepared by a syndicate of New York men interested in Life, was issued in Chicago beginning in 1890. Figaro was its name. A sketch of "Figaro en Masque" — a satanic figure in pen and ink, a pho- tograph of some Chicago society leader, and a border in brilliant red ink combine to awaken interest in the cover of each of the numbers to be found in a file at the Newberry Library. In the contents the plate matter from Life was supplemented with original material concerning the drama, society, and local affairs in Chicago, as satirically seen through a monocle like Life's. After the first year the general jokes from New York were dropped out. By 1893 the many functions for visiting princes afforded more society news than there had been in Chicago before, and although a few tales were published in the paper, it became distinctly a society weekly. After several changes in management, with the issue of December 21, 1893, Figaro van- ished from the periodical stage in Chicago. Titles with Columbian Exposition connotation were given, to two ephemeral weeklies of the literary class. One called Columbia, a Saturday paper listed in the newspaper directories as "literary," lasted for a year or so in 1890 and 1891. The Columbian, catalogued as a periodical devoted to fiction, lived as brief a time in 1892 and 1893. A creditable quarterly designated the Queen Isabella Journal, and intended to be but ephemeral, was published in 1893 by the Queen Isabella Association to promote the interests of women at the World's Fair. The creation of several art magazines for general readers 794 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY was one of the direct results of the exaltation of the fine arts in Chicago and the Middle West by the World's Columbian Expo- sition. They grew out of the general increase in attention to the so-called fine arts — the expressions of beauty in the graphic and plastic media — which was given a much greater impetus by the Exposition than was activity in other forms of express- ing the aesthetic interest. This attention was not ended with the passing of the rich collection of paintings, drawings, and sculp- ture in the Art Building of staff at the Fair grounds. There was a permanent result more influential locally, and from which art magazines emanated more directly. The impressive and beauti- ful structure of the Art Institute of Chicago, standing on the Lake Front border of the city's business maelstrom, was erected in 1892. The World's Fair commissioners and the Art Institute trustees built it and gave it to the municipality. It was tempo- rarily used for Columbian Exposition congresses. But the monu- mental structure of blue-gray stone, its architecture of the Italian Renaissance style, with details in classic Ionic and Corinthian, was erected on such a scale as would fit it to stand as a permanent shrine, where worshipers of the fine arts might gather in its museums and grow in appreciation of beauty, and where those with creative ability might assemble in its studios and learn technique. The art magazines which accompanied the general interest in fine arts awakened by the exposition, and the perma- nent establishment of this institution of art, did not depend pri- marily on literary form for their appeal to the aesthetic interest. But since the art of letters is furthered by the parallel increase of interest in painting and sculpture, the growth in this phase of the aesthetic interest, and the magazines which went with it, are to be considered in giving an account of the literary interests of Chicago. Brush and Pencil is the name which two artistic magazines started at the Art Institute have borne, one of them, a general art magazine which has broken the local bounds, being still pub- lished regularly. In October, 1892, the first magazine of that name was attempted at the Institute. It lived but a short time, and was soon absorbed by Arts for Amerka. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 795 This more lasting magazine — Arts for America — was also established in 1892, but with offices outside of the Art Institute. It was broader in its scope, and more directly the result of the general interest in fine arts created by the Exposition exhibits. One of its early objects was announced to be the reproduction of the pictures at the World's Fair. Devoted exclusively to in- formation about the fine arts, it was an attractive monthly, digni- fied in tone, and, from its illustrations, beautiful in appearance. It was the organ of the Central Art Association, and was con- tinued for nine years. Later numbers announced that one of its objects was the promotion of national art education. In 1899, from an office of publication in the Auditorium tower, the maga- zine went out to 15,000 readers, largely in the north central states. Mrs. T. Vernette Morse was its editor. The Brush and Pencil, which has been continued monthly to the present time, was begun in 1897. It was started as a maga- zine '^devoted to the interests of the students of the Art Institute." In the initial number the editor of Arts for America was thanked for the permission to revive the name Brush and Pencil. Charles Francis Browne, the painter, a member of the Art Institute corps of teachers, was the first editor oi the journal. In tone it was at the beginning very much like any school or college paper. In 1900 Brush and Pencil became a general art magazine, the local elements being eliminated. During that year it was pur- chased by Mr. Frederick W. Morton, a former Unitarian min- ister, who for five months in 1899 had attempted, at Chicago, the publication of Friday, "a weekly journal of views, reviews, and piquant comment." Mr. Morton became sole editor and pub- lisher of Brush and Pencil. For several years the office of pub- lication was in the McClurg Building. The character of the magazine, as a portrayer oi contempo- rary work in the fine arts, has been excellent. The reproductions of the best of the paintings, mural decoration, and sculpture of America, Europe, and Japan, printed in its pages, have been well done. Mr. Morton holds that at no city can engraving and printing of high quality be secured more economically than in Chicago. The magazine's articles on art subjects have also been uniformly good. 796 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Brush and Pencil has had a circulation of 10,000, the sub- scribers being scattered through all the states . But Mr. Morton complains that the people of Chicago are not yet interested in art in general, that their art interest is confined to supporting the Art Institute. The magazine has not enjoyed a very pros- perous business career. From July to December, 1904, its publi- cation was temporarily discontinued, but thereafter resumed. To secure advertising, on May i, 1905, the main office of the periodical was removed to New York, although the Chicago post-office entry has been retained and the mechanical work con- tinued here. Mr. Morton says : New York is the magazine center of the country. Any Chicago magazine that has made good its foothold has gone to New York. In New York in five days I secured $2,400 worth of cash advertising. In Chicago I could not get that much for Brush and Pencil in five weeks. Great Pictures, a monthly filled with reproductions of paint- ings by world-masters, was brought out regularly during the year 1899. Its contents were confined to copies of the nude. Its file shows that it was plainly erotic, and that the periodical was designed for a perverted use of the art interests. It was published by "The White City Art Company," and was a medium for advertising the sale of single copies of the pictures repro- duced in its pages. Nature and Art, a. children's monthly of aesthetic interest derived from illustrations well executed in printed colors, was begun in 1897 as Birds in Natural Colors, and continued until 1901. Child Garden of Story, Song and Play, a monthly magazine for children of the age for primers, was established in 1892 and is still published. It is a kindergarten magazine in which the attractiveness of stories, rhymes, and pictures is utilized to edu- cate little ones without the appearance of didactic effort, accord- ing to the principles of the "new education." It is published at the Pestalozzi-Froebel Press in Chicago, and has a circulation of 10,000. A unique order of literary periodicals, toned to the temper of the artist, whatever his working medium, flourished in Chi- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 797 cago during the years immediately following the World's Fair. The presence of a growing group of professional artists and liter- ary workers — an artist class — and an increase in the number of dilettantes account, in part, for the interest in this type of lit- erary medium at Chicago. Enthusiasm for individual expres- sion, and contempt for the inartistic, gave a tang toi these minia- ture magazines. The Chap-Book, whose history has significance in a certain line of literary and periodical publishing develop- ment for the entire country, east as well as west, was the first and most notable of this class of literary media. Others at Chi- cago in the nineties were Four O'Clock, the Blue Sky, and the Scroll. Before being transplanted to Chicago, in August, 1894, the Chap-Book had been issued for three months at Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Herbert S. Stone, a Harvard college man from Chi- cago, the son of Mr. Melville E. Stone, the journalist, was the chief originator and principal editor and publisher of the Chap- Book until its hundredth and last number appeared July 15, 1898. As an undergraduate he had been editor of the Harvard Crimson, had contributed sketches to the Lampoon, and had pre- pared a serious work of First Editions of American Authors, de- signed for collectors. In the autumn of his senior year, 1893- 94, at Cambridge, Mr. Stone had, with H. I. Kimball, establish- ed the firm of Stone & Kimball, for carrying on a small book- publishing business, which was later continued in New York by Mr. Kimball. The periodical was put out to be an adjunct tO' this business. The ambitious undergraduate book-publishers needed a circular with which to advertise the books of fiction and verse bearing their imprint, and economy was to be exercised in having it cir- culated as second-class mail matter. Choosing a name which originated in the literary developments of England in the seven- teenth century, when small tracts or booklets containing ballads and stories of heroes, hobgoblins, and witches were issued inter- mittently, and were sold cheap, by chapmen or peddlers, they called their circular the Chap-Book — a name which proved ad- mirably pat for the Cambridge-ChicagO' publication. This was 798 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY the first chap-book to appear at stated intervals. Coming out semi-monthly, it was sold at five cents a copy and one dollar a year. It was very small and of the bibelot shape, something new at the time, and a means of emphasizing its unique character. But for this "miscellany and review of belles-lettres" to ful- fil the post-office regulations, reading-matter containing general information was required, and the title-page, which, like every other of its pages, was odd from being printed in red as well as black ink, contained these words: The Chap-Book, Being a miscellany of curious and interesting songs, ballads, tales, histories, etc. ; adorned with a variety of pictures and very delightful to read, newly composed by MANY CELEBRATED WRITERS ; to which is annexed a large collection of notices of books. In the character creation, during the first two months of the periodical, Mr. Stone was assisted by Bliss Carman, the poet. Together they wrote some original notes and essays, and edited the contributions. Sharp remarks about new books, reviews containing views framed solely from the feelings of the one who happened to write each critique, gave the Chap-Book its keynote. All of the notes were in the first person and signed. The essays, stories, and poems published, were marked by the most distinct individuality and originality. In making their bow, the chap- men of 1894 had added a word that contributions from writers "unknown" as well as from those "wellknown" would be printed. Both men who had written before and men who had never written for publication, but thought that they could do so, at once saw in the Chap-Book a medium for their freest expres- sion. They soared in freedom from the commercial chains of the established publishers who judge literary output by the stand- ard of the conventional demands made by the book- and maga- zine-buying public. The independence of the Chap-Book was emphasized by the fact that Mr. Stone and Mr. Kimball con- tinued their publishing despite a threat from the Harvard faculty that if it was not discontinued they could not be graduated. This new periodical, so novel in character, leaped into in- stant popularity with its first numbers. Such a reception took THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 799 the young publishers by surprise. It seemed to them an acci- dent. They, hoAvever, grasped the situation and pushed their effort with enthusiasm. Before the three months of its publica- tion at Cambridge had ended, the Chap-Book had found an audi- ence and was to be seen regularly on the news-stands not only of Boston and the East, but throughout the country. The local situation was not very encouraging for the Chap- Book, when in the summer of 1894 its publishing headquarters were removed to Chicago. It became a Chicago publication for the greater part of its existence chiefly through the accident that Mr. Stone's home was here, and that for personal and social reasons he decided, upon graduation from college, to carry on a professional and business career as a publisher in this city. Mr. Harrison Garfield Rhodes, a Cleveland man, came with him to be associate editor of the Chap-Book. Mr. Stone found the resi- dents of Chicago suffering under a reaction which came after the World's Fair. Mr. Stone says that an avalanche of criticism from discerning visitors here the year before to see the "White City" had temporarily overwhelmed the thinking people of the smoke- covered, overgrown business town, which stood out unfavorably by contrast with the beautiful Fair. But he was nevertheless firm in the belief that an essentially cosmopolitan magazine could be published successfully in Chicago and the West. Attention to new and curious developments in foreign artistic groups, particularly among the men of letters in England, which had been one of the unique features of the Chap-Book in its earliest issues, was continued and increased. Mr. Stone was in close touch with Aubrey Beardsley and the "Yellow Book" coterie of London, and from time to time made trips to London and Paris in quest of manuscripts. In a partial summary of authors who sent contributions from abroad, the following were listed : From England: William Sharp, Edmund Gosse, Kenneth Grahame, I. Zangwill, John Davidson, "Q", William Ernest Henley, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. B. Marriott Watson, William Canton, Norman Gale, Max Beerbohm, F. Frank- fort Moore, Arthur Morrison, H. G. Well?, S. Levett Yeats, Katherine Tynan Hinkson, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, E. F. Benson, William Watson, Henry Newbolt, and Andrew Lang. From France: Paul Verlaine, among others. 8cx> THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Among American contributors were : Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Alice Brown, Gertrude Hall, Richard Hovey, Louise Chandler Moulton, Gilbert Parker, Charles G. D. Roberts, Clinton Scollard, Louise Imogen Guiney, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Maria Louise Pool, Richard Henry Stoddard, Richard Burton, Madison Cawein, Eugene Field, Julian Hawthorne, H. H. Boyesen, Clyde Fitch, Wallace Rice, Hamlin Garland, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Maurice Thompson, John Vance Cheney, Lillian Bell, John Burroughs, Stephen Crane, John Fox, Jr., Henry James, Clinton Ross, Charles F. Lummis, Edmund Clarence Stedman, George W. Cable, Alice Morse Earle, Brander Matthews, Octave Thanet, Tudor Jenks, Joseph Pennell, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Paul Laurence Dunbar, J. J. Piatt, Ruth McEnery Stuart, George Edward Woodberry, R. W. Chambers, L. E. Gates, John Jay Chapman, Norman Hapgood, Gerald Stanley Lee, John Kendrick Bangs, and Joel Chandler Harris. That their writings would find place alongside of those of such a company from America and England was a spur tO' ambitious young writers in Chicago and the West, who found in the Chap-Book a medium which was suited to the virility and inde- pendence of their westernism, but at the same time was so cosmo- politan an exponent of literary expression from various parts of the world as to make for the broadening of their striving toward artistic expression. Among the Americans listed above not a few did some of their first work for the Chap-Book. In Chicago Mr. Stone solicited manuscripts not only from amateur literary workers, such as Edith Wyatt then was, but also asked news- paper men to write for the Chap-Book with special attention to form of expression. Among others of whom he asked manu- scripts were George Ade and Finley Peter Dunne. Wallace Rice wrote many clever critiques for the periodical. The artists and literary workers of Chicago, who had grown to be quite a group, well defined through World's Fair influ- ences, were soon rallied around the Chap-Book. A series of "Chap-Book teas" drew them to Mr. Stone's publishing-ofifice, to look at originals of drawings and manuscripts, to- talk shop, and in general to promote sociability in the professional literary and art crowd. Incidentally the "Chap-Book teas," which were followed by meetings of the "Attic Club," set the copy for the meetings of the "Little Room," an organization of creative THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 8oi writers, artists, and musicians who at present gather fortnightly at a studio in the Fine Arts Building, and by the very coming to^ gether of the artist class for a social hour or two foster profes- sional literary and artistic endeavor. ''Chap-Book posters" were one of the unique artistic products put out by the publisher of this unique magazine. These posters were sent to the news-stands, and influenced buyers of periodicals so that sales ran up as high as 50,000, and averaged 20,000. The posters were so artistic and so fantastic that they became very popular on their own account. Harper's posters, by Pen- field, had previously attracted attention. But there was a rage for Chap-Book posters, and prospective readers often competed in keen bidding for them without buying the periodical they were intended to advertise. Through making many of these posters. Will Bradley helped himself toward achieving a national reputation. But in a short time the Chap-Book no longer stood out as a unique literary periodical. The force of imitation was soon manifest. Mr. Stone says that at one time there were twenty-six imitators of it at the news-stalls. A disinterested investigator, Frederick Winthrop Faxon, of the Bulletin of Bibliography, Boston, compiled "A Bibliography of Modern Chap-Books and Their Imitators," which was first published in the journal with which he is connected, and republished in 1903 as a pamphlet under the title Ephemeral Bibelots. He lists 200 such periodi- cals, and in his introduction says, in part : The small artistically printed periodicals variously called Chap-Books, Ephemerals, Bibelots, Brownie Magazines, Fadazines, Magazettes, Freak Maga- zines, owe their origin probably to the success of The Chap-Book, which was at once in such great demand that the early numbers were soon out of print and were in demand by collectors at from twenty to fifty times their original price. All sorts of "little magazines" were soon on the news-stands, competing for a part of The Chap-Book's favor. They were, with few ex- ceptions, easily distinguishable by their appearance as well as by their names, which were apparently carefully chosen to indicate the ephemeral character of the publication. The motive of publication of the genuine chap-books is hard to discover. They sprang up in the most out-of-the-way spots and died young in most 8o2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY cases. Of the first generation we still have with us only the Little Journeys (December, 1894), now in its second form; Bibelot (January, 1895); Philis- tine (June, 1895) ; and the Philosopher (January, 1897), now in its third size. Many of these bibelots seem to have resulted from the desire of ambi- tious, unknown writers to reach a supposedly large waiting public, which could not be reached through the established magazines, either because the author could not get his manuscript accepted, or because the readers he wished to reach were not among the subscribers to the older monthlies and quarter- lies. This is but our humble guess as to cause of birth ; but lack of support, or unwillingness on the part of the editor to be the only support, caused the untimely (?) death of the majority. In 1898 the race had almost all died off. The Chap-Book, in a valedictory review of its career and influence, said : Its habits of free speech produced a curious movement among the young writers of the country. There was scarcely a village or town which did not have its little individualistic pamphlet f'-ankly imitating the form and tone of the Chap-Book. Many moves toward getting the Chap-Book out of the class of ephemerals and into that of magazines firmly established on a sound business basis were made by Mr. Stone after settling down to his life-work as a publisher in Chicago. One such, made January 15, 1897, was the abandonment of its small form, for the regulation 7^X4^ i^ch magazine size. This change robbed the magazine of an appearance which had previously attracted attention to it when it was unique, and also proclaimed the fact that the proprietor was laying more emphasis on the commercialization than on the editing of the periodical. This change did not help sales and circulation. Furthermore, by this time the Chap-Book had said so many scorching things about books brought out by every leading publishing house in America that the publishers, from whom such a journal, containing liter- ary critiques, should naturally have received its principal adver- tising patronage, tabooed it. As a bid for advertisements from general magazine advertisers, still another experimental change in form was made, February 15, 1898. The pages were en- larged to the 12X8^ inch illustrated weekly size, and extra THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 803 smooth paper, suitable for advertisements containing half-tones, was used. But the Chap-Book did not secure much general advertising. Mr. Stone says one reason is that it was published too far from the seat of the advertising business — New York. But a more important reason is that no effort to secure a list of annual subscribers was made. "If we had secured such a list, the Chap-Book would be alive today," says Mr. Stone. "News-stand sales fluctuate. A list is needed in order to get advertising in ofif-years." The Chap-Book died July 15, 1898. On that date those of its readers who were regular subscribers received a folio of fare- well. This finis notice said in part : It was- not felt necessary to continue the Chap-Book longer to demon- strate that a good literary magazine could be published in the West and meet the critical approval of the country. The Chap-Book has never de- pended in any special way upon the West for support; indeed, it is probable that, in proportion to its size, Chicago had fewer subscribers than any other large city. But the editors believe that the critical standards of their paper have been kept as high as would have been possible either East or West. They believe that they have been consistently honest in trying to give to their public what seemed to them the best writing they could procure, whether it came from new or well-known authors. They believe, furthermore, that the Chap-Book has been the strongest protest we have had in America against the habit of promiscuous overpraise which is threatening to make the whole body of American criticism useless and stultifying. Instead of the July 15 issue of the Chap-Book, the subscribers will receive the issue of the Dial for the same date. To this latter journal, upon an offer from its proprietors, have been transferred the subscription list, the right to the name, and the good-will of the Chap-Book. It has been consistently maintained by the Chap-Book that the Dial is in many ways the best purely critical journal in America, and it is hoped that subscribers will be pleased that their subscriptions are to be filled out in this manner. William Morton Payne, a regular writer for the Dial, says the Chap-Book was a fad which ran its course, and that the Dial then absorbed what was left of it. He also gives the authorita- tive opinion that the Chap-Book was superior tO' any of its imi- tators. Having profited by experience with the Chap-Book, Mr. Stone has been successful in publishing and editing the House 8o4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Beautiful. This attractive monthly was one of the first merito- rious periodicals currently published at Chicago, and not a trade paper, to become established on a business footing. One reason given for the suspension of the Chap-Book was that from a business point of view the time and energy which it took could be spent more profitably in attention to the other interests oi Herbert S. Stone & Co., this firm being engaged in bringing out novels and other works, and doing general publishing. In this connection Mr. Stone's firm had taken up, in September, 1897, the work of publishing the House Beautiful, which however, as from the date of its beginning in December, 1896, was then edited by Eugene Clapp, a civil engineer. When Air. Clapp went to Cuba as a lieutenant of volunteers in the summer of 1898, Mr. Stone became the editor. In 1900 he sold his book- publishing interests to Mr. Melville E. Stone, Jr., his brother, and has since conducted the Hoiue Beautiful as an individual enterprise. Avoiding the Chap-Book pitfall, the first effort of Mr. Stone has been to secure a large list of annual subscribers. In 1900 the House Beautiful had 3,000 regular subscribers, and the news-stand sales averaged 4,000. In 1905 the monthly circula- tion claimed was 40,000, and but a small percentage of the copies went to others than regular subscribers. To offset the diffi- culty in securing income from advertising which arises because 75 per cent, of all general advertising is placed by agencies in New York, the subscription price has been raised from $1 to $2 per year. In 1904 the size of the pages was enlarged to 9X1^ inches so as to provide more advertising space next to single columns of reading-matter in the back part. The art of interior decoration in the homes of those who, while having annual incomes of $8,000, yet are so located that they cannot often visit the metropolitan stores, the art of land- scape gardening, and architecture for country houses are the topics of aesthetic interest to which the House Beautiful is de- voted. It contains little or no fiction, and Mr. Stone's society proclivities show results in its character. But since he writes or rewrites much of its contents, the periodical is marked by literary touches reminiscent of the ear-marks of the Chap-Book. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 805 In mentioning ephemeral imitators of the Chap-Book ap- pearing in the nineties, Mr. Faxon, in the pamphlet heretofore quoted, says : The Debutante, The Little Cyclist, The Mermaid, and The Night-Cap were advertised to appear in Chicago, the first in April, 1895, the others in March and May, 1S96, but were probably never issued. With a suggestion in its name of the bright give-and-take of afternoon teas. Four O'Clock was conspicuous among the original magazines expressing the attitude of certain literary workers, pen-and-ink artists, and dabblers in art at Chicago in the late nineties. Its descriptive subtitle proclaimed it to be "a monthly magazine of original writings," and its motto was "Sincerity, beauty, ease, cleverness." Most of its contents were from Chicago writers. Not all were so original and clever, nor so marked by ease and beauty of style, as to be of special literary value, though some had a degree of merit. The "sincerity" was its expression of that vague spiritual quality known as the artist soul. In illustrations, however, the periodical was original and specially attractive. The reproductions of drawings, done so as to give them the effect of originals, appeared on leaves of special texture, pasted into the magazine. This device gave the periodi- cal distinctive aesthetic values. Young artists, a majority of them students at the Art Institute, did most of this illustrating. Among the illustrators was Carl Werntz, who' is now the head of the Art Academy, an independent art school in Chicago. Four O'clock was started some time after the Chap-Book had reached the height of its career in Chicago. No. i was dated February, 1897. With the seventy-first number, December 1902, Four O'clock was merged in Muse, another of the art-spirit literary periodicals, which had grown out of still another called Phil- harmonic. Literary workers who recall these magazines char- acterize them as dilettante ephemerals. The Blue Sky Magazine, a dainty monthly booklet of letters, came regularly from a Chicago shop from August, 1899, until April, 1902. In both make-up and contents it was beautiful and quaint. This little magazine was a literary exponent of the new arts-and-crafts movement. It was printed at "the house of the Blue Sky Press," 4732 Kenwood Avenue, and, like the books 8o6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY which the "Skytes," as the pubhshers called themselves, brought out from time to time, it was hand-set and printed by hand, ex- quisite in workmanship. Most of the numbers were the size of a book easily slipped into a coat pocket. It was printed on deckle- edge paper, and each paragraph was indicated with a reversed P. Thomas Wood Stevens and Alden Charles Noble, poetic souls who had been schooled in the mechanical part of their craft at Armour Institute of Technology, were the Blue Sky Magazine publishers, editors, and chief contributors. "Happy is the man who ever sees the blue sky" — so their adopted motto ran. In an announcement of back volumes of the magazine, books bound in antique boards, they gave this quotation from "The Summer Sky" : So let us mould the Spirit of our book : to bring sometimes the sound of an old chivalric song over star-strewn waters tuning the Elder elemental note to the sweetest harmonies of the N'^.w. Throughout, the contents showed evidence of editing and writ- ing in this spirit. Verse, short stories, mostly on archaic themes, and two departments designated "Stray Clouds" and "The Devil, His Stuff," being made up of clever literary gossip by the young editors, filled the pages. In the verse some "Formal Measures" by Mr. Stevens, and a series of stately child rhymes by Mr. Noble, received the favor of critics. Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, the imaginative pulpit orator who is president of the institute which the Blue Sky Magazine editors had attended, contributed some of his poetry. Among the tales was one by James Lane Allen, entitled "The Extraordinary." An essay on "The Poetry of William Morris." by Wallace Rice, and a few lines in meter, entitled "Brothers," by Mrs. Elia W. Peattie, were written for the April, 1902, number, which proved to be the last. Each of the five volumes, except the first, was beauti- fully illustrated with symbolic pen-and-ink drawings and hazy wash-work. Walter J. Enright and Grace M. McClure, and other Chicago artists who were then students at the Art Insti- tute, did most of the illustrating for the periodical. Although so attractive in its way, the Blue Sky Magazine found its con- stituency limited to a small cult. The publishers saw "glim- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 807 merings of prosperity" the second year, but the magazine was merged with another short-Hved Chicago periodical, Rubric, "a magazine de luxe," which the "Skytes" said in their adieu was "the only purely literary and artistic magazine whose policy was sufficiently consistent with that of the Blue Sky to allow a reasonable fusion." The Scroll was the name of another periodical, evidently of this general artist-dilettante group, which was listed as "literary" in the newspaper annuals of 1902 and 1903, when its founding date was given as 1899; but from the collections oi files and the recollections of literary workers no further informa- tion about it is attainable. All of these magazines, with the line of artist-class sentiment woven into their literary texture, may possibly be characterized in a general way as examples of I'Art Nouveau in letters. The cosmopolitan outlook given to Chicago by the World's Columbian Exposition stood out in five or six general magazines attempted in the latter part of the nineties. In them this aspect of the social influences left by the Fair was to be seen more clearly than in the illustrated and artistic journals which were the chief crop of the period. They show that the western cos- mopolitanism mentioned in the introductory paragraphs of the first in this series of papers on literary interests had been reached. The spirit of westernism retained potency, but the current idea was that cosmopolitan products could and should come out of this western center. A title of purely cosmopolitan connotation had been given to no periodical started in Chicago in a previous decade. The most typical and significant of those with tlie enlarged point of view was first issued in 1896, and was named the International. It was published much longer than a majority of the ephemeral magazines of Chicago, The first role which the International took on the publishing stage made it unquestionably a cosmopolite. Its pages were filled with translations — described by the magazine as "Eng- lished" — of stories which had been published in the contem- porary literary periodicals of France, Spain, Italy, Ger- 8o8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY many, Russia, Hungary, and Japan. The theory of the pub- Hsher was that the American reading pubHc, while made famihar with the poHtics, crime, and superficial events of the foreign countries through the daily newspapers, has no means of know- ing the literature of the nations as it grows from month to month. As the Worlds' Fair had spread before American eyes the products of the industrial arts of all peoples, so the Inter- national was to lay before them regularly the typical literary productions of the times. It was printed in regular 7X10 inch covered magazine form, and on supercalendered instead of coated paper, thus giving a medium for exceptional half-tone illustrations. A successful organizer of an industrial trust, Mr. A. T. H. Brower, was the founder, editor, and publisher of the Inter- national. Mr. Brower had been a prosperous business man in the printing-press and type-founderc;' trade at Chicago for many years, and in 1892, during the first period of the industrial con- solidations, had been the promoter of the American Type- Founders' Company, which includes all the leading type-found- ing concerns in the country. He was its secretary and manager until 1894, when he retired from active participation in its affairs, though retaining a place on the directorate. As a mature business man of the captain-of-industry type, going into maga- zine-publishing at Chicago, he stands out in contrast with the many young men who, without business experience and capital have undertaken to establish periodicals here. Being well supplied with capital, Mr. Brower went into the venture confident that he was prepared to see it through on a business basis. But his ambition was also spiced with local pride. A man of general culture, born in New York, but proud of his place as a Chi- cagoan, Mr. Brower then said, as he repeats today: Chicago is called "Porkopolis." But there is as much culture in pro- portion to population here as anywhere. Chicago as well as New York ought to have successful literary magazines. One experiment after another was tried by him in the deter- mination to make the International successful. An entire year was taken for preliminary preparations for No. i of Vol. I. To THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 809 secure the stories from the various nations, Mr. Brower carried on a correspondence with magazine-publishers all over the world, made arrangements under the various copyright regulations, and secured the services of skilled translators residing at different places in America. He estimated that the market for the Inter- national's presentation of foreign literary products should be found among 50,000 cultured people of this country. But only 1,500 became interested enough to send annual subscriptions to the magazine. A lack of support from Chicago and the Missis- sippi valley was particularly discouraging to the publisher, since Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, had told him that two-thirds of that magazine's constituency was in this section. The unique character of the International called out a sporadic circulation in nineteen nations. But that did not help much. After a year and a half the translations were discontin- ued. An "International Register" of Americans going abroad was next introduced as a leading feature of the magazine. This was a list of names of travelers and tourists classified by states. But the pains required for compiling it were too great to make this experiment anything but costly. Then after the Spanish- American War, when there were signs of interest in the Spanish tongue, a novel scheme for teaching modern languages was un- dertaken. Lessons in Spanish were outlined in the magazine. Graphophones and cylinders for use in a sort of mechanical con- versational method of self -education were offered for sale to subscribers. But few of them, however, took interest in grapho- phone Spanish, and contemplated magazine lessons in German and French were not given by the International. Travel-letters writ- ten by American visitors to out-of-the-way places, and general travel-notes by the editor, were published in all stages of the experiments with the magazine. Toward its end, when the price per copy had been reduced to ten cents, Mr. Brower, in the hope of alluring the masses, inserted trashy, popular stories of a kind in which he had no personal interest. In seeking advertising this Chicago business man found that other Chicago business men had the same sentiment he had about a Chicago magazine, but that they did not have advertising to 8io THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY place in such a medium — at least not until he ccmld show a circula- tion of 15,000. At one time in the first eighteen months the maga- zine was nearly self-supporting, and it is conceivable that if the original character derived from the translations had been main- tained the International might have found a permanent place for itself. Mr. Brower sunk $10,000 a year in it for six years, and in July, 1901, discontinued experimenting. Today he says: To publish a literary magazine, three things are needed: business sense, literary sense, and money — and the business sense must be that of the publishing business. The influence of the University of Chicago upon the literary interests of the city, during the fifteen years in which the uni- versity has been one of the institutions of the community, has grown to be great. At the present time it is to be seen in many directions, and is recognized as specially direct in one of the general magazines published in the city. From the day the uni- versity opened its doors, its potential influences were regarded by men down-town as including a new force for development of literary activity. In 1893, when the professors and students on its quadrangles were living in a university atmosphere vibrant with the noise of natives of foreign lands which came to the campus from beyond the fence of the Midway Plaisance, the university's unofficial sanction was sought for Current Topics, a magazine begun in that year by a promoter of certain business schemes named David Wever, who had a publishing office for the periodical in the Masonic Temple. Mr. Wever, as both editor and publisher, endeavored to give — and, judging from the recol- lections of down-town literary workers, and also from those of some members of the faculties, succeeded in giving — the im- pression that the magazine had some sort of University of Chi- cago sanction. The publishing of contributions from the pro- fessors and students of the university was the method followed in giving this impression. These were articles in the more serious vein of literary criticism, and helped greatly to fill the eighty- four pages in the rather solid-appearing journal printed in the regular magazine form, and bound in a heavy blue cover. Not only contributions written especially for it, but also papers pre- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 8ii pared for other purposes, were solicited for the magazine. One of the most notable contributions was an article on Taine by Professor Paul Shorey, Ph.D., head of the department of the Greek language and literature at the University. For a time, Dr. Edwin H. Lewis, now professor of literature at Lewis In- stitute, then an assistant in rhetoric on the University of Chi- cago faculty in the department of English, was active, not only in contributing to Current Topics, but in securing contributions for the magazine from other university men. Soon, however, it was discovered that the publisher did not carry out his agree- ments to pay for the contributions he readily accepted, and that the university men were being used to give prestige to a maga- zine which was part of an advertising device for selling pianos. The university authors discontinued contributing, and it is al- leged that the man who was a magazine-publisher for a time still owes some of them for the serious work they did for his periodi- cal. The name of the magazine was changed to the Chicago Mag- azine of Current Topics, and later to Chicago Magazine. It went out of existence in 1895, having been published for about two years. Dr. Lewis is of the opinion that the history of Current Topics has no more significance in the consideration of the literary interests of Chicago than any advertising scheme has. It appears to have been an example of the engraftment of interests, with a considerable element of plain graft involved. A University of Chicago student from the West, Frank Bur- lingame Harris, who became a Chicago newspaper man, under- took the establishing of a general magazine in 1898. Mr. Har- ris was a friend of Opie Read, Forrest Crissey, and other literary workers in the Press Club ranks. He rejected the name Ro- mantic Life, suggested to him for the periodical by Mr. Read, and christened it, after the lake at the southern border of the city, the Calumet, thus giving the journal a name intended to connote the western romantic sentiment. Mr. Harris started by inserting more essays than stories. But two numbers were pub- lished. Mr. Harris had undertaken the enterprise almost with- out capital — a lack which literary sentiment could hardly offset. Carter's Monthly was a general story magazine begun in 8i2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY 1898 by a printer named John Carter, who came to Chicago from Streator, 111. An advertisement of Carter's Monthly, ap- pearing in Arts for America, announced one policy in keeping with a trend in publishing during the World's Columbian Expo- sition decade; namely, that the magazine would contain repro- ductions of 192 paintings by famous masters. Opie Read per- mitted the use of his name as editor. A serial by John McGovem was extensively advertised. Within a few months, however. Carter dropped the stories and devoted the bulk of his space to laudatory articles concerning some of the department stores. Mr. Read says that he then endeavored to have his name re- moved from the head of the page containing the table of con- tents in the periodical, but in vain. By the end of a year, however, the local write-ups had brought Carter's Monthly to a deserved death. Literary efforts and temperance news were used in con- coction of an oddity among the periodicals put out at Chicago in the nineties. This queer paper was named the Banner of Gold. It was started with the support of several of the "old guard" of literary newspaper men belonging to the Press Club — "good fellows" who in more ways than that of writing had un- fortunately followed the example of "Bobbie" Bums. Having been at Dwight, 111., under the care of Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, some of these men were enrolled as members of "The Bichloride of Gold Club of America." They conceived the idea that the reading world should be informed on the merits of Dr. Keeley's uses for bichloride of gold, and that news along this line could be best set off with sparkling gems of new literature, fresh and pure as prairie dewdrops. Further, it was expected that the journal would prove to be an outlet for the excitements of re- newed literary activity. When the first weekly number appeared, February 10, 1892, Charles Eugene Banks, a newspaper writer and poet, who has written a great deal of verse, some of which touches the heart like that of Riley, and also is marked by beauty in the use of word and meter, was the editor. An outpouring of rhymed enthusiasm from his pen, appearing at the top of the first column in the first number, contained the following: THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 813 Then down with the grinning old skull of despair; In the army of hope we're enrolled. From ice-berg to palm-tree fling free to the air The banner "Bichloride of Gold." For some time the periodical was chiefly literary, and was a medium for stories and verse used by a considerable group of Chicago men engaged in a fair order of literary endeavor. Among the contributors to early numbers were Opie Read, Stanley Waterloo, George Horton, John McGovern, and William Lightfoot Visscher; and the paper secured a following among readers interested only in the part of its contents which were of a literary nature. But after a few months some of the writers who had been members of the "Bichloride of Gold Club" sur- rendered their membership, and the periodical, which is still pub- lished as a monthly organ for the gold-cure, lost entirely its literary admixture. In 1893. when socio-economic congresses were held in con- nection with the World's Fair, a magazine designed to give a popular presentation of social and political questions, but in such a form as compared with newspaper-writing that it was rated as literary, was begun. It bore the name New Occasions. The first editor, B. F. Underwood, was succeeded by Frederick Up- ham Adams, who is today a general magazine and newspaper syndicate writer on these subjects. In 1897 New Occasions was merged in Nezv Time, of which Mr. Adams, at Chicago, and B. O. Flower, at Boston, were the joint editors. Mr. Flower was the founder of the Arena, and had a large personal follow- ing. The July, 1897, number said "Chicago-Boston" in its im- print, and mentioned a union of West and East. But in April, 1898, Mr. Flower sent his valedictory, in which he said: "For some time I have felt it impossible to perform the duties of senior editor in a manner satisfactory to myself, while living 1,000 miles from the office of publication." Mr. Adams contin- ued editing the magazine and writing for it, particularly in op- position to the existing money system, declaring that it was his ambition "to aid in the founding of a magazine on the rock of economic truth." In June, 1898, he complained that only about 8l4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY $3,200 in small amounts, received from all over the United States, had been paid in for capital stock, and pleaded for public subscriptions, not only for the periodical, but also for its stock. However, a file in the Chicago Public Library shows no copies of a date later than the one containing that appeal. Self -Culture and Progress, both brought out at Chicago in 1895, were two literary magazines of the home-study type, which will be given further mention in the part of the next paper tracing one of the lines oi development incidentally influential in leading to the establishment of The World To-Day, the most important of the Chicago magazines of the present decade. An unusual use of the story form in a periodical with a slight educational bias was made in Historia, a monthly magazine published in Chicago for two years prior to the financial crash of 1893. Accounts from the histories of the leading nations, re- written in romantic style for boys and girls between the ages of twelve and twenty, were printed in this periodical. Using ten noTJis de plume, Fred B. Cozzens, a young man who as a student at Northwestern University had been specially interested in history, and who had also done some editorial page work for an afternoon daily, performed single-handed all of the duties of contributor, editor, and publisher. There is no doubt that the general interest in history aroused by plans for the exposition commemorating the discovery of America had some influence in leading Mr. Cozzens to undertake Historia. His magazine was illustrated with zinc-etching reproductions of pictures from old histories not copyrighted, and with some sketches by John T. McCutcheon, the cartoonist. At one time Historia had a circu- lation of 8,000 including many subscribers among school chil- dren who used the magazine for supplementary reading. But Mr. Cozzens possessed little capital, although he is now the pro- prietor of a successful type-setting business, and his credit was taken away with the failure of a bank which had backed him in the Historia venture. He turned the magazine over to a mail- order jeweler, who soon got into trouble with the postoffice de- partment by publishing his entire catalogue in the advertising pages of the periodical. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 815 A visit to the World's Columbian Exposition led Claude King, the editor and publisher of Sports Afield, an interesting magazine which he had built up at Denver from a small begin- ning with a sportsmen's newspaper, founded in 1887, to remove his headquarters to Chicago in 1893. As a New York printer w^ho had learned his trade while an apprentice of the Harper firm, Mr. King, ever since moving to the West, had been a faithful reader of the New York Sun. From that paper's pungent para- graphs he had gained the impression that Chicago and its World's Fair were jokes. But Mr. King, who still publishes his maga- zine for a constituency of about 300,000 subscribers, says that seeing Chicago and the "White City" so impressed him that he at once decided to move from a center of influence for a part of the West to the metropolis of the entire section known as the West. Sports Afield, of which half the contents are short stories of outdoor experiences designed to be purely entertain- ing, and half are articles on natural history and scientific sub- jects intended to be instructive, is a magazine well calculated to interest typical western men and boys in the towns and villages and sparsely settled localities. Although of but mediocre literary quality, its written contents, supplemented by illustrations, are of direct appeal to the aesthetic interest. Two-thirds of the mag- azine's revenues are derived from subscriptions, which is unusual. The circulation was built up in the old-fashioned way of personal visits by the editor. In largest part, the magazine goes to the Northwest. Mr. King makes the comment that the people of the Southwest, while having a like interest in its con- tents to that of those in the Northwest, are not "businessfied," are reluctant to subscribe, and when they do give subscription orders forget to remit payments. Besides the phases of periodical publishing at Chicago in the nineties, shown in this paper, there was also a large increase in the number of papers in the mail-order grade of so-called literary periodicals. As practically all of these "family-story" papers started in the nineties still prosper, this development in that period will be treated in the paper which is to follow on the periodicals of the present decade. 8l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY The statistics compiled for this series of papers show that 70 of the 306 Hterary periodicals of all types started in Chicago were begun in the World's Fair decade. Of this number, 23 per cent, were illustrated ; 1 1 per cent, were devoted to the fine arts ; 9 per cent, were of the quaint and curious artist-class literary type; 19 per cent., of the unqualified literary type; 7 per cent., of the literary information variety; and 23 per cent., of the family-story grade. The percentages for those of other types were small. Twenty-nine per cent, belonged to more than one classification, especially those classed as illustrated. Those pub- lished monthly numbered 56, and the weeklies but 9, in contrast with 41 monthlies and 25 weeklies in the eighties. But many of the monthlies were in journal form, the total of weeklies and monthlies in this form being 47, while 20 appeared in regulation magazine form. Twenty-seven of the 70 lived but a year or less, and only 9 of the number begun in the nineties are still published. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO. VI AND VII HERBERT E. FLEMING University of Chicago VI. THE COMMERCIALIZED MAGAZINES OF A COSMOPOLITAN CENTER, 1900 TO DATE "Where Is the West? It would be easier to tell where is the East. That is always toward the Atlantic. Boston is East to Cleveland; Chicago is East to Colorado, and everything this side of the Cascade Mountains is East to the Pacific coast. It amounts to this : The West is where a man is ; the East is where his father came from. So it comes to pass that the West has no fixed geographical limits like the South and New England. It is something more than a geographical term. Like Boston it is a state of mind "The West means Americans who are controlled by certain ideas and motives. But American does not mean Anglo-Saxon beyond the Alleghanies. It is never, strictly speaking, a matter of descent ; but this is doubly true of that region where blood and ideas and habits of every people under the sun are fusing into a new race. Inevitably the West is cosmopolitan "The West is a synonym of vitality. No region knows larger zest in life. Whether it be in farming or in literature, it finds the world full of novelty "And the West is also a synonym for democracy — .... — that democ- racy of practice which sees a partner in every man and woman who is accomplishing something "The old West with its romance is all but past The West, with its boundless interest in life, with its passion for creation, and with its democ- racy, is still new. The visitor from the East finds it crude, and often frankly materialistic in its judgments. But the crudity is disappearing in actual achievement, and the materalism, if more frank, is less treacherous than high finance. The West is human and so imperfect, but it is sincere. It is rough, but it is being educated. "As a locality it may be shifting, but as a state of mind it is America in the making." — From the World To-Day, Chicago, February, 1905. A few ma:gazines, popular through certain Hterary forms of presentation and on account of their pictures, have grown up in Chicago during the present decade and have found places, appar- 68 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 69 ently permanent, in a good part of the market sought by the general periodical publishers of New York. They have been, and are, edited in such a manner as to reflect the social influences emanating from a city having the particular type of cosmopolitan character now attained by Chicago. They have been, and are, published with that strict attention to the commercial side which is one of the marked characteristics of a metropolis whose substan- tial citizens are now constantly proclaiming it to be "the Great Central Market." The World To-Day and the Red Book are the most important and significant of these present-day magazines. The Sunday Magazine, unique in its development as an adjunct to the Sunday edition of a daily newspaper, the Record-Herald, also shows some of the same points. There are others currently published, as well as some no longer appearing, which are of interest in considering the literary publishing undertaken at Chicago since 1900. That cosmopolitanism is the general characteristic of Chicago today will doubtless be granted. It has been pointed out in the foregoing papers that the insistent western sectionalism of the prairie days, when Chicago was a small pioneer town, became modified by a new national spirit following the Civil War; that Chicago came to feel world-sympathy and also inner power from rapid growth toward a large city's dimensions in the years fol- lowing the fire of 1871; that in the eighties the community attained the consciousness of being a material metropolis; and that for a brief time in the nineties it was a world-center of kaleidoscopic, external cosmopolitan activity. The city of the present has inherited these traditions. They have become traits of Chicago's community character, a fund of standing opinion, now held in a new combination. But what is the essential char- acteristic of the cosmopolitanism of Chicago* today? In gen- eral it may be defined as an internal cosmopolitanism. It is not the dazzling kind that comes from the temporary residence in a nation's leading center of a shifting crowd of interesting cos- mopolites, citizens of the world with no very strong national attachments, such as there is in Paris, and as there is in a lesser degree in New York. It is a different type of life in the large, 70 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY yet constantly and with accuracy described as cosmopolitan. It is the fusing in a composite, permanent, resident people of a great congeries of elements from Old and New World civilization; the interplay, in one community, of factors derived from all parts of Europe, and from America's East, South, and West. From such combining of varying elements, according to frequent state- ments by the publicists, comes whatever is typically American today. That is, the distinctively American is now cosmopolitan. The process which brings this about is possible only in a large city, a metropolis of such dimensions as to be an immense crucible. New York, being the largest city in the country and a metropolis permanently composed of many elements of population, and also constantly visited by a shifting crowd of cosmopolites such as is not often seen elsewhere in the United States, is, of course, the most cosmopolitan center in America. Since, however, the chan- ging dress of external cosmopolitan life is most conspicuous there, and since New York is largely lacking in the western pioneer element, as a cosmopolis it is not purely typical of the developing character of America, with its inner fusing of heterogeneous elements. Chicago, having practically no exterior cosmopolitan aspect, and being the western center for j>ermanent co-ordinating of a most comprehensive group of differing racial elements, is perhaps the most typical American city. At any rating given, it is certainly conspicuous for what has been described here as internal cosmopolitanism. Among the influences felt from the traditions held by the vari- ous elements in Chicago's population of 2,000.000, the one coming from the New England men who' settled here, or near here, is commanding. It permeates the life of the town. The "I Will" attitude expressed in the city's motto, the determination to do things, first in commercial and industrial enterprise, and then in general, comes most notably from this' element. The Puritan aspect of this Anglo-Saxon influence has been greatly modified by the traditional attitudes of the great colonies oi people from every European nation, who have become component parts of the com- munity. More than a score of foreign languages are spoken here by permanent residents. The numbers of people using the THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 71 various tongues, pointed out in estimates by Professor Carl Darling Buck, in "A Sketch of the Ling^iistic Conditions in Chicago," Vol. VI oi The Decennial Publications of the Univer- sity of Chicago, 1903, is as follows : German 500,000 French 15,000 Polish 125,000 Irish 10,000 Swedish 100,000 Croatian and Servian 10,000 Bohemian 90,000 Slovakian 10,000 Norwegian 50,000 Lithuanian 10,000 Yiddish 50,000 Russian 7,000 Dutch 35,000 Hungarian 5,ooo Italian 25,000 Greek 4,000 Danish 20,000 And Frisian, Roumanian, Welsh, Slovenian, Flemish, Chinese, and Spanish, each by 1,000 or more. Chicago is the fifth German city in the world, the third Swedish, the fourth Polish, and the second Bohemian. For many years the German element has been considered of great influence in shaping the chaiacter of Chicago. "The most notable characteristic of Chicago's foreign population is the strength of the Scandinavian and Slavic elements," says Pro- fessor Buck in his monograph. "No other city in the country contains anything like as many representatives of these groups. The Slavs number a quarter of a million." He points out that in the Chicago linguistic grouping, Slavic comes next to Germanic, a "place which would be occupied by Romance in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston." The most recent arrivals, ignorant immigrants from south- eastern Europe, belonging exclusively tOi the industrial group, have made no direct contributions to the literary and general artistic interests of the city. But the great majority of the colonies of foreign-boni, through their dramatic and singing societies and other organizations, have added some elements to the general artistic activities and interests oi the community. The very amalgamation of the groups of foreign origin in the common life of the community — a process that seems incredibly rapid in its realization — causes a spread of the manifold effects of the many racial heritages, even though they are felt in modified forms. The maintenance of European customs as to drinking and Sunday recreation by the social organizations of the Euro- 72 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY pean-Americans has brought about a general attitude of liberality regarding personal habits. Notwithstanding occasional reactions by the ultra-Puritans among the leading element of the popula- tion, their own customs have changed. The public schools are the greatest melting-pot. Concerning the Chicago-born children of the city's foreign-born population, Professor Buck, says : The second generation is bi-lingual. The children first learn their mother- tongue, but as soon as they are on the street and in school they learn English, and it is not long before they speak it by preference. The third generation, even of unmixed foreign descent, knows only English. The daily newspapers have a great influence in giving com- mon interests and a common community-consciousness to the many elements in the composite citizenship. It is true that there are sixty-seven newspapers, including fourteen dailies, printed in foreign languages in Chicago. The editor of one of these papers informed the writer that, if it were not for the continued acquisitions from uninterrupted immigration, it would be only a few years before papers printed in the foreign languages would be discontinued, as would the use of the foreign tongues at church services. The great metropolitan newspapers of Chicago, in response to the broad range of interests naturally held by the mixed population of Chicago and the North Central States, are notable for the national and cosmopolitan view of American and foreign events which they present daily. It is a safe assertion that the Chicago papers give a better-proportioned presentation of the news of the whole world than do those of New York, where a much greater amount of space, proportionally, is taken up with the news of New Yorkers, whose typical attitude seems inclined to be that their metropolis is world enough in itself. The social settlements, a belt of them established in the densely populated river districts, northwest, west, and southwest of the heart of the city, are common meeting-ground for some accentuation, and chiefly for amalgamation of diverse interests'. Participation in political life, particularly as it relates to municipal affairs, provides a constantly absorbing common inter- est to all the people of Chicago. A great deal that is of signifi- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 73 cance as to world-wide movements in the readjustment of social and economic relationships is fomenting in Chicago. The strati- fication of classes on the economic basis, with the houses of the poor in the river wards and those of the prosperous at favored sites along the shore of the lake, is distinct. Socialistic ideas, often brought directly by persons who' have been under the influence of socialistic leaders in Europe, are in the air. The socialization of the urban transportation system is the leading local issue of the decade and has held attention for years. Both organized labor and organized capital are strongly intrenched in Chicago, and make the city and its streets their battlefield. Through all the confusion and controversy, there are many mani- festations of the democratic character of the community. Besides the social and economic conditions showing the inter- nal cosmopolitanism of Chicago, there is a great variety of cul- tural interests, which are developments of cultivated cosmopoli- tanism. The Theodore Thomas Orchestra and Orchestra Hall, and the Art Institute, have been cited in foregoing papers. The number of theaters and performances of the drama has been greatly increased during recent years, and at present an important movement, headed by the Chicago Woman's Club, looking toward the establishment of a theater for the presentation of only the higher class of dramatic entertainments, is well started. The woman's clubs, with efforts so insistently laudable that they some- times become a little ludicrous, are seriously and effectively promoting culture. The institution which is' probably doing the most tO' give the community a fixed ideal of the higher, intellectual life, is the University of Chicago. "The City White hath fled the earth; But where her azure waters He, A nobler city hath its birth, The City Gray that ne'er shall die." The very presence, within the "City Black," of the university with its many beautiful and substantial buildings, halls, and laboratories set apart for the search after and dissemination of truth in all the fields of knowledge, and the reports of the activi- 74 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY ties of the searchers appearing constantly in the Chicago daily papers, however inadequate and distorted they may be from the point of view of the professors, impress the community with the idea of universal truth. The university helps toward eradication of the provincial. As to its direct influence on literary production, Mr. Walter A. Page, of Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, told the writer of this paper that no university in America is doing so much to encourage creative literary activity among its professors and students as the University of Chicago. After all is said that may be said, however, about the concert of notes in the life of cosmopolitan Chicago, the fact remains that the one which sounds loudest and clearest is that of business. A typical expression of this was given in the following sentences by William E. Curtis, in the Chicago Record-Herald, November i8, 1904: Chicago has pushed ahead more rapidly than any other city in the history of mankind. She is the greatest of railway centers. Her harbors float a greater tonnage than any other port in the world. Chicago is the greatest cattle market in the world. Chicago is the largest grain market. Chicago is the biggest market for agricultural machinery. Chicago does the largest mail-order business. The largest trading in ready-made clothing. She has the finest wholesale dry-goods establishment in the world. She has the largest and finest retail department store in the world. She is the largest hardware market in the world. Chicago is the biggest furniture market. Although in recent years much attention has been centered on the upbuilding of the cultural, artistic, and socializing activities of the community, there has been no movement of such momen- tum as that of the Chicago Commercial Association, which, reorganized in 1904, set out to boom Chicago as a national and world mart. Holding that the city is "the storm center of price competition," delegations of business men from the mercantile and manufacturing concerns in the association go out to various parts of the country on genuine campaigns in the interest of Chicago as the market-metropolis. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 75 The romance of business battles has stirred many writers of fiction resident here to produce novels portraying the characters and narrating the incidents of this phase of the community's life. These are published by the established book-houses of New York and Boston. No magazine for literary expression of this kind of life has been undertaken here. The Saturday Evening Post, of Philadelphia, the general magazine which devotes more attention than any other tO' stories of the life of men of affairs, maintains in this city a western editorial office, with Mr. Forrest Crissey, a Chicago^ author of stories and verse, in charge, chiefly for the securing of manuscripts containing literary expression of such themes. Incidental to the high development of business activity in Chicago has been a great increase in the class of the readers of magazine fiction who read merely for rest. Many business men and thousands of their clerks, after the rush and noise of the business day, do much reading for recreation, according to the testimony given for this paper on Chicago's literary interests, by the men behind the news-stands supplying them with peri- odicals. As a rule, they are not critical of the literary quality of the magazines read in this spirit, merely demanding stories diverting on account of incident. That the various elements set forth in this brief outline of the character of the Chicago of today, and particularly the character- istics from the ideals of business, have been, and are, reflected in the origin, development, and character of the popular magazines published here today will be shown by the facts submitted in the detailed accounts. These magazines are produced as' goods. They are put on the market to yield profits on investment. In their publication, literary productions of certain grades are com- mercialized. Because commercialized, these periodicals will be satirized — by idealists. But the history of the scores of period- icals attempted at Chicago in preceding decades has shown that the bulk have been nothing more than ephemeral efforts, because based on the floating foundation of literary sentiment — western literary sentiment. In this general experience the commercializa- tion of popular literary magazines finds justification. The demand 76 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY for them reveals something which economists describe as an econ- omic want. Only when produced on a business basis is the demand economically supplied. The professors in the English department of the Central Division of the Modern Language Association, at a conference in this city, in January, 1903, advocated the establish- ment of a western literary magazine tO' preserve the smaller literary productions of men who really write literature according to the academic standards of criticis^m. They declared that its publication could be provided for in no other way than by endow- ment. Such an endowed magazine has not been established in Chicago. For the general dissemination of any kind of literary- periodical, endowment is not practical, certainly not economical. To exist and grow, a literary magazine must be run — to use a business colloquialism — as a "business proposition." "But when the coimting-room is put first, taste is perverted," say objectors to this statement. The answer is that while the publisher of periodical and book fiction can do something in elevating reading taste, it is but little. The point of attack for that great work is not the publisher's office, but the school and the home, where the taste of those making the demand for novels and literary magazines is acquired and definitely cultivated. The World To-Day, a magazine in which a cosmorama of knowledge about world-events is made popular by means of an aesthetic gloss from the essay style of writing and from illustra- tions, mirrors not only in its present character, but also in the history of its development of character, more of the influences in the internal cosmopolitanism of Chicago than does any other periodical. This popular monthly of the literary journalistic order had its roots in a heavy, periodic encyclopedia and a religious weekly. The magazine is now in its sixth year, though during the first year of its publication it bore another name and was not of its present artistic character. It was at first devoted to knowledge, and to knowledge unal- loyed. The Current Encyclopedia was its name at the beginning. The initial number appeared July 15, 1901. The periodical was founded by Mr. William E. Ernst, who holds the office of vice- president and publisher in the World To-Day Company. He had THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 77 been in charge of the subscription book department of the V\'"erner Company, then of Chicago, now of Akron, Ohio^ — a firm making large sales of standard encyclopedias. Mr. Ernst obsen^ed that the annual handbooks brought out tO' supplement the encyclopedia volumes were usually late. He therefore was impressed with the idea of publishing a "monthly record of human progress, con- taining the latest information on history, science, philosophy, literature, legislation, politics, industry, religion, education, art, etc.," to quote the subline to the title of the Current Encyclopedia. Two similar periodicals, devoted to the knowledge-interests, had previously been published in Chicago. One was Self Culture, first brought out by the Werner Company in April, 1895. A file in the Newberry Library shows that this heavy magazine was dis- tributed among the members of the "Home University League" — that is, among readers of the Encyclopedia Britannica. By 1900, three years after the Werner Company had moved tO' Akron, the name of the magazine was changed to Modern Culture, and its ponderous appeal to the serious interest in knowledge gave place to the popularized form of magazine presentation. The other was Progress, also begun in 1895. This was a "home study" magazine, each monthly number containing "lessons." It was issued by the "University Association" in the interests of uni- versity extension and World's Congress extension. Right Rev. Samuel Fallows, D.D., bishop of the Reformed Episcopal church in the West and Northv/est, chairman of the general education committee of the World's Congress Auxiliary, and former state superintendent of public instruction in Wisconsin, was the chancellor of the association and the leading editor on the periodi- cal's staff of "instructors." When the Current Encyclopedia was started. Progress was merged with it, and Bishop Fallows is still one of the directors of the World To-Day Company. For the Current Encyclopedia Mr. Ernst estimated that from students, teachers, public speakers, newspaper editors, and serious-minded people generally there should be a demand requir- ing 100,000 copies each month. He organized a "Modern Re- search Society," engaged Edmund Buckley, Ph.D., of the Uni- versity of Chicago, as editor, and secured the services of a staff 78 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY of thirty-nine assistant editors, each in charge of editing the material on a subject in which he was a speciaHst. No advertising was sohcited and not any pubHshed. That is, there was no effort to induce readers to make indirect payment toward the cost of satsifying their desire for knowledge. A price of 50 cents a copy and $5 a year, was charged for the Current Encyclopedia. It was sold only by subscription. But the expected circulation was not secured. The maximum reached was 8,000. This was not sufficient to make the magazine self-supporting. The experimenting to maintain this kind of periodical was continued for a year. Then what may be called the sesthetizing of the magazine was begun. "We saw there was a demand for the same material in a lighter vein than had marked the Cur- rent Encyclopedia," says Mr. Ernst. The very name of the maga- zine was too heavy. It was a title suggesting a ponderous tone and work in reading. The publisher found that the number of general readers really willing to labor in magazine perusal was most limited. It was decided first to alter the name of the maga- zine. At this time Mr. Albert G. Beaunisne, assistant to the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, became financially inter- ested in Mr. Ernst's magazine venture. Through his influence negotiations over an offer of the editorship of the magazine were begun with Mr. Trumbull White, a seasoned Chicago newspaper man and foreign correspondent, who, however, became the editor to found the Red Book, and is now editor of Appleton's Book- lover's Magazine at New York. The name "Current Events" was under consideration. Mr. White said that was too common- place. He proposed the "World of Today." This title, minus the preposition, w^as adopted. At this point Mr. Ernst and Mr. Beaunisne went to Mr. E. A. Shepler, manager of the Western News Co.. a constituent part of the American News Co., the periodical-distributing agency for the entire country. They asked him if matter-of-fact material written in an entertaining manner, profusely illustrated with half- tones, appearing in a magazine with a catchy cover design, would sell on the news-stands if published in Chicago. Mr. Shepler said to them : THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 79 You can succeed if you give the people their money's worth. There never has been a magazine published in Chicago that deserved to succeed in compe- tition with those pubHshed in New York. Sentiment as to place of publication does not go. If you make the magazine worth its price, it will sell. Mr. Ernst and his associates set about attempting to give the public its "money's worth" at twenty-five cents a copy. The first number of the periodical under its present name, being the first of its second year, appeared on the news-stands in July, 1902. A total of only 5,000 copies was placed on distri- bution. A larger issue was put on sale in August; and in Sep- tember, 8,000 copies were given to the news company. The annual subscribers numbered 7,000. Up to this time no advertisements had been solicited. Since, however, the sales had been encouraging, the publisher believed he had the nucleus of a circulation that would appeal to advertisers. He began seeking advertising contracts But those advertisers who supply the magazine publishers with the bulk of their revenues did not show much interest in a circulation of only 15,000. Toward August of the next year, 1903, it became evident that steps to enlarge the number of readers were imperative. In this direction new editorial strength and the influence of the Uni- versity of Chicago were sought. During the late spring and summer of 1903 a weekly news- paper, with magazine cover, called Christendom, and bearing the imprint "Chicago," was to be found on the news-stands — that is, by one looking carefully. No. i of this journal came out April 18. Christendom was an incident in the religious-education move- ment. A gentleman who was intimately connected with the publi- cation says : "Christendom originated in the fertile brain of the late Dr. William R. Harper, president of the University of Chi- cago." Dr. Harper, as founder of the Religious Education Asso- ciation of the United States, and a leader in the movement for keeping religion constantly emphasized as one of the most funda- mental forces in the life of a nation admittedly materialistic in its attitudes, desired to have information concerning current events popularly presented to magazine-readers with attention to this point of view. To judge from the announcements concerning 8o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Christendom, the object of its sponsors was the estabhshment of an Outlook for the West — a weekly journal along the lines of the one edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott in New York. Shailer Mathews, D.D., professor of New Testament history and interpretation, and one of the deans of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, was the editor of Christendom. He was nominated for this editorial office by Dr. Harper partly because he had been successful in the active editorial direction of the Biblical World. Skilled as a popularizer and scholarly as a research worker, not only in theological, but also in historical and sociological fields, Dr. Mathews is regarded as being unusually well qualified to be the editor of a magazine portraying current life in its larger relations and published for general distribution. Christendom was ably edited. Not many numbers had been put on sale, however, before it became apparent that the periodical was not going to be self-supporting. Christendom was discon- tinued August 23, 1903. From it the World To-Day acquired the new editorial strength which was being looked for eagerly by the publishers at that time. With the September, 1903, number Dr. Mathews became editor of the World To-Day, and Dr. Har- per chairman of the directorate's editorial committee. All that was left of Christendom was absorbed by the World To-Day, which derived from it, besides editorial power, additional busi- ness strength. The World To-Day Company was' reorganized, and the principal owners of stock in Christendom became officers and directors of the reorganized company. Prominent Chicago business and professional men, some also patrons of the Uni- versity of Chicago, were among them. Mr. Francis W. Parker, a reform leader in active politics and a university trustee, became chairman of the finance committee. Mr. Beaunisne, chairman of the director's committee on publication for Christendom, who had previously become interested in the World To-Day, became treas- urer of the publishing corporation. That the World To-Day is regarded as' a business invest- ment is indicated by the fact that among its directors are Mr, John R. Thompson, the proprietor of a system of restaurants ; Mr. Charles A. Marsh, the president of a lumber company; Mr. O. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 8l F. Kropf, the secretary of a company manufacturing plumbers' supplies ; and Mr. F. J. Llewellyn, a contracting manager. In the list of stockholders is Mr. Frank G. Logan, a former member of the Board of Trade. A majority of the owners of stock in the magazine company are actively engaged in local commercial enter- prises. They have invested in the stock expecting returns at the normal rate of interest on capital. It is possible that more is looked for, since the amount of stock paid up, the preferred, is $100,000, while the total capital stock of the company is put at $430,000. It would, however, be unfair to assert that business gain has been the prime motive of investors in the World To-Day venture. The spirit of local pride, and the ambition of fostering agencies for intellectual and artistic advancement in a city that may be said tO' be not so much backward in culture as forward in business, have been important moving forces. All of the stock- holders are residents of Chicago. W\ of them have expressed an earnest desire for the permanent establishment of a dignified literary magazine bearing the imprint of Chicago. The friendly influence of the University of Chicago, in addi- tion to these permanent assets of editorial and business power, was secured by the World To-Day with the taking over of the remnants of Christendom. It is difiicult for one in any way con- nected with the university tO' estimate the influence exerted by the institution on the higher-life interests of the community. Mr. William Morton Payne, of the Dial, whoi is a Chicago' literary critic in no way connected with the university, writing on "The Intellectual Life of Chicago" for the World To-Day of July, 1904, laid emphasis on "the predominant influence of a single institution — the University of Chicago^ — upon our intellectual development." Mr. Payne brought out this point, showing progress made in the city since the time he had been commissioned to write an article on "Literary Chicago" for the Neiv England Magazine, in 1893, when the university was in its first academic year, and its influence only a promise. That the backing of the executive officers, the large faculty, and the patrons of the univer- sity has been an important factor in the growth of the World To- Day, published down-town and not in any way directly connected 82 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY with the university, is quite evident. Dr. Mathews says that the advantage which the magazine has in his own connection with the university lies in its editor's contact with the men on the faculties as individuals, and his nearness to them as a source of supply for valuable articles. Mr. Ernst, the publisher, speaking from the business man's point of view, says, however, that because the public is aware of the magazine's support by the university men, it has gained in standing with the public. With the alignment of these editorial and business forces, in September, 1903 the World To-Day took on its present character of literary dress and pictorial attraction for the interest in the aesthetic, and the publishing company set about making it, not only self-supporting, but also profit-bearing. In this, the adjust- ing of business and literary interests is interesting, and illustrative of general facts in magazine publishing, not only at Chicago, but in the publishing field at large. To understand a correlating of such interests it is necessary to trace the lines in a web of economic wants in which the desires for instruction and entertainment through the medium of literary form and pictures are woven. Advertising is the most important thread. The securing of contracts for publishing advertising became the main objective even of those directly interested in the World To-Day as a cultural agency. By far the largest part of the receipts of nearly every magazine comes from the advertising pages, as every casual magazine-reader appreciates. The receipts from the purchasers of the magazine at the news-stands, and from, the subscribers by the year, cover only a small percentage of the total expenses of pro- duction. Of course, the advertisers put the expense of advertis- ing into the prices of articles advertised. So' it comes about that the people who buy the goods advertised in the magazines pay, when they purchase those goods, a literary toll. The advertisers are the toll-gate men, and through them indirectly the publishers collect fares for passage in whatever kind of literary omnibus they are running. Now it happens that the kind of goods' most advertised, those pushed intO' attention by means of brands and trade-marks, are certain staples of home consumption, such as soaps and breakfast THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 83 foods. Hence the people who' must be reached by a magazine whose publishers wish tO' make it a medium for a large volume of this advertising are the home-maintainers. The publisher of the World To-Day, on the basis of experience in the development of this magazine, summed the situation up this way: Advertising is the backbone of a magazine's success. Middle-class people with homes are the ones who buy the goods on which most money is spent for advertising. But to get this advertising for your magazine you first must have in its literary pages "the stufiF" that will appeal to the people interested in those "ads." The climax of this statement indicates the fact that the taste of that large body of citizens called the middle class has definitely determined in large part the editorial, literary, and artistic character of the World To-Day. The demand which its editor has avowedly aimed to supply is what he frankly describes as the bourgoisie interests. The variations in taste which have been kept in mind are those of the people whom Charles Austin Bates, a New York advertising agency proprietor, in his book, The Art and Literature of Business (New York, 1902), treats of under the head "The Average American." He says (Vol. I, p. 284): It is the great middle class that reads newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, and these are the people that the advertiser wishes to reach. Taking them at random, one thousand of them is just about as valuable as another thousand. But it is the Middie West average American, considered by Dr. Mathews to be the most typically American, whose tastes and interests have been kept in mind in the making of the World To- Day. A compact western circulation has been worked for by the publisher of the magazine, and 80 per cent, of the World To-Day readers are in homes west of the Alleghany Mountains, 60 per cent, being in the North Central States. The editor has quite naturally kept his finger on the pulse of the people in the region of which Chicago' is the metropolis, and the publisher has expected the largest constituency there for the same reason. Incidentally, the advertisers who carry on big publicity campaigns have taken to conducting those campaigns by states, and Mr. Ernst has aimed to 84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY meet this condition by building up a concentrated Middle West constituency. Further, it is not to be forgotten that Dr. Mathews and several members of the World To-Day Company are teachers', and that, despite the emphasis laid on making the magazine a success commercially, one of their aims has been to make it a means of leading public opinion. Therefore, since those asserting leadership must not get too far away from their publics, attention to the taste and opinion of the constituency has been exercised consciously and analytically. For these various reasons the taste and temper of Chicago and the Middle West have influenced Dr. Mathews directly as he determined the editorial content and literary form policies in the formation of the character of the World To-Day. The desire to be instructed, and to be entertained while receiv- ing instruction, felt generally by the average American, is regarded by the editor and publisher of the World To-Day as especially strong in the middle-class people with homes who make up the largest part of the population of the Middle West. Mr, Ernst, influenced by his experience with the Current Encyclopedia, lays emphasis on the desire for entertainment from literary forms and pictures. Dr. Mathews says his aim is equally toi instruct and to entertain. The interest of intelligent home-maintainers in the literary presentation of serious subject-matter in form other than that of the story is what, in his opinion, makes a demand for such a periodical as the one he edits. His effort is "to put facts so as to be read." In an investigation of the extent of the market for books of fiction published in Chicago, pursued in this study, it was learned that two-thirds of the reading of the country is done by the one-half of the population residing east of Ohio. Mr. Ernst is authority for the statement that this holds true for the maga- zine reading of the country. But of the reading in the West a larger proportionate share is of serious subject-matter. Mr. Ernst presents some concrete facts on the circulation of other magazines to show that the people outside of that section known as the East do relatively more reading of serious writing than they do of fiction in periodicals. He says that the Reviezv of Reviews, for example, has a larger percentage of its circulation in the West THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 85 than any story magazine has. Dr. Mathews, in a signed article on "Culture in the West," appearing in a "New West" number of his magazine, February, 1905, says of the Atlantic Monthly that, although it "appeals to the tradition of culture without relying upon tlie seductions of illustrations or sensational exposes, yet finds more than half its circulation west of Cleveland." He further says: "The view which the West takes of life, while not pessimistic, is serious;" and in the editorial leader for the same number, quoted in part for the headpiece of this paper, he further emphasizes this point. The interest of home people in every phase of progress is rated as fundamental in determining western taste, but the desire for virile expression and novelty modifies this in such a way that the taste in periodicals is for a magazine which is entertaining. The "literary-information" class of magazines is the one to which the World To-Day belongs, it is not a literary magazine, in the literary critic's use of the adjective "literary," since in its contents there is to be found no exclusively imaginative writing. But since its pages show great dependence on a form of writing designed to appeal to the aesthetic interest, and since pictures: are a leading factor in its entertaining of the public, the World To-Day merits minute attention for the purposes of looking into the orders of periodicals manifesting the literary phase of the general aesthetic interest at Chicago. The table of contents for any issue of the World To-Day shows that they have been selected with a plan for consistent unity. The main motive throughout is the knowledge-interest. The first two pages are filled with an editorial printed in large type. This is an editorial written with "the psychological moment" in view, an expression designed to give new mental pictures concern- ing the question of the month dominating the minds of typical "average Americans." The next fifteen pages are devoted to a review of the "Events of the Month." under four subheads : "World Politics," "The Nation," "Art and Letters," and "The Religious World." A dozen "contributed articles" on a variety of subjects, written by men of more or less authority, then come to complete the main part of the magazine. They are followed 86 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY by short, signed articles in a department called "The Making of Tomorrow" which has a subline saying, "How the world of today is preparing for tlie world of tomorrow." Sections designated "Books and Reading" and "Calendar of the Month," and finally "The Encyclopedic Index," a survival of the magazine in its original form, complete the contents. "National journalism" is the characterization of this array of material given by the editor, who is endeavoring each month to cover the entire field, in balance. Some down-town friends of the World To-Day, among them a literary critic, offer the objec- tion that the magazine is too emphatic in its religious tone. On the other hand, some of the editor's theological friends are inclined to think it is too worldly. Dr. Mathews defends his policy, con- tending that no more attention is given to the record of religious movements than to others, and that the facts show religion to be one of the large forces in the life of tlie nation. Looking at the monthlies with which the World To-Day is competing, it appears to be true tliat the World To-Day is broader in scope. The Reviciv of Reviews is predommantly a political and economic record. The World's Work makes special features of various topics, seeming to show little effort at a balanced view of the world-field. McC hire's Magazine has recently specialized in mu- nicipal, political, and economic exposes. The Outlook, published as a weekly newspaper, with a monthly magazine number, carries out effectively the policy adopted by the World To-Day, and is even more insistent on attention to religious activity. Thus in its range of material, the appeal of the World To-Day reflects the character of Chicago, and is designed for the tastes of the people of "the new West" whom Dr. Mathews regards as particularly susceptible to the cosmopolitanism which he regards as typically American. It is' not the world-wide range of subject-matter that makes the World To-Day of interest from the point of view of aesthetics. What does is the style of writing in which this matter is presented. The encyclopedic form of statement is shunned. The ponderous circumlocution known as academic writing is studiously avoided. The essay style, brightened by a play of THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 87 imagination over matters of fact, pointed with epigrams, is what the editor wants, so that every paragraph shall be entertaining. Literary form of this kind is relied upon as a means of making the magazine popular. The composition of the editorial leaders, by Dr. Mathews himself, has been of this style, appealing to the general aesthetic interest, and the contributed articles have been written in this manner. After all is said about the literary dress of the magazine, it is, however, through another medium that the World To-Day makes its telling appeal. The men behind news-stands, when asked what the people desire most, said : ''They want to read pictures." The eye of a magazine-purchaser standing before a news-stand display of periodicals is caught by the original drawings of the World To-Day cover designs. For several issues after it became the World To-Day, the magazine lacked such a means of adver- tising itself. For some months also, the same design, containing only a small hemisphere for a decorative feature, was used, although this cover scheme was made to stand out by the use of different colors from month to month. As a permanent policy, the plan of printing a new cover, done in two or three colors, each month was adopted. The cover gives a promise of the illustra- tions on the reading-pages. Pictures fill nearly half of them. There is scarcely a page without some kind of a picture, quarter- page, half-page, or full-page in size. Besides portraits of indi- viduals whose personalities are factors in the life of the world, there are scenes showing activities in fields and parks, on rivers and seas, in factories and legislative halls, and on the stages of theaters, as well as reproductions of masterly paintings. Excepting the reproductions of etched newspaper cartoons run in the review section, all the illustrations are half-tones, exceedingly well done. Fancy borders and backgrounds, in pale blue and cream-yellow tints, are used to give the larger half-tones added aesthetic values. The illustrations of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition number, September, 1904, made it, without doubt, one of the most beauti- ful magazines ever published. Summing up, it may be said that the World To-Day is like a wholesome cake of many layers, coated with frosting and decorated with designs in sugar of various colors. o» THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY For a year after the name of the magazine became the World To-Day, and for nearly another year after the formation of its character in the present editor's hands, the price of 25 cents a copy and $3 per annum was maintained. This is the regular charge for the review magazines. But experience in marketing the World To-Day at this figure showed that the constituency of average Americans interested in its contents, and desired so as to command the largest volume of advertising, thought it too high. In July, 1904, the price was reduced to 10 cents a copy and $1 a year. The publisher advertised the periodical as the "only maga- zine of its class for ten cents." As this is the price of popular fic- tion magazines', the new charge made a prejudice in favor of the World To-Day. Immediately sales doubled. Mr. Ernst esti- mated that in the western territory there were 300,000 people interested in such a magazine as his and able to afford it at this price. The circulation mounted to 60,000, then tO' 80,000 by Feb- ruary, 1905, and has reached 85,729, the steady increase having gained such momentum that in March, 1906, the price was raised to 15 cents a copy and $1.50 for twelve numbers. A magazine with contents so presented as to interest home- maintaining people having been developed, and circulation among them having been secured, and especially a circulation geog- raphically compact, the desired and needed advertising contracts have been forthcoming for the World To-Day. In a tabulation of paid advertising in the "leading monthlies" of the country, appearing in Printer's Ink, November 9, 1904, the World To-Day ranked fourteenth. At that time, thirteen months after it had taken on its present character, the magazine had 83 pages and 19,256 agate lines of advertising. It has since advanced in rank to eleventh. Early in 1905 the magazine began to show a profit. Judging the success of a contemporary periodical is handi- capped by the natural enthusiasm felt for their literary children by editors and publishers, the chief sources of information. Moreover, unromantic as it may seem, the test of success for even a dignified journal, of genuine editorial, literary, and artistic quality, is that of the "going concern." However good a periodical may be, it is not a success if continuance is not assured. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 89 It is safe to say that the World To-Day is a success, and to predict its permanence. The manager of the Western News Co., who has seen many ephemeral Chicago magazines dry up by the wayside, the Hterary critics and men in the pubhshing business at Chicago, and the western representatives of the older New York magazines have agreed in tliis statement and prediction. The chief reason for such success and promise is that the editor has proved skilful in having topics of world-wide information so clothed in a literary dress, with pictorial trimmings, as tO' make it appeal convincingly tO' the general aesthetic interest of middle- class people in the Middle West, the territory contiguous to the inwardly cosmopolitan metropolis in which it is published. The Red Book, Chicago's first conspicuous success at publish- ing a fiction magazine of the contemporary popular type, came into being because several gentlemen who^ are Jews, the members of a prominent firm of merchants with headquarters at the center of the principal shopping street, thought they might make some money by satisfying the demand for stories. Stumer, Rosenthal & Eckstein is the firm name of these business men, Messrs. Louis M. Stumer, Abraham R. Stumer, Benjamin J. Rosenthal, and Louis Eckstein. They own and operate among other business enterprises, two retail millinery stores — "The Emporium" and the "Millinery World," a large "cut rate" drug-store — the "Public Drug Co.," two restaurants and an office building, in which the editorial and publishing offices of the Red Book are located. Some pointers about publishing and advertising, and possible profits therefrom, had been picked up by individual members of this firm several years ago. Before joining this business partner- ship. Mr. Eckstein had been general passenger agent of the Wis- consin Central Railway, and in working up to that position had learned the ins and outs of the periodical advertising. Mr. Rosen- thal, as a prominent member of the Chicago Board of Education, the Public Library Board, and the Chicago Centennial Celebra- tion committee, had become acquainted with Mr. D wight Allyn, a "star newspaper-man," who in June, 1900, started the 10 Story Book. This is a small-sized Chicago monthly containing 90 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY "snappy" short stories, and is prosperous today. In its early stages Mr. Allyn, finding himself in need of funds to keep the venture alive, went to^ Mr. Rosenthal. He and some other members of his firm bought stock in Mr. Allyn's company — under contract, however, to sell it back to him prior to 1903. This they did, Mr, Allyn declining to^ sell out tO' them and to accept an offer for conducting the periodical on salary. In the mean- time they had realized a small but neat profit on their investment. After balancing accounts in the books of all their ventures at the end of 1902, Stumer, Rosenthal & Eckstein found that they had on hand a considerable amount of floating capital. Besides the retail establishments already mentioned, they had a whole- sale millinery house, and were under contract to build a "sky- scraper." They turned from the distinctly materialistic field of investment and asked : "If a small 10 Story Book will make a small profit, why will not a large story-book bring in a big profit?" They decided to start such a magazine venture, to make a large outlay, take a large risk, and tO' await a large return. In looking about for an editorial manager, they went to a man connected with the Chicago Daily News, whose assistant tO' the publisher is a prominent member of the World To-Day Company. They asked Mr. Charles M. Faye, the managing editor of that newspaper, with whom Mr. Eckstein had a personal acquaintance, to become the editor of the proposed magazine. Mr. Faye, instead of accepting, recommended Mr. Trumbull White, a prominent newspaper-man of the younger generation in Chicago, who had recently been abroad in charge of the foreign service for The Chicago Record, then under the same general management as The Daily Nezus. Mr. White is a son of the Middle West become a "citizen of the world," by nature enthusiastic and optimistic, and endowed with a broad range of human sympathy — a man who has acquired the cosmopolitan point of view. After spending his youth in an Iowa village and receiving an eastern collegiate education at Amherst, Mr. White did local newspaper work and newspaper literary editing in Chicago. Then, while at London, St. Petersburg, and other foreign capitals as a news- paper correspondent, he contributed articles to magazines, inci- THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 91 dentally serving as authority on Asiatic affairs for the World To-Day when that magazine was the Current Encyclopedia. Having been connected with the press of Chicago for quite a number of years, he had been acquainted with newspaper men who had made futile efforts to establish literary periodicals. Among newspaper workers he was regarded as one of the best qualified to undertake the editing of a popular magazine. Mr. White was engaged as editor, and the Red Book corpora- tion, of which Mr. Eckstein is the president, was organized. This corporation has an official capitalization of but a few thousand dollars. Its stockholders are members of the Stumer, Rosenthal & Eckstein firm exclusively. This firm guarantees all bills against the magazine for paper, printing, manuscripts and distribution. The limit of Red Book obligations is, therefore, the total personal wealth oi its members. The financial rate-sheets put this at $1,000,000. Hence, the Red Book nas been alone among Chicago periodical publishing efforts in having backing which was, for all practical purposes, unlimited. An estimate of publishing cost rather startling to the capital- ists of the firm was made at the outset by Mr. White, who, while engaged to be editor, had many of the duties of a publisher. He told them it would take three years of publishing the new maga- zine to place it on a self-supporting basis, and that during such period they must expect to see a temporary net less of $100,000. Accepting the estimate, though with mental reserv^ations as to its accuracy, Stumer, Rosenthal & Eckstein told Mr. White to go ahead with the venture. The only instructions as to literary quality given to the editor were to produce a monthly book better than the 10 Story Book. It was at once decided that the magazine should be devoted to fiction, that it should contain no serials, and that its pages should be filled with short stories written by contemporary authors. First the publishers prepared a small preliminary edition, of which only twenty copies were completed and taken to the Red Book office. They were never circulated. This preliminary number contained only a meager collection of stories and no photographic ilkistra- tions. A sample copy was taken to Mr. Shepler, the Western 92 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY News Col manager, experienced in seeing Chicago publications die on the news-stands. Mr. Shepler told the publishers that, as it then appeared, their book was nO' better than any of the many ten-cent story magazines, and therefore it would not go. They stopped the binders. They enlarged the magazine, and added an illustration feature. The illustrations of the stories in the experimental number, as in the first six regular issues, were zinc etchings which looked cheap. For this reason some half-tone feature was especially desired. In the enlarged initial number a series of pictures in a "photogaphic art" department filling the first pages of the book was inserted. Since then the first pages — originally twelve, later twenty-eight — have regularly contained excellent full-page half-tones of the well-known actresses. In illustrating the stories, zinc etchings were soon dropped, and tooled half-tones of original drawings substituted. The illustrations, however, have not been of good quality, and the main pictorial appeal to the aesthetic sense has been the display of "photographic art." The stories give the magazine its character. These are not of the classic type, and severe literary critics scoff when the Red Book is mentioned as a literary magazine. In the first place, the name Red Book, and the magazine's red cover regularly con- taining a drawing in which the figure of a woman wearing an evening gown appears, are more sensational in their suggestions than the contents of the stories warrant. Mr. White says that his aim in selecting manuscripts has been to secure stories pro- viding "decent entertainment for people with red blood in their veins." Many of the stories in each number of the Red Book have not been above the mediocre in literary form, though each has had some quality sufficiently entertaining to satisfy the widespread interest in narrative. But in each number there have been a few stories by the best of the fiction-writers for the accredited American magazines. For example, Stuart Edward White, whose interpretations of the spirit of life in the western mountains have been widely acclaimed, has been a Red Book contributor. Further, stories from authors who reside in Eng- land have been published regularly in this Chicago^ magazine. So THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 93 many of them have been used that Mr. Crissey, the western edi- torial representative of the Saturday Evening Post, says that the Red Book publishes more good brief fiction from the authors of England than does any other short-story magazine in America. That the Red Book, presenting this kind of literary and pic- torial entertainment, has caught the fancy of thousands is shown by the sales records of the magazine. When the first edition, in its enlarged and revised form, was put out, 40,000 copies were sent to the Western News Co. and the other branches of the American News Co. Of these 14,000 were returned, showing a net first-number circulation larger by several thousand than that of any preceding literary publication in Chicago. Since then the output has been increased by thousands of copies monthly. For the February, 1905, issue, 275,000 copies were printed, and for June, 1906, 338,500. The publishers say that during no month has the number of unsold copies returned exceeded 5 per cent, of the issue. The commercial means of satisfying the order of aesthetic want which these readers manifest is shown by the experience of the Red Book in securing its advertising patronage to be bound up in a bundle of more material wants. The aim of the publishers is not to attract the largest possible number of readers. It is, instead, to get the largest possible body of readers having the power to purchase the classes of goods that are most constantly and expensively advertised in magazines. The "ad-writers'" create wants. The advertisements stimulate demands for the moderate-priced luxuries. While there is a constant interaction between the effects' of the advertising pages and the reading- matter section, Mr. White holds that in the last analysis the con- stituency for the advertising matter is the one that controls policy. That it should be so is' a business necessity with the Red Book, for while it costs 8^^ cents a copy to produce the magazine, the news company pays only SV^ cents per copy for it, thus leaving a net loss on sales of 3 cents on each book. The advertising revenue must be secured. The State Street firm of merchant- publishers, through its heavy purchases for the store of the Public Drug Co., is in a position to command a large amount of patent- 94 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY medicine advertisements, and during the first few months of the magazine's publication practically all of its advertising pages were filled with cure-all announcements. But the people who pin their faith to proprietary-medicine men's assertions are not the ones who buy the luxuries and fancy staples which yield the bulk of magazine advertising returns at highest rates, and Mr. White declares they are not the people interested in the class of stories he has put in the Red Book. Further, Mr. White, in giving data for these papers, said : "Every magazine that pretends to decency in its contents must omit the patent-medicine advertisements." The relative amount of nostrum advertising in the Red Book has constantly decreased. Prohibitive rates have caused this kind to be dropped out. With recognition of the large circulation of the magazine, the advertising contracts of the character required have been secured in large numbers. At the end of its second year, the Red Book was on a profit-yielding basis, although at one time $50,000 appeared to have been sunk in the venture. All who are prominently connected with publishing in Chicago say that the magazine is firmly established for the future. The owners of the Red Book at the beginning of its third year decided to use their publishing organization for issuing a second short-story magazine. This is the Monthly Story Magasine, of which the first number appeared in May, 1905. Each number contains nearly 200 pages of complete stories. Although the Story-Press Corporation is the nominal publishing organization, manuscripts used for this publication come from the myriad of short-story writers. They are submitted, usually, for the Red Book, but are not regarded as up to the standard of that maga- zine. The accumulation of such manuscripts was one of the incidents that led to the starting of the side-issue periodical. Except for twelve pages of theatrical scenes, reproduced by half- tones in an introductory department called ''Stageland," and the advertisements, the contents' of the Monthly Story Magamne are printed on the cheapest kind of paper. On account of its cheapness of production, this magazine, sold at ten cents a copy, brings a profit from its circulation of 100,000. It is a conspicuous example of commercializing the publishing of a kind of literary periodical. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 95 The attention of the New York publishers of magazines has been arrested by the success of the Red Book. Being one of a very small number published in the West, as contrasted with the many turned out in New York, its large sales in the general magazine market have stood out conspicuously. New York magazine-publishers, in interviews for these papers so stated explicitly. Incidentally the sales of the Red Book in New York City have been larger than the sales in Chicago, though not larger in proportion to population. Smith's Magazine, brought out in New York after the Chicago^ publication had enjoyed twO' years of success, is regarded as a direct imitation of the Red Book. The most notable and complimentary New York recognition of the Red Book, however, has come in the loss tO' Chicago' of Mr, White, its editor for the first three years. Tlie well-established publishing house of D. Appleton & Co., on acquiring the high- grade Booklover's Magazine of Philadelphia, and converting it into Appleton s Magazine, called Mr. White to its editorship. On May I, after Mr. Karl Edward Harriman, a short-story and magazine-article writer, for three years editor of the Pilgrim, published at Battle Creek, Mich., had been named as his successor with the Red Book, Mr. White went to New York to assume his new editorial duties. The attraction of Mr. White tO' the leading publishing center of the country is a unique recognition of success in Chicago as a growing publishing center. The publishers of both the Red Book and the World To-Day are recognized, by the publishers of magazines at New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, to be competing in the general maga- zine market. The experiences of the editors and business direc- tors of the World To-Day and the Red Book are instructive on the limitations and possibilities of Chicago as a place for produ- cing and distributing popular magazines, in comparison with those of New York, the national publishing center. The imprint "Chicago" has given these magazines an advantage in securing benefits from the metropolitan influence of Chicago in the Middle West, subtly aiding them tO' get large and concentrated circulations in that part of the national market comprised in this section. But it has handicapped their influence east of the Alleghanies. A New York imprint gives the advan- 96 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY tage of New York's influence as the national metropolis, not only in the East where two-thirds of the total reading is done, but also for a general circulation scattered throughout the country. The World To-Day has laid all possible emphasis on its Chicago con- nection, plainly showing itself by various articles and special west- ern numbers to be an organ of Middle West Americanism. The Red Book has carried the word "Chicago" in fine type. Mr. White, before he went to New York, said that with the average reader, wherever found, the imprint has but little influence, the question being: Does the magazine offer the literary goods wanted ? Location in Chicago, through the editors' association with the type of cosmopolitan life here manifest, has had an important effect on the character of these magazines, making them typical of the composite interest of America. Dr. Mathews' says it is hardly possible to express the national life from the "America- in-the-making state of mind" in a periodical published in the city of New York. Mr. White cites the rejection by several New York magazine-publishers of a western story by a well-known author, which later, when published in the Red Book, attracted widespread attention, as evidence that the eastern publishers do not know the taste of that part of the national public resident in the West. As exceptions to this generalization, however, Mr. White, several months before his call to the East, listed those western men who have become heads of New York publishing concerns. The western market is specially desirable because the West is growing more rapidly than the East in population, and the fertility of the Mississippi Valley assures such a growth con- tinuously. In that part of producing a magazine which involves the securing of acceptable manuscripts, the New York publisher has, of course, advantages. Many more authors are there, and con- sultations between editors' and many authors can be had easily. These consultations are particularly desirable for a magazine like the World To-Day, for each number of which the editor adopts a plan, and then has many of the articles made to order. How- ever, the mails are open, and to both the Red Book and the THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 97 World To-Day many more desirable manuscripts than could be used have been sent by contributors. At first the Red Book suf- fered from the fact that authors who had sent their productions to some of the Chicago periodical fiction-publishers whose maga- zines failed, leaving them without even postage to return unused manuscripts, were afraid tO' send any of their literary creations to another Chicago^ magazine. Mr. White was' able to reduce this handicap and tO' secure an advantage with authors, tradition- ally in financial straits, by means of his strong financial backing. He evolved a scheme for paying authors on acceptance, instead of on publication of their productions. Manuscripts sent to the Red Book are read in tlie order of reception. On a story which the editor desires to accept he sets a price, and queries the author of it to find out if it is acceptable, notifying him that payment will be made at once. By following this plan the Red Book regularly has on hand several thousands of dollars' worth of manuscripts already paid for. One pitfall of too many literary periodicals' attempted at Chicago', namely a too frequent use of the productions of Chi- cago authors, has' been avoided by the Red Book editor, through applying the rule of judging manuscripts in the order of their arrival, regardless of personal acquaintance with the local con- tributors. The Red Book's stories from authors residing in Eng- land are contributed by a literary agency in New York, which represents these English authors in America. Native material also comes' fromi a similar agency which represents American authors in America. There are no' such agencies, which are clear- ing-houses for authors, in Chicago. In securing original illustrations for fiction, a Chicago' periodi- cal editor is at an absolute and unqualified disadvantage which, according to Mr. White, is not likely to be overcome until there are many Chicago magazines making a constant demand for the work of Illustrators. The capable illustrators are in New York. It is practically impossible to have their work submitted to a Chicago publisher by mail in the same way that manuscripts of authors can be and are sent on from New York. For illustra- tions of a given story, conferences between editor and artist, in order to make changes and corrections in drawings, are almost I 98 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY imperative. For the Red Book an endeavor to develop local artists has been made. More than sixty pen-and-ink and wash- drawing workers have been tried out. They have been drawn from the daily newspaper art departments, the mercantile illustrat- ing shops, the student classes of the Art Institute, and also the Art Academy. A specially comprehensive trial of art students was provided, manuscripts being given to them for competition and the prize illustrations used. After one such trial the art classes were dropped as a source of practical illustrators. Some twenty men, discovered in newspaper and trade illustrating work, have done the illustrating of Red Book manuscripts as piece-work. On the whole, the magazine has been less successfully illustrated than any New York rival periodical of the same literary grade. A few of the magazine's illustrators have done good work; but Mr. White, during his last year at Chicago, was in constant fear that these new illustrators would migrate east. The World To- Day, using original illustrations for its cover only, has not felt the absence of local artists so keenly. But the fact that the lead- ing photographers who take pictures for half-tone illustrations of scenes bearing on current events are established in New York has caused delay in the filling of orders even when sent by wire. A large supply of satisfactory photographs, however, has been obtainable from photographers in Chicago and elsewhere without too great difficulty. For the engraving required to get the most artistic effects in original illustrations, the Red Book has experienced a difficulty that would not have been felt in New York. Touches from hand-tooling of half-tone illustrations are needed to get the best values in black and white. At one engraving house a workman has been specially developed to do this class of work for the Red Book. He has not become enough of an artist to warrant attach- ing his name to the illustrations. For the general half-tone work, the Chicago engraving houses are as proficient as those any^vhere. The half-tone photograph illustrations in the World To-Day are of the best magazine quality. For printing, as for other mechanical parts of producing, some New York publishers have their own plants. A majority do not, THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 99 and no Chicago magazine publisher is so equipped. For the type- setting required in fine art printing, like some of that in Harper's Magazine, there is a large supply of skilled labor in New York. But the popular fiction or pictorial review magazine does not require this, and the development of high-class trade periodicals in Chicago has caused the establishment of well-equipped print- ing-houses, and drawn to the city a large number of skilled lino- type operators. Labor disputes may be more frequent in Chicago than in New York. But one of Chicago's periodical publishers says that the complaints of the proprietors of the printing establishments against the highly organized Typographical Union, and tlieir repeated threats of removal from Chicago are chiefly diplomatic statements incidental to industrial strife, made for the purpose of holding the union printers in check as much as possible. The press-work obtainable in Chicago is of a thoroughly satis- factory grade. In getting the binding of his "book" done, the New York periodical publisher is at a decided advantage over his few Chi- cago competitors. For magazine-binding, a large force of girls working at high speed during only a few days each month is required. In New York there are so many magazines coming from the presses on different days of the month that skilled bind- ery workers can find constant employment by going from shop to shop. In Chicago the list of periodicals put up in standard magazine form is too small for the best development of such a force. When it comes to distributing, the publishers of the two Chi- cago magazines under consideration have found an advantage in reaching the general market, and particularly the western market, from the very fact that so few are published in Chicago as com- pared with the many issued from New York. The news-stand sales of practically all magazines are made through the American News Co., which has a monopoly. The home office of the American News Co. at New York is often glutted with the out- put from the many New York magazine publishing-houses. The office of the Chicago branch, the Western News Co., never is. The manager of this branch, receiving the Chicago magazine output lOO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY for the entire field of the American News Co., and wishing to make tlie largest possible business showing for his branch of the concern, aids the Chicago publishers in every legitimate way. He has been in a position tO' turn the attention of his entire force toward rushing out shipments of the Chicago magazines. In one instance, when the Red Book issue was received a day late, by concentrating attention on it, he caused the copies to reach the retail market on time. Nearness of place of publication to the market does not cause the same problem for the Red Book as for the World To-Day, in its competition with review magazines. There is no element of immediate timeliness in the contents of the Red Book fiction. Its issues are printed a month before their distribution. But the World To-Day, in order that its record of the events of the month may be complete, must hold its columns open until the last possi- ble day before the date of publication. Hence, if the first aim of the publishers were to reach the entire national market, they would be at a disadvantage in competition with publishers whose offices are at New York, nearer to the one-third of the country's territory in which two^thirds of the reading public is to^ be found. But reaching the market from rival centers works both ways. The World To-Day has an advantage over eastern publications' in getting quickly to its most desired constituency in the Middle West. Another fact in the general publishing situation helps determine the date of publication for the World To-Day. It is' that most of the ten- and fifteen-cent magazines appear at the stands ten days before the first day of the month indicated in their date lines. Mr. Ernst believes that it is more desirable to have the World To-Day come out at the same time as the popular magazines than tO' have its review cover later days. Hence the period it embraces is from the fifteenth to the fifteenth ; and while the New York magazines with which it competes come out later — the Reviezv of Reviews, a day or two' before the first of the month of its date line ; the World's Work, between the antecedent twenty-fifth and thirtieth; and Current Literature, on the thirti- eth — the twentieth is the date on which the World To-Day appears. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO lOl As to gratis advertising of periodicals, the newspapers are as quick to publish "literary reading notices" sent out from Chicago publishers' offices as from those in New York. In securing annual subscribers whose orders are filled direct from magazine offices, results depend on the normal advertising through the news-stand displays and on special campaigns, there being nO' advantage in location at any particular publishing center. In soliciting contracts for advertising tO' be published in a magazine, there is a great gain from location in New York, since the largest part of general advertising is placed through the New York offices of advertising agencies. The Red Book and World To-Day publishers, and those of other Chicago periodicals, have endeavored to offset their disadvantage on this score by maintain- ing eastern offices in New York chiefly for the handling of advertising business. Summing up, the disadvantages of location in Chicago for popular literary and quasi-literary general magazine publishing are not as great as they would at first appear from a casual recog- nition of New York's leading place as the literary publishing center of the country, and the advantages for success in pub- lishing with a view to the western part of the national market are numerous and effective. The 10 Story Book, whose early profits led the owners of the Red Book to start that magazine, sprang up, almost by accident, out of a syndicate for supplying fifty newspapers of the country with short stories daily. This syndicate, the Daily Story Publish- ing Co., was organized by Mr. Dwight Allyn, with whom was associated Mr. James S. Evans, another Chicago newspaper-man, now an editorial writer, in December, 1899. They accumulated a large collection of "cracking good stories," which Mr. Allyn, the secretary and manager of the company, says were toO' good for the newspapers, since the editors of newspapers, with a view to family fireside reading, want principally "sissy" stories. So the proprietors of the Daily Story Publishing Co. conceived the idea of getting rid of some of these surplus stories' by putting out ten of them at a time in a small-sized, thin, paper-covered book. The first issue of 10,000 was tried on the Chicago public exclusively. I02 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY The story-books were placed in the hands of sixty boys fitted out in striking red coats and white trousers. The boys hawked them from the street corners in the loop district until stopped by the police. But that was not until sales had proved Chicago to have in its population a large class of people interested in smart stories. The Western News Co. called on the publishers for further issues, a post-office entry was made, and the Daily Story Pubishing Co. began the periodic publishing of the lo Story Book for the general fiction magazine market. The choice of the word "book" for a part of the name indicates an influence of the bibelot publishing movement begim with the Chap Book six years before. In its attention to the unique, weird, and bizarre subjects and the mystery in detective tales the lO Story Book was at first regarded as an imitation of that periodical "devoted exclusively to- original, unusual, fascinating stories" published in Boston — the Black Cat. But through the years it has budded some offshoots from the main branch of studied ori- ginality. "An emotion with every story" is one of the mottoes' of those directing the periodical. While the stories are not indecent, the manager frankly says that he is not squeamish. Although the stories are not positively risque, in many of them sexual passion provides the theme for "human interest." Both accredited and unknown writers are the authors of the manu- scripts used, many of them coming from men who dream and write in the South. Stories by Chicago writers have been used freely, among others those of the late H. H. S. Canfield, an author skilful in the satirical vein. The editor, Mr. Henry L. Blaisdell, a University of Wisconsin graduate, formerly in newspaper work at Rockford, 111., says he judges manuscripts more for action than for literary form. Most of the stories, however, are not badly written. They are illustrated by Ike Morgan and other local newspaper artists, the illustrations being printed with good effects', from zinc etchings, which are one-fourth as expensive as half-tones. The magazine has a constituency of 50.000. Its readers are found exclusively in cities. Country people are not interested in it. There is a big demand from people in hotels, and also from THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 103 commuters. Mr. Allyn is of the opinion that the development of suburban train service has helped his sales immensely. When the State Street merchants withdrew their investment and influence from the 10 Story Book, it lost the advertising they could command. But Mr. P. H. Grimes, the proprietor of a Chi- cago saloon, invested capital in it, becoming president of the Daily Story Publishing Co., and the magazine has gradually secured a fair amount of advertising patronage, although the manager has considered moving to New York for position in the competition for advertising. However, the cost of producing the 10 Story Book in Chicago is, comparatively, so low that there is a profit on sales, and removal is not likely. Its permanence is assured as long as large parts of city populations retain a taste for incidents drawn from spiced imagination. The Sunday Magazine oi the Sunday Record-Herald, a credit- able magazine of popular literature not the least journalistic in tone, was originated chiefly from the desire of the publisher of a metropolitan daily to secure the advertising containing half-tones and other illustrations which do not show up well on newspaper prints, despite the high development of the process for illustrating the general and Sunday supplement sections of the papers. This kind oi advertising cannot be secured for the ordinary pages of a newspaper. Sunday supplements of excellent hard-finish paper, their contents profusely illustrated with excellent half-tones, had been issued with the Chicago Chronicle, the Nei.v York Tribune, and other papers. Newspaper publishers were feeling after plans to convert their magazine supplements, printed on regulation-size newspaper pages, into genuine magazines. In 1903 Mr. Frank B. Noyes, publisher of the Chicago Record-Herald, worked into definite form a plan to bring out such a magazine, to be on the order of the Saturday Evening Post, published at Philadelphia, and Collier's Weekly, of New York, its pages to be of the weekly journal size, 14^ by 10% inches, as contrasted with the larger pages of a newspaper and the smaller, 9^ by 6^ inch pages, of the standard-size monthly magazine such as the World To-Day and the Red Book. It was estimated that the expense of producing such a magazine, to be I04 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY circulated with the newspaper as a bonus, without extra charge, would be heavy. To lighten the burden, Mr. Noyes and Mr. Charles W. Knapp, proprietor of the St. Louis Republic, associ- ated with him in developing the scheme, turned to the prevailing industrial idea of co-operaton and syndicating. If copies of the magazine, alike except for the name on the title-page, could be circulated with one Sunday paper in each of the non-competing centers of Sunday newspaper circulation, their publishers acting in combination and sharing the expense, this could easily be met. An organization called the Associated Sunday Magazines was in- corporated. In November, 1903, the Sunday Magazine of the Sunday Record-Herald, Chicago, and of the Sunday editions of five other papers — the St. Louis Republic, the Pittsburgh Post, the Philadephia Press, the New York Tribune, and the Boston Post — began to appear reguarly. Since then, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Herald, and the Minneapolis Journal have been added to the list. The combined circulation is over 1,000,000 copies a Sunday. Further, the publishers point out that, unlike the ordi- nary parts of a Sunday newspaper, the copies of the magazine are kept on reading-tables during the week. The magazine advertis- ing sought has been secured at profitable rates. The range of taste appealed to in the Sunday Magazine is wide. It is that of the average newspaper reader. First there is the city circulation. The geographical extent of the magazine's constituency is dependent on the schedules of the Saturday night and Sunday morning trains carrying newspaper mail to the towns along railroads, nO' copies to^ speak of going to the rural districts where papers are received in wrappers. From Chicago it goes mainly to Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, southern Wisconsin, south- western Michigan, and northern Indiana. To supply the desires of this clientele, stories and articles by accepted authors, written in their less serious manner, are published in the magazine, which contains no news features. Many of the short stories and poems are of the sentimental type. Recently a serial, "Sir Nigel," a historical romance of knightly adventure by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, attracted attention to the periodical. The titles of the stories and articles are printed in large light-faced type, like that used in the Saturday Evening Post, and extend across the three THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 105 columns of each page. The magazine is well illustrated with original work by artists in New York. The editorial office is in that city, and the editor is Mr. William A. Taylor, formerly in Chicago, the Sunday editor of the Record-Herald. Wayside Tales is a ten-cent monthly which proclaims itself to be "the western short- story magazine." On account of a some- what belated emphasis on the western interests, and more on account of insufficient business backing in the past, this maga- zine, though now somewhat rejuvenated, has had a struggling existence. Wayside Tales is one of the periodicals drawn to Chi- cago by this center's attractive power as a metropolis. It was started at Detroit, Mich., in 1899, for its first year was largely local in character, and bore the name Detroit Monthly. Its original publishers continued it until May, 1903. Three months later the Sampson-Hodges Co., an organization for the syndicat- ing of Sunday "feature" articles for newspapers, of which Mr. Lewis D. Sampson, a former tutor at the Northern Indiana Normal School and newspaper-man, was the president and manager, revived the magazine. They brought out one number at Detroit, and then moved the office of publication to Chicago. For a year and two months they published the magazine here. It contained a heterogeneous display of tales — some good, some inferior — chiefly by western writers. The owners were so inadequately supplied with capital that they could not always pay for even second-rate manuscripts, could not afford illustrations or attractive covers, and had difficulty in paying the bills for printing, not of the best quality. They found the Western News Co. rule of holding back the cash returns on three full issues — a rule made by the distributing monopoly because of losses from ephemeral magazine ventures — to be specially hard. Further, uncertainty as tO' permanent name caused embarrassment. Mr. Sampson planned to change the name to Wayside Magasinc and to insert a sprinkling of serious articles'. This inconstancy as to title was in contrast with the permanent attractive power of the name of the Red Book, selected after twenty others had been con- sidered, but chosen to stand as final. For all these reasons, in January, 1906, the Wayside Tales company went into involuntary bankruptcy. The tying-up of manuscripts in the hands of a io6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY receiver caused a scathing editorial of the magazine's editor, Miss Gertrude M. Murdock, a Chicago review-writer, to appear in a contributors' organ called The Editor. Mrs. Warren Springer, a club woman of means and friend of Miss Murdock, then invested several thousand dollars in a new company which bought the magazine at a receiver's sale. This was the M.-S. Co., the present publishers. Mr. Murray S. Schloss, who' had been a student of various philosophies at Mid- dle West universities, backed by his father, a wealthy retired merchant, was the heaviest investor. In three months he became sole owner and also manager and editor. Mr. Schloss had been ambitious to participate in social reform through the medium of a magazine, and for a month or so had been managing editor of Tomorrow, "a magazine of the changing order," which had been started with Oscar Lovell Triggs as editor-in-chief. Mr. Schloss has made signed editorials, by the editor, such as one in the May, 1906, number, in which he declared John Alexander Dowie a modern prophet and Zion City an expression of the times through garbing industry in religion, a leading feature. But as' the result of high prices paid for story-writers' manuscripts, for plentiful illustrations, and for printing the pages with all the lines in large, clear, black letters extending their full width, the magazine has become popular. Large sales are reported. Within the last few months a circulation manager came on from New York to push the sales. In June, 1906, the editor suffered nervous prostration, and it was announced that the July number would be published at New York, whither other interests called the circulation manager for attention during a part of his time. It is possible, therefore, that the magazine no longer will be proclaimed a west- em publication. The newest expression of unqualified though enlarged west- ernism in the form of a magazine is the Greater West, a monthly periodical of which Vol. I, No. i, appeared in October, 1905. The first object sought in this' magazine is to portray, by articles expressing glowing sentiment, and set of¥ with illustrations', par- ticularly of mountain scenery, the physical nature and life of the vast region between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 107 coast. The second object is to stimulate the mutual interests between the lovers of the fine arts in this region and artists where- ever they may be. The editor and publisher is Mrs. Marian A. White, and the office of publication at her residence, in Chicago, "the Gateway of the Greater West." Mrs. White is a lecturer who has delivered a popular discourse entitled "The Greater West." She had been for five years editor of the Fine Arts Jour- nal, another Chicago magazine in which, by somewhat flowery writing, she has earnestly worked "to promote and foster," as she says, "a love for art American in type and the work of the Ameri- can artist in particular." From that magazine she resigned on the ground that it had degenerated into a "write-up periodical." Several dilettante magazines have been started in Chicago during the present decade. One rather inclined to this order is Events, devoted to scattered fiction, the stage, society, and wo- man's clubs. This was begun in 1901, with Mrs. Frances Arm- strong Woods as editor. Miss Murdock, formerly of Wayside Tales, recently took part in editing it. With an office of publication in the Fine Arts Building, where there is an upper floor teeming with a type of life whose mixture of serious fine-arts effort and dilettantism has been portrayed with whimsical satire by Henry B. Fuller in "Under the Skylights," the Sketch Book was created in 1902. This is a well-illustrated monthly devoted to art. Through a series of changing editor- ships it has improved in quality and secured some influence. It is still published at the Fine Arts Building. Quite a number of the periodicals bordering on the dilettante grade have been typically ephemeral. Rubric, the beautiful monthly magazine, containing poems, short stories, and the work of young artists, into which the Blue Sky was merged, was begun in October, 1901, and faded away December, 1902. It was pub- lished at the Studio Building, another of the artists' headquarters. Among the dusty fragments, the monuments to this sort of effort tO' be found in the Chicago Public Library, is a file of a few numbers of the Muse. This magazine, comprehensively avowing devotion to "Literature, Music, Art and the Drama," contained soulful versicles, stories, and articles, and was artis- lo8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY tically illustrated. Its mechanical execution was of such an order that the price was put at 20 cents a copy and $2 a year. Mr. Charles E. Nixon was the editor. While the main office of the Muse Publishing Co. was in the Fine Arts Building, Chicago, the periodical advertised New York, Boston, and Paris offices. The Muse, as such, appears to have been more than a dream for three months. The last number filed was that of April, 1903. On the cover of this number a female figure, in pictorial bas- relief, hovered over the following statement : ''The Muse, a Con- solidation of The Philharmonic , Werner's Magazine of Expres- sion and Literature, Music and Four O'Clock." Philharmonic was begun in January, 1901. In 1903 the name Muse was chosen. Werner's Magazine was absorbed in February, 1903, and Four O'Clock in March. But despite its varied strands of publishing poesy, the Muse ceased. ''The Princess, robed in modest violet (ink), greets you, gentle reader, in the charming month of April that poetic natures love, and on the threshold of a century destined to be the most wonderful in the world's progress." So an introduction to No. I, of a magazine appearing in 1901, and now on file in the Chi- cago Historical Society's museum, began. It continued in part: Representative of the highest ideals as embraced in "Fine Arts," synon- ymous with Literature, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, Music, Drama and Handicraft, The Princess will endeavor to please the cosmopolitan taste of a public broad and progressive, by means of short stories, special articles, timely and novel, signed by talented writers, with illustrations by capable artists and snap shots of human interest. This gently aesthetic promise was carried out, but the delicately tinted magazine withered and died in December, 1902. Inci- dentally the periodical was used to announce that the "time was at hand for bookings" with the Princess Lecture, Lyric, and Dra- matic Bureau, of which Giselle D'Unger, the publisher, was proprietor. Ephemeral bibelots, for which there was a craze in the early nineties, have appeared sporadically since then. The phenomenon of the budding of short-lived periodicals of this type, and other varieties, is so constant and general that since January, 1901, the Bulletin of Bibliography, Boston, has maintained a department THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 109 headed "Births and Deaths." In this record there have appeared the names of several pubhcations attempted at Chicago in the present decade. The little magazine glinting most of the literati's cleverness launched at Chicago in the last few years was the Bachelor Book. Some "bachelor girls" — Page Waller Sampson and Marion Thor- ton Egbert — created it. In the story of the Bachelor Book, pub- lished in the Blue Sky Magazine, January, 1902, Thomas Wood Stevens, of the Blue Sky Press, at which it was' printed, says of it : "The Bachelor in his real life was dainty, unthrift, ready of purse, and blade, a beau." Its contents were essentally the "non- essential," "meteoric tinsel." William Ellis', philosophically inclined, and bent on converting the Bachelor Book into a young men's home journal, acquired it after eight appearances, took it to Wausau, Wis., and brought out a ninth number, which was "a ponderous corpse in a green cloak." At Evanston, the so-called classic suburb, three clever bibelots were published briefly by Mr. William S. Lord. One was Noon, appearing monthly from October, 1900, to October, 1902. and containing in its October, 1901, number a collection of "the best nonsense verse," chosen by Josephine Dodge Daskam. Another was the Book-Booster, "a periodical of puff," of which there was one number, December, 1901. The third was the Bilionstine, "a periodical of knock," two numbers, May, 1901, and October. 1901. Its contents were written by B. L. Taylor, now connected with Puck, and reproduced from the Chicago Daily Tribune. They were exclusively satire directed at Elbert Hubbard's Philistine. Other bibelots, since dead, were : the Goose Quill, "an Anglo- American magazine," February, 1900, to February, 1903: the Jester, January, 1901 ; Two Penny Classics, April, 1901 ; the Yel- lozv Dog, "a monthly short-story magazine," April, 1901 ; Items, "the twentieth-century pocket journal," a weekly, March, 17, 1902; and the Gauntlet, "a magazine for the honest," March, 1903. Two little periodicals, started recently, have not yet passed away. One, the Pageant, was begun in June, 1905, and is pub- lished by A. L. Langworthy, the craftsman now at the head of 110 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY the Blue Sky Press. It contains reprints of archaic literature. The other is the O. P. Magazine — a minute monstrosity, which appeared first July i, 1905. The title is explained as follows: "The Orinthorhynchus Paradoxus is the most different of ani- mals. This magazine is the most different of magazines. Hence its name." In the list of extant periodicals begun since 1900 is one of the type in which home study is popularized by means of the literary flavor and illustrations. This is the People's Magazine and Home University, published at Oak Park, a suburb of Chcago. The publishers designate themselves as "The Home University Asso- ciation." Inexpensive reprints of classic fiction and poetry, and studies in literature, are the leading features of this journal, which was started in 1901. Its circulation is chiefly in country towns. A boy's story paper, the Star Monthly, started in 1894 and now very prosperous, has' a circulation of 1 50,000. It is filled for the most part with stories of adventure, and in literary quality grades between the Youth's Companion of Boston and the "nickle library thrillers." It appears in small journal form, and bound, the cover design usually suggesting active boy life. It is pub- lished by the Hunter Publishing Co., at Oak Park, the home of Colonel Hunter, secretary of the W. D. Boyce Co., Chicago, pub- lishers of money-making "family-story" periodicals. Its large advertising patronage is mainly of the mail-order variety. Among the prosperous current publications issued from Chi- cago are many "family-story" journals, begun in the nineties and 1900's, as well as the Chicago Ledger, established in the seventies, and others established in past decades and already mentioned. They have enormous circulations. Some of the typical periodicals of this class as the Household Guest, begun in 1891, circulation at present, 250,000; Homefolks, 1896, 300,000; Facts and Fiction, 1896, 78,000; the Homemaker, 1903, with which is consolidated Information, 1904, 150,000; and Home Life, begun at Cairo and Pontiac, Mich., 1892, moved to Chicago, 1900, 300.000. All told, at least nineteen of the family-story genus were begun in the nineties, and six in the present decade. Only a few have failed, THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO m though many have been merged with others, some pubHshed elsewhere. Among such was Conkey's Home Journal, which was run for a year in 1897, as the American Home Journal, then taken over by the large printing firm of W. B. Conkey & Co., and ostensibly published for the so-called American Musical Associa- tion. A collection of early numbers at the Chicago Historical Society library shows it was at first a rather high-grade mail- order paper in contents, but it became one of the ordinary kind, secured a circulation of 200,000, and in 1905 was merged in the Woman's Magazine, of St. Louis, which at ten cents a year has the biggest mail-order circulation in the country — 1,592,000. The price of most of the Chicago "family story" monthlies is fifty cents a year, and at that their lists are large enough. Chicago readers, including the poorer people, never see them. They circulate in the country. Because of pressure from the Post-Office Department, their literary quality has recently been raised a notch. For instance, Mr. Howard I. Shaw, editor of Home Life, has published some of "The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," by Sir A. Conan Doyle, in his paper. But it is the advertising columns that are read most faithfully by the country people. In them every kind of goods, from buggies to hairpins, is described, in advertisements for mail-order concerns large and small. These are goods to be purchased on orders by mail. Because of Chicago's advantages as a distributing center, the city has become a center for mail-order houses. In the last twelve years, particularly, several of these houses have built up an enormous business along the lines laid out by Montgomery Ward & Co. For example. Sears, Roebuck & Co. have gone to the front with a plant covering two square blocks. These houses do but little business in the South, because the colored people and "crackers" are negligent about paying. The bulk of mail-order sales are in the Middle West. Tlie bulk of mail-order paper cir- culation is in the same territory. Mr. Shaw says that for country people who cannot get to the city for shopping, the advertising columns of mail-order papers, and the catalogues of mail-order firms, are almost literally department stores in which wares are spread out before them. With Chicago's development as a mail- 112 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY order house center, the city has also achieved the doubtful honor of becoming a leading "family-story" paper center. Such papers are almost a caricature of the commercialization of the literary interest. VII. SUMMARY OF GENERAL CONCLUSIONS, INCLUDING STA- TISTICS OF THE PERIODICALS "If so soon I was done for I wonder what I was begun for." —Old Rhyme. The deductions from the facts collected for these papers' have been stated and discussed in generalizations interspersed through the series of stories of the efforts to establish the various literary periodicals of Chicago. Some answers to the questions put at the outset have been presented. A summary of the conclusions which stand out most conspicuously is offered in the following paragraphs. FROM THE STATISTICS I. There has been a constant manifestation of the general aesthetic interest, on its creative side, in the up-springing of liter- ary magazines and periodicals at Chicago in every stage of tlie city's' history. All told, 306 periodicals with some sort of literary interest dominant in their pages have been attempted. The following table shows the constancy of the phenomenon : . Decadal Period of Origin Forties and fifties (prairie days to war). Sixties to fire (to 1871 inclusive) Seventies (after the fire) Eighties Nineties 1900 to 1906 Total Per cent, of Total 2. In character, these periodicals, broadly classed as literary, are of fifteen types, ranging from the genuinely literary, with chief interest in form according to the standard derived from classic literature, down to the "family-story" paper, with rather crude expression of the mere interest in story. The "western" THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO "3 interest, or some modification of it, is common to all, this being the general variation in the universal literary interest here. The following statistical table, for which classifications are necessarily more or less arbitrary, indicates the variety : Type Decade of Origin '■SfS'c a « •S Bo Ov 2 w ;z; H 13 14 73 I 14 5 10 33 3 8 I 4 2 7 7 I 24 3 I 13 16 5 62 16 17 60 8 5 23 6 5 21 6 8 15 3 2 IS 4 20 20 70 70 48 306 a iS Literary Literary-miscellany . Literary-information. Literary-news Literary-fashions . . . Literary-society Juvenile literature . . . Juvenile-family story Family story Illustrated Fine arts Humor Quaint literature .... Literary criticism . . . Literature of sport . . Duplicates Net total 12 9 3 5 27 10 5 10 6 3 6 46 14 7 47 14 3 I 2 1-7 12 4 6 I 5 3 II 68 0.34 •OS .11 ■03 .01 .02 .08 .04 .20 .20* .08 .07 •05 •OS .01 •23 1. 00 * Five per cent, illustrations sole aesthetic characteristic. In the character given by form of make-up and binding variety is also shown : Form Magazine . . . Journal Newspaper . . Bibelot Pamphlet . . . Unknown . . . Duplicates . . Net total •a E.2 2.9 ;gb •B w. Ul in i'^ as n 8l 13 ,0 b w t« W 2 •- H 7 II II 12 20 19 80 6 24 23 45 47 II 156 13 II II 2 10 I 3 3 I 17 49 20 3 2 2 I 3 4 27 46 47 68 70 48 306 Oh 0.26 •SI .16 ■05 .01 .01 .01 1 .00 Sixty-eight per cent, of the total were monthly magazines and periodicals. The periodicity of the total list is shown in the following tabulation : 114 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Periodicity -a -■ .a 2 O.S 2b< 8:S c ii ■a .a a 2 2< n) tS s s 1-1 a ^ cj s ca rt C3 1) _ 1 T >H > to > 00 >^ > > ■* > > ^ Forties and fifties... . 20 2 I I I I I 27 I Sixties to fire (incl. 1871) 3 2 3 4 _ y _ « 46 47 2 4 Seventies after fire. . . 8 10 8 I I I I 2 I 8 Eighties 19 7 10 9 3 6 9 5 5 3 4 9 4 f 3 _ - J . 4 68 70 48 6 9 IS 17 4 3 3 1900 to date 27 6 2 Total 103 ■34 45 .15 34 .10 26 16 25 .08 5 .02 6 5 .02 8 3 .01 4 .01 4 .01 4 .01 IS •05 306 36 Per cent .08 ■05 .02 •03 .01 *Those over 15 years: 16 years, i; 17, i; 18, i- 19, 2; 20, 2; 23, 2; 26. i; 31, 2; 33, i; 36, i; 64, i. THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO II 5 FROM THE HISTORY I. Origins. — The detailed stories of the typical attempts to found literary periodicals in Chicago show the ever constant importance of the individual element, the distinctly personal factor. The most tangible element in the origin of the majority is the ambition of authors, amateur literati, and young news- paper men to establish personal organs for their genius. Many are merely significant of the "individual itch to write in an 'age of print.' " But social factors have been constantly manifest, as repeatedly indicated in the comments offered throughout the papers here submitted. The periodicals have been attempted in response to more or less intangible stimulus of environment. The physical environment called, for example, in the pioneer days, for prairie periodicals, and in World's Fair days for pictorial period- icals. The spritual environment, more complex and difficult to see, has had a greater influence on the origin of magazines. The changing, growing character of the local social environment has been reflected in the typical periodical attempts of each decade. Through them all there has been the clearly voiced social demand : "Why can we not have a truly western literary magazine in Chi- cago?" With changes of emphasis in the western interest, Chi- cago, successively as pioneer western town, as phoenix city, as market metropolis, as world's historic exposition city, and as a center of inner cosmopolitanism, has been reflected in the repeated efforts to start new magazines with new characteristics. The city's centripetal power as a metropolis has drawn literary men and periodicals. The growth and prospective increase in both population and culture in the upper Mississippi Valley, the terri- tory which is the immediate sphere of Chicago's metropolitan influence, have stimulated corresponding increase in efforts to found magazines in Chicago. The gradual tightening of the strings of the national and world-wide social environments of Chicago has constantly quickened the stimuli from older centers, leading to imitation and adaptation in the undertaking of Chicago periodicals. 2. Struggles for permanence. — Attention to the steps taken in the attempts to make these periodicals enduring has brought Il6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY out one social fact more than any other — namely, the interrelation of interests. In sociological analysis the various interests have been marked off sharply, notably by Dr. Albion W. Small, as the sixfold interests — those of health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness. But in the satisfaction of any one set of these six fundamental desires on the part of human beings in asso- ciation, the interdependence of interests is essential. The history of Chicago periodicals, at least, shows that the literary phase of the aesthetic interest will not work out, to the satisfaction point, in a vacuum. The expression of the creative literary interest through periodicals is necessarily social. The process is not merely that of writers getting their literary forms printed for their own gratification, but it is getting them printed for the satis- faction of tlie desires of readers, the social group appealed to by the publisher. Hence the standing opinion, or taste, of a large body of people is a controlling factor. The author or literary publisher, like the leader of political opinion, can neither lag behind nor yet run too far ahead of his' public. Still more to the point, successful and continuous display of the art of letters through periodicals has to depend on the business, or wealth- interest activities — a rather materialistic fact which literary artists attempting periodicals in Chicago have found repulsive, but a fact none the less. Satisfaction of the taste for literary goods has been shown to be dependent on methods of satisfying taste for material goods much advertised. The extreme extension of the dependence of interests has been shown in at least fifteen instances, where the literary publishing interest has originated in, or been built up on, an agency for the satisfaction of some other phase of the literary interest, or some interest altogether foreign to the aesthetic interest. For a general term to characterize such activities, a word has been here adapted and used repeatedly. It is' the term "engraftment." It connotes nothing necessarily invidi- ous like the epithet "graft," current in political writing. It is possible that in descriptions of the general interrelations of in- terests in the social process, outside the comparatively narrow field of literary periodical-publishing, a general and constant phe- nomenon would be accurately characterized by the term "engraft- ment." THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO II7 3. Measures of success attained. — One result of the long series of periodicals in Chicago has been the recording, in decade after decade, of the literature of locality. This was notably true of the periodicals in the early decades, when a larger percentage of the total was of the purely literary type. The success of the Lakeside Monthly, in literary quality, was the result of conspicu- ous ability by its editor and publisher, and to a degree other such personal achievements have been realized. Also- authors and illus- trators have been discovered through many of the short-lived if magazines of Chicago. But for an effort at periodical producing 1| to be a genuine success, a long duration is essential, because of the t! enduring desire for satisfaction of the literary interest on the J part of readers. Those Chicago periodicals which have enjoyed a degree of pennanence have been conducted by publishers who paid attention primarily to the business of publishing according to the principles of trade. The lowest order of periodical that is literary, broadly speaking — the "family-story" or "mail-order" paper — has had the most enduring success of all attempted in Chicago. The current popular magazines have become established as commercial enterprises. The permanence of the Red Book seems assured because, with an effective appeal to the popular interest in the short story, it is engrafted on a wealthy firm's interests in other lines. The continuance of the World To-Day is predicted because its presentation of an sestheticized knowledge- interest, looked at from the point of view of cosmopolitan western- ism, is popular, and because the magazine is published on a busi- ness basis. In attention to business, account is taken of competi- tion with the magazines published elsewhere. The limitations of the western field are realized, and it is recognized that, since two- thirds of the reading done in the country is by people east of Ohio, magazines published at New York, the developed publishing center of the country, will easily lead there, and, since New York is the metropolis of the nation, will indefinitely have a wide fol- lowing in all sections of the national market. 1 1 4. The many failures. — The most general cause for the short- // ness of life for the great majority of the periodicals attempted in ■ ' Chicago has been disregard of their commercialization. In detail, Il8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY the reason why so many have been ephemerals is that they were U merely outbursts showing personal aspirations of ambitious ,. writers — this being conspicuously so with the bibelots. Further, the degree of potency in the sentimental demand of western people for a western magazine — an often expressed demand whose validity is diminishing with the closer contacts of the nation — has been constantly overestimated. Incidentally, business' mal- practice, in converting m.agazines that started out with dignity and promise into "write-up" sheets, has caused some failures. These are some of the reasons why Chicago is sometimes' called "the graveyard of magazines." In fine, the history of efforts to establish various kinds of magazines, or "storehouses" of literature, and literary periodicals in Chicago up to 1906 indicates that, for the successful socializa- tion of the literary phase of the aesthetic interest through periodi- cals, the material interest must first be assured. This implies that, if taste in reading is to be elevated, the points of attack are in the educational channels, through which a demand for period- icals of genuine literary merit can be made so widespread and strong as to make possible their continuous' publishing as a profitable or at least self-supporting business. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. 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