A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING BUSINESS IN THE UNITED
STATES
“The history of a nation,” one dictionary says, “is a systematic record
of past events; especially the record of events in which man has taken
part.”
The history of the educational publishing business in America
is likewise a systematic record of past events in which man has
taken part. The events of this history include the beginning, the
development, and the wonderful improvement in books and book-making
since 1691, and the men and women who have taken part in these events
are authors and publishers.
Starr King, the eloquent preacher and orator whose powerful arguments
in 1860 and ’61 aided mightily in saving California for the Union, was
once riding on a very slow train from Boston to New York with a friend,
who asked Mr. King if he were going to fill a New York pulpit on the
following day, which was Sunday.
“No,” replied the great preacher, “I am not going to fill, but I am
going to rattle ’round in Henry Ward Beecher’s.”
A comprehensive history of the American educational publishing business
has never been prepared, although a number of writers have produced
interesting and instructive books, booklets, periodical, magazine,
and newspaper articles covering in some detail such portions of this
history as engaged their attention. For instance, Dr. Meriwether
and Professor Johnson have rather thoroughly and with reasonably
satisfactory completeness given us an account of the schoolbooks of
colonial times and of the clumsy and slow process of manufacturing
and distributing them. They have described in considerable detail the
gruesome text matter of these early books, and their ugly and almost
ludicrous illustrations.
Ford has given us a most interesting and historically valuable account
of the oldest American schoolbook, _The New England Primer_, prepared
and printed by Benjamin Harris of Boston, the second edition appearing
in 1691. This was printed 44 years _after_ Massachusetts had passed a
law requiring each town of fifty householders to “appoint one within
their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write
and read.” Others have written of the first Arithmetic, prepared by
Nicholas Pike of Newburyport, Mass., and printed in 1788; of the
first American Geography, written by the Reverend Jedidiah Morse
of Charlestown, Mass., and published at New Haven in 1784; of the
first pedagogical and educational book, written by Christopher Dock,
America’s pioneer writer on education, a second edition of which was
published by Christopher Sower of Philadelphia in 1770. Much has been
written concerning the world-famous Blue Back Speller, prepared by
Dr. Noah Webster and printed at Hartford in 1793; of Peter Parley’s
Geographies, the first of which was published in 1829. Dr. Henry H.
Vail, formerly connected with the American Book Company, has written a
most interesting history of the McGuffey Readers, of which the first
two books of the four-book series were copyrighted in 1836 and the
second two in 1837.
Then there have been published such books as _The House of Harper_,
which gives the history of a business concern now more than a hundred
years old; a most charmingly written biography of Henry O. Houghton,
the founder of the house now known as the Houghton Mifflin Company;
a memorial volume giving in some detail the story of the life and
activities of Henry Ivison, of the old firm of Ivison, Blakeman,
Taylor & Company; a book giving a rather complete account of several
century-old business houses, including that of Christopher Sower &
Company of Philadelphia; a volume entitled _Fifty Years Among Authors,
Books and Publishers_, by J. C. Derby; _Memories of a Publisher_, by
Major George Haven Putnam; a book on the _Old Schools and School-books
of New England_, by George E. Littlefield, and a brochure published by
G. & C. Merriam Company that gives us some interesting glimpses into
the history of their business and of the men who have published and
distributed to the world the famous Webster dictionaries.
There are also extant a great many valuable periodical, magazine and
newspaper articles which set forth in some detail accounts of the
founders of other nineteenth century publishing houses, which accounts,
together with what has appeared in book form, make a rather inchoate
but highly valuable mass of data that could and should be compiled and
published as soon as a scholarly man of historical habit can be found
to edit and prepare it for the press.
Having a knowledge of the facts just stated, you will agree with me
when I say that a writer of a paper to be read in thirty or sixty
minutes on a subject so broad in its scope and so important as the one
assigned me, can’t do more than “rattle ’round” in its field, to quote
Starr King’s figure. If he should try to do more, he would be tempting
the Fates.
Realizing, as you must, how unsatisfactory the isolated and unrelated
fragments of our history are, do you not feel, as do I, that this
Association should take early steps to find a thoroughly competent man
to prepare for the fraternity of educational publishers a complete
history of their business in America from the day when _The New England
Primer_ was printed in Boston to the present time?
The attention of people is frequently called to the great march of
progress since colonial days in all that helps to make the world a
better place in which to live. It is truthfully said that both medicine
and surgery have been perfected to such a high degree that the length
of human life greatly has been increased; that sanitary science is
so well understood, and its principles so generally practiced, that
disease germs born in filth no longer exist in such abundance as in the
days when, because of the ignorance or indifference of the majority of
the population, food, air, and water carried these breeders of disease
to their unhappy victims. We are reminded of the electric light, the
telegraph, the wireless, the ocean cable, and the telephone; of the
leviathan of the ocean--the great and palatial steamship that crosses
the Atlantic in five days; of the aeroplane that has demonstrated
its ability to fly across seas, oceans, and wide expanses of land,
carrying passengers and mail at a speed almost inconceivable; of the
transcontinental lines of railroad that transport people in comfort
from ocean to ocean in six or seven days; of the splendid specimens of
art housed in our great museums; of the beautiful homes, the really
elegant school and college buildings, the great business structures
planned by architects as skilled as any the world has produced since
the days of the Greeks and the Moors; of the sewing machine, the
reaper, the steam plow, the powerful motor truck, and the automobile;
of the mighty steel bridges that span our wide rivers; and, in view of
all this, we are told by the historian and the philosopher that the
last century has been the Golden Age of the world, that all this has
brought man a little closer to God, and God a little closer to man.
The twentieth century school or college textbook, and the means
employed in making it, evidence a progress in the art of book-making
and the character of the book made equally wonderful; for the modern
educational publication differs in content and format from the textbook
of the early days even more than the modern schoolhouse from the log
cabin used a century or two ago to shelter the unfortunate youngsters
who shivered and suffered therein while they were receiving such poor
instruction as ignorant masters and dames could give them.
But there are a great number of people in this country, some of
whom find their way into State, County, City, and Township Boards
of Education, who cannot be made to believe that a textbook of this
day and generation is very much, if any, better than the textbook
of a century or even a half century ago. To their minds one book is
practically as good as another, no matter whether modern or old. This,
of course, is like saying that the ugly chromos that adorned (?) the
walls of the parlors of country and many city homes fifty years ago
were as useful and beautiful as works of art as the artistic, oils,
etchings, and water-colors that one may now see commonly in the city
and country homes of cultured people.
The New York _Sun_ said editorially, May 16, 1915, “Advance in the
United States in its schools and improvement in the textbooks have been
as great as in any other phase of American life.” _The New England
Journal_ of June 24, 1909, said substantially the same thing in
slightly different language, but in addition this: “The modern sewer
system is no greater improvement over that of 1840 than the examples
and problems contained in modern arithmetics over those printed as of
that date.”
In what respects does the modern schoolbook differ markedly
from its forebears of the eighteenth and the first half of the
nineteenth centuries? A careful examination and inspection of the
new in comparison with the old convinces one that the new differs
radically from the old in (1) content, including both text matter and
illustrations; (2) typography and printing; (3) binding; (4) maps;
(5) size; and altogether in its much greater attractiveness as an
educational instrument.
Allow me to take a snapshot or two at some of the peculiar text matter
printed in the American schoolbooks of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, in order that I may more clearly emphasize the contrast
between the new and the old. I pass over the text of _The New England
Primer_ with its
In Adam’s fall
We sinned all.
Zaccheus he
Did climb a tree,
Our Lord to see.
and
A dog will bite
A thief at night,
reminding you only that the bulk of the book was composed of extracts
from the Bible, of hymns, and of moral teachings; that the backbone
of this book--misnamed a primer, for it was not a primer at all as
we now understand the term--was the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter
Catechism, which Cotton Mather called “a little watering-pot to shed
good lessons”; and lastly, that this primer was the only reader that
children had until they were able to read the Bible. As dreadful as
many of the doctrines taught in the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter
Catechism were, Cotton Mather urged writing masters to set sentences
from it to be copied by their pupils.
Comparing itself with this earliest American schoolbook, the modern
primer might, in the language of Chaucer, say without being guilty of
immodesty:
“O little booke, thou art so onconning,
How darst thou put thyself in prees for drede?”
George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, published in 1674 a
Primer in England. This was republished in Philadelphia in 1701, in
Boston in 1743, and in Newport in 1769. The book was not much used
except by Friends.
The text matter of Jonathan Fisher’s _A Youth’s Primer_, printed
in 1817, followed closely the text of _The New England Primer_. It
contained a series of short stories in alphabetical order, each
followed by a religious, moral, or historical observation. The poor
youngsters who were forced to read, day after day, from the pages of
these early books, whose text matter was certainly lugubrious and
distressing, were constantly reminded of death, the grave, a wrathful
God, and a burning hell prepared for the wicked.
The text matter of the early Arithmetics, while not as gruesome as that
of the Readers, was in many respects so peculiar as to be quite beyond
the understanding of the twentieth century teacher. Allow me to call
your attention to two or three of the puzzling things contained in “Old
Pike,” as his Arithmetic was commonly known.
When tare and tret and doff are allowed:
Deduct the tare and tret, and divide the suttle by 168, and the
quotient will be the cloff, which subtract from the suttle, and
the remainder will be the neat.
These definitions will help you to understand the old terms:
_Tare_ is an allowance, made to the buyer, for the weight of the
box, barrel, or bag which contains, the goods bought.
_Tret_ is an allowance of 4 lbs. in every 104 lbs. for waste,
dust, etc.
_Cloff_ is an allowance of 2 lbs. upon every 3 cwt.
_Suttle_ is, when part of the allowance is deducted.
_Neat_ weight is what remains after all allowances are made.
The following rule is another of Pike’s puzzles. This tells how to find
the Gregorian Epact:
Subtract 11 from the Julian Epact. If the subtraction cannot
be made, add 30 to the Julian Epact, then subtract, and the
remainder will be the Gregorian Epact. If nothing remains, the
Epact is 29.
You doubtless remember that an epact is the excess of the solar year
over the twelve lunar months, or about eleven days.
In Walsh’s _Mercantile Arithmetic_, published in 1807, there is an
example that certainly would not have pleased Neal Dow. This is the
problem:
If 8 boarders drink a barrel of cider in 12 days, how long would
it last if 4 more came among them?
I quote another problem that must surely have sent the distracted
teacher to her dictionary for first aid to the tormented:
How much will 189 bazar maunds (a maund = 82.14 lbs.) 31 seer (a
seer = 2.06 lbs.) 8 chattacks (a chattack = 1/16 of a seer, or 2
oz.) of sugar come to, at 6 rupees per maund?
One arithmetic maker, Jacob Willetts, of Poughkeepsie, set many of his
problems in rhyme; for instance,
When first the marriage knot was ty’d
Between my wife and me,
My age was to that of my bride,
As three times three to three.
But now when ten, and half ten years
We man and wife have been,
Her age to mine exactly bears,
As eight is to sixteen;
Now tell, I pray, from what I’ve said,
What were our ages when we wed?
_Ans._--Thy age, when marry’d, must have been
Just forty-five; thy wife’s fifteen.
Dillworth’s _Schoolmaster’s Assistant_, first published in London in
1774 and reprinted in Philadelphia in 1769, and considerably used in
the colonies, contains two examples which the author called “Pleasant
and Diverting Questions.” The first is as follows:
A farmer with a fox, a goose and a bag of corn has to cross a
river in a boat so small that he can take only two of these three
burdens with him at a time. How can he so handle matters that
nothing will be destroyed, because he cannot leave the fox and
the goose together, nor can he leave the goose and the corn.
The next was an example, the solution of which might possibly be of
practical help to distressed husbands:
Three jealous husbands, each with a wife, meet on a river bank.
How are they to cross so that none of the wives is left in the
company of one or two men unless her husband is also present?
As poor, from our point of view, as most of these old Arithmetics were,
George Washington cordially recommended Pike’s as “of great assistance
to children desiring to learn the art of figuring.” The pages in many
of these early books were printed like those in the Adams, a copy
of which I am able to show you, issued in 1814 at Keene, N. H. The
text matter, as you see, occupies but a small part of the page, the
rest being left to be filled with the solutions of problems that the
children had first worked out on smooth shingles, scraps of paper,
or slates, and then copied neatly on the pages where the solutions
belonged. All these printed books were, of course, a great improvement
over the Master’s notebook of an earlier time, from which rules and
problems were copied by the children, they not possessing a printed
text.
Note.--(1) In the library of Mr. George Plimpton are more than 300
different Arithmetics printed before 1601, the largest collection ever
brought together.
Note.--(2) These old arithmeticians are responsible for what we know as
the one-sixth discount, for they advertised their books at, say, $10.00
the dozen, the single copy $1.00.
Note.--(3) They were the pioneers in collecting and printing before the
prefaces of their books, as Adams did before his preface, complimentary
testimonials of their books--a practice that the modern publisher would
hardly dare to follow.
If the text matter of the early Readers was in many cases gruesome and
distressing in its effect upon the youthful mind, and the explanations,
rules, and problems in early Arithmetics were at times ludicrous and
extremely puzzling, it is also the fact that much of the text printed
in the first American Geographies was ridiculous because the writers
frequently indulged their imaginations at the expense of geographical
fact. Let me quote two or three examples showing how imagination played
havoc with the truth. Dwight’s _Question and Answer Geography_, printed
at Hartford in 1798, contains the following:
Q. What are the customs and diversions of the Irish?
A. There are a few customs existing in Ireland peculiar to this
country; these are their funeral howlings and presenting their
corpses in the streets to excite the charity of strangers, their
convivial meetings on Sunday, and dancing to bagpipes, which are
usually attended with quarreling.
Even the scholarly Morse, the author of the first Geography printed in
the United States, indulges in some picturesque flights of imagination,
as when he writes that the great men of the Friendly Islands “are fond
of a singular kind of luxury, which is, to have women sit beside them
all night, and beat on different parts of their body until they go to
sleep; after which, they relax a little of their labour, unless they
appear likely to wake; in which case they redouble their exertions,
until they are again fast asleep.” A careful reading of Mariner’s
_Account of the Friendly Islands_, a book published by John Murray &
Sons in London in 1817, thirty-four years after Morse published his
first Geography, reveals no account of any such custom, and Mariner
lived in the Friendly Islands for a number of years.
Adams declares in his Geography, published in 1814, that “the White
Mountains are the highest, not only in New Hampshire, but in the
United States.” Of course he was speaking of the United States of
1814,--territory consisting of the original thirteen states and
Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana, admitted at the time when
Adams wrote his book,--but he evidently didn’t know that Mt. Mitchell
in North Carolina, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, is more
than 400 feet higher than the mountain that bears Washington’s name.
If the geographers drew upon their imaginations when describing the
physical features of the country, so also did the statesmen. That
great apostle of democracy, Thomas Jefferson, sent a communication to
Congress after the Louisiana Purchase, conveying what he considered
good information about the new possession. The most curious statement
in this strange document was about the mountain of salt. He informed
Congress that this mountain was said to be 180 miles long, 45 miles
wide, and all of white, glittering salt, with salt rivers flowing from
cavities at the base. In all probability Lewis and Clark disillusioned
Mr. Jefferson in 1806, when they returned from their trip to the
Pacific coast and gave accurate descriptions of the country they had
traversed.
The first English Grammar written in America was prepared by Professor
Jones, a mathematical professor, as Dr. Chandler tells me, at William
and Mary College. This book was written about 1703 and was printed
in London. Only one copy of this grammar is now known, and that is
contained in a London collection. Another book was prepared by Caleb
Bingham, the first edition of which was printed in 1799. It was called
_The Young Lady’s Accidence_. This was the first English Grammar used
in the Boston schools. Its only predecessor used in this country was
Part II of Webster’s _Grammatical Institute_.
Lindley Murray left his native country and settled in England in 1784.
The following year he wrote and published in England his _Grammar of
the English Language_. This Grammar was the standard textbook for fifty
years throughout England and America.
The illustrations in the early schoolbooks were as bad or worse than
the text matter. They were not only entirely lacking in artistic
quality, but, worse than that, they frequently pictured horrible
things that the child during his school day had constantly under
his observation. What twentieth century publisher would dare to
use illustrations in Readers, Geographies, or any other textbooks,
picturing the burning of an unfortunate victim at the stake, a widow
burning on the funeral pyre of her husband, or the bloody details of an
Indian massacre? And yet these awful things are pictured in a Geography
not yet a hundred years old.
Nearly all the books that appeared prior to 1840 were printed from
type, for neither the stereotype nor the electrotype plate was in use
before that time. Dr. Vail tells us that the early editions of the
McGuffey Readers, copyrighted, as I have said, in 1836 and 1837, were
so printed. The type impressions of the limited editions were clear and
distinct for the most part. Whether these impressions would have been
clear had as large and as many editions been printed from standing type
as we now print from plates, is of course a matter of conjecture.
It is not necessary to remind you that publishers may to-day furnish a
duplicate set of plates to any concern on earth desiring to reproduce
one of their books, and that the book may be reprinted by the purchaser
without the bother and expense of resetting the type; but the printer
of the early days was not so fortunate, for if a concern in New York
wished to reprint and sell a book originally printed in Boston, he was
obliged to reset it, taking as copy the Boston production.
You remember that stereotyping was not perfected by Stanhope until
1800, and that stereotype plates were not used in the manufacturing of
schoolbooks until a later date, but that they were commonly used before
electrotyping came into general use about 1860, though the Harpers
used electrotyping in 1840 to duplicate wood cuts; that wood engraving
was used in Europe in 1830, but much earlier in China; that copper
engraving was used as early as 1450; that steel engraving was invented
by Perkins, of Newburyport, Mass., in 1814; that the three-color
process plate was first made by Frederick Ives of Philadelphia in 1881,
but that the development of color work in schoolbooks has been within
the last forty years.
You recall the fact that the Adams or flat press was largely used
until 1875; that the first flat-bed cylinder press used in America was
a Napier brought from England in 1825; that in 1860 William Bullock
began to experiment on a rotary self-feeding or web printing press, and
finally achieved success in 1865. The web rotary press, as we know, can
turn out about ten times as much work in a given time as the flat-bed
cylinder press. Considering the fact that many millions of textbooks
are now printed annually, requiring the service of high power rotary
presses to print their sheets in season for use, is it not indeed
fortunate for the educational world that human skill has perfected such
a really wonderful instrument as this great machine, so splendidly
equipped for the accomplishment of this gigantic task?
The binding of books until a comparatively recent date was entirely
done by hand. The process was so slow that only a few books could be
bound in a day, even by the largest establishment. Folding machines
were not used by binders until 1875, rounding and backing machines
until about 1888, sewing machines and case-making machines until about
1890, gathering machines until about 1895, casing-in machines until
about 1900. It is well known to you that a modern bindery in which
up-to-date machinery is installed is able to produce per day from
20,000 to 60,000 three-hundred-page sewed books of octavo size. It
is therefore evident that there has been as wonderful an improvement
in the method of binding books in the last century as in the method
of printing them, and that the output of a modern bindery is now so
enormous that it would have made the heads of the early hand binders
dizzy just to think of it.
_The New England Primer_ was, of course, bound by hand. Its covers were
of thin oak that cracked and splintered badly with use, in spite of
the coarse blue paper that was pasted over the wood. The back was of
leather. Neither back nor sides had any printing on them. Yet, despite
its ugly appearance, this book has had a sale of at least two million
copies since Harris first printed it in or before 1691.
The binding of the old Blue Back Speller until 1829 consisted of back
of leather and sides of thin oaken boards pasted over with a dull blue
paper. “Blue paper of a somewhat brighter tint,” says Johnson, “was
used on the later editions, which gave rise to the name _Blue Back_.”
This book, as you know, has enjoyed a sale larger than that of any
other schoolbook ever made in this or any other country--a sale which
Mr. Appleton has recently told me has reached the stupendous figure of
sixty-four millions of copies.
Adams’ Arithmetic, which I have shown you, you observe was covered with
leather pasted over a very thin pasteboard. It had no headbands, and
its sheets were stitched by hand. Leather binding on the larger books,
Dr. Vail tells us, persisted for a number of years after the beginning
of the nineteenth century. This gentleman informs us that the First
Reader of the original McGuffey series made a thin 18mo book of 72
pages, having green paper covered sides.
Peter Parley’s _Method of Telling About Geography_, published in
1829, was a thin, square little book with leather back and flexible
pasteboard sides. His _National Geography_, published in 1845, was the
earliest to take the large, flat quarto shape. This form enabled it to
include good-sized maps and do away with the necessity for a separate
atlas.
Cover designs were not used until quite late in the nineteenth century,
and of course books whose covers bore no designs of any sort were far
less attractive than those bound to-day.
In 1874, under the direction of Mr. James McNally, of Rand McNally
& Company, that concern began the publication of atlases, pocket
and large wall maps. In 1872, the Company had introduced the then
new relief line engraving process for making maps--a process which
revolutionized the methods of that day and cut the cost of production
by several hundred per cent. Maps that can now be bought for from 25
cents to $1.00 each used to cost, under the old method of map making,
all the way from $5.00 to $10.00 apiece. The modern map, well and
thoroughly made, records faithfully every fact concerning the surface
of the earth now known to man, and there is very little about it that
scholarly geographers do not now know. In addition to the modern map’s
accuracy, it is as much more attractive than its forebears to the eye
as the beautiful color pictures now used in textbooks are seen to be
when compared with the muddy wood cuts that appeared in schoolbooks a
century or more ago.
It is not necessary for me to speak in such a presence as this of
the contents of modern schoolbooks in order to point out how vastly
superior in every respect they are to the contents of books of the
earlier days. It would be a work of supererogation for me to comment at
length, for instance, upon the character of the literature now included
in reading books, or to note the scientific work that is now commonly
done in the preparation of one of the most difficult books to prepare,
namely, the primer, whose text matter and vocabulary are so splendidly
adapted to the capacity of the young child, and whose illustrations
picture his pets, his toys, his games, his playmates, and other things
with which he is thoroughly familiar. I asked a literary friend to pick
out a half dozen of the choicest selections of literature that he knew
in modern readers. He replied as follows:
“Even a cursory survey of modern school readers soon reveals that no
period in the whole world’s literature has been neglected as a source
of selection. We have majestic passages from the Bible, Shakespeare,
Milton, Bacon, and Bunyan. The later centuries of English literature
afford the names of Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Browning,
Dickens, Thackeray, and on to Tennyson and Stevenson. The early
classic American period contributes freely from Longfellow, Lowell,
Emerson, Thoreau, and Irving, and our early patriots and philosophers
like Washington, Patrick Henry, Franklin, and Lincoln, live to-day
in the school readers. Even our modern authors have their place.
James Whitcomb Riley, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Joel
Chandler Harris, and a score of others are no strangers to the child
who has in his possession a school reader of the present day. If these
were not enough, we have occasional excursions into the Greek and Roman
myths, and for the little people touches of the fascinating German and
Scandinavian folklore.
“Most wonderful of all, however, is the skill of the editors and
publishers of these modern readers in selecting from this world-wide
galaxy of authors just the particular poem, tale, or episode that the
childish mind can assimilate and digest, and thus be left not only with
an introduction to these famous authors, but better yet with a desire
to know more of them.”
Recently it was my pleasure to examine the illustrations in a set of
modern school readers. I found in them a number of pictures beautifully
done in color, copied from some of the masterpieces of world-famous
artists, as, for instance, _The Age of Innocence_, by Reynolds, _The
Blue Boy_, Gainsborough, _The Melon Eaters_, Murillo, _Portrait of a
Man_, Franz Hals, _King David_, Rubens, _Mona Lisa_, Leonardo da Vinci,
_The Tapestry Weavers_, Velasquez, _The Architect_, Rembrandt, as well
as many others made from drawings cleverly done by artists of manifest
ability. The pictures in this series of readers were evidently selected
with as much care as the text, which contained selections of high
literary value.
“If I were asked,” said James Russell Lowell, “what book is better than
a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a
cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by.”
Prior to the enactment of state copyright laws, the first of which was
passed by Connecticut in 1783 and the last of which were enacted by
Georgia and New York in 1786, and the passage of a national copyright
law by Congress in 1790, literary property had no protection whatever
against piracy. Printers could help themselves _ad lib._ to books of
all kinds turned out by other printers. Dr. Noah Webster, realizing the
danger to an author arising from such piracy, labored diligently for
many years to secure the enactment of a copyright law. He pleaded that
the Constitution of the United States authorized Congress to “promote
the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times
to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective
writings and discoveries.”
Previous to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787, the nation
had no power to act, but on Madison’s motion Congress in May, 1783,
recommended the states to pass acts securing copyright for fourteen
years. Dr. Webster traveled from state to state, urging members of
legislatures to secure the passage of copyright laws in their states,
and some thirteen states did pass such laws prior to the national act;
but when Congress finally took action in the matter, Webster’s work
was done. It was to his great advantage and that of all authors who
have produced books subsequent to 1790 that a national law preventing
the stealing of literary property was passed. To Noah Webster and his
successful work in securing the enactment of a national copyright law,
the literary world owes a great debt.
The international copyright bill passed Congress March 3, 1891, thanks
to the diligent and unceasing labors of Mr. W. W. Appleton, the present
President of the Copyright League, Major George Haven Putnam, its
Secretary, and Robert Underwood Johnson.
It is my hope that this brief and most incomplete historical sketch
will convince us afresh of the truth of such almost axiomatic
statements as that made in the New York _Sun_ in 1915, namely, that
the advance in the United States in textbooks has been as great as in
any other phase of American life. Large credit is due both to authors
and to publishers for this really wonderful advancement, for both
have keenly realized the truth of Disraeli’s epigram which declared
that “the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity,” and have
labored diligently to place in the hands of this youth books sound in
their pedagogy, accurate as to facts, inspiring in their influence, and
as attractive as possible in their appearance, to the end that these
trustees of posterity may be sent from the schools full armed to cope
successfully with ignorance, foolish and dangerous theories concerning
religious and political life, and all other evils that now or in the
future may menace our civilization.
The immortal Milton declared that “a good book is the precious life
blood of a master spirit.” It has been and will continue to be the
happy privilege of the publisher to clothe the good book of the master
spirit in a style befitting its character, and to place it within
the reach of those who should have its message. That the educational
publisher is doing that work with much greater skill now than at any
time during the past two centuries is manifest; that he will, as time
grows apace, do it increasingly better, who can doubt?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS
Allow me to close this paper by giving a brief record of the
organization of the houses now engaged in educational publishing,
mentioning the titles of some of the earlier textbooks produced. In
this brief record I have considered the history of these houses in
chronological sequence rather than in alphabetical order, beginning
with the earliest American house engaged in textbook publishing.
CHRISTOPHER SOWER COMPANY.--Christopher Sower (Saür), the founder
of this house, issued in 1733 as his first venture in publishing, a
_schoolbook_ entitled _Ein A B C und Buchstabier Buch_. In 1747 he
published a German and English Grammar; in 1750, _The Golden A B C,
or the School of Knowledge in Rhymes_ (English translation of German
title); in 1771, _The New England Primer, Enlarged_. Although he began
publishing in German, he was soon printing in both German and English,
and he issued from six to twelve books a year until his death. His most
important educational publication was _Die Schul-Ordnung_, written
by Christopher Dock, a remarkable schoolmaster in Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania. This is known as the first American treatise on school
teaching.
In 1758 Christopher Sower was succeeded by his son, Christopher
Sower, 2nd, and he by his son, Samuel. In 1799 another son, David,
Sr., took charge of the business. In 1842 Charles G., son of David,
Jr., succeeded his father. In 1888, 150 years after the founding, the
firm was incorporated as the Christopher Sower Company, with Charles
D. Sower as President. In 1910 the officers were: Albert M. Sower,
President; James L. Pennypacker, Vice President; Daniel B. Hassan,
Secretary and Treasurer.
LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY, INC.--This business began as a retail store
started by Ebenezer Battelle in Boston in 1784. Four years later the
concern issued its first book and became a publisher in the strict
sense of the word. From 1784 to 1913 there was a succession of partners
entering and leaving the organization, and in the early days the name
of the house was changed frequently, according to the changes in
partnership. The name of Little & Brown was adopted in 1830, when James
Brown and Charles C. Little owned the business. James Brown may more
truly be called the founder of the present house than any other one
man. In 1898 Little, Brown & Company absorbed the successful publishing
firm of Roberts Brothers of Boston, thereby securing a large
miscellaneous line, including the works of Louisa Alcott. In 1913 the
house was incorporated as Little, Brown & Company, Inc., without change
in the personnel of the organization.
The present educational enterprise of this company was started in
May, 1904, and the first two schoolbooks of the present list were a
school edition of _The Man Without a Country_, and the series known
as the _Wide Awake Readers_. Little, Brown & Company are known as the
publishers of Bancroft’s _History of the United States_, also of Daniel
Webster’s works.
BENZIGER BROTHERS.--This firm was founded in 1792 in Einsiedeln,
Switzerland, by Joseph Charles Benziger. In 1883, he was succeeded by
his sons, Charles and Nicholas Benziger.
In 1853, the New York house was founded. J. N. Adelrich Benziger, a
son of Charles, and Louis, a son of Nicholas, took charge of the New
York house. The American firm is now entirely independent of its parent
house in Switzerland. In 1860 a branch house was opened in Cincinnati,
Ohio. In 1880, Nicholas C. Benziger became a partner. His father,
Nicholas, was a partner in Einsiedeln, and was the son of Nicholas
mentioned above. In 1887, a branch house was opened in Chicago. In
1894, Louis G. Benziger, son of Louis, became a partner, retiring in
1914. In 1912 Xavier N. Benziger, and in 1919 Bernard A. Benziger, both
sons of Nicholas C., became partners.
This firm has been publishing schoolbooks since 1860. From 1874 to 1877
the _Gilmour Readers_ were published. _The Catholic National Readers_
were brought out in the years 1889-1894. _The New Century Catholic
Readers_ were issued from 1903 to 1905. The house has also published
a _History of the United States_ in two volumes, an _Elementary
Geography_, _Advanced Geography_, and two series of Arithmetics.
The present partners of the firm are Nicholas C. Benziger and his sons,
Xavier N. and Bernard A. Benziger.
BENJ. H. SANBORN & CO.--Mr. Young, the present President of this
organization, writes:
“The records of the family tree of the Sanborn publications go back
into the eighteenth century. The predecessors of the present concern
appear to have been in the textbook business from the beginning, and
to have specialized in English grammars. The earliest trace we have
is of the publication of Staniford’s _Short but Comprehensive Grammar
Rendered Simple and Easy by Familiar Questions and Answers Adapted to
the Capacity of Youth_. This was printed by Mannering & Loring, of
Boston, January, 1797. Later came _The Elements of English Grammar_ by
Adoniram Judson in 1808. Following Mannering & Loring came the firm of
Loring & Edmunds. They were the publishers of Lindley Murray’s Grammar.
Following Loring & Edmunds came Robert S. Davis, then Robert S. Davis
& Company, then Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, and now Benj. H. Sanborn &
Company.
“In addition to the Lindley Murray Grammar, one of the notable
achievements of the predecessors of Benj. H. Sanborn & Company was the
publication of the Greenleaf Arithmetics. The first contract for these
books goes back to 1832. Greenleaf, by the way, a Maine teacher, sold
the copyright of his first book for $10,000 in gold. This was more
money than Greenleaf had ever seen before in his life, and he at once
took the boat to Boston to deposit it.”
JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.--Charles Wiley established the business in
1807. John Wiley came into it as a clerk in 1820 and continued until
1890. He had associated with him at various times George Palmer Putnam,
Mr. Long, and Robert Halsted. The concern became John Wiley & Sons in
1865. Major William H. Wiley entered it in 1875, and W. O. Wiley in
1890. The house was incorporated in 1904.
The first educational publication was a _History of the United States_,
which was issued by the founder of the house just after the War of
1812, and contained an account of that war. The first technical book
was published in 1819, entitled _A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri_,
by Henry R. Schoolcraft.
HARPER & BROTHERS.--This house was founded in 1817 by John Harper,
Wesley Harper, James Harper, and Fletcher Harper. Harper & Brothers
began to publish educational books in 1836, the title of their
first publication being Professor Anthon’s Classical Series. Some
of their most notable educational books are the Harper Geographies,
Harper’s United States Series of Readers, Harper’s Arithmetics,
Rolfe’s Shakespeare, Swinton’s Language Books, Green’s _Short History
of the English People_, Harper’s Greek and Latin texts. In 1890 or
thereabouts, the American Book Company bought the educational list of
Harper & Brothers.
James Harper, the oldest brother of the original four Harpers, was
elected Mayor of New York City in 1844. He originated the idea of the
magazine, and Fletcher, who was an unusually fine business man, the
idea of _Harper’s Weekly_.
D. APPLETON & COMPANY.--Mr. Daniel Appleton, who was a dry goods
merchant in Boston, moved and established himself in business in New
York in 1825. He began the bookselling business at 16 Exchange Place
by the importation of editions of English books. The bookselling
business was soon carried on by Daniel Appleton’s eldest son, William
H. Appleton. The first book published in this country by Mr. Appleton
was a little volume entitled _Crumbs from the Master’s Table_, issued
in 1831. William H. Appleton became a partner with his father in 1838,
and the firm became D. Appleton & Company. In 1848, Daniel Appleton
retired, and William H. and his brother, John A. Appleton, became
partners in the business. Daniel Appleton died in 1849. His son, Daniel
Sidney Appleton, became a partner in 1849, and later George S. Appleton
and Samuel Francis Appleton, also sons of Daniel Appleton, became
partners. D. Appleton & Company was incorporated in 1897. Mr. W. W.
Appleton writes:
“I cannot give the exact time when educational books were first issued,
but somewhat late in the 1830’s a number of such works were published,
some of them in foreign languages--French, Spanish, and German--and
in the 40’s several more were added. In the 1850’s the educational
list became much more important and included Cornell’s Series of
Geographies, Quackenbos’s standard textbooks, Perkins’ Arithmetics,
Mandeville’s Readers, and a great number of educational books in the
Spanish language. One of the most interesting publications was Noah
Webster’s _Elementary Spelling Book_, which was originally issued in
Hartford as the first part of _A Grammatical Institute of the English
Language_. D. Appleton & Company secured the publication of Webster’s
_Speller_ in 1855, and it sold nearly a million copies a year up to the
beginning of the Civil War.”
VAN ANTWERP, BRAGG & COMPANY.--The original firm of which this company
was the successor was Truman & Smith, organized about 1834 by William
B. Truman and Winthrop B. Smith. On June 2, 1834, this house published
an _Introduction to Ray’s Eclectic Arithmetic_. It was the firm’s first
schoolbook. Mr. Truman retiring, Mr. Smith carried on the business
of educational publishing in the second story over a small shop on
Main Street, Cincinnati. He was the sole proprietor of the McGuffey
Readers and his other publications from 1841 until about 1852. He then
admitted, as partners, Edward Sargent and Daniel Bartow Sargent, his
wife’s brothers, and the firm name became W. B. Smith & Co.
Mr. Smith made an arrangement with Clark, Austin & Smith, of New
York, to become the Eastern publishers of the McGuffey Readers, and
a duplicate set of plates was sent to New York. From these plates,
editions of the Readers were manufactured, largely at Claremont, N. H.,
bearing on the title page the imprint of Clark, Austin & Smith. The
Smith of this firm was Cornelius Smith, a brother of Winthrop B. Smith.
Mr. W. B. Smith retiring, a new firm under the name of Sargent, Wilson
& Hinkle was organized April 20, 1863, with Edward Sargent, Obed J.
Wilson, and Anthony H. Hinkle as partners, and with W. B. Smith and
D. B. Sargent as special partners. In 1866, Mr. Lewis Van Antwerp was
admitted as a partner, and on April 20, 1868, the firm of Sargent,
Wilson & Hinkle was dissolved. Mr. Sargent retired, and the new firm,
Wilson, Hinkle & Co., bought all the assets. Mr. Caleb Bragg in 1871
became a partner in Wilson, Hinkle & Co. On April 20, 1877, the firm
of Wilson, Hinkle & Co. was dissolved, and the business was purchased
by the new firm, Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., of which Lewis Van Antwerp,
Caleb S. Bragg, Henry H. Vail, Robert F. Leaman, A. Howard Hinkle, and
Henry T. Ambrose were the partners.
Mr. Van Antwerp retired January 22, 1890, just previous to the sale
of the copyrights and plates owned by the firm to the American Book
Company. The four active partners in that firm, each of whom had been
in the schoolbook business some twenty-five years, entered the employ
of the American Book Company. Mr. Bragg and Mr. Hinkle remained in
charge of the Cincinnati business, Dr. Vail and Mr. Ambrose went to New
York, the former as Editor-in-chief, the latter at first as Treasurer,
but later he became the President of the Company.
The most notable books published by these several firms, preceding
and including Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., were McGuffey’s Readers and
Speller, Ray’s Arithmetics, and Harvey’s Grammars.
G. & C. MERRIAM COMPANY.--The business was started in 1831, but the
publication of Webster’s Dictionary was not undertaken until 1843.
The founders were the brothers, George and Charles Merriam, and the
original copartnership style was G. & C. Merriam. In 1856 Homer Merriam
joined the other brothers, with no change in the firm style.
In 1882 the firm name was changed to G. & C. Merriam & Company, and
at that time Orlando M. Baker and H. Curtis Rowley were admitted to
partnership. In 1892 the copartnership was changed to a corporation,
styled G. & C. Merriam Company. George Merriam, one of the founders
of the company, died shortly before 1882, and about that time Charles
Merriam retired from the firm. Thereafter the active management of
the business devolved upon Mr. Baker and Mr. Rowley. Later Mr. K. N.
Washburn was made one of the Managers. Mr. Baker died in 1914, and at
the present time the active management of the business is in the hands
of Mr. Rowley, Mr. Baker’s two sons, A. G. Baker and H. W. Baker, and
Mr. Washburn.
The original firm of G. & C. Merriam, shortly after becoming
established in 1831, began publishing educational books in a small way.
The first of these publications seem to have been a series of school
readers, _The Child’s Guide_, _Village Reader_, etc. For many years,
however, and probably almost from the time that they acquired the
rights in Webster’s Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam and their successors
have confined their publications to the Genuine Webster Dictionaries.
WILLIAM H. SADLIER.--The founder of the business was Denis Sadlier, who
organized a general Catholic publishing house in 1835. In 1841, James,
the brother of Denis, was admitted to partnership, the firm name being
D. & J. Sadlier & Co. Upon the death of the original partners, the firm
was continued by James F., the son of Denis Sadlier.
In 1872, William H. Sadlier left the old firm and started a purely
textbook publishing house. His first books were the Excelsior
Geographies, followed shortly by the Excelsior Histories and Readers,
and then a general line of Catholic textbooks. William H. Sadlier died
in 1877 and the business was continued by his widow, Annie M. Sadlier,
who still lives and who may rightfully claim to be the original
business woman of New York. A law had to be passed in the Assembly
permitting her to do business under her husband’s name. Mrs. Sadlier
retired about ten years ago, and the business is now being conducted
by her son, Frank X. Sadlier, of the third generation. The surviving
textbooks of the original firm are now being published by the firm of
William H. Sadlier, which is the lineal successor of the original firm
of D. & J. Sadlier & Company.