claiming so much to abound in wealth, it is yet more extraordinary that we
look around in vain to see who are to replace even these when age or death
shall withdraw them from the literary world. Of all here named,
Mr. Thackeray is the only one that has risen to reputation in the last ten
years, and he is no longer young; and even he seeks abroad that reward for
his efforts which is denied to him by the "cheap labor" system at home. Of
the others, nearly, if not quite all, have been for thirty years before
the world, and, in the natural course of things, some of them must
disappear from the stage of authorship, if not of life. If we seek their
successors among the writers for the weekly or monthly journals, we shall
certainly fail to find them. Looking to the Reviews, we find ourselves
forced to agree with the English journalist, who informs his readers that
"it is said, and with apparent justice, that the quarterlies are not as
good as they were." From year to year they have less the appearance of
being the production of men who looked to any thing beyond mere pecuniary
compensation for their labor. In reading them we find ourselves compelled
to agree with the reviewer who regrets to see that the centralization
which is hastening the decline of the Scottish universities is tending to
cause the mind of the whole youth of Scotland to be
"Cast in the mould of English universities, institutions which, from
their very completeness, exercise on second-rate minds an influence
unfavorable to originality and power of thought."--_North British
Review_, May 1853.
Their pupils are, as he says, struck "with one mental die," than which
nothing can be less favorable to literary or scientific development.
Thirty years since, Sir Humphrey Davy spoke with his countrymen as
follows:--
"There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is
followed more as connected with objects of profit than fame."--
_Consolation in Travel_.
Since then, Sir John Herschel has said to them:--
"Here whole branches of continental study are unstudied, and indeed
almost unknown by name. It is in vain to conceal the melancholy truth.
We are fast dropping behind."--_Treatise on Sound_.
A late writer, already quoted, says that learning is in disrepute. The
English people, as he informs us, have
"No longer time or patience for the luxury of a learned treatment of
their interests; and a learned lawyer or statesmen, instead of being
eagerly sought for, is shunned as an impediment to public business."
--_North British Review_.
The reviewer is, as he informs us, "far from regarding this tendency,
unfavorable as it is to present progress, as a sign of social
retrogression." He thinks that
"Reference to general principles for rules of immediate action on the
part of those actually engaged in the dispatch of business, must, from
the delay which it necessarily occasions, come to be regarded as a
worse evil than action which is at variance with principle altogether."
Demand tends to procure supply. Destroy the demand, and the supply will
cease. Science, whether natural or social, is not in demand in Great
Britain, and hence the diminution of supply. We have here the secret of
literary and scientific decline, so obvious to all who study English books
or journals, or read the speeches of English statesmen. Empiricism
prevails everywhere, and there is a universal disposition to avoid the
study of principles. The "cheap labor" system, which it is the object of
the whole British policy to establish, cannot be defended on principle,
and therefore principles are avoided. Centralization, cheap labor, and
enslavement of the body and the mind, travel always in company, and with
each step of their progress there is an increasing tendency towards the
accumulation of power in the hands of men who should be statesmen, the
difficulties of whose positions forbid, however, that they should refer to
scientific principles for their government. Action must be had, and
immediate action in opposition to principle is preferable to delay; and
hence it is that real statesmen are "shunned as an impediment to public
business." The greater the necessity for statesmanship, the more must
statesmen be avoided. The nearer the ship is brought to the shoal, the
more carefully must her captain avoid any reference to the chart. That
such is the practice of those charged with the direction of the affairs of
England, and such the philosophy of those who control her journals, is
obvious to all who study the proceedings of the one or the teachings of
the other. From year to year the ship becomes more difficult of
management, and there is increasing difficulty in finding responsible men
to take the helm. Such are the effects upon mind that have resulted from
that "destruction of nationalities" required for the perfection of the
British system of centralization.
England is fast becoming one great shop, and traders have, in general,
neither time nor disposition to cultivate literature. The little
proprietors disappear, and the day laborers who succeed them can neither
educate their children nor purchase books. The great proprietor is an
absentee, and he has little time for either literature or science. From
year to year the population of the kingdom becomes more and more divided
into two great classes; the very poor, with whom food and raiment require
all the proceeds of labor, and the very rich who prosper by the cheap
labor system, and therefore eschew the study of principles. With the one
class, books are an unattainable luxury, while with the other the absence
of leisure prevents the growth of desire for their purchase. The sale is,
therefore, small; and hence it is that authors are badly paid. In strong
contrast with the limited sale of English books at home, is the great
extent of sale here, as shown in the following facts: Of the octavo
edition of the "Modern British Essayists," there have been sold in five
years no less than 80,000 volumes. Of Macaulay's "Miscellanies," 3 vols.
12mo., the sale has amounted to 60,000 volumes. Of Miss Aguilar's
writings, the sale, in two years, has been 100,000 volumes. Of Murray's
"Encyclopedia of Geography," more than 50,000 volumes have been sold, and
of McCulloch's "Commercial Dictionary," 10,000 volumes. Of Alexander
Smith's poems, the sale, in a few months, has reached 10,000 copies. The
sale of Mr. Thackeray's works has been quadruple that of England, and that
of the works of Mr. Dickens counts almost by millions of volumes. Of
"Bleak House," in all its various forms--in newspapers, magazines, and
volumes--it has already amounted to several hundred thousands of copies.
Of Bulwer's last novel, since it was completed, the sale has, I am told,
exceeded 35,000. Of Thiers's "French Revolution and Consulate," there have
been sold 32,000, and of Montagu's edition of Lord Bacon's works 4,000
copies.
If the sales of books were as great in England as they are here, English
authors would be abundantly paid. In reply it will be said their works are
cheap here because we pay no copyright. For payment of the authors,
however, a very small sum would be required, if the whole people of
England could afford, as they should be able to do, to purchase books. A
contribution of a shilling per head would give, as has been shown, a sum
of almost eight millions of dollars, sufficient to pay to fifteen hundred
salaries nearly equal to those of our Secretaries of State.
Centralization, however, destroys the market for books, and the sale is,
therefore, small; and the few successful writers owe their fortunes to the
collection of large contributions made among a small number of readers;
while the mass of authors live on, as did poor Tom Hood, from day to day,
with scarcely a hope of improvement in their condition.
Sixty years since, Great Britain was a wealthy country, abounding in
libraries and universities, and giving to the world some of the best, and
best paid, writers of the age. At that time the people of this country
were but four millions, and they were poor, while unprovided with either
books or libraries. Since then they have grown to twenty-six millions,
millions of whom have been emigrants, in general arriving here with
nothing but the clothing on their backs. These poor men have had every
thing to create for themselves--farms, roads, houses, libraries,
schools, and colleges; and yet, poor as they have been, they furnish now a
demand for the principal products of English mind greater than is found at
home. If we can make such a market, why cannot they? If they had such a
market, would it not pay their authors to the full extent of their merits?
Unquestionably it would; and if they see fit to pursue a system tending to
cheapen the services of the laborer in the field, in the workshop, and at
the desk, there is no more reason for calling upon the people of this
country to make up their deficiencies towards those who contribute to
their pleasure or instruction by writing books, than there would be in
asking us to aid in supporting the hundreds of thousands of day laborers,
their wives and children, whom the same system condemns, unpitied, to the
workhouse.
But, it will be asked, is it right that we should read the works of
Macaulay, Dickens, and others, without compensation to the authors? In
answer, it may be said, that we give them precisely what their own
countrymen have given to their Dalton, Davy, Wollaston, Franklin, Parry,
and the thousands of others who have furnished the bodies of which books
are composed--and more than we ourselves give to the men among us
engaged in cultivating science--fame. This, it will be said, is an
unsubstantial return; yet Byron deemed it quite sufficient when he first
saw an American edition of his works, coming, as it seemed to him, "from
posterity." Miss Bremer found no small reward for her labors in knowing
the high regard in which she was held; and it was no small payment when,
even in the wilds of the West, she met with numerous persons who would
gladly have her travel free of charge, because of the delight she had
afforded them. Miss Carlen tells her readers that "of one triumph" she was
proud. "It was," she says, "when I held in my hand, for the first time,
one of my works, translated and published in America. My eyes filled with
tears. The bright dreams of youth again passed before me. Ye Americans had
planted the seed, and ye also approved of the fruit!" This is the feeling
of a writer that cultivates literature with some object in view other than
mere profit. It differs entirely from that of English authors, because in
England, more than in any other country, book-making is a trade, carried
on exclusively with a view to profit; and hence it is that the character
of English books so much declines.
But is it really true that foreign authors derive no pecuniary advantage
from the republication of their books in this country? It is not. Mr.
Macaulay has admitted that much of his reputation, and of the sale of his
books at home, had been a consequence of his reputation here, where his
Essays were first reprinted. At the moment of writing this, I have met
with a notice of his speeches, first collected here, from which the
following is an extract:--
"We owe much to America. Not content with charming us with the works of
her native genius, she teaches us also to appreciate our own. She steps
in between the timidity of a British author, and the fastidiousness of
the British public, and by using her' good offices' brings both parties
to a friendly understanding."--_Morning Chronicle_.
If the people of England are largely indebted to America for being made
acquainted with the merits of their authors, are not these latter also
indebted to America for much of their pecuniary reward? Undoubtedly they
are. Mr. Macaulay owes much of his fortune to American publishers,
readers, and critics; and such is the case to perhaps a greater extent
with Mr. Carlyle, whose papers were first collected here, and their merits
thus made known to his countrymen. Lamb's papers of "Elia" were first
collected here. It is to the diligence of an American publisher that De
Quincey owes the publication of a complete edition of his works, now to be
followed by a similar one in England. The papers of Professor Wilson owe
their separate republication to American booksellers. The value of Mr.
Thackeray's copyrights has been greatly increased by his reception here.
So has it been with Mr. Dickens. All of those persons profit largely by
their fame abroad, while the men who contribute to the extension of
knowledge by the publication of facts and ideas never reap profit from
their publication abroad, and are rarely permitted to acquire even fame.
Godfrey died poor. The merchants of England gave no fortune to his
children, and Hadley stole his fame. The people of that country, who
travel in steam-vessels, have given to the family of Fulton no pecuniary
reward, while her writers have uniformly endeavored to deprive him of the
reputation which constituted almost the sole inheritance of his family.
The whole people of Europe are profiting by the discovery of chloroform;
but who inquires what has become of the family of its unfortunate
discoverer? Nobody! The people of England profit largely by the
discoveries of Fourcroy, Berzelius, and many other of the continental
philosophers; but do those who manufacture cheap cloth, or those who wear
it, contribute to the support of the families of those philosophers? Did
they contribute to their support while alive? Certainly not. To do so
would have been in opposition to the idea that the real contributors to
knowledge should be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for the
gentlemen who dress up their facts and ideas in an attractive form and
place them before the world in the form of cloth or books.
We are largely indebted to the labors of literary men, and they should be
well paid, but their claims to pecuniary reward have been much
exaggerated, because they have held the pen and have had always a high
degree of belief in their own deserts. Their right in the books they
publish is precisely similar to, and no greater than, that of the man who
culls the flowers and arranges the bouquets; and, when that is provided
for, their books are entitled to become common property. English authors
are already secured in a monopoly for forty-two years among a body of
people so large that a contribution of a shilling a head would enable each
and all of them to live in luxury; and if British policy prevents their
countrymen from paying them, it is to the British Parliament they should
look for redress, and not to our Executive. When they shall awaken to the
fact that "cheap labor" with the spade, the plough, and the loom, brings
with it necessarily "cheap labor" with the pen, they will become
opponents, and cease to be advocates of the system under which they
suffer. All that, in the mean time, we can say to them is, that we protect
our own authors by giving them a monopoly of our own immense and rapidly
growing market, and that if they choose to come and live among us we will
grant them the same protection. We may now look to the condition of our
own literary men.
LETTER V.
Our system is based upon an idea directly the reverse of the one on which
rests the English system--that of decentralization; and we may now study
its effects as shown in the development of literary tendencies and in the
reward of authors.
Centralization tends towards taxing the people for building up great
institutions at a distance from those who pay the taxes; decentralization
towards leaving to the people to tax themselves for the support of common
and high schools in their immediate neighborhood. The first tends towards
placing the man who has instruction to sell at a distance from those who
need to buy it; while the other tends towards bringing the teacher to the
immediate vicinity of the scholars, and thus diminishing the cost of
education. The effects of the latter are seen in the fact that the new
States, no less than the old ones, are engaged in an effort to enable all,
without distinction of sex or fortune, to obtain the instruction needful
for enabling them to become consumers of books, and customers to the men
who produce them. Massachusetts exhibits to the world 182,000 scholars in
her public schools; New York, 778,000 in the public ones, and 75,000 in
the private ones; and Iowa and Wisconsin are laying the foundation of a
system that will enable them, at a future day, to do as much. Boston taxes
herself $365,000 for purposes of education, while Philadelphia expends
more than half a million for the same purposes, and exhibits 50,000
children in her public schools. Here we have, at once, a great demand for
instructors, offering a premium on intellectual effort, and its effect is
seen in the numerous associations of teachers, each anxious to confer with
the others in regard to improvement in the modes of education. School
libraries are needed for the children, and already those of New York
exhibit about a million and a half of volumes. Books of a higher class are
required for the teachers, and here is created another demand leading to
the preparation of new and improved books by the teachers themselves. The
scholars enter life and next we find numerous apprentices' libraries and
mercantile libraries, producing farther demand for books, and aiding in
providing reward for those to whom the world is indebted for them.
Everybody must learn to read and write, and everybody _must_ therefore
have books; and to this universality of demand it is due that the sale of
those required for early education is so immense. Of the works of Peter
Parley it counts by millions; but if we take his three historical books
(price 75 cents each) alone, we find that it amounts to between half a
million and a million of volumes. Of Goodrich's United States it has been
a quarter of a million. Of Morse's Geography and Atlas (50 cents) the sale
is said to be no less than 70,000 per annum. Of Abbott's histories the
sale is said to have already been more than 400,000, while of Emerson's
Arithmetic and Reader it counts almost by millions. Of Mitchell's several
geographies it is 400,000 a year.
In other branches of education the same state of things is seen to exist.
Of the Boston Academy's collection of sacred music the sale has exceeded
600,000; and the aggregate sale of five books by the same author has
probably exceeded a million, at a dollar per volume. Leaving the common
schools we come to the high schools and colleges, of which latter the
names of no less than 120 are given in the American Almanac. Here again we
have decentralization, and its effect is to bring within reach of almost
the whole people a higher degree of education than could be afforded by
the common schools. The problem to be solved is, as stated by a recent and
most enlightened traveller, "How are citizens to be made thinking beings
in the greatest numbers?" Its solution is found in making of the
educational fabric a great pyramid, of which the common schools form the
base and the Smithsonian Institute the apex, the intermediate places being
filled with high schools, lyceums, and colleges of various descriptions,
fitted to the powers and the means of those who need instruction. All
these make, of course, demand for books, and hence it is that the sale of
Anthon's series of classics (averaging $1) amounts, as I am told, to
certainly not less than 50,000 volumes per annum, while of the "Classical
Dictionary" of the same author ($4) not less than thirty thousand have
been sold. Of Liddell and Scott's "Greek Lexicon" ($5), edited by Prof.
Drisler, the sale has been not less than 25,000, and probably much larger.
Of Webster's 4to. "Dictionary" ($6) it has been, I am assured, 60,000, and
perhaps even 80,000; and of the royal 8vo. one ($3.50), 250,000. Of
Bolmar's French school books not less than 150,00 volumes have been sold.
The number of books used in the higher schools--text-books in
philosophy, chemistry, and other branches of science--is exceedingly
great, and it would be easy to produce numbers of which the sale is from
five to ten thousand per annum; but to do so would occupy too much space,
and I must content myself with the few facts already given in regard to
this department of literature.
Decentralization, or local self-government, tends thus to place the whole
people in a condition to read newspapers, while the same cause tends to
produce those local interests which give interest to the public journals,
and induce men to purchase them. Hence it is that their number is so
large. The census of 1850 gives it at 2,625; and the increase since that
time has been very great. The total number of papers printed can scarcely
be under 600,000,000, which would give almost 24 for every person, old and
young, black and white, male and female, in the Union. But recently the
newspaper press of the United Kingdom was said to require about 160,000
reams of paper, which would give about 75,000,000 of papers, or two and a
half per head.
The number of daily papers was returned at 350, but it has greatly
increased, and must now exceed four hundred. Chicago, which then was a
small town, rejoices now in no less than 24 periodicals, seven of which
are daily, and five of them of the largest size. At St. Louis, which but a
few years since was on the extreme borders of civilization, we find
several, and one of these has grown from a little sheet of 8 by 12 inches
to the largest size, yielding to its proprietors $50,000 per annum, while
Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham are still compelled to depend upon
their tri-weekly sheets. St. Louis itself furnishes the type, and
Louisville furnishes the paper. Everywhere, the increase in size is
greater than that in the number of newspapers, and the increase of ability
in both the city and country press, greater than in either number or size.
These things are necessary consequences of that decentralization which
builds school-houses and provides teachers, where centralization raises
armies and provides generals. The schools enable young men to read, think,
and write, and the local newspaper is always at hand in which to publish.
Beginning thus with the daily or weekly journal, the youth of talent makes
his way gradually to the monthly or quarterly magazine, and ultimately to
the independent book.
Examine where we may through the newspaper press, there is seen the
activity which always accompanies the knowledge that men _can rise_ in the
world _if they will_; but this is particularly obvious in the daily press
of cities, whose efforts to obtain information, and whose exertions to lay
it before the public, are without a parallel. Centralization, like that of
the London "Times," furnishes its readers with brief paragraphs of
telegraphic news, where decentralization gives columns. The New York
"Tribune" furnishes, for two cents, better papers than are given in London
for ten, and it scatters them over the country by hundreds of thousands.
Decentralization is educating the whole mind of the country, and it is to
this it is due that the American farmer is furnished with machines which
are, according to the London "Times," "about twice as light in draught as
the lightest of English machines of the same description, doing as much,
if not more work than the best of them, and with much less power; dressing
the grain, which they do not, and which can be profitably disposed of at
one half, or at least one third less money than its British rivals"--and
is thus enabled to purchase books. Centralization, on the other hand,
furnishes the English farmer, according to the same authority, "with
machines strong and dear enough to rob him of all future improvements, and
tremendously heavy, either to work or to draw;" and thus deprives him of
all power to educate his children, or to purchase for himself either books
or newspapers.
Religious decentralization exerts also a powerful influence on the
arrangements for imparting that instruction which provides purchasers for
books. The Methodist Society, with its gigantic operations; the
Presbyterian Board of Publication; the Baptist Association; the
Sunday-school, and other societies, are all incessantly at work creating
readers. The effect of all these efforts for the dissemination of cheap
knowledge is shown in the first instance in the number of semi-monthly,
monthly, and quarterly journals, representing every shade of politics and
religion, and every department of literature and science.