Boys and girls who can buy HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE every week for four
cents, and other periodicals and books almost as cheap, can have very
little notion of the difficulty that little folk had seventy or eighty
years ago in getting something to read. It was only fifty years ago,
indeed, that the first efforts were made to supply cheap, instructive,
and entertaining literature, and one of the men who made those efforts
is still living in Scotland. Mr. William Chambers, who is now eighty-two
years of age, has lately published a little account of his life, and
what he has to tell of his boyhood and youth is very interesting.
His father was unfortunate in business, and became so poor that young
Chambers had to begin making his own way very early in life. He had
little schooling--only six pounds' (thirty dollars) worth in all, he
tells us--and as there were no juvenile books or periodicals in those
days, and no books of any other kind, except costly ones, it was hard
for him to do much in the way of educating himself. But William
Chambers meant to learn all that he could, and that determination
counted for a good deal. There was a small circulating library in his
native town, and he began by reading each volume straight through,
without skipping one. Then he got hold of a copy of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, which most boys would regard as very dry reading. He read
it carefully. When that was done, young Chambers was really pretty well
educated, although he did not know it.
About this time the boy had to go to work for his living. He became an
apprentice to a bookseller in Edinburgh. His wages were only four
shillings (about a dollar) a week, and on that small sum he had to
support himself, paying for food, lodging, clothes, and everything else,
for five years. "It was a hard but somewhat droll scrimmage with
semi-starvation," he says; for after paying for his lodgings and
clothes, he had only about seven cents a day with which to buy his food.
In the summer he jumped out of bed at five o'clock every morning, and
spent the time before the hour for beginning business in reading and
making electrical experiments. He studied French in that way too, and on
Sundays carried a French Testament to church, and read in French what
the minister read in English.
Winter came on, and the poor lad was puzzled. It was not only cold, but
entirely dark at five o'clock in the morning during the winter months,
and William, who had only seven cents a day to buy food with, could not
afford either a fire or a candle to read by. There was no other time of
day, however, that he could call his own, and so it seemed that he must
give up his reading altogether, which was a great grief to the ambitious
lad.
Just then a piece of good luck befell him. He happened to know what is
called a "sandwich man"--that is to say, a man who walks about with
signs hanging behind and before him. One day this man made him a
proposition. The sandwich man knew a baker who, with his two sons,
carried on a small business in a cellar. The baker was fond of reading,
but had no time for it, and as he and his sons had to bake their bread
early in the morning, he proposed, through the sandwich man, to employ
William Chambers as reader. His plan was that Chambers should go to the
cellar bakery every morning at five o'clock, and read to the bakers, and
for this service he promised to give the boy one hot roll each morning.
Here was double good fortune. It enabled Chambers to go on with his
reading by the baker's light and fire, and it secured for him a
sufficient breakfast without cost.
He accepted the proposition at once, and for two and a half hours every
morning he sat on a flour sack in the cellar, and read to the bakers by
the light of a penny candle stuck in a bottle.
Out of his small wages it was impossible for the boy to save anything,
and so when the five years of his apprenticeship ended, he had only five
shillings in the world. Yet he determined to begin business at once on
his own account. Getting credit for ten pounds' worth of books, he
opened a little stall, and thus began what has since grown to be a great
publishing business.
He had a good deal of unoccupied time at his stall, and "in order to
pick up a few shillings," as he says, he began to write out neat copies
of poems for albums. Finding sale for these, he determined to enlarge
that part of his business by printing the poems. For that purpose he
bought a small and very "squeaky" press and a font of worn type which
had been used for twenty years. He had to teach himself how to set the
type, and as his press would print only half a sheet at a time, it was
very slow work; but he persevered, and gradually built up a little
printing business in connection with his bookselling. After a while he
published an edition of Burns's poems, setting the type, printing the
pages, and binding the books with his own hands, and clearing eight
pounds by the work.
Chambers wrote a good deal at that time, and his brother Robert wrote
still more, so that they were at once authors, printers, publishers, and
booksellers, but all in a very small way. After ten years of this work,
William Chambers determined to publish a cheap weekly periodical, to be
filled with entertaining and instructive matters, designed especially
for the people who could not afford to buy expensive books and
periodicals. Robert refused to join in this scheme, and so for a time
the whole work and risk fell upon William. His friends all agreed in
thinking that ruin would be the result, but William Chambers thought he
knew what the people wanted, and hence he went on.
The result soon justified his expectations. The first number was
published on the 4th of February, 1832. Thirty thousand copies were sold
in a few days, and three weeks later the sale rose to fifty thousand
copies a week.