Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5, Part 44

Author: Hart, Albert Bushnell, 1854-1943, editor
Publication date: 1927
Publisher: New York, States History Co.
Number of Pages: 922

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THE NEWSPAPER REVOLUTION (1880-1930)

If most of the newspapers of Massachusetts seem to have shown a certain deterioration in intellectual character and ethical standards since 1885, it is fair to say that they have but followed the deplorable course of journalism in general.

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The decade from 1880 to 1890 witnessed a general revolu- tion in newspaper editing and publishing. From a profession it became a business. The manufacturing side began to eclipse in importance the intellectual side. Discovery of the enormous financial rewards to be reaped from the assiduous cultivation of the advertising field resulted in a race for mass circulation. The great increase of the number of pages in newspapers brought about no corresponding increase in the value or quality of the news or other reading material with which such portions as were not given over to advertising were filled. Colored supplements, "comics," rotogravure picture sections, were all added to the normal newspaper, even in the smaller cities. Rapidity of transport so flooded the rural districts with the papers of New York and Boston that the proper development of local journals of dignity and power was checked. Outside of Boston only New Bedford, Spring- field and Worcester supported dailies of more than 25,000 circulation.

As in other states, the number of periodical publications in Massachusetts is steadily falling off. An authentic newspaper manual gives the number of all classes in 1905 as 690; in 1927 it had dropped to 519. The reduction in the number of dailies was but three. During the same period, however, the population of the State had more than doubled.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR (1908-1930)

While the general tendency of the Boston newspapers is to accept the somewhat stereotyped style of the metropolitan papers of the day, one stands out in sharp contrast to the estab- lished type. The Christian Science Monitor, established in 1908 by Mary Baker G. Eddy, is distinctive in character, even though that character may seem to many the negation of jour- nalistic excellence. It is in no sense a religious or proselyting paper, despite its name, printing much less distinctly religious matter weekly than the Transcript. But it refuses to publish stories of crimes, disasters or deaths unless the event has some special effect upon the history of the time. It publishes no so- ciety news, personal gossip, or trivialities. Its editorial policy is based upon the succinct statement of its founder: "The

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object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind." It does not profess to be a Boston paper, the greater part of its circulation being outside of New England, and it does proclaim itself "An International Daily News- paper." By way of justifying this claim it maintains a far- flung system of correspondents in Europe, Asia, and Africa, publishes advertising from every quarter of the globe, and boasts truthfully that it circulates wherever English is read and in many countries in which it is not. The Monitor is the one paper in New England to maintain its own foreign service. Because of the wide distribution of its circulation (146,000 daily) the Monitor is so edited as to be readable many days after the date of publication-being thereby in sharp contrast to the average daily paper which is made for the day, and almost for the hour. This necessitates the de- velopment of entirely unique and characteristic material, and the Monitor is persistently urging an entirely new definition of news, by which the purely trivial and evanescent would be excluded.

NOTABLE PAPERS

It is perhaps not overstating the case to say that the Spring- field Republican, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Boston Transcript, and the Christian Science Monitor today stand as the most notable contributions of Massachu- setts to American daily journalism. Each is, or was, unique in its own field. Each possesses special characteristics which have not infrequently aroused the satire of contemporaries. Possibly at the present moment each is an anachronism, wholly out of keeping with the existing ethics of the newspaper press. But perhaps out of their quiet influence some improvement in newspaper ethics may yet come.

PERIODICALS

In the field of magazines and weekly publications Massa- chusetts was long a leader and has not yet wholly surrendered primacy. But just as the golden age of magazines vanished in New York, with the gradual deterioration of the publica- tion which inspired the later days of the last century, so too

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in Massachusetts material and not wholly happy changes have come.

Except for the Atlantic and the North American Review, Massachusetts has shared little in that golden age of magazine making which began about the last decade of the nineteenth century. We look back upon the magazines of that period published in New York as vastly superior in literary and artistic content to those of today. The era of process-engrav- ing had not dawned; and wood-engraving was an art which enlisted the talents of men destined ultimately to win high places as painters. The twentieth-century notion that any one can write well enough for magazine publication, provided he has only a story of personal experience to tell, had not then gained currency. It was not a time of highly paid editors or contributors-in that respect the phrase "golden age" was singularly inapplicable. But it was a time of high thinking, of graceful writing, and of artistic illustration, even though none of the Massachusetts magazines shared in the latter quality.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY (1857-1930)

An anecdote concerning Christopher Morley always delights the younger type of literary men who are chiefly concerned with "getting next to" publishers. It runs that Morley, fresh from his experience as Rhodes scholar at Oxford, came into the office of Doubleday, Page & Company, seeking a job. He encountered the redoubtable Frank N. Doubleday, and stated his need. "Whose job do you want?" inquired "Ef- fendi" ironically. "Yours" responded Morley, emphatically, and though he did not get that he got another one.

The story is pleasingly parallelled in Boston with the At- lantic Monthly, its editor James T. Fields, and the poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the dramatis personae. Aldrich sought to sell a poem. Dropping into Field's office, he found that personage out, but a memorandum lay on his desk setting forth things to be done at once. "Don't forget to mail E- his contract," it read, and "Don't forget H-'s proof." It is said that the initials referred to Emerson and Holmes, but in no wise abashed, the budding poet added "Don't forget to

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accept Aldrich's poem." The poem was accepted, paid for and-never published.

The Atlantic today differs from the magazine of the Fields era precisely as the social habits and intellectual life of Mas- sachusetts differ from those of the era of Emerson, Holmes, Whittier, and Longfellow. Since its foundation in 1857 the Atlantic has been a reflection of the best thought of its environ- ment -- changing with the environment. Significance attaches to the fact that the present brilliant editor, Mr. Ellery Sedg- wick, permits the appearance in the official history of the magazine of the statement that he fitted himself for his post by "a rigorous training in New York." The first editor, James Russell Lowell, would have been pleasantly scandalized by the suggestion that editorial training could be obtained in any cisatlantic city other than Boston. And as we scan the list of editors up to the present day we find it racy of Massa- chusetts soil. Note the roster :

James Russell Lowell 1857 -1861 James Thomas Fields 1861 -1871 William Dean Howells 1871 -1881 Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1881 -1890 Horace Elisha Scudder 1890-1898

Walter Hines Page 1898 -1899 Bliss Perry 1899-1909 Ellery Sedgwick 1909 -

Howells, it is true, came originally from Ohio, but his talent was an atavistic recurrence of New England ideals. Walter Page alone stands in the list as a spirit alien to New England by birth and education and yet under his guidance nothing of the ancient spirit of the magazine was changed-perhaps rather a certain broadening of the horizon of the Carolinian was apparent and contributed somewhat to his notable triumph as ambassador of the United States to London in the dark days of the World War.

A second publication, affiliated with the Atlantic Monthly, is the House Beautiful, which was acquired in 1896. Its name sufficiently indicates its character, and its influence is reflected by beautiful homes, and attractive domestic interiors through- out the country. Established originally by Chicagoans shortly

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after the World's Fair had opened American eyes to something better in domestic art than tidies, lambrequins, and Rogers groups, it found its greatest development after its removal to Boston.

THE LIVING AGE (1844-1930)

To this brief account of the most notable magazine that has ever flourished in the rarified intellectual atmosphere of Mas- sachusetts, should be added some reference to its recent ad- junct, the Living Age. This publication was issued fort- nightly under the editorship of Dr. Victor H. Clark, and had its beginnings in 1844 when it was founded by E. Littell of Brookline. It was, for many long years, the classic example of American literary piracy at its worst. It flourished at a time when there was no cable communication with Europe, and even the mails were irregular and dilatory. No inter- national copyright protected the foreign author in his literary property. Accordingly, provided with a keen eye for the interesting and popular, and a serviceable pair of shears, Lit- tell was able to produce a compendium of the very best mater- ial appearing in the British magazines and reviews. The weekly was highly educational in its tone, and enjoyed a wide circulation in the more cultivated households of that primitive day.

To denounce the morals of the procedure would be futile. The world had not been educated up to the idea that an author could be protected in his rights beyond the borders of his own country, and Littell did no more than the most eminent Amer- ican publishers of his time. But the enactment of the inter- national copyright law narrowed the field of selection for the editor, reduced in fact his "honest graft," and the publication fell upon evil days. Shortly after the close of the World War the publication passed into the hands of the owners of the Atlantic Monthly, who at once impressed on it a definite character as the foremost American repository of European journalistic material. It was unique in that it give complete articles, not merely reprinted from English magazines, but translated from Continental and even, on occasion, Asiatic publications. But despite its distinctive position, it failed of

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commercial success and in 1928 was sold to New York owners, abandoning thenceforth the Massachusetts field.

JUVENILES (1827-1927)

It is a pity that notable journals which have rendered long years of service cannot organize their readers, as do colleges their students, into alumni associations for' the glorification and support of the journalistic alma mater. This is peculiarly the case with those publications termed "juvenile" whose readers after eight or ten years of association pass on to the publications which appeal to the more mature mentalities. Of these none has stood more emphatically for New England thought than the Youth's Companion, which in 1925 became the fourth of the group of periodicals headed by the Atlantic Monthly. In its earlier history, edited by Nathaniel P. Willis, and brought to high prosperity by a publisher of extraordinary ability, Daniel S. Ford, the Youth's Companion rounded out a century of service in 1927. In the 'nineties, it had attained a circulation of above half a million, a phenomenal body of readers for that period. As an alumnus of the Youth's Com- panion the present writer feels impelled to confess that what remains most vividly in his memory in relation to the publica- tion was the enticing premium list, by which it excited its youthful readers to herculean efforts for the increase of its circulation. Never before or since have such rich rewards been dangled before the eager eyes of youth. How many boys became amateur printers, or expert turners on the lathe, or skilled in fret-saw work because of the way in which the attractiveness of those vocations was set forth in the premium list, with the promise of a press, a lathe, or a jig saw for a beggarly handful of subscriptions can never be estimated. Doubtless it was reflected in some degree in the half-million subscribers to the magazine.

Fashions change, and literary tastes as well. The practice of offering premiums fell into disfavor among American publishers a quarter of a century ago. About the same time the business custom of relying on advertising revenue for support became firmly established. Both these innovations seriously affected all juvenile publications, the Youth's Com-

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panion with the rest. For a time it sought to be a companion to the more mature, but with little profit to itself in a field so well occupied. Its transfer to the publishers of the Atlantic seemed to be accompanied by a return to its earlier field. Then in 1929 it was absorbed by the other leading publication in this field, The American Boy.

NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE AND ARENA (1890-1909)

Notable among the magazines of Massachusetts was the New England Magazine-long since gone to the limbo in which repose the souls of periodicals which possessed souls. Three periodicals of this name appear in the records of Mas- sachusetts, but the one with which we are concerned announced as its purpose the endeavor "to become a repository for material of interest concerning the New England states worthy of preservation." To this end it cordially invited "contribu- tions of matter relating to town and local history, and the manners and customs of early times, and of biographical and other sketches relating to the notable men and women, the social and religious life, the occupations and industries of colonial and other days . . . brief records of the genealogy of families resident in New England during and prior to the War of the Revolution."

The life of the New England Magazine was a record of intellectual achievements and financial vicissitudes. Appealing necessarily to a limited, though cultured class, it never at- tained the circulation needed for material success. Yet among its contributors, at various times, were James T. Fields, Ed- ward Everett Hale, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Charles Eliot Nor- ton, Samuel Longfellow, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. During the decade 1890-1901 the New England, under the brilliant editorship of Edwin D. Mead, was worthy of its name. It was in the truest sense a repository of historic facts concerning New England, but was furthermore a forum in which the most brilliant champions of the New England point of view loved to appear. Mr. Mead, who was at the same time director of the Old South Historical Series, and edited for that organization 200 "leaf- lets," brought to his task a zest for the New England scene,

From a photograph by Garo, Boston

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

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a graceful pen and extraordinary editorial acumen. The magazine in the end perished, submerged like much that was best in New England under the flood of foreign ideas follow- ing the rising of industrial immigration.

Practically contemporaneous with the New England was the Arena, likewise an outgrowth of the acute and restless mental activity of the day and place. It declared its purpose in this translation from Heine:

"We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them.

They master us, and force us into the arena

Where, like gladiators, we must fight for them."

Always radical, far ahead of the mass thought of the mo- ment, the Arena blazed the way for reforms which are now accepted as the very commonplaces of government. It had a succession of editors, among whom B. O. Flower, John C. Redpath, and Paul Tyner were outstanding figures in their day. It flourished most in those days of active and radical political thought which lasted from 1896 to 1908, and in 1909 was merged with the Christian at Work and the Evan- gelist-surely a strange sepulcher for so vivacious and un- orthodox a journalistic spirit.

SOCIAL BASIS OF MASSACHUSETTS

The disappearance of periodicals like the New England and the Arena fixes attention on the changed conditions of thought and of society in Massachusetts since the days of their foundation. It was in the very year that they vanished that Bliss Perry wrote, in his Park Street Papers:

"Read the editorials which Whittier wrote for the mill- folk of Lowell,-an educated, thrifty, ambitious class,-and then walk the streets of Lowell and Lawrence today, in an endeavor to find a native New England face. They have almost disappeared. Massachusetts which reckoned about one- fifth of her population as foreign-born or children of foreign- born in 1857 . .. now finds this class of her citizens in the majority. To the men and women for whom Whittier wrote, the Boston of today would be a city of aliens, only thirty- two per cent of its population is Protestant. No imagination

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can picture the laboring men of New England sitting down to read Whittier's 'Songs of Labor.' The very tools have changed, and the spirit of Whittier's Drovers and Shoemakers and Lumbermen is incomprehensible to their successors. ... Far better these immigrants, as raw material for Democracy's wholesome task, than that exhausted strain of Puritan stock which lives querulously in the cities or grows vile in the hill- towns. It is no worse for Boston to be misgoverned by a clever Irishman than by some inefficient Brahmin of the Back Bay. But whether these changes in population are welcomed or deplored, . . the local public .. . has altered beyond recognition."

Massachusetts might not have been the precise section of the United States which a famous French gourmet described as having fifty religions and only one sauce, but at least it has not lagged behind in the variety of its religious sects. Nowadays they say that the glorious climate of California is peculiarly propitious to the growth of sectarian cults; but in its palmier days Boston, with a climate never described as glorious, did its share in multiplying churches, creeds and publications devoted to the advancement of sectarian ideals. These publications, too, have been singularly exempt from that mortality which of late years especially has invaded the journalistic field. Two, at least, have rounded out their century of usefulness and honor, and many are approaching that venerable status in life.

RELIGIOUS PERIODICALS (1816-1930)

While one reads much of the modern indifference to re- ligion and of the falling off in church attendance there is, seemingly, a greater vitality in the field of religious journalism than in other branches of the profession. Nor does it appear that any transference of intellectual activity from the pulpit to the editorial chair is involved, for many of the most suc- cessful of the religious papers have been directed by lay members of the congregations they represented.

It is impossible to do more than to enumerate the religious periodicals which Massachusetts has supported during the last half century-any effort to characterize each would exhaust

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available space. In 1927 there were of such publications 36, weekly and monthly, three being in foreign languages ; namely, the Christian Science Journal, appearing in French and Ger- man, and a Lithuanian Catholic paper. Most notable of the list, perhaps, is the Hibbert Journal, which under the editor- ship of L. P. Jacks has won preeminence in the field of both religion and philosophy. Zion's Herald, dating back to 1823, the organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, is credited with the largest circulation of any religious publica- tion in the State. It does not, however, devote its columns exclusively to doctrinal discussions, but is a hard hitter in the domain of politics when moral issues are involved.

The palm for age must be conceded to the Congregationalist, which has enjoyed continuous publication since 1816. Its files constitute a true history of the characteristic, and one time dominant, church of New England for more than a century. Almost equal in age is the Christian Register Ex- aminer, founded in 1821, and for a time edited by Edward Everett Hale, who was never quite happy as an editor because he longed for the pulpit, and never content in the pulpit be- cause of the attractions of the editorial office. Of him Samuel Bowles once said that there was only "one good journalist in Boston and they were spoiling him in the pulpit." Like the church it ably represents, the Christian Register is alert to present-day social movements, and deals with them sanely and without sectarian bias. The Boston Pilot, a Roman Catholic weekly, started in 1835 and vigorous today, won eminence under the editorship of James Jeffrey Roche, in the early 'nineties. The Christian Science Sentinel (weekly) and Journal (monthly), the latter also published in German as Der Herold de Christian Science and in French as L'Heraut de la Science Chrétienne, are the output of the Christian Science Publishing Society. In contradistinction to the Monitor these papers are purely doctrinal in their editorial character, and publish no advertisements.

It is not to be denied that there is a tendency toward the dis- appearance of the purely doctrinal religious press. Many of the weekly publications of this character, not in Massachusetts alone, but particularly in New York, have sought to change their character gradually to a more material type of publica-

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tion. Notable among these are the Independent, now absorbed by the Outlook, neither of which has of late displayed the slightest trace of their old religious character. The trend to- ward the material reduction of publications of this type is shown by the fact that in 1909 there were 55 such publications in Massachusetts and in 1930 only 34.

EARLY BOOKSELLING

The cognate callings of book publishing and bookselling in Massachusetts deserve a volume to themselves. Indeed, very respectable volumes could be written about such ancient pub- lishing houses as Houghton Mifflin & Company, or such venerable bookshops as the Old Corner Book Store-now no longer on a corner. Perhaps in neither of these callings is the human element quite so pronounced as in older times. The publisher has too many authors on his list to play the Maecenas quite as hospitably as of yore; while there are few bookshops left which serve as rendezvous for distinguished authors. Indeed the really successful author is nowadays little inclined to seek out fellows of his sort in some publisher's office, or at a bookstall. Clubs, yachts, and seashore cottages are more his environment.

None the less the bookshops of Boston are still a picturesque feature, even though the Chamber of Commerce may not dignify them with its encouragement and support. The old Cornhill, which was the name given to that part of Washing- ton Street from the present School Street to Dock Square, became a bookselling center in the seventeenth century. In 1855 there were no less than twenty-five bookstores within its limits. Gradually the neighborhood was modernized, and the haunts of the bibliomaniac disappeared. One shop, still in the modern Cornhill, traces its existence back to 1825, and has published a circular showing the various quarters occupied in that more than a century of literary existence. At one time its stock in trade had grown to such cumbersome pro- portions that it bundled up and sent off to the paper mill no less than 50,000 odd volumes, as many government documents and 100,000 old magazines-120 tons in all.

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The new Cornhill still possesses four notable book shops, two of them dusty tunnels walled from floor to ceiling with books of every sort and kind, appealing to the controlling lust of the bibliomaniac, and now and then disgorging treasures as the reward of his grubbing in their grime. The most pictur- esque of all the ancient shops-the Old Corner-beloved of Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Ticknor and their tribe, has lost its corner but not its name, while a shop which long at- tracted by its location in a downtown archway has lost its arch, but still retains its name of The Archway Bookshop.

That the basement of the Old South Church should be used for a bookstore grates less on the sensibilities than the employ- ment of another section of that ancient edifice as an entrance to the subway. For after all should not religion and good books be near akin? Not a few of the ancient worthies who thundered from the pulpit of the Old South contributed their part to the output of volumes, mostly theological, which en- gaged the presses of Massachusetts in the earlier days. Per- haps their Puritan convictions might be shocked by some characteristics of the volumes on the shelves below today, but not more so than the religious beliefs of this generation would be amazed by the doctrines preached by them with fervor and deep conviction.

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Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5, Part 44

Author: Hart, Albert Bushnell, 1854-1943, editor Publication date: 1927 Publisher: New York, States History Co. Number of Pages: 922

Author: Hart, Albert Bushnell, 1854-1943, editor
Publication date: 1927
Publisher: New York, States History Co.
Number of Pages: 922