USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 2 > Part 15
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
Little Brown and Houghton Mifflin are among the oldest publishing firms in the country. The latter is the direct descendant of Ticknor and Fields, Hurd and Houghton, Fields, Osgood and Company, James R. Osgood and Company, and Houghton, Osgood and Company, which were succeeded by the present company in 1880. Among the officers today are Edward R. Houghton, Stephen B. Davol, James Duncan Phillips, Roger L. Scaife, Benjamin H. Ticknor and Franklin S. Hoyt. During the past half-century the firm has issued approximately seventy-five hundred different titles. The offices were for many years at 4 Park street, but more recently they have been at 2 Park street. The name of Little, Brown and Company has been in continuous use for nearly a century, although the actual predecessors of the business can be traced back for two centuries. . Established in the beautiful old Cabot homestead at 34 Beacon street, and with a bindery and shipping department in Cambridge, the house is controlled by Alfred R. McIntyre, Herbert F. Jenkins, James R. MacDonald, Ross Whistler and Murray Brown.
As one might expect from the presence of so many schools and colleges in or near Boston, the city has been active in educational publishing. Both Houghton Mifflin and Little Brown have important educational departments and there are in addition two houses, Ginn and Company and D. C. Heath and Company, which devote their attention exclusively to text-books. In 1867 Edwin Ginn published his first book, Craik's "English of Shakespeare," and from this single volume built up a rapidly growing business. Soon after his brother joined him and the name of the firm became Ginn Brothers. Today there are nearly twenty partners working under the name of Ginn and Company. All manufacturing is carried on at the Athenaeum Press in Cambridge, which was
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established and developed by the firm for the sole purpose of making its own books, and which has gained an enviable reputation for its high standards of accomplishment. The editorial and sales departments have been located for several years at 15 Ashburton place in Boston. In 1874 Mr. Ginn took into partnership Daniel Collamore Heath, the firm being known until 1885 as Ginn and Heath. After that date Mr. Heath carried on his own business until his death in 1908. Beginning with only twenty-four titles, the firm has now published nearly three thousand books covering the entire educational field from the lower primary grades to the university.
Other specifically educational publishers with headquarters in Boston are Allyn and Bacon and the Pahner Company. Until recently the list would also have included Benjamin H. Sanborn and Company and Silver, Burdett and Company, both of which now have central offices elsewhere. Although these firms have comparatively small lists, they have had no inconsiderable share in spreading Boston standards through the schoolrooms of America.
Any consideration of the smaller general publishing houses presents valuable side-lights on the reading interests of our period. Individuality is unavoidable even in a big house, while in a small one it is the very reason for existence. Such was the case, for instance, with Boston's first woman publisher, Carol M. Clark, and her best seller, "Quincy Adams Sawyer," that took the country by storin in 1900. Many years later Hale, Cushman and Flint developed naturally from Ralph Hale's position as American publisher of the celebrated Medici Prints. Miss Mary Barrows has long made a success with domestic science books; the Cornhill Company has encouraged contemporary poetry; Lothrop, Lee and Shepard have developed a fine list of juveniles; the Stratford Company has become prominent through the botanical works of Ernest H. Wilson, late Keeper of the Arnold Arboretum; the Marshall Jones Company, after continuing the business of Dana Estes and Company for several years, has built up a list of dis- tinctive books, may of them illustrated in unusually handsome fashion; and over in Cambridge, Washburn and Thomas, with their "books for the cultivated amateur," have added a modest but humanizing touch to the picture. Then there is the L. C. Page Company, which if not gigantic is certainly not small; one must recall its beautifully illustrated travel books, its fine standard sets, and its huge success with the ".Anne of Green Gables" series and the "Pollyanna " series. From 1917 to 1928 the "Atlantic Monthly," beginning with reprints from the magazine but quickly enlarging the program, published a number of books under its own imprint. In 1925 an association was forined with Little, Brown and Company by which Atlantic Monthly Press books continue to be initiated, edited and designed by the Press but the manufacture and promotion are handled by Little, Brown and Company. Unusual success has attended the Atlantic books: Pulitzer prizes have been awarded to M. A. DeWolfe Howe's life of Barrett Wendell and to James Truslow Adams' "The Founding of New Eng- land"; the Newbery Medal has been conferred on Charles Boardman Hawes for his seafaring stories; and the essays of A. Edward Newton have stimulated every side of book-collecting. To this list of publishing houses must be added the Harvard University Press, although its offices and printing plant are located in Cambridge. Founded in 1913, it now has on its active list nearly a thousand
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titles, most of them being of a strictly scholarly nature. Its facilities are avail- able not only to Harvard graduates and instructors but to scholars of every university in America and Europe.
In the field of magazine publishing Boston has always been a leader. Aside from the numerous religious and commercial publications, there have been for general national circulation the "New England Magazine," established in 1886 and discontinued in 1916; "Littell's Living Age," "The Independent," and "The Sportsman," all recently removed to New York; and "The House Beautiful." Two other magazines are of outstanding importance. "The Youth's Companion," a name that awakens delightful memories in the mind of every Bostonian of middle age, was the eagerly awaited weekly visitor in over half a million American homes. Daniel S. Ford, its founder and presiding genius, had an uncanny ability so to edit his pages that no one, regardless of age or sex, could pick up a copy without finding something to interest him. Con- sequently the life of a subscription often reached fifty, sixty and even eighty years, and the proportion of renewals is said to have been nearly ninety per cent. Like the "Youth's Companion," the "Atlantic Monthly" has been (and still is) a family institution. During the last fifty years its editors have been Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Horace Elisha Scudder, Walter Hines Page, Bliss Perry and Ellery Sedgwick. Its international reputation as the best edited magazine in the English language, which was won under Aldrich, has not suffered under his successors. During and since the World War it has more than ever been, as Bliss Perry said of it in 1899, "particularly interested in this present world, curious about the actual conditions of politics and society, of science and com- merce, of art and literature engrossed with the lives of the men and women who are making America what it is and is to be." Whether from Park strect or Arlington street, the "Atlantic" has exerted an abiding influence upon American thought and life.
Enough has already been said to suggest the extent and development of the printing business in Boston. In such a summary as this, there is obviously no opportunity to make individual mention of the numerous establishments which have served the community's needs for job work and the men who have faithfully carried on this contribution to the city's economic growth. We must confine our attention to the general trends of the business. Boston, as a matter of fact, has had its full share in the revival of taste in the graphic arts which has marked this half-century. And most experts consider our fellow-citizens, Daniel Berkeley Updike and Bruce Rogers, the leading typographers of modern times.
The ten years between 1880 and 1890 werc, as Henry Lewis Johnson has pointed out, a rather lean period. With the 90's, however, and as part of the intellectual and artistic awakening of that eager decade, came the influence of the English craftsman and printer, William Morris. In Boston the first printer to reflect his ideals was Carl H. Heintzemann, whose work for Copeland and Day added typographical distinction to the literary charm of that firm's attractive publications. In addition, Heintzemann did considerable text- book work and commercial printing that is still highly regarded. As interest spread, with its concomitant demand for fine lettering and illustration, such
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men as Will Bradley, Theodore B. Hapgood, Walt Harris and William A. Dwiggins began their delightful work which, fortunately, has not yet ceased. Those who possess the Christmas cards and other publications of Alfred Bartlett, can note the vigor and beauty characteristic of even their youthful work. So great an architect as Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue turned aside from his building long enough to design initials, head-bands, borders and a font of type. Naturally this lively group of men, all deeply interested in their work, formed a club. Since 1905 the Society of Printers has brought them together "for the study and advancement of the art of printing," and the vitality of the association is shown by the fact that in spite of the inevitable accession of younger men there is still a large proportion of the original members on its list. Their discussions are, generally speaking, of a less technical nature than those at the Club of Printing-house Craftsinen, which has flourished for a number of years. The movement, moreover, has had its own magazine, "The Printing Art," founded and edited by Henry Lewis Johnson; its pages will always be valuable as a gallery of specimens of the best work from 1903 onwards to 1928.
One of the founders of the Society of Printers was Daniel Berkeley Updike, who had received his early training at the Riverside Press and in 1893 had started the Merrymount Press. For nearly forty years this establishment has been producing work of such distinguished excellence that it is now one of the most prominent presses of the world, each new product eagerly awaited by printers and collectors. In sureness of touch, in versatility of imagination, in mastery of every detail of the business, Mr. Updike himself has grown with the years, as one will see by a comparison of the Altar Book of 1896 with the Standard Book of Common Prayer, issued in 1931. Although much of his work has been of a liturgical nature or for ecclesiastical customers, a still larger amount has been in the ordinary way of trade. He has printed regular editions for New York and Boston publishers, special limited editions for private individ- uals, and an astonishing variety of commercial job work. With the true artist's respect for his material, he has worked in a vein of high seriousness, lightened by a crisp humor. From the very beginning he has paid attention to the historical aspects of his work; his first advertising circulars announced that his equipment comprised unusual type, ornaments and papers. In view of his extensive information it was only natural that for a number of years he was asked to give a series of lectures at Harvard University in a course on printing and publishing. When the course was discontinued, the substance of these lectures was remodeled into Mr. Updike's authoritative work, "Print- ing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use," and his briefer book of essays, "In the Day's Work." These two books have had an incalculable influence upon recent printing and book-collecting all over the world. In recognition of Mr. Updike's scholarship and craftsmanship he has been given honorary degrees by Brown University and Harvard University.
Side by side with Mr. Updike in the world's judgment of current printing masters stands Bruce Rogers, a native of Indiana, who also found his life- work through William Morris's influence. Coming to Boston in 1895, he worked at the Riverside Press and was finally placed in charge of a special department for the production of fine limited editions, which George H. Mifflin established
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in 1900. Here he remained until 1912. After spending the next seven years in London, New York, and elsewhere, lie returned again to Boston and became Printing Adviser to the Harvard University Press, an offiee which he has held sinee that time, although for several years his aetual work has been done in New York and in London. Mr. Rogers has worked on all sorts of editions and in every style, but whatever he has done has been marked with astounding grace and lightness. He can on occasion make a perfectly straightforward book with no attraetion other than harmony of type, ink and paper; and on a different occasion he ean interweave type-ornaments with such delicacy that they transeend the harsh nature of type metal. In 1928 Mr. Rogers went to London again and has spent the last three years in adapting for the mono- type machines his Centaur type, which he first designed at the Dyke Mill in Montague, Massachusetts, in 1915. The first considerable use of the new face will be in the leetern Bible, which is now in process of printing at the Oxford University Press. Yale has granted Mr. Rogers an honorary degree.
With these two great printers in our midst, and with such a half-century of publishing history to our eredit, it might almost seem that we are standing again, as our fathers did in 1880, at the end of an epoch. Perhaps we are; but the history of these fifty years, if it is of any value at all, ean most certainly teach us that the new day has possibilities of beauty and usefulness for our ehildren that we ourselves never dreamed of.
CHAPTER VII SOCIAL WELFARE
SOCIAL AGENCIES IN BOSTON, 1880=1930 By EVA WHITING WHITE
INTRODUCTION
Boston has not only played a notable part in the nurturing of the political and moral ideas which have made possible the establishment of our republican form of government, but she has also been in the forefront in the development of the social reforms which attest the progress of civilization. Early in colonial history the citizens combined with a high sense of civic responsibility a con- spicuous generosity of spirit in looking after the needs of the unfortunate. Many a present-day necessity is met from the trust funds which were established in the early years.
The so-called Elizabethan Poor Law was passed in England in 1602, so that it was but natural that the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630, should have adopted the methods with which they were familiar in matters of poor relief. Therefore, in spite of many modifications, the prec- edents of three hundred years ago are still dominant in the system of public administration.
During this same period, when the public administrative forces were being developed, churches and private citizens were giving of their time and money to supplement public effort.
Exactly as the first two hundred and fifty years of the history of Boston show a continuous growth in the number of institutions maintained under public and private auspices, so the last fifty years demonstrate the quick response of the city to the needs of the individual and the community. Essentially, the period from 1880 to 1930 is noted for the close interlinking of the efforts of public and private agencies; for the high-grade officials who have been appointed to serve in the correctional and eleemosynary departments; and for the results obtained by the many unpaid commissions on which have served the most able of men and women.
In the late 70's there was a quickening of the social conscience. The country had been through the Civil War. Boston was gradually recovering from the fire of 1872 and the country from the financial panic of 1873. In 1880 the nation was preparing to meet the challenge of the upbuilding period which was to follow. In the field of social reform the developments came like the unfolding of a drama. There was many a sharp clash in political and economic theory. Feelings often ran high, but step by step our practices of today emerged and the institutions which have become world-renowned grew in efficiency and power.
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Fifty years ago new ideas began to be current; there was a dim fore- shadowing of social changes. The Labor Movement was coming to its own. Civil Service Reform was driving hard against the old slogan, "To the victors belong the spoils." In criminal procedure methods of reformation were centering the attention of serious-minded people more than were methods of punishment.
Further, it was borne in upon the common mind that, as cities grew, urban life presented quite different problems from those of the smaller community. It was seen that with the increase in immigration Boston was growing into a cosmopolitan city. Her congested areas called for strict sanitary regulations. Therefore, the city government became increasingly concerned with strengthen- ing the Board of Health; with passing more rigid housing laws; with ordinances to insure fire protection.
Moreover, about 1880, the vision which has crystallized into a world- famous park system was presented to the public, to be followed by the efforts of Ellen Tower and Joseph Lee in behalf of playgrounds for children.
As another progressive note, education came within the influence of the civic searching of the time. A glance at a report of the Boston Public School systein in the 70's and a comparison with the last report of the Superintendent of Schools will demonstrate to what extent the schools have broadened and socialized their curriculum.
As to the arts, they were looked at askance by the early Puritans and were scantily nourished even as late as 1880. However, early in the period under consideration, the arts began to come to their own. The Boston Sym- phony Orchestra was founded in 1881. The public began to take a deepened interest in its Handel and Haydn Society, which had been started in 1815, and in its New England Conservatory of Music, founded in 1867 - both of which began now to gain increased popular support. The Boston Art Museum added many rare treasures to its collection. Architecture received a fresh impetus. The Boston Public Library, built in Copley square - plans for which were accepted in 1884 - marks a decided change in architectural design as compared with the public buildings erected before that date, while its mural paintings by Sargent, Puvis de Chavannes and Abbey attest further the advance in aspiration and in taste.
The early 80's were also marked by the entrance of women in increasing numbers into business and professional life, and by the growth in strength of the women's club movement and the cause of women's suffrage under the leader- ship of such Massachusetts women as Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Frances Willard and Lucy Stone.
Since social work cannot be detached from its community setting, this background is essential. Social work could not have made the progress which it has if the last fifty years had not been a period marked by civic development. The 80's mark a transitional period during which extreme individualism gave way to a broadening concept of the individual in a social setting. Moreover, that was a period when the scientific note began to be sounded in social work - a note which has done much to deepen human understanding. A survey of the treatinent of the dependent and delinquent in the seventeenth and eighteenth
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centuries and the early ninteenth century makes the charity of those days seem hard and unyielding as compared with the discrimination used in the treatment of today.
As to method, the last fifty years in social service in Boston have been characterized by the following improvements:
First .- There has developed a close interplay between different branches of effort, beginning with the founding of the Associated Charities, now the . Family Welfare Society, in 1879, and culminating in the Boston Council of Social Agencies, organized in 1921.
Second .-- The development of a technique called "social case work" is notable. The case work method is used universally today by all types of agencies because it has been demonstrated that relief-giving without the plan- ning and supervision of modern case work can be seriously harmful both to the beneficiary and to the community.
Third .- The Central Index marks an important advance over the days when persons went from agency to agency - one agency being in entire ignorance of the relationship of any other agency with a client.
Fourth .- Relief is today based on the budget plan. The time is past when relief was so niggardly that the very conditions which it was hoped to better were allowed to accumulate in intensity because of the inadequate doles that were given. Today, cash grants are based on careful budgeting.
Fifth .- It has come to be understood that there are social causes of poverty as well as personal causes due to bad habits and inefficiency. Therefore, the attack on environmental conditions has been frontal during the last generations.
Sixth .- The old stigma of pauper relief is dying out. There is a deep significance in the change of name from Overseers of the Poor to Overseers of the Public Welfare.
Seventh .- Innocent children are no longer held accountable for the sins of their parents.
Eighth .-- Paupers, insane, criminals, defectives are not today huddled together in almshouses and in institutions. On the contrary, in all lines of treatment the institution sinks into the background, and wherever possible children and adults are kept in their own homes or are boarded out in private homes. Only when absolutely necessary is institutional care provided and, when it is provided, separate institutions are opened to meet different types of need. Moreover, a definite classification of inmates has been brought about. First offenders are not placed with hardened criminals as in days past.
Ninth .- As society has become conscious of the network of circumstances over which the individual has no control, insurance and pension plans have been developed by the state and city. Workingmen's compensation became a state system in July, 1912. The Massachusetts Mothers' Aid Law was passed in 1913. The Old Age Assistance Act was passed in 1930 to go into effect in July, 1931.
In line with this legislation, which aims to safeguard the economic status of individuals, the Massachusetts Savings Bank Insurance Law was passed in 1907, through the influence of Louis D. Brandeis, Justice of the United States
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Supreme Court, when he was a resident of Boston - a far-reaching, constructive measure which enables the citizens of Boston as well as those throughout the state to obtain life insurance policies and annuities at cost.
Not only have the methods used in social work gained in effectiveness and not only has the thought of society approached a more just balance between individual fault and social causes of need, but the last fifty years have witnessed the development of entirely new approaches to social problems. Neighbor- hood work and the club and class method of group organization played almost no part in the social program of ISS0, while the leisure-time movement was just getting under way. Zoning and city planning are distinctly modern efforts. Public improvement and nonpartisan political organizations point to a broaden- ing civic outlook. Public health organizations are also characteristic of the present. Vocational guidance is a contribution of the twentieth century.
Then, in the early nineteen hundreds, the community faced with a shock the number of feeble-minded to be cared for, as well as the increase in cases of mental instability, and, as a result, psychiatry in its various branches sprang to the front. The mental test - the "I. Q."- came to center the attention of the educator and the social worker.
In connection with the progress that has been made in the care of the feeble-minded, the City of Boston as well as the state and nation cannot but pay tribute to Dr. Walter E. Fernald, who served as the superintendent of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-minded, situated in Waltham, from 1887 to 1924, since a large proportion of those admitted have been from Boston. Doctor Fernald, with rare skill and interpretative power, developed a superior system of training at this institution and educated the community to an under- standing of those who are mentally and morally irresponsible. .
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