Chapter VI: 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.

The number of these returned to the census was 175; but that must, I think, have been even then much below the truth. Since then it has been much increased. Of two of them, Putnam's and Harper's, the first exclusively original, and the latter about two thirds so, the sale is about two millions of numbers per annum; while of three others, published in Philadelphia, it is about a million. Cheap as are these journals, at twenty-five cents each, the sum total of the price paid for them by the consumers is about $700,000. The quantity of paper required for a single one of them is about 16,000 reams of double medium, being one tenth as much as has recently been given as the consumption of the whole newspaper press of Great Britain and Ireland. Every pursuit in life, and almost every shade of opinion, has its periodical. A single city in Western New York furnishes no less than four agricultural and horticultural journals, one of them published weekly, with a circulation of 15,000, and the others, monthly, with a joint circulation of 25,000. The "Merchants' Magazine," which set the example for the one now published in London, has a circulation of 3,500. The "Bankers' Magazine" also set the example recently followed in England. Medicine and Law have their numerous and well supported journals; and Dental Surgery alone has five, one of which has a circulation of 5,000 copies, while all Europe has but two, and those of very inferior character.[1] North, south, east, and west, the periodical press is collecting the opinions of all our people, while centralization is gradually limiting the expression of opinion, in England, to those who live in and near London. Upon this extensive base of cheap domestic literature rests that portion of the fabric composed of reproduction of foreign books, the quantities of some of which were given in my last. The proportion which these bear to American books has been thus given for the six months ending on the 30th of June last:

Republications 169
Original 522

691

[Footnote 1: It is a remarkable fact that there should be in this
country no less than four Colleges of Dental Surgery, while all Europe
presents not even a single one.]

Of these last, 17 were original translations.

We see, thus, that the proportion of domestic to foreign products is already more than three to one. How the sale of the latter compares with that of the former, will be seen by the following facts in relation to books of almost all sizes, prices, and kinds; some of which have been furnished by the publishers themselves, whilst others are derived from gentlemen connected with the trade whose means of information are such as warrant entire reliance upon their statements.

Of all American authors, those of school-books excepted, there is no one of whose books so many have been circulated as those of Mr. Irving. Prior to the publication of the edition recently issued by Mr. Putnam, the sale had amounted to some hundreds of thousands; and yet of that edition, selling at $1.25 per volume, it has already amounted to 144,000 vols. Of "Uncle Tom," the sale has amounted to 295,000 copies, partly in one, and partly in two volumes, and the total number of volumes amounts probably to about 450,000.

_Price per vol._ _Volumes._

Of the two works of Miss Warner,
Queechy, and the Wide, Wide World, the
price and sale have been. $ 88 104,000

Fern Leaves, by Fanny Fern, in six months. 1 25 45,000

Reveries of a Bachelor, and other books,
by Ike Marvel. 1 25 70,000

Alderbrook, by Fanny Forester, 3 vols. 50 33,000

Northup's Twelve Years a Slave 1 00 20,000

Novels of Mrs. Hentz, in three years 63 93,000

Major Jones' Courtship and Travels 50 31,000

Salad for the Solitary, by a new author,
in five months 1 25 5,000

Headley's Napoleon and his Marshals, Washington
and his Generals, and other works. 1 25 200,000

Stephen's Travels in Egypt and Greece. 87 80,000

" " Yucatan and Central America 2 50 60,000

Kendall's Expedition to Santa Fe 1 25 40,000

Lynch's Expedition to the Dead Sea, 8vo. $3 00 15,000

" " 2mo. 1 25 8,000

Western Scenes 2 50 14,000

Young's Science of Government 1 00 12,000

Seward's Life of John Quincy Adams. 1 00 30,000

Frost's Pictorial History of the World,
3 vols. 2 50 60,000

Sparks' American Biography, 25 vols 75 100,000

Encyclopaedia Americana, 14 vols. 2 00 280,000

Griswold's Poets and Prose Writers
of America, 3 vols. 3 00 21,000

Barnes' Notes on the Gospels, Epistles, &c.,
11 vols. 75 300.000

Aiken's Christian Minstrel, in two years. 62 40,000

Alexander on the Psalms, 3 vols. 1 17 10,000

Buist's Flower Garden Directory 1 25 10,000

Cole on Fruit Trees. 50 18,000

" Diseases of Domestic Animals 50 34,000

Downing's Fruits and Fruit Trees. 50 15,000

" Rural Essays. 3 50 3,000

" Landscape Gardening. 3 50 9,000

" Cottage Residences. 2 00 6,250

" Country Homes. 4 00 3,500

Mahan's Civil Engineering. 3 00 7,500

Leslie's Cookery and Receipt-books. 1 00 96,000

Guyot's Lectures on Earth and Man. 1 00 6,000

Wood and Bache's Medical Dispensatory 5 00 60,000

Dunglison's Medical Writings,
in all 10 vols. 2 50 50,000

Pancoast's Surgery, 4to. 10 00 4,000

Rayer, Ricord, and Moreau's Surgical Works
(translations). 15 00 5,500

Webster's Works, 6 vols. 2 00 46,800

Kent's Commentaries, 4 vols. 3 38 84,000

Next to Chancellor Kent's work comes Greenleaf on Evidence, 3 vols., $16.50; the sale of which has been exceedingly great, but what has been its extent, I cannot say.

Of Blatchford's General Statutes of New York, a local work, price $4.50, the sale has been 3,000; equal to almost 30,000 of a similar work for the United Kingdom.

How great is the sale of Judge Story's books can be judged only from the fact that the copyright now yields, and for years past has yielded, more than $8,000 per annum. Of the sale of Mr. Prescott's works little is certainly known, but it cannot, I understand, have been less than 160,000 volumes. That of Mr. Bancroft's History, has already risen, certainly to 30,000 copies, and I am told it is considerably more; and yet even that is a sale, for such a work, entirely unprecedented.

Of the works of Hawthorne, Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Curtis, Sedgwick, Sigourney, and numerous others, the sale is exceedingly great; but, as not even an approximation to the true amount can be offered, I must leave it to you to judge of it by comparison with those of less popular authors above enumerated. In several of these cases, beautifully illustrated editions have been published, of which large numbers have been sold. Of Mr. Longfellow's volume there have been no less than ten editions. These various facts will probably suffice to satisfy you that this country presents a market for books of almost every description, unparalleled in the world.

In reflecting upon this subject, it is necessary to bear in mind that the monopoly, granted to authors and their families, is for the term of no less than forty-two years, and that in that period the number of persons subjected to it is likely to grow to little short of a hundred millions, with a power of consumption that will probably be ten times greater than now exists. If the Commentaries of Chancellor Kent continue to maintain their present position, as they probably will, may we not reasonably suppose that the demand for them will continue as great, or nearly so, as it is at present, and that the total sale during the period of copyright will reach a quarter of a million of volumes? So, too, of the histories of Bancroft and Prescott, and of other books of permanent character.

Such being the extent of the market for the products of literary labor, we may now inquire into its rewards.

Beginning with the common schools, we find a vast number of young men and young women acting as teachers of others, while qualifying themselves for occupying other places in life. Many of them rise gradually to become teachers in high schools and professors in colleges, while all of them have at hand the newspaper, ready to enable them, if gifted with the power of expressing themselves on paper, to come before the world. The numerous newspapers require editors and contributors, and the amount appropriated to the payment of this class of the community is a very large one. Next come the magazines, many of which pay very liberally. I have now before me a statement from a single publisher, in which he says that to Messrs. Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, and Alston, his price was uniformly $50 for a poetical article, long or short--and his readers know that they were generally very short; in one case only fourteen lines. To numerous others it was from $25 to $40. In one case he has paid $25 per page for prose. To Mr. Cooper he paid $1,800 for a novel, and $1,000 for a series of naval biographies, the author retaining the copyright for separate publication; and in such cases, if the work be good, its appearance in the magazine acts as the best of advertisements. To Mr. James he paid $1,200 for a novel, leaving him also the copyright. For a single number of the journal he has paid to authors $1,500. The total amount paid for original matter by two magazines--the selling price of which is $3 per annum--in ten years, has exceeded $130,000, giving an average of $13,000 per annum. The Messrs. Harper inform me that the expenditure for literary and artistic labor required for their magazine is $2,000 per month, or $24,000 a year.

Passing upwards, we reach the producers of books, and here we find rewards not, I believe, to be paralleled elsewhere. Mr. Irving stands, I imagine, at the head of living authors for the amount received for his books. The sums paid to the renowned Peter Parley must have been enormously great, but what has been their extent I have no means of ascertaining. Mr. Mitchell, the geographer, has realized a handsome fortune from his schoolbooks. Professor Davies is understood to have received more than $50,000 from the series published by him. The Abbotts, Emerson, and numerous other authors engaged in the preparation of books for young persons and schools, are largely paid. Professor Anthon, we are informed, has received more than $60,000 for his series of classics. The French series of Mr. Bolmar has yielded him upwards of $20,000. The school geography of Mr. Morse is stated to have yielded more than $20,000 to the author. A single medical book, of one 8vo. volume, is understood to have produced its authors $60,000, and a series of medical books has given to its author probably $30,000. Mr. Downing's receipts from his books have been very large. The two works of Miss Warner must have already yielded her from $12,000 to $15,000, and perhaps much more. Mr. Headley is stated to have received about $40,000; and the few books of Ike Marvel have yielded him about $20,000; a single one, "The Reveries of a Bachelor," produced more than $4,000 in the first six months. Mrs. Stowe has been very largely paid. Miss Leslie's Cookery and Receipt books have paid her $12,000. Dr. Barnes is stated to have received more than $30,000 for the copyright of his religious works. Fanny Fern has probably received not less than $6,000 for the 12mo. volume published but six months since. Mr. Prescott was stated, several years since, to have then received $90,000 from his books, and I have never seen it contradicted. According to the rate of compensation generally understood to be received by Mr. Bancroft, the present sale of each volume of his yields him more than $15,000, and he has the long period of forty-two years for future sale. Judge Story died, as has been stated, in the receipt of more than $8,000 per annum; and the amount has not, as it is understood, diminished. Mr. Webster's works, in three years, can scarcely have paid less than $25,000. Kent's Commentaries are understood to have yielded to their author and his heirs more than $120,000, and if we add to this for the remainder of the period only one half of this sum, we shall obtain $180,000, or $45,000 as the compensation for a single 8vo. volume, a reward for literary labor unexampled in history. What has been the amount received by Professor Greenleaf I cannot learn, but his work stands second only, in the legal line, to that of Chancellor Kent. The price paid for Webster's 8vo. Dictionary is understood to be fifty cents per copy; and if so, with a sale of 250,000, it must already have reached $125,000. If now to this we add the quarto, at only a dollar a copy, we shall have a sum approaching to, and perhaps exceeding, $180,000; more, probably, than has been paid for all the dictionaries of Europe in the same period of time. What have been the prices paid to Messrs. Hawthorne, Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Curtis, and numerous others, I cannot say; but it is well known that they have been very large. It is not, however, only the few who are liberally paid; all are so who manifest any ability, and here it is that we find the effect of the decentralizing system of this country as compared with the centralizing one of Great Britain. There Mr. Macaulay is largely paid for his Essays, while men of almost equal ability can scarcely obtain the means of support. Dickens is a literary Croesus, and Tom Hood dies leaving his family in hopeless poverty. Such is not here the case. Any manifestation of ability is sure to produce claimants for the publication of books. No sooner had the story of "Hot Corn" appeared in "The Tribune," than a dozen booksellers were applicants to the author for a book. The competition is here for the _purchase_ of the privilege of printing, and this competition is not confined to the publishers of a single city, as is the case in Britain. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and even Auburn and Cincinnati, present numerous publishers, all anxious to secure the works of writers of ability, in any department of literature; and were it possible to present a complete list of our well-paid authors, its extent could not fail to surprise you greatly, as the very few facts that have come to my knowledge in reference to some of the lesser stars of the literary world have done by me. You will observe that I have confined myself to the question of demand for books and compensation to their authors, without reference to that of the ability displayed in their preparation. That we may have good books, all that is required is that we make a large market for them, which is done here to an extent elsewhere unknown.

Forty years since, the question was asked by the "Edinburgh Review," Who reads an American book? Judging from the facts here given, may we not reasonably suppose that the time is fast approaching, when the question will be asked, Who does not read American books?

Forty years since, had we asked where were the _homes of American authors_, we should generally have been referred to very humble houses in our cities. Those who now inquire for them will find their answer in the beautiful volume lately published by Messrs. Putnam and Co., the precursor of others destined to show the literary men of this country enjoying residences as agreeable as any that had been occupied by such men in any part of the world; and in almost every case, those homes have been due to the profits of the pen. Less than half a century since, the race of literary men was scarcely known in the country, and yet the amount now paid for literary labor is greater than in Great Britain and France combined, and will probably be, in twenty years more, greater than in all the world beside. With the increase of number, there has been a corresponding increase in the consideration in which they are held; and the respect with which even unknown authors are treated, when compared with the disrespect manifested in England towards such men, will be obvious to all familiar with the management of the journals of that country who read the following in one of our principal periodicals:--

"The editor of Putnam's Monthly will give to every article forwarded for insertion in the Magazine a careful examination, and, when requested to do so, will return the MS. if not accepted."

Here, the competition is among the publishers to _buy_ the products of literary labor, whereas, abroad, the competition is to _sell_ them, and therefore is the treatment of our authors, even when unknown, so different. Long may it continue to be so!

Such having been the result of half a century, during which we have had to lay the foundation of the system that has furnished so vast a body of readers, what may not be expected in the next half century, during which the population will increase to a hundred millions, with a power to consume the products of literary labor growing many times faster than the growth of numbers? If this country is properly termed "the paradise of women," may it not be as correctly denominated the paradise of authors, and should they not be content to dwell in it as their predecessors have done? Is it wise in them to seek a change? Their best friends would, I think, unite with me in advising that it is not. Should they succeed in obtaining what they now desire, the day will, as I think, come, when they will be satisfied that their real friends had been, those who opposed the confirmation of the treaty now before the Senate.