The Press: Harper’s Century

By 1850, New York’s Harper brothers—James, John, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher —had made a name for themselves* in the book-publishing business, still had some idle press time on their hands. To keep presses and employees profitably busy they started Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, a sort of undigested Reader’s Digest of fiction of the day, bought the galley proofs of the current works of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope and other English greats, and ran them as serials. Overnight, Harper’s became a success. Literary Americans became such fans of the magazine, not only for its fiction but for its factual articles on U.S. life, that Thoreau peevishly asked: “Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers to select our reading?”

Last week, in a fat, 300-page centennial issue, Harper’s published a selection of the reading and illustrations that had made it famed. (It also ran some of the early testimonial ads that had helped pay the way, e.g., “Nicholas II, Czar of Russia, rides a Dayton Bicycle.”) The idea of the issue, said Editor in Chief Frederick Lewis (Only Yesterday) Allen, was “to do an historical survey without making it look like an historical survey.” Thanks to a careful culling of yellowed Harper’s files and a series of essays on the U.S. scene through the century by Bernard DeVoto, Gerald Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt, Editor Allen achieved a nostalgic, perceptive review of the last 100 years that was sometimes as sharp and exciting as a newsreel. He was so well pleased with it that he ran off 75,000 copies more than Harper’s normal press run of 190,000; the U.S. State Department bought 10,000 for distribution abroad.

Drinking & Gambling. In some respects, the world seemed to have changed little in the last 100 years. Said Harper’s in 1851: “It is supposed that in case of war Russia is able to send into the field not less than 800,000 men. This immense disposable force, absolutely under the control of the Emperor, renders the power of Russia imminently dangerous to the peace of Europe.” At home Harper’s kept its editorial finger on the pulse of a lively, swiftly changing nation. It reported that in San Francisco in 1855, “the places of universal resort were the Drinking Saloon and Gambling House.” Harper’s interiewed “Wild Bill” Hickok, who was said to have killed at least 20 men in gunfights, and recorded his feelings on such matters:

‘As ter killing other men, I never thought much about it. The most of the men I lave killed it was one or t’other of us, and at such times you don’t stop to think, and what’s the use after it’s all over?”

Harper’s occasionally took note of some of the social evils of the growing nation. However, as Editor Allen points out in his review of Harper’s own century, the magazine then had “the tone of an aristocrat reminding other aristocrats of the regrettable conditions among the unfortunate if picturesque members of the lower orders.” Thus an article in 1873, entitled The Little Laborers of New York City,” unemotionally reported that of the 100,000 children working in the factories many were permitted “to take home enough material to do extra work, after the regular ten-hour day, in order to earn more than the standard $3 per week.” But Harper’s could wax indignant about the plight of Vassar girls who had no clothes closets in their dormitory, and for whom Matthew Vassar had prescribed “two nails on the walls of their rooms, one for their school dress and one for their best dress.”

Whiz & Whir. Harper’s, like everyone else, was amazed that in the new Pullman car “you converse as you would in your parlor at home.” By 1896, it somewhat sadly admitted that progress and speed were everywhere and “the hum of the trolley is in the air … we can only have peace by moving on with the whirring, whizzing world.”

But Harper’s barely kept up with the whizzing journalistic world. In the depression of the 1890s, it almost went under. Only in the nick of time did J. P. Morgan bail it out with fresh funds. In the mid-’20s, the emphasis on illustration and fiction that had won Harper’s its fame was jettisoned as Harper’s changed with the changing times. The magazine began to concentrate on current affairs.

Editor Allen, the sixth man to hold the post, thinks that Harper’s present circulation (159,357) is adequate, though he frankly wishes he “had the wit to get more without doing anything I consider unworthy of the magazine.” With or without wit, Editor Allen can still attract top-notch writers for bottom-drawer rates. The probable reason, says Allen, is that “we deliberately edit for a minority of educated . . . people . . . the real leaders of America. We do not [try to] appeal to the millions of people who do not really know how to read or care to make the effort.”

* James also went into politics, was mayor from 1844 to 1845, set up New York’s first uniformed police force. From the officers’ copper buttons came the slang term “cops.”