A History of the McGuffey Readers Part 5

The revised edition of the McGuffey Readers, having no author's name on the t.i.tle page, designed and compiled under the direction of the publishers, but retaining the moral excellences and literary qualities that had been affixed to the series from its origin, attained the largest sales that have as yet been accorded by the public to a single series of books. Of the Sixth Reader, which must have the least sale, over a million copies have been distributed, as shown by the edition number. Of the First Reader more than eight million copies have been used.

[Other Compet.i.tors]

At no time in the history of these readers have they been without formidable compet.i.tion. Pickett's Readers were published in Cincinnati as early as 1832. Albert Pickett was at one time president of the College of Teachers and his books were published by John W. Pickett, who was probably his brother. Later some additional books were prepared by John W. Pickett, M.D., LL.D., and published by U.P. James in 1841, and by J. Earnst in 1845. These readers were vigorously pushed into the market for several years, but in the end were unsuccessful.

The Goodrich Readers published by Morton & Griswold in Louisville, Ky., were perhaps the most constant compet.i.tors with the McGuffey Readers in the early years throughout the states of the Mississippi Valley. These were prepared by S.G. Goodrich, the author of the then popular "Peter Parley Tales." The readers were originally published in Boston and some copies bear the imprint of Otis, Broaders & Co. They were first copyrighted in 1839 and were frequently revised. They finally became the property of the Louisville publisher. Mr. Smith and Mr. Morton kept up a most vigorous schoolbook war, especially in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky in the years from 1845 to 1860. Cobb's Readers, copyrighted in 1845, were published for some time in Cincinnati by B. Davenport. These were once widely introduced but soon went out of use.

It was very much the custom in those early days, before the railroads made transportation quick and cheap for Eastern publishers to furnish a set of plates to some enterprising bookseller in the West or to print an edition for him with his imprint.

Ebenezer Porter's Rhetorical Reader copyrighted in 1835 was sold largely in the western market by William H. Moore, of Cincinnati, and in 1848 the books bore his imprint. Thus there was ample compet.i.tion for the market even at this early date. The Pickett Readers, Cobb Readers, Goodrich Readers, and even the excellent Rhetorical Reader of Ebenezer Porter were all swept out of the schools by the superior qualities of the McGuffey Readers and the persistent energies of their publishers.

[Humorous Advertising]

In these books the publishers found s.p.a.ce for a little advertising of their wares. In Pickett's Readers there is printed conspicuously at the top of a page a warm commendation of Pickett's Readers, written in 1835 by William H. McGuffey, Professor at Miami University, in which he "considers them superior to any other works I have seen." That was before he made his own readers. Mr. Smith responded by publishing a strong commendation of one of his books signed by Mr. Albert Pickett.

Life is seldom devoid of the lesser amenities.

The Willson Readers, published by the Harper Brothers, were vigorously pushed into the schools of Ohio and Indiana about 1867. The first supply was usually sold to the school authorities by agents who operated on the commission plan. Thus the agents had an interest in the introduction sales, but cared nothing about the continuance of sales in after years.

Booksellers, meanwhile, kept the McGuffey Readers in stock, and whenever new readers were desired these were easily obtained. In a few years the Willson Readers were out of the schools. Of course, there was no lack of traveling agents and of circulars which freely criticised these Willson Readers, which were constructed to teach not only reading but science.

After a short time the children wearied of reading about bugs and beetles they had never seen and gladly welcomed the books that had a single aim.

[Enduring Qualities]

In the eyes of a publisher a good schoolbook is one that can be readily introduced and one that will stay when it is put in use. The officials who adopt a schoolbook are not the users of the book. They are adults long past the school age. Cases have been known when in important adoptions the majority of the adopting board had not seen the inside of a school room for twenty-five years. Of course such men are far behind the schools. They are governed by their own past experience. When the teachers are allowed to have a voice in the way of advice, the real needs of the pupils obtain more consideration. But the final real judge of the merits of a schoolbook is the boy or girl who uses it. If the book is truly pedagogical, adjusted in every part to the average mental development of the child, it becomes a valuable tool in the school room.

If on the other hand it is a mere collection of novelties such as catch the eye of inexpert judges and impress merely the imagination, the books may be introduced; but they won't stay.

[Child Nature]

The McGuffey Readers had staying qualities. Teachers often became so familiar with their contents that they needed no book in their hands to correct the work, but to each child the contents of the book were new and fresh. It is the fashion of the present day to exalt the new at the expense of the old. But the child of today is very much such as Socrates and Plato studied in Greece. The development of the human mind may be more generally understood than it was then; but it may be doubted whether the ma.s.s of teachers are today wiser in the results of child-study than were the philosophers of ancient days. Child nature remains the same. At a given stage in his upward progress, he is interested in much the same things. He is led to think for himself in much the same way, and the whole end and aim of education is to lead toward self activity. The readers that deal simply with facts--information readers--may lodge in the minds of children some sc.r.a.ps of encyclopedic information which may in future life become useful. But the readers that rouse the moral sentiments, that touch the imagination, that elevate and establish character by selections chosen from the wisest writers in English in all the centuries that have pa.s.sed since our language a.s.sumed a comparatively fixed literary form, have a much more valuable function to perform. Character is more valuable than knowledge and a taste for pure and enn.o.bling literature is a safeguard for the young that cannot be safely ignored.

The success of the McGuffey Readers was due primarily to their adaptation to the general demand of the schools and secondarily to the energy and skill of their publishers.

[Moral Teaching]

The books in their first form were strongly religious in their teaching without being denominational. If a selection taught a moral lesson this was stated in formal words at the close. The pill was not sugared. Thus at the close of a lesson narrating the results of disobedience, the three little girls a.s.sembled and "they were talking how happy it made them to keep the Fifth Commandment." There was in the books much direct teaching of moral principles, with "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not."

In the later revisions this gradually disappeared. The moral teaching was less direct but more effective. The pupil was left to make his own deduction and the formal "haec fabula docet" was omitted. The author and the publishers were fully justified in their firm belief that the American people are a moral people and that they have a strong desire that their children be taught to become brave, patriotic, honest, self-reliant, temperate, and virtuous citizens.

In some of these books the retail price is printed. In 1844 the retail price of the First Reader was twelve and a half cents. It contained 108 pages. In the same year, the Second Reader of 216 pages was priced at 25 cents. The Fourth Reader cost 75 cents, and contained 336 pages.

These prices were in a market when the day's wage of a laboring man was only fifty cents. Relatively to the cost of other articles, schoolbooks were not nearly so cheap as they are now.

[Copyright Files]

When Truman & Smith began publishing, the copyright law required the deposit of t.i.tles and copies of the several books in the office of the Clerk of the District Court. At first such deposits were made in Columbus, Ohio, but later in Cincinnati. When Congress organized the Copyright Bureau in Washington, the several clerks were required to send to the Library of Congress all the sample copies deposited; but these had been carelessly kept and many were lost. A duplicate set was for years required to be sent to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution in Washington.

These were also pa.s.sed into the custody of the Librarian of Congress; but this collection had been carelessly preserved and the files of the McGuffey Readers at Washington are now quite defective for the earliest issues. The Library seems to have no copy of any number of the first edition except possibly the Second and Fourth. The copy of the Second was deposited December 12, 1836. The Fourth bears date of July, 1837.

All the other early copies found in that library are of later dates and are "Revised and Improved."

[Early Engravings]

It may be well to indicate in a general way the progress that has been made in ill.u.s.trating schoolbooks. The first editions of the McGuffey Readers as issued in 1836 and 1837 did not contain a single original engraving. All seem to have been copied from English books. The nice little boys wear round-about jackets with wide, white ruffled collars at the neck. The proper little girls have scoop bonnets and conspicuous pantalets. Most of the men wear knee breeches. The houses shown have the thatched roofs of English cottages. In one picture a boy has a regular cricket bat. Other schoolbooks of that date show similar appropriations of English engravings; but even at that time there were a few wood engravers in America. When the second general revision was made in 1843 some original ill.u.s.trations appeared and in the edition of 1853 notice was given on the t.i.tle page that the engravings were copyright property that must not be used by others.

As pictures are closely studied by children, some of the users of these early books may remember the cut showing vividly the dangers of "whale catching." Two boats are thrown high in the air by one sweep of the animal's tail and one seaman is shown head downward still in the boat.

Another represented Jonah being cast overboard from the ship toward the whale below whose mouth is manifestly large enough to accommodate Jonah.

But the engravings in this edition of 1853 had no considerable artistic quality and they were very coa.r.s.ely engraved. In 1863 came the first employment of a genuine artist in wood engraving. This was Mr. E.J.

Whitney who had made a reputation by work done for New York publishers.

His engravings were to take the place of some then in the books and their sizes were precisely determined. The drawings were most carefully made by Mr. Herrick with pencil on the whitened boxwood blocks, and sent to the publisher for examination. These, when approved, were returned to the engraver who followed precisely the lines of the drawing. When the engraving was finished, a carefully rubbed proof on India paper was sent to the publisher. If this was satisfactory, the block was delivered and from it an electrotype was made for printing. The block itself was preserved as an original. Mr. Whitney's work was thoroughly good. He was a wood engraver of the old school.

[New Processes]

When the revision of 1878 was decided on, the publishers of the McGuffey Readers realized that much improvement must be made in the ill.u.s.trations. About this time the magazines were placing great stress upon pictorial work and a new school of engravers came into existence.

The wood engravers had already departed from the painful reproduction of each line of a pencil drawing and had become skilled in representing tints of light and shade if placed on the whitened block with a brush.

This gave greater freedom of interpretation to the engraver. The next step was to have the drawing made large and reproduced on the block by photography. By this method most of the engravings were made for the edition of 1878. Care was taken to employ artists of reputation and the engravings were usually signed by the artist and by the engraver.

Before the last edition came out in 1901, photo-engraving had nearly supplanted wood engraving. By this process the artist's drawing with the brush is reproduced in fine tints which, when well engraved and carefully printed, produce effective results. Pen and ink drawings are also reproduced in exact facsimile. By this process the hand work of the engraver is nearly eliminated. The blocks are sometimes retouched to produce effects not attained by the process work. The skill of the artist in making the drawing thus becomes all important.

[Later Inventions]

The introduction of color work in the schoolbooks intended for young children resulted from the invention of the three-color plates. From nature, or from a colored painting, three photographs are taken--one excluding all but the yellow rays of light, one for the red rays, and one for the blue. From these photographs three tint blocks are made which to the eye in many cases look exactly alike. From one of these an impression is made with yellow ink, exactly over this the red plate prints with red ink and this is followed by an impression from the blue plate. If the effects of the color screens of the camera are exactly reproduced by the printer's inks and with exactly the right amount of ink, the result is wonderfully satisfactory.

What are the qualities in these McGuffey Eclectic Readers that won for them through three-quarters of a century such wide and constant use?

[Character Building]

The best answer to this question may be drawn from the many newspaper articles which appeared in Western and Southern papers after the death of one of the authors. There is general recognition on the part of the writers of these articles that while the books served well their purpose of teaching the art of reading, their greatest value consisted in the choice of masterpieces in literature which by their contents taught morality, and patriotism and by their beauty served as a gateway to pure literature. One editor, who used these books in his school career, said, "Thousands of men and women owe their wholesome views of life, as well as whatever success they may have attained to the wholesome maxims and precepts found on every page of these valuable books. The seed they scattered has yielded a million-fold. All honor to the name and memory of this excellent and useful man."

[What Const.i.tutes Real Value]

One of the wise men of the olden time cared not who wrote the laws if he might write their songs. Among a people devoid of books the folk-songs are early lodged firmly in the mind of every child. They influence his whole life. The modern schoolbooks--particularly the readers--furnish the basis of the moral and intellectual training of the youth in every community. The McGuffey Readers, from their own peculiar inherent qualities, retained their hold upon the schools until in some states laws were pa.s.sed which in their operation caused schoolbooks to be regarded as commodities estimated almost solely upon the cost of paper, printing and binding. The value of these material things can easily be ascertained and compared; but unless the print carries the lessons that help to form a life the paper is wasted and the pupil's most valuable time is misspent. The teaching power of a schoolbook cannot be weighed in the grocer's scales nor measured with a pint cup. In the field open to free and constant compet.i.tion, the books best suited to the wants of each community will in the end succeed. It was under such conditions that the McGuffey Readers won and held their place in the schools.