Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/520

 504 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

in a compilation of American periodicals for the "ephemeral intellectual department" of the Vienna exposition in 1873, that in general "literary enterprises are ephemeral" a generalization also brought out by the census of 1870. Statistics compiled in the course of study for these papers show that eight of the forty-seven periodicals of a literary character started in Chicago after the fire and before 1880 lived for more than fifteen years, and that four started in that period are extant. This is all the. more remarakable when it is pointed out that, as the result of the financial panic of 1873, a dozen periodicals died. But in 1876, in Rowell's list prepared for the national Centennial Expo- sition, there were titles of twenty literary Chicago periodicals. Following the panic there was a new spurt of energy injected into the business activity which followed the fire.

In the establishment of the profitable, low-grade story periodicals the indirect influence of world-wide assistance to the burned-out city has been traced. Its more direct effects, through enlarging the point of view of Chicago editors, may be found in the journals and periodicals of a higher literary order during the fire decade.

The most notable direct aid from the Old World to the literary interests of Chicago came in a gift from England, a contribution which was the beginning of the Chicago Public Library. In the fire the semi-public libraries were destroyed, and the people lost the books of their homes. Moved by the thought of such a loss, Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown at Oxford, led his countrymen in collecting a large library of fiction and general works. This was sent to Chicago and accepted gladly, the whole community being deeply impressed by an act of such refined sympathy.

Dr. W. F. Poole, a pioneer in the public-library movement, was called as librarian. And in October, 1874, with the bookwise doctor as editor, W. B. Kern, Cooke & Co., booksellers and pub- lishers, brought out a three-column folio entitled the Owl, and subtitled "A Literary Monthly." In No. I, to be found in a file at the Newberry Library, there appeared a dialogue, in which the Public said to the Owl: "Qui vive?" The Owl gave the