Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/523

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 507

a wide following. This paper is still published, although devoted almost exclusively to society. In its first years. . however, with John M. Dandy and G. M. McConnell doing editorial work in addition to that of Mr. Glover, the paper was distinguished for essays and other literary efforts of excellent quality. Among the quasi-literary journals of Chicago it was, in its day, one of the most influential.

More important, however, as an index of an expanding point of view, was the advent of a periodical founded in 1873, by a group of liberal, literary preachers Professor David Swing, Rev. Robert Collyer, Dr. Hiram A. Thomas, and others. To symbolize their getting together, they named the periodical the Alliance. It contained a faint religious dye. But it was first of all colored with an effort at literary expression, chiefly in the essay form. The denominational religious press in Chicago, although it has been most successful and has been marked by the incidental use of material appealing to the literary interest, is not a subject for treatment here. In a more general account of the aesthetic interests of Chicago such religious-literary periodicals should be given attention, because the purely religious desires and the most purely aesthetic desires are closely allied. But the main features of the denominational papers are the items of church news. The Alliance, however, was primarily literary so distinctly literary that, at one time, Mr. Francis F. Browne, in the latter part of the decade, con- sented to be its managing editor. At the inception of the Alliance the literary clergymen attempted to settle their editorial problems in meetings as a board of editors. This proved fatal to any progress. Soon Professor Swing became the editor-in- chief and chief contributor. His weekly essay was one of the literary treats of the period, and was later continued when the Alliance was merged with the Weekly Magazine in 1882. According to the testimony of those concerned, the Alliance lost its identity from deliberate wrecking by its business manager, who is alleged to have taken advantage of the allied ministers' lack of business experience.

A western magazine from the newer West moved east to