Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/530

 514 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

original publishing, the most extensive book-distributing business for all publishers by any single house in the United States. In 1880 this house was the most conspicuous among three large book-stores in adjoining buildings on State Street, known to residents of the city, to visitors from the Middle West, and to tourists as "Book-Sellers' Row."

The immense book-distributing business of the McClurg firm was built up in conjunction with, and as an engraftment upon, another line of jobbing. The retail book-sellers of the small towns throughout the West are the druggists, who, in addition to proprietary medicines and drugs, sell a varied line of sundries. Such a retailer would often ask the McClurg company to deliver an order of books to some Chicago house jobbing these sundries, so that shipment could be made in one box. Therefore the firm decided to supply these articles direct. And today, in addition to a Monthly Bulletin of New Books, A. C. McClurg & Co. send out a large annual volume, the cover of which says: Catalogue of Blank Books and Tablets, Stationery, Typewriter Paper and Sup- plies, Hair and Tooth Brushes, Druggists' Sundries, Pocket- Books, Pipes, Pocket Cutlery, etc." More than one floor of their large building is filled with such prosaic supplies.

Directly out of this book-distributing agency, so built up, ramifying to drug-stores and book-stores in all towns of the West, and centered in the McClurg house, there originated a journal of literary criticism the Dial. In 1880 the McClurg firm started this periodical in conjunction with Mr. Francis Fisher Browne, who from its first number until the last of the current volume in 1905 has been in charge of its editorial management. At the time, Mr. Browne, whose work in editing and publishing the Lakeside Monthly had been so notable, was connected with the book-house as literary adviser in its publishing department, which General A. C. McClurg was then personally making special efforts to develop.

Devoted exclusively to literary criticism and information con- concerning new books, the Dial did not and does not make the appeal of literary form direct to the aesthetic interest, although the style of its contents is excellent. Its appeal is to the interest