Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/533

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO $ 1 7

which made the dot on the map marked "Chicago" a metro- politan center.

The distributing of people as well as packages by the railway systems centering here brought the Arkansaw Traveler and Opie Read, who had founded this periodical at Little Rock in 1882, to Chicago in 1887. It might appear that the name Arkansaw Traveler was given in a punning mood, because its contents were prepared for the amusement of railway travelers. But it was taken from a tune made familiar in Arkansas by a local character, one "Sandy" Faulkner, who as a candidate for the legislature had gone about the state playing a "fiddle" and reciting a monologue. The contents of the paper were of a humorous char- acter sketches and jokes, drawn chiefly from the lives of southern dialect characters, with whom Mr. Read had made him- self familiar when local editor of the Little Rock Gazette. While during the early eighties the comic papers of New York were, according to Frederick Hudson, the authority on American jour- nalism, first becoming successful, the Arkansaw Traveler, still at Little Rock, leaped into popularity, first in the Southwest and then through the North, attaining a circulation of 85,000 in its second year. The year 1887, in which the headquarters of the Arkansaw Traveler were removed to Chicago, was one in which the last two of the seven lines of railroad coming into Chicago in the eighties were opened. Mr. Read, in an interview given to contribute material for these papers, said :

Chicago had become the great railway center. Our paper was sold chiefly on railway trains. We moved to Chicago so as to be in position for reaching the largest number of railway passengers most easily. The mailing facilities of Chicago, as the central point in a spider's web of railways, also led us here. In those days schoolboys were not used extensively for the sale of weekly papers. Besides making sales on the trains through the news companies, we had a subscription list. For years Chicago had been a great point for the sale of subscription books. For our weekly of general circulation the business manager, P. D. Benham, my brother-in-law, found that it was not possible to get advertising in the same proportion to the number of subscribers as with a local newspaper. The advertising patronage came from the general agencies, and in those days magazine advertising was not done so generally as it is today. We counted on sales and subscriptions.

For five years after its migration to the western railway