Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/544

 528 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the advocacy of a cause which brought failure to America. Mr. Taylor says :

Besides our inexperience, the fact that the periodical was published in Chicago and not in New York kept it from gaining a sure foothold.

Mr. Thompson, also, says:

Of course, there was a prejudice against a journal from Chicago; and the labor organizations here made prices of printing higher than in New York. But these magazine failures are not peculiar to Chicago. There has been no greater extinction here than those of Putnam's and the Eclectic in New York.

Nevertheless, the chief reason for the disappearance of America remains the decline of its appeal to the pure literary interest, and the phenomenal persistence and increase in its appeal to interest in one political idea. In forsaking literature to follow the anti- immigration will-o'-the-wisp, America followed the line of extinction taken in Chicago in the earliest period by the Literary Budget, founded in 1852 and transformed in 1855 to the short- lived Native Citizen. It is difficult to make a literary tree grow out of a political platform.

That America in dying was transferred to the Graphic was in line with the developments of periodical publishing at Chcago in the decade following the eighties. The Graphic was an Illustrated weekly of about the same age as America. " With the World's Columbian Exposition coming," said America's editorial valedic- tory, " during the next two years, the Graphic, having the facili- ties, will render valuable service to Chicago."

Other weeklies with metropolitan earmarks springing up in the eighties were those of the smart variety. These contained a melange of clever comment on current events and local society news, verse, and other material of interest for its form of expres- sion. The Rambler, started in 1884, by Reginald De Koven and Harry B. Smith, and carried on until 1886 by Elliott Flower, was the most interesting of these weeklies. It was "A Journal of Men, Manners, and Things." Mr. Flower, in an interview for these papers, said :

We wanted to do for Chicago what Life does for New York. The manager of the Western News Co. said : " Put a New York date line on it, or the West won't take it." We did not do so. But he was right.