Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/830

 8l4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

$3,200 in small amounts, received from all over the United States, had been paid in for capital stock, and pleaded for public subscriptions, not only for the periodical, but also for its stock. However, a file in the Chicago Public Library shows no copies of a date later than the one containing that appeal.

Self-Culture and Progress, both brought out at Chicago in 1895, were two literary magazines of the home-study type, which will be given further mention in the part of the next paper tracing one of the lines of development incidentally influential in leading to the establishment of The World To-Day, the most important of the Chicago magazines of the present decade.

An unusual use of the story form in a periodical with a slight educational bias was made in Historia, a monthly magazine published in Chicago for two years prior to the financial crash of 1893. Accounts from the histories of the leading nations, re- written in romantic style for boys and girls between the ages of twelve and twenty, were printed in this periodical. Using ten noms de plume, Fred B. Cozzens, a young man who as a student at Northwestern University had been specially interested in history, and who had also done some editorial page work for an afternoon daily, performed single-handed all of the duties of contributor, editor, and publisher. There is no doubt that the general interest in history aroused by plans for the exposition commemorating the discovery of America had some influence in leading Mr. Cozzens to undertake Historia. His magazine was illustrated with zinc-etching reproductions of pictures from old histories not copyrighted, and with some sketches by John T. McCutcheon, the cartoonist. At one time Historia had a circu- lation of 8,000 including many subscribers among school chil- dren who used the magazine for supplementary reading. But Mr. Cozzens possessed little capital, although he is now the pro- prietor of a successful type-setting business, and his credit was taken away with the failure of a bank which had backed him in the Historia venture. He turned the magazine over to a mail- order jeweler, who soon got into trouble with the postoffice de- partment by publishing his entire catalogue in the advertising pages of the periodical.