Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/301

Rh Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft" were written by any person other than Hubert Howe Bancroft is such a contradiction as to startle today the great majority both East and West whose attention have never been directed to the question. To determine the authorship of a work we are wont to consult its title page, and the title pages of these volumes all declare that they are "By Hubert Howe Bancroft." The advertising matter sent out by the Bancroft publishing establishment refers to them as "the writings of Mr. Bancroft," with never a suggestion that any other person wrote a line. The same course was followed in the reviews of these volumes, which at the time of their publication were scattered by the press throughout the length and breadth of the leading countries of Europe, as well as in our land, although here we must remember that book reviews may be but another name for advertising matter prepared by the publisher and inserted at advertising rates. In his Literary Industries, the volume giving an account of his literary activities, Mr. Bancroft refers to himself as the author (Lit. Ind., 361, 661), and speaks of his own writing without a clear reference to that of others (Lit. Ind., 288, 568, 571, 653) in such terms as to give the impression that he was the only writer who prepared the manuscript as it went to the printer. True, he mentions assistants, and we can easily see, as he tells us, that he must have had fifteen or twenty note takers, cataloguers, and other library aids (Lit. Ind., 582) in order to arrange so vast an amount of material. When assistants are mentioned it is usually in words which justify the reader in the inference that these aids are meant (see Central America I, preface, viii; Literary Industries, 584), and that, therefore, the assistants are in no sense authors.

By a careful reading of the Literary Industries, however, we find that there was a class of assistants who are