Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/140

 552 Book Publishers and Publishing factor along the Ohio, the Mississippi, and westward through Texas. Later came the period of rapid and cheap overland shipments and of great publishing houses with a far-flung corps of salesmen and all-pervading methods of advertising; and Cincinnati relatively lost its bright promise, being therein but a type of what, broadly speaking, took place outside of three or four great cities. Perhaps the most illuminative document of this century is the figures of the United States Census giving the total value of book and job printing for 1905. In the nearest mil- lion dollars it runs: New York 44, Chicago 26, Philadelphia 14, St. Louis 8, Boston 7, San Francisco 4, and Cincinnati 4. Unfortunately, as we are concerned primarily with the publication of notable literature, these figures are somewhat misleading but possibly prophetic of the future. Boston, for instance, which found itself in the forties forced once more into leadership through the race of great writers that sprang up in New England, though it lost its primacy to New York in the sixties, yet has in Houghton Mifflin Company the publishing house that issues a larger number of truly great literary works by American authors than any other house in the country; while the firm of Little, Brown and Company holds an honour- able place in the development of our literature. Boston has, too, in D. C. Heath & Co. and in Ginn and Company text -book firms of commanding importance. One of the most prominent publishers of Chicago, writing in the year 191 8 says: "Pub- lishing in the west is attended by many difficulties. The prin- cipal book market is east of the Alleghenies, and the natural source of supply is the eastern cities." So, if from the stand- point of pure literature one should attempt a rearrangement of this table it would probably run relatively, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. St. Louis is a medical book publish- ing centre of importance, and San Francisco has some standing for her finely printed books. Cleveland, Louisville, Springfield (Mass.), St. Paul, and Indianapolis have firms of note. Some of the most striking phases of publication within the last two decades are the increased stress upon juvenile litera- ture, ' the emphasis thrown upon a few best sellers by insistent ' Goodrich says that in 1827 juvenile literature received little consideration from the publishers (vol. ii, pp. 279-80), but he coincides with the writer of The