Notes to Introduction to The Youth's Companion
An example of an article from 1827 is "Filial Duties," which begins:
"Last week, we said a few words to our youthful readers in regard to the duties of
children to their parents. But we proceeded no farther than to describe the spirit
or disposition of mind which belongs to them, and from which all actions and
words of filial obedience should proceed. In this paper we propose to assign reasons,
why children should feel thus; why they should love and reverence their
parents" (rptd. in Thompson 1116). The reasons, in brief, are as follows:
"Because of their age and character"; "Because your parents love you";
"Because the peace of families depends upon it"; and "God requires it"
(rptd. in Thompson 1116-1117).
In her essay entitled "The First 'Youth's Companion,'" Mary A.W. Davis relates the lengths to which she and her sister went to raise the money for the subscription and to arrange for the magazine's delivery. Her essay's closing paragraph reveals both to what extent the paper had changed and the keen appreciation that she had for the early issues:
When I see the paper in the hands of my grandchildren, with its polished covers, so smooth and grateful to the touch, its interesting tales, its beautiful illustrations, and its many instructive lessons, I wonder if they feel a tithe of the satisfaction with which our young fingers pressed that little two-leaved sheet, the first Youth's Companion. (September 8, 1892, p. 447)
Such delight was not constrained to the Companion, either. The market seemed ready for children's periodicals in general, as evidenced by the public joy expressed by those who waited for Lydia Maria Child's Juvenile Miscellany. Caroline Karcher reprints Caroline Healey Dall's recollection of this periodical's regular arrival:
'The children sat on the stone steps of their house doors all the way up and down
Chestnut Street in Boston, waiting for the carrier,' recalled Dall. 'He used to cross the
street, going from door to door in a zigzag fashion; and the fortunate possessor of the
first copy found a crowd of little ones hanging over her shoulder from the steps above . .
. . How forlorn we were if the carrier was late!' (Caroline Healey Dall, Unitarian
Review, June 1883, 525-26, qtd. in Karcher 91. Karcher's ellipses).
According to Richard D. Cutts's Index to the Youth's Companion, fourteen
different Dickinson poems were published during a period that began July 16, 1991, and
ended January 20, 1998 (288). He lists the nine poems that we include as being original
publications. As our chronology
shows, however, some of those poems actually were printed first elsewhere. Our project
eventually will include the other poems that Cutts lists and one that Cutts does not.
The reasons that follow are a mixture of past work done by others and our own
observations. Frank Luther Mott offers three reasons for the magazine's popularity:
premiums, serials for youth, and whole family appeal (II 268). Two of the three reasons
Mott offers for the magazine's success are connected specifically to our own focus on the
influence of marketing strategies. Although the Companion eventually attracted
quality writing to its pages, "high quality" is usually a tag reserved for St.
Nicholas, a competitor of the Companion's, with a much smaller circulation
and a shorter life span. St. Nicholas's parent magazine, Our Young Folks,
is generally seen as a leader in the innovations that took place in the area of children's
literature.
The Companion has received attention as a reflector of the culture of the day by many; R. Gordon Kelly went beyond this idea in his important dissertation "Mother Was a Lady" (1971) by seeing it also as serving a "social function" (2; see also his book Mother Was a Lady [1974]). This idea, that the Companion asserted itself upon that culture as well as reflecting it, deserves further attention. We came across an example of such action by the Companion in its involvement with Columbus Day. In response to a Presidential proclamation that Columbus Day be celebrated, a representative from the Companion chaired a committee that "prepare[d] an Official Programme of exercises for the Day, uniform for every school" (September 8, 1892, p. 446). The Companion not only printed the program (September 8, 1892, pp. 446-447), it also offered, "as its special gift, the Original Poems and the Address which are to be rendered on the occasion" (446). The "special notice" on the program designates the Companion as the distributor of the program:
"This Official Programme, printed on a four-page sheet, including the songs and the President's Proclamation, will be supplied by 'The Youth's Companion' at $1.00 per hundred. The songs entire should be in the hands of all the audience. With every order will be sent single copies of the Ode and the Address; also a four-page sheet containing suggestions on 'How to Observe Columbus Day.' An abbreviated and simplified form of the Address will be supplied for Primary Schools." (446)
The September 29, 1892, issue offered further urging and instructions for
celebration: two
separate ads offer schools suggestions about how to raise money for a
U.S. flag; one of them also offers "to send free to any address in America the
Official Programme of the National School Celebration . . ." (481). John Baer writes
of the Companion's involvement with this holiday: "Francis Bellamy was
probably correct when he claimed that the Companion's campaign in 1892 to promote
the National public School Celebration for Columbus Day was the first national campaign to
combine modern public relations and publicity techniques with national advertising"
(Baer). From The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial History, 1892-1992. <http://www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/pdgech2.htm>
"An Illustrated Family Paper".
Scholars often have cited the Companion's tag "For all the
family" as evidence of the paper's broader audience. Cutts points out, however, that
this "slogan" did not appear until 1903 but that "[i]n 1865 a regular
announcement on the back page of each issue of The Youth's Companion proclaimed
editorial policy: 'Youth's Companion. A family paper, devoted to piety, morality,
brotherly love--no sectarianism, no controversy'" (vi-vii). Our own examination of
the paper revealed instead the existence of the descriptor "An Illustrated Family
Paper," which appeared in the issues that fall in the later 1890s. Issues from the
early 1890s do not include this tag; the Companion instead calls itself
"an illustrated weekly paper."
David L. Greene represents a dissenting voice in his opinion that the Companion
billing itself as a family paper was essentially a marketing technique to cover up the
fact that it was still a children's magazine (511). He does not explain, however, the
elements of the magazine that directly address themselves to an older audience, nor does
he explain why, once readers saw beyond this marketing scheme, they would keep coming
back.
weekly medical column.
C.A. Stephens apparently obtained a medical degree so he could write this column (Cutts ix). Example.
Cutts notes that this label was dropped after 1894 in exchange for the policy of
indicating original contributions by "printing authors' names in small caps"
(xix). As Dickinson's case illustrates, the tag could be deceptive: her poems were by no
means written specifically "For the Companion"--they were instead
submitted after her death by Mabel Loomis Todd, as related in the transmission histories we offer.
While Eaton asserts that the Companion successfully adhered to this
resolution, she tellingly does not comment on another of the Companion's
"self-imposed restrictions": "to 'exile death from its pages'"
(284-285). Perusal of the first issue of the Companion shows ample evidence of
writing on death, and Katharine C. Busch's M.A. thesis, An Analysis of the Youth's
Companion: 1827-1929, offers evidence to the contrary that surfaces from her
rudimentary survey of the periodical.
the guise of objective reporting.
The appearance of objectivity is thin in the case of some articles about currency
"experiments" ("Gold Exports," September 29, 1892, p. 481 and
"Troubles about Money," May 1893, 252) and futures trading ("The
Anti-Option Bill," September 8, 1892, p. 444). In the case of the latter article, any
attempt to present "the anti-option bill" as simply "[o]ne of the most
exciting debates that took place during the recent session of Congress" falls flat.
The author explains that "there are many explanations" for the
"disappointing" prices from the previous year's wheat prices, "[b]ut the
farmers conceived the idea that the decline was caused by the selling of 'futures' in the
produce exchanges" (444). Setting up the farmers' position as something conceived
rather than something that is ("there are many explanations")
offers a less-than-subtle though indirect commentary on the Companion's own
position in the debate.
See Ellen Gruber Garvey's recent The Adman in the Parlor (1996) for an
outstanding analysis of the field of advertising during the turn of the century. Garvey
says little specifically about The Youth's Companion but her work is especially
pertinent to our own in its support of our independently-reached conclusion that the
boundaries between "advertising" and "content" are thin. "Any
insistence on an editorial/advertising split," Garvey writes, "distorts the
experience of actual magazine readers, who took in the magazine as a whole . . . . we find
advertisers learning from fiction writers, while fiction writers define themselves both
within and against advertising" (4). Garvey's book is also useful to introduce here
as a reminder that The Youth's Companion's advertising pages are part of a larger
phenomenon.
Such perspective is useful to keep in mind to temper the horror that might be felt
by the observation that Katharine Busch makes about the decline in quality of the Companion
after it merged with The American Boy in 1929: "The little space devoted to
reader participation was characterized by commercialism; e.g., essay contest
on the subject 'The Advertisement I like Best in the January Issue and Why'" (60). In
fact, such contests were not simply an extension of the Companion's own
commercialism or simply evidence of its decline. Garvey shows the contrary in her devotion
of an entire chapter to the contest craze ("Training the Reader's Attention:
Advertising Contest," pp. 51-79). One area where The Youth's Companion
apparently was ahead of its contemporaries, however, was in its printing of advertising
and "contents" on the same page. Space-sharing of this kind did not take place
on a larger scale until the 1910s, according to Garvey (4).
We echo here language used in the warning attached to an ad for Pearline:
"Beware," "send it back," the ad calls out--"Peddlers and some
unscrupulous grocers will tell you 'this is as good as' or 'the same as Pearline.' IT'S
FALSE--Pearline is never peddled; if your grocer sends you an imitation, be honest--"
(September 11, 1897, p. 567).
The public desire for "real" stories was one that the Companion
made special efforts to fulfill. As Cutts explains, early queries by readers about the
truthfulness of stories led the Companion to send reporters out to collect story
material which they would then revise into publishable form (x).
Examples of testimonial ads abound in the pages of the Companion, many of which
play cleverly with the conventions with which they work, as does "A Foot Note,"
an ad for Smith's Vegetable Compound
that features a "note" from a customer whose use of the product resulted in the
disappearance of "the pain and swelling" in his ankle. Other testimonials set
themselves apart by emphasizing their authenticity. One such ad for Cleveland's
Baking Powder argues for the quality of its testimonial by
emphasizing the date that it was written. Other stamps of authenticity that might
accompany testimonials are reproduced signatures (like that in the Cleveland's Baking
Powder ad) and photographs (like that in an ad for Mellin's
food, which prints the picture of a healthy baby sent in by the writer of
the published testimonial).
CHOLERA
[C.A. Stephens?]
From The Youth's Companion, Vol. 65, No. 39 (September 29, 1892), p. 488.
The world was never so small as it is to-day. Means of rapid transit are bringing all quarters of the globe closer and closer together. This result has its dangers as well as its advantages. The recent outbreak of cholera in European Russia, of whose daily advance we are made aware by cable, warns us that we have dangers to fear from a too close international relationship.
The grave responsibility of keeping from our land the dreaded scourge of cholera rests upon the sanitary inspectors of our port cities, for it is only through a few great gates of commerce that we have reason to fear its introduction.
Recent experiences with typhus fever in the port of New York have shown that there are weak points in our quarantine defences which should be remedied. When once these bulwarks are passed, the labor of disinfection is increased a thousandfold.
It should be the duty of the authorities to prepare beforehand for thorough inspection of all arriving vessels and for complete disinfection of all suspected freight and passengers.
The usually easy-going American should not allow his good nature to modify the stringency of his maritime sanitary regulations. European officials are to be commended for their increasing vigilance in this respect, for it is by their efforts that the disease may be kept from shipping ports, whence it might be distributed by commerce.
The disease called cholerine, which has lately been prevalent in and about Paris, has been watched with anxiety by the authorities, but there is every reason to believe that it is in no way connected with the genuine cholera.
Probably cholera will never again ravage Europe as it has done in the past. Recent scientific investigations, which have given us a closer knowledge of its nature and of the conditions favorable and unfavorable to its development, have contributed powerfully to render efficacious the efforts made to prevent its spread.
Universal cleanliness, with good water and good drainage, would probably banish cholera from the earth; but under existing circumstances, when it has once started on its travels it requires the most stringent regulations to check its progress.
While European ports are free from this disease, the United States can hardly be said to be menaced on her Atlantic coast. Nevertheless, prudence bids us make preparations to guard both our Pacific and Atlantic ports against such an insidious disease before the danger from it becomes imminent.