MAUCK BRAMMER
Winthrop B. Smith: Creator of
the
Eclectic
Educational Series
William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) is
generally credited with the phenomenal
spread of moral eclecticism throughout
the United States during the middle third
of the nineteenth century. Much of the
credit should go, however, to his canny
publisher, Winthrop B. Smith, who was
the first to recognize the evocative magic
of the word "eclectic" as an
advertising device. He also wrested complete owner-
ship of the McGuffey readers from the
author, and he and his partner, William T.
Truman, parlayed it into the beginning
of an incredibly successful series of text-
books based on the eclectic concept.
Starting from scratch in 1833. W. B. Smith
by 1868 had developed the world's
largest textbook house through a succession of
partnerships. These included the
following: Truman & Smith (1833-1843); W. B.
Smith (1843-1845); W. B. Smith & Co.
(1845-1863); and Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle
(1863-1868). Smith's aggressive business
policy, however, was motivated not so
much by belief in an educational
philosophy as by the ambition of a Connecticut
farm boy to become a financial success.
Cincinnati, during the time of Smith's
residence, in spite of the cattiness of Mrs.
Trollope, was the "Queen City of
the West." With a population of nearly 25,000
in 1830, it could boast of more than
strategic and transportational virtues. By this
time there were numerous public,
private, and parochial schools, academies, and
colleges. Public libraries and a number
of circulating libraries served the descen-
dants of a mixed European population.
Music, both sentimental and highbrow, was
popular, and one theater could claim 800
seats. There were picture galleries, the
beginning of an art museum, a Haydn
Society, several literary clubs, and a very
active group of booksellers, printers,
and publishers. "By the 1830's," wrote Walter
Sutton, "Cincinnati was the
recognized capital of the western book trade,. . . ."2
Too frequently rough privations of
frontier living are associated with lack of
culture. This was certainly not true of
Cincinnati in 1833 when W. B. Smith arrived.
1. American Book Company is a direct
descendant from Truman & Smith, having been formed in
1890 by the descendants of textbook
concerns discussed in this text plus Wilson, Hinkle & Co. (1868-
1877) and Van Antwerp Bragg & Co.
(1877-1890) together with three New York concerns, Iuison,
Blakeman & Co., A. S. Barnes &
Co., and D. Appleton & Co.
This paper is adapted from Mauck
Brammer, "American Book Company: Our Heritage and Our
History." A typescript is in the
New York office of American Book Company.
2. Walter Sutton, The Western Book
Trade: Cincinnati As a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and
Book-Trade Center (Columbus, 1961), 67.
Mr. Brammer is retired managing editor
of American Book Company.
46
OHIO HISTORY
At the time, the city was astir with
intellectual groups well aware of the cultural
refinements of the East and even of
Europe. This was particularly true in educa-
tion. Largely through the efforts of Dr.
Daniel Drake, one of Cincinnati's early
leaders and historians, and other
intellectuals in and about Cincinnati, the College
of Teachers was founded in 1834 as a
discussion group and was later known as the
Western Literary Institute. They brought
together the leading exponents of educa-
tion from Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri,
Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, and Tennessee
into what was the "first important
teachers' association in America."3 Among these
educators were the three authors upon
whose work W. B. Smith was to found his
colossus of textbook publishing: Joseph
Ray, a medical doctor and mathematics
professor at Woodward College in
Cincinnati; William Holmes McGuffey, a Pres-
byterian minister and professor of
language and moral philosophy at Miami Uni-
versity (1826-1836); and Alexander
Hamilton McGuffey, William's brilliant younger
brother who had been graduated from
Miami at sixteen, was professor of "Belles
Lettres" at Woodward, and was
reading law.4
About this time an evocative new concept
in education, the eclectic method origi-
nating in France, was adopted by the
teachers' association. The philosophy of Eclec-
ticism, formulated by the Frenchman
Victor Cousin, attempted to reconcile all
philosophies, ancient and modern.
Cousin's educational theories became immensely
popular and appeared in English
translation in Boston in 1832 and quickly spread
westward. In practical use his disciples
simplified the theories to the basic meaning
of eclectic, that is, a selection
containing "the best in each and greater than any."5
It was thus that Eclecticism came to
include the generally accepted moral precepts
of the time, as separate from debatable
church theology, and was a doctrine largely
accepted by the mixed European
nationalities of the Midwest and South.
In 1833 Winthrop B. Smith chose the
Queen City as the site for his first business
venture. In a document from the American
Book Company files, probably largely
dictated by him, entitled "Copy of
Paper Furnished by W. B. Smith, March 26th,
1876," he tells his own story:6
Winthrop B. Smith, son of Anthony Smith
[and Rebecca Clarke Smith], of Washington,
Litchfield Co., Conn., was born in
Stanford, Conn., 28 Sept., 1808 where his Father tem-
porarily resided. When Mr. Smith was two
years old his Father returned to his native
Washington, [Conn.], where he continued
to reside until his death at the age of ninety-two.
The son, subject of this sketch,
continued in Washington, was brought up on a farm,
receiving a New England Common school
education. At the age of sixteen [he] went to
New Haven, apprenticed as a clerk to the
mercantile house of Jonathan Nicholsen & Co.
When twenty-one [he] went to Boston
where he was employed as a bookkeeper in a lead-
ing publishing house. With a natural
fondness for books, and book-publishing, of which
he seemed to have an almost intuitive
knowledge, in 1833 [he] went to
Cincinnati and en-
gaged in the business of book selling
with the late Mr. W. T. Truman, with whom he was
associated for a short time.7
3. Harvey C. Minnich, William Holmes
McGuffey and His Readers (New York, 1936), 23.
4. Henry H. Vail, A History of the
McGuffey Readers (Cleveland, 1911), 36-37.
5. Minnich, McGuffey and His Readers,
65-68.
6. W. B. Smith, "Copy of Paper
Furnished by W. B. Smith, March 26th, 1876." The original of
this paper is not known to the author.
An unpaged handwritten copy is in the New York files of
American Book Company.
7. The Boston firm is not named in any
papers in the company's files or archives. It is significant,
in view of Smith's final success as a
stockbroker, that he learned his bookkeeping with this firm. Italics
not in original.
Publishing, especially the department of school text books, was at that time exceedingly limited in the West, and the publishers of the East, particularly those of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, looked upon the Western & South Western States, as the great field for their surplus publications. Mr. Smith saw the value of the field for usefulness, and pro- jected the publication of what is popularly known as the Eclectic Educational Series, brought about him experienced and intelligent educators, authors and compilers, such as Profs. Wm. H. McGuffey, E. D. Mansfield, Jos. Ray, T. S. Pinneo and others and was soon able to furnish to the West valuable books, compiled, stereotyped and manufactured in the West, from Western material, books of almost unequaled merit in the branches of spelling, reading, English grammar, geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, in short, covering the various branches of a thorough English education, and these, known as the Eclectic Edu- cational Series, now published by Messrs. Wilson, Hinkle & Co., have in their various de- partments no superiors and few equals. Smith's account of the rather abrupt dismissal of William T. Truman, as seen many years after the fact, is not very accurate. The Truman & Smith partnership, which began with Truman as the senior, lasted from 1833 to 1843, when Smith was able to buy Truman out for an incredibly small sum. "The Truman and Smith team did not always pull together," wrote company historian Henry H. Vail in 1911. "Mr. Truman was not versed in the school-book business. Mr. Smith was."8 This judgment, even from one who knew at least one of the principals in his youth, was not fully justified either. Most of the success of W. B. Smith resulted from decisions made in the early days of the partnership, and we must assume that Truman had 8. Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 41. Vail entered the firm of Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle in 1866 and as a young man was briefly acquainted with W. B. Smith. Vail continued with the various succeeding firms until his retirement in 1914. His chief contribution was the editorial direction in prepa- ration of the 1879 McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, Revised Edition, the edition which carried McGuffey, no longer living, to the peak of his popularity. |
an equal voice in contracts with Ray and McGuffey. Stress between the partners must have built up slowly over the decade of their association. It must have finally become severe enough to allow Smith in later years to discount so abruptly Tru- man's part in their business relationship with the two chief authors of the Eclectic Educational Series. Actually, Smith and Truman were remarkably similar in background and inter- ests. Both had been born in Connecticut in the same month and year and had been brought up there, although Truman could claim a more distinguished lineage of ministers and professional men. Both were Methodists and in Cincinnati were mem- bers of the same congregation, but Truman appears to have been more active and generous in church affairs. Each married in 1834, Truman to a girl from New Haven, Smith to one from Philadelphia. Both were against Negro slavery, with Truman again more active in abolitionist movements (these activities and sentiments were such that pro-slavery men and rowdy sympathizers attempted to burn them out in 1842). They both shared in the optimism of the frontier and, despite their New England backgrounds, were quick to endorse the movement for western products made by westerners for the West.9 W. B. Smith set the date for the beginning of the Truman & Smith firm as 1833, and the Cincinnati Directory for 1834 listed it for the first time, giving the location as 150 Main Street (a street number much altered by city growth), apparently mid- way between present Fourth and Fifth streets. To accommodate their business in books, stationery, and blank books, they filled the second floor with book counters, a warehouse, and the rudiments of a hand bindery.10 9. Ibid., 39 In their second year, they published the Ray arithmetics and Daniel Drake's Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West. 10. Cincinnati Directory, 1834; see also Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 46. |
Winthrop B. Smith 49
In a letter of August 22, 1833, to
Durrie & Peck of New York and New Haven,
ordering two hundred dozen spellers, Mr.
Smith laments the effects of an outbreak
of cholera on business as leaving it
"dead, dead, dead." Undismayed, however, he
continues: "We have just moved to a
pretty good store and we design to do a snug,
careful, and safe business. We intend
to trust no man unless we have the means of
knowing him well, and then not for
long."11
By the spring of 1834, Truman &
Smith had extended their business to book
publishing. They began with
"careful, and safe" ventures--two devotional works,
a hymn book and a children's Bible. By
the midyear, however, they had published
two textbooks, one a regional reissue of
a Roswell C. Smith English grammar and
the other a work in arithmetic by a
Cincinnati teacher, Joseph Ray. The Ray arith-
metic book was to start W. B. Smith on
his way to success. It was the first American
textbook to include the word
"eclectic" in its title and thus became the founder of
the Eclectic Educational Series, the
title Smith thereafter used to identify all his
publications.12
An original work by Joseph Ray of
Woodward College, An Introduction to Ray's
Eclectic Arithmetic, was registered for copyright in the Federal District
Court of
Ohio on June 21, 1834, and actually
deposited on July 4. Its immediate success led
Truman & Smith to consider a full
Eclectic Educational Series, and they immedi-
ately began a search for an author for
an eclectic set of readers. Their first attempt
was to interest Catherine Beecher. She
had recently come to Cincinnati for a rest,
joining her family there after
pioneering in higher education for women in the
East, only to be persuaded to open the
Western Female Institute at Cincinnati.
Since Miss Beecher was mainly interested
in higher education, she turned down
the offer. Lyman Beecher and his
son-in-law, Calvin E. Stowe, members of the
Western Literary Institute and College
of Professional Teachers, hearing of the
opportunity, sent Smith to one of their
friends, William Holmes McGuffey of Miami
University at Oxford, Ohio, where he had
been teaching since 1826. McGuffey,
with work already started on readers of
his own, accepted the authorship.13
To understand W. B. Smith's business
acumen it is necessary to look into the
contrasting financial arrangements made
with Joseph Ray and William Holmes
McGuffey. By 1834 Ray had given up his
practice of medicine and had decided
upon a career of teaching and the
writing of textbooks. As Woodward College was
really a high school, his salary for
teaching could not have been as much as the
$600 a year McGuffey received at Miami.
Even at the low cost of living of those
times, some form of
"moonlighting" for extra income was indicated. Ray chose
textbook writing rather than medicine as
his major source of income. Like many
other authors, including those of today
who have created successful textbook series,
he soon found it necessary to devote his
life outside the classroom to revision and
extension of the series. Arithmetic and
mathematics texts required much work; they
could not, as in readers for the middle
grades, make use of many selections from
popular literature.
On January 2, 1834, Joseph Ray signed a
contract with Truman & Smith that
stipulated the writing of two books, a
short work for which he was to receive one-
half cent per copy sold, and a larger
work for two cents per copy. This royalty was
11. W. B. Smith to Durrie & Peck.
August 22, 1833. American Book Company files. Italics not
in original.
12. Minnich, McGuffey and His
Readers, 66.
13. Ibid., 31-32.
for the duration of the copyright (then twenty-eight plus fourteen years). It was further agreed that the books would be called Ray's Eclectic Arithmetic. Their suc- cess was such that Ray produced four arithmetics and three algebras in his rela- tively short lifetime, founding a series that Smith revised, expanded, and extended until it outsold all others in its field.14 The McGuffey contract of April 28, 1836, was very different. It specified that in return for the preparation of four book manuscripts, McGuffey was to receive a royalty of ten percent on the net intake on all copies sold until such time as $1000 had been paid, in the cautious words of the contract, "if that amount were reached!" At this time all rights would then revert to Truman & Smith. Some McGuffey par- tisans consider this an outrageous swindle. W. B. Smith certainly did not, and Mc- Guffey himself defended it throughout his lifetime and continued to accept modest fees in lieu of royalty for approving revisions of these works.15 There is much evidence that W. B. Smith considered reader composition a much less arduous task than arithmetic formulation and therefore worth less in author royalty. He knew that books for grades beyond the first and second would be made up largely of "eclecticized" excerpts from standard literature. To help McGuffey in finding the best selections, Smith furnished him seventy readers to add to his own library of thirty. From these and other sources, Dr. McGuffey paid a friend $5.00 to copy selections for his new series.16 14. Charles Carpenter, History of American Textbooks (Philadelphia, 1963), 145. 15. Alice McGuffey Ruggles, The Story of the McGuffeys (New York, 1950), 100. Mrs. Ruggles, a granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, concentrates on the "human side" of the illustrious family. Her account is particularly interesting for its picture of Alexander's transition from an avowed associate author of parts of the McGuffey series to apologetic anonymity as a lawyer for the company. 16. Minnich, McGuffey and His Readers, 58; Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 33. Vail names the copyist as a student of McGuffey, Benjamin Chidlaw. |
Winthrop B. Smith 51 It was obvious that Dr. McGuffey, well aware of the time required in textbook revision and extension through his friendship with Joseph Ray, did not want to devote all of his free time to textbook writing. His greater interests were in teach- ing, lecturing, preaching, and for a while in college administration. He was, there- fore, content with his original contract, subsequent outright payments for consultation and additional work, and with travel and lecture fees provided by W. B. Smith in order to promote the series. In fact, much later when McGuffey's name had reached its peak in popularity and relatives and friends persisted in ask- ing why he had sold his copyright for so little, he grew quite touchy and answered 'that the time, labor, worry, expense of the introduction and distribution of the books fell altogether on the publishers, and they were entitled to all the pecuniary profits. . .'17 During the last decade of McGuffey's life he was, according to H. H. Vail, granted a fixed annuity by his publishers. The annuity may have been small; the company's records do not indicate its duration, nature, or amount. The First and Second of the Eclectic Readers appeared in 1836; the Third and Fourth in 1837. Even though they had to combat the great business depression of 1837, they rapidly paid off the royalty of $1000 to McGuffey, and by 1838 had become the absolute property of Truman & Smith. For William McGuffey, this was to prove fortunate. There is some evidence, originally reported by Truman & Smith in their house journal, that eastern publishers were becoming alarmed over the future of their western business because of the success of the Eclectic Educational Series. Ray and McGuffey were rapidly replacing eastern competitors. This, some eastern publishers felt, had to be stopped. The basic nature of Eclecticism together with the naivete 17. Quoted in Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 100. |
52 OHIO
HISTORY
of McGuffey (and Smith) about copyrights
for literary property conveniently pro-
vided an opportunity, they thought, to
crush the Truman & Smith threat. On Oc-
tober 1, 1838, Benjamin F. Copeland,
publisher, and Samuel Worcester, author,
both of Boston, brought suit through the
United States courts against Truman &
Smith and McGuffey for unlawfully
copying the plan and much of the contents of
the Worcester Readers. A temporary
injunction with a claim for $20,000 in damages
was secured by December 25, 1838, during
which time Copeland and other eastern
publishers had rushed eastern-made books
West to supplant McGuffey.18
What a blow this must have been to the
self-esteem of that great exponent of
moral philosophy, William Holmes
McGuffey! By this time he had left Miami Uni-
versity to take up the presidency of
Cincinnati College, a short-lived experimental
school, and was in no position to
withstand a scandal. While his friends, among
them Catherine Beecher, rushed to his
defense in print, W. B. Smith was more
practical. Since the readers were now
Truman & Smith property, Smith hurriedly
compared the McGuffey and Worcester
books, and at Truman & Smith's expense
substituted for every selection that
might possibly infringe upon Worcester (accord-
ing to H. H. Vail there were seventeen).
Working at great speed, the publishers
produced in the three hectic months
between suit and injunction a "Revised and
Improved Edition" with which they
succeeded late in 1838 to replace the first edi-
tion. Thus, when the legal machinery
slowly approached a deadline, Truman &
Smith could prove that the supposedly
offending first edition of the McGuffey
readers no longer was in print, but they
did appease eastern rivals with the payment
of $2000 damages, only ten percent of
their demand.19 This cost Truman & Smith
two times what they had paid McGuffey
for the copyright plus complete resetting
of the type, a heavy expenditure that
came at the lowest ebb in W. B. Smith's fi-
nancial career.
Having weathered a cholera outbreak in
1832-1833, a financial panic in 1837,
and the legal battle of 1838, W. B.
Smith proceeded undaunted to continue to de-
velop his Eclectic Educational Series.
In addition, moderately successful were a
Political Grammar by E. D. Mansfield, the Moral Instructor by
Catherine Beecher,
and the Young Minstrel by Lowell
and Timothy Mason, but the major properties
continued to be the collection of books
in Ray's Mathematics Eclectic Series and
the readers in McGuffey's Eclectic
Series.
Before the dissolution of the Truman
& Smith partnership, Ray had rewritten
his two original texts into three and
provided a key to accompany them, arranging
for continuing royalty payments on all,
even on the key. The major additions to
the Eclectic Education Series were,
however, in the McGuffey series. A Primer pre-
pared under the supervision of William
Holmes McGuffey, for which he accepted
a "satisfactory consideration"
in lieu of royalty, appeared late in 1837. Ready in
time for inclusion in the "Revised
and Improved Edition" of 1838, it became ex-
ceedingly popular.
A more important addition was the Eclectic
Progressive Spelling Book of 1838.
The leading speller of the day was, of
course, Webster's "Old Blue-Back," long
since basic to American education, and
McGuffey had chosen it for the orthogra-
phy of his readers. W. B. Smith, unable
to arrange for the western rights to the
Webster book, decided to have one of his
own. William Holmes McGuffey was not
18. Sutton, Western Book Trade, 180-181;
Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 42-43.
19. Vail, History of McGuffey
Readers, 43-45.
Winthrop B. Smith 53
interested in writing it and persuaded
his younger brother Alexander Hamilton to
prepare the manuscript. For this work
Alexander accepted an outright fee of $500.
Basing his work on Webster and tying it
closely with his brother's readers, he added
a new feature by numbering the vowel
sounds and then relating the syllables of
words to a combined phonic and numbering
system. This speller, issued as part of
the McGuffey Eclectic Series, took its
place as a prominent part of the series but
did not become a phenomenal success
until after the 1846 revision by Alexander,
assisted by Dr. Timothy Stone Pinneo,
the company's house editor.20
With McGuffey now thoroughly occupied in
difficult college administration,
Alexander was further persuaded to
undertake the preparation of the Rhetorical
Guide, the basis for the later Fifth and Sixth readers, the
books which were to form
the literary taste of the Midwest and
the South. Those McGuffey adherents who
lament the limited royalty arrangement
that the author accepted originally should
note that Alexander Hamilton McGuffey,
by this time a lawyer and house attorney
for W. B. Smith, who had seen his
brother's work become widely popular in a few
years, still did not hesitate to accept
$500 in lieu of all royalty for the Rhetorical
Guide, and even that on a three-part note.21
H. H. Vail has indicated that Smith and
Truman did not form an ideal partner-
ship. Smith's apparent propensity for
getting involved in legal action over his text-
books, first with the quarrel over the
regional publication of Roswell C. Smith's
grammar and then with McGuffey's naive
plagiarism, may have disturbed the more
churchly Truman. It is more likely,
however, that Truman was most disturbed by
the overpowering egotism and
self-centered drive of W. B. Smith. By 1843, what-
ever the reasons, Smith had determined
to shed his partner and to try his "almost
intuitive knowledge" of book
publishing entirely on his own.
H. H. Vail's story of the dissolution of
Truman & Smith is too simple. "It is
said," Vail wrote, "that Mr.
Smith went early one morning to their humble shop
on the second floor of No. 150 Main
street, and made two piles of sample books.
In one he put all the miscellaneous
publications of the firm, big and little--the
Child's Bible and Sacred Harp among them--and on top of the
pile placed all the
cash the firm possessed; in the other,
were half a dozen small text books, including
the four McGuffey Readers. When Mr.
Truman arrived, Mr. Smith expressed the
desire to dissolve the partnership,
showed the two piles and offered Mr. Truman
his choice. He pounced on the cash and
the larger pile and left the insignificant
schoolbooks for Mr. Smith, who thereupon
became the sole owner of McGuffey's
Readers."22
There are several errors in Vail's
account, including placing the date at 1841.
A more significant fact is that there is
a document in the American Book Com-
pany's files of dissolution of the
partnership, dated April 28, 1843. In that agree-
ment, W. B. Smith demonstrated his
utmost shrewdness in a deal that dwarfs any
supposed injustice to McGuffey. That
document transfers to W. B. Smith Truman's
half interest in Ray's two [perhaps
three] arithmetics, the McGuffey Speller, and
the five McGuffey readers for the
astonishing figure of $500 plus Smith's share of
the less popular Truman & Smith text
and trade books!23 Could any Connecticut
Yankee be more astute in business deals?
20. William E. Smith, About the
McGuffeys (Oxford, Ohio, 1963), 10.
21. American Book Company contract files
in New York.
22. Vail, History of McGuffey
Readers, 41.
23. "Document of 1843" in
American Book Company contract files in New York.
54
OHIO HISTORY
W. T. Truman took his books and moved
out, continuing bookselling and pub-
lishing from 20 Pearl Street, issuing
both trade and textbooks, but not for long and
with no great success. Truman died
within a few years. His widow then took over
the business and through a new
partnership of Truman & Spofford managed to
continue until 1858.24 Smith, however,
retained the original shop, revising and ex-
tending his Eclectic Educational Series
wherever he could, often on terms favorable
to himself. One way he did this was to
have house editors revise and extend the
McGuffey readers as part of their
salaried assignment, continuing to pay McGuffey
small fees for his approval and the use
of his name.25
It is difficult to realize now that W.
B. Smith had a family life, particularly as
he completely ignores it in his 1876
memoir. Through the Methodist Episcopal
Church he had met Mary Sargent soon
after his arrival in Cincinnati. The Sargents
were an old New England family who had
moved to Philadelphia, and Mary was
the daughter, one of several children,
of the Reverend Thomas F. Sargent. Born in
Philadelphia March 26, 1812, Mary had
gone to Cincinnati with her family in Oc-
tober 1832,where her father functioned
briefly in a new pulpit. Along with Mary
came two younger brothers, both destined
to be Smith's partners, Edward Sargent,
born April 2, 1820, and Daniel Bartow
Sargent, born December 17, 1824.
Winthrop B. Smith and Mary Sargent were
married November 4, 1834, about a
year after the death of her father. Mary
and Winthrop set out bravely on the pat-
tern established by her parents,
producing eight children in all, four of whom were
to survive to adulthood: Lilian, Winthrop,
F. Percy, and Herbert. By 1844, the
Smiths gave up residence in downtown
Cincinnati, already overcrowded, rowdy,
and noisy. With the Eclectic Educational
Series promising to become a bonanza,
W. B. Smith was able to purchase
seventeen acres on an undeveloped hillside in
Clifton, beautifully situated on a
promontory overlooking the city. There he built
an Italianate villa with a square tower
and verandas on three sides. Along with
Salmon P. Chase and others, he became
one of the incorporators of Clifton as a
village and in time one of "the
barons of Clifton."26
In the new firm of 1843, W. B. Smith was
the sole owner and proprietor. An
old, untitled, and unsigned manuscript
in the company's files summarizes the situ-
ation in 1843. Although the firm had now
grown to thirty employees, "the care and
preparation of new books and the
revision of old books, the labor of introducing
the books into schools by means of
traveling agents, and the manufacture of stock
at first all came upon the head of the
firm. He had confidence in himself and in
the success of his enterprise and he
strained every nerve and risked every dollar
he had in the world." Even his
bitterest critic, Mrs. Alice McGuffey Ruggles, ad-
mits that "he himself worked like a
beaver, . . . ."27
W. B. Smith, however confident, could
not go on very long doing everything.
The untitled document continues,
"he gradually brought around him those whom
24. Sutton, Western Book Trade, 188,
340.
25. Miscellaneous documents assigning
authorship rights in lieu of "satisfactory consideration" in
American Book Company contract files in
New York.
26. The W. B. Smith estate in Clifton
Heights was sold in 1868 to his successor Obed J. Wilson,
who christened it "Sweet
Home," celebrated it in pedestrian verse, and lived there until his death
in
1914. The house was razed in 1967-1968
to make room for a deluxe housing development.
27. Untitled, undated, and unsigned
eight-page document in American Book Company files in
New York. Internal evidence shows that
it may have been written after the death of W. B. Smith as
notes for a commemoration. Even though
it seems to have been prepared as a publicity release, the
source of its publication has not been
found; see also Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 98.
Winthrop B. Smith 55
he could trust to perform parts of the
work. . . ." Among these were his wife's two
brothers, Edward Sargent and Daniel
Bartow Sargent, and Lowell Mason, Jr., a
son of one of his earliest authors. Of
most interest to the Educational Series was
the addition of two editors, Timothy
Stone Pinneo and Obed J. Wilson.
Joseph Ray, in spite of increasing ill
health, continued actively to revise and
extend his series. The burden was great,
however, and in 1849, a new contract for
the Little Arithmetic authorized
W. B. Smith "to make or cause to be made any
such renewals or revisions as to him may
seem proper, without cost to said Ray,
or his heirs, and the revisions, if made
during Ray's life, to have his approval." On
April 13, 1855, Ray saw that he could
not continue, and gave W. B. Smith complete
control of his seven (or eight) titles
but with current contractual arrangements to
continue. Thus Ray and his heirs continued to receive royalties;
in 1868, thirty-four
years after the first Ray publication,
these royalties amounted to $6,314, the largest
by far for any author of the firm.28
In addition to Ray's original works, W.
B. Smith continued to add titles to the
Ray Mathematics Course within the
overall Eclectic Educational Series, now a gen-
eral title for all Smith publications,
whatever their nature, until that series provided
best-selling works from beginning
arithmetic to calculus. Not surprisingly, these
new authors were given royalty contracts
that terminated with the life of the
copyright.
Had McGuffey, like Ray, devoted most of
his life to revision and extension of
his series under a continuing royalty
contract, he would in 1868 have been drawing
even more than Ray. While it is
impossible to estimate accurately what the total
may have been, it could hardly have been
less than $500,00029 and might have
been twice that amount by McGuffey's
death in 1873. Why were the facts so dif-
ferent? First, it is evident that
McGuffey considered textbook writing a side issue
to teaching, lecturing, and preaching
when he signed his first contract in 1834.
Second, the 1838 accusation of
plagiarism had a lasting effect on his interest in
further attempts at eclecticizing.
"However others may have felt, Dr. McGuffey
was embarrassed and confused by the
lawsuit," revealed two of the Timothy S.
Pinneo descendants.30 Third,
during the period from 1836 to 1843, Dr. McGuffey
had more than he could handle in the
presidencies of Cincinnati College (1836-
1839) and Ohio University (1839-1843);
the problems were largely economic and
political and were becoming too much for
a financially naive moral philosopher.31
He had been, therefore, more than willing
to let his brother Alexander pinch hit
for him and to accept the direction of
W. B. Smith in the future management of
his series, receiving fees for advice,
promotional appearances, and any other such
chores as W. B. Smith found desirable.
With W. H. McGuffey no longer available
for creative work and with his brother
Alexander beginning to show more
interest in his law firm than in teaching and
28. Handwritten copy of Wilson, Hinkle
& Co. Royalty payments for 1868 preserved in American
Book Company contract files in New York.
29. Assuming arbitrarily that the Joseph
Ray royalties had averaged the same since 1834, the total
would have been $216,676. By 1848 the
Ray heirs were drawing royalties on seven works. The McGuffey
readers had by this time tripled the Ray
series in number, although four of them were paying royalties
to Dr. Pinneo. It is easy, therefore, to
understand the complaint of Mrs. Ruggles that W. B. Smith
had outsmarted McGuffey of millions.
30. Jean Gregory Byington and Alice
Gregory Powys, "An Inside Story of the McGuffey Read-
ers," Elementary English, XXXX (November
1963), 744. This statement gains validity when it is real-
ized that it is made by direct
descendants of Dr. Pinneo.
31. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 83-84.
56 OHIO
HISTORY
ghost-writing, W. B. Smith solved his
problem by hiring a house editor to do the
work, Timothy Stone Pinneo, whom he
engaged in 1843. Pinneo, another Con-
necticut product, the son of a prominent
minister, had the advantages of a Yale
University education. With ambition to
become a doctor temporarily stalled by
pulmonary troubles, he tried his hand at
poetry and drama. Unsuccessful at that,
he did find improved health through
winters in Florida and Maryland and was
able to continue his studies, completing
a M.A. at Yale. Sent by his family to Cin-
cinnati, he received his M.D. in 1834
from the Medical College of Ohio. Returning
to Maryland to practice medicine, he
eventually became dissatisfied with working
in a slave state and moved to Ohio to
teach at Marietta College. There he became
acquainted with W. B. Smith, and in 1843
became a fulltime member of the Smith
organization.32
During his long association with W. B.
Smith, Dr. Pinneo was chiefly responsible
for many new publications, extending the
McGuffey series into high school, adding
elocution readers,and helping to revise
the Spelling Book. All the additions to this
series, according to H. H. Vail, even
though written by others, "passed through the
hands of Dr. McGuffey," for which
William Holmes, then Professor of Moral Phi-
losophy, first at Woodward College and
then at the University of Virginia, received
"satisfactory compensation" in
fees. By this time the name of McGuffey had be-
come more meaningful than the term
"eclectic," and all the revisions and additions
continued to carry his name as author.
In time, even Alexander Hamilton McGuf-
fey's name was dropped (with his own
approval) from the Spelling Book and the
Fifth Reader, and the public was led to believe by the canny Mr.
Smith that Wil-
liam Holmes McGuffey was the author of
all the books.33 It may be interesting to
note that Dr. Pinneo secured royalty contracts
from W. B. Smith for the High School
Reader, the two Eclectic Speakers, a revision of the Spelling
Book, and a grammar
of his own, contracts that brought him
$983 in 1868. Only the Elementary Gram-
mar, however, was published under the Pinneo name.
By the time Dr. Pinneo returned to the
East in 1862, W. B. Smith had trained
Obed J. Wilson to take his place.
Another New Englander, this time from Maine,
Wilson had gone West after graduation
from Bloomfield Academy to become a
teacher in Cincinnati. In 1851, he
joined W. B. Smith as a traveler and quickly
became both chief of the agency and
chief editor. Marrying a fellow Cincinnati
teacher, Amanda Landrum, and finding
themselves childless, the two devoted their
lives to editorial and literary work,
being chiefly responsible for the McGuffey
revisions of 1863, 1865, and 1866.
Wilson devoted his major energies to becoming
part of the firm. Neither he nor his
wife appear in the 1868 royalty list and their
names do not appear as authors of any
Eclectic Educational Series text.
"At the opening of the War in
1860," the American Book Company's document
continues, "Mr. Smith was infirm in
body although vigorous in mind. The first
effect of the opening war was a great
depression in business and disturbance of
prices. Materials such as paper, cloth,
leather, boards, super, and even the thread
that was used in sewing doubled and
trebled in prices."34 The first severe shock to
W. B. Smith was the failure of his New
York representative, Clark, Austin, Maynard
32. Vail, History of McGuffey
Readers, 47-48; Byington and Powys in "An Inside Story of the
McGuffey Readers," 746-747, appear
to suggest an earlier date, possibly 1842.
33. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 101.
34. Untitled, undated, and unsigned
eight-page document in American Book Company files in
New York.
& Co., shortly after Cornelius Smith, his brother, foreseeing difficulty, had with- drawn. To save the Eclectic Educational Series plates, previously duplicated for the East, W. B. Smith had to raise $6000 and start over again in an area where Mc- Guffey had not been able to replace eastern texts.35 A more severe blow came from the military and economic embargoes that cut off direct shipment of books to secession states, a major sector of his market. To save what business he could, W. B. Smith made duplicate plates for the use of his old friends in the Methodist Book Concern of Nashville, Tennessee. While they were not able to do as well as hoped with the McGuffey readers in the war- bankrupted South, this arrangement did keep the name of McGuffey alive there until better times. When the war was over, Smith, now a silent partner in Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle, took back his book plates and sent Dr. McGuffey on a pre-paid lecturing tour throughout the South. Soon the readers were again in great demand.36 About this time, the American Book Company's undated document continues, "Mr. Smith desired to go out of business. A firm was formed embracing Mr. Ed- ward Sargent, Mr. O. J. Wilson, Mr. A. H. Hinkle & Co."37 According to H. H. Vail, W. B. Smith and his brother-in-law, Daniel B. Sargent, continued as "special partners,"38 furnishing capital and drawing shares of the profits, but taking no direct daily part in conducting the business. The 1863 transfer of publishing rights covered W. B. Smith's thirty years of publishing.39 Two major assignments were involved. From the Truman & Smith and W. B. Smith firms, W. B. Smith assigned forty-one publications. Twenty-one were spellers and readers authored, nominally at least, by McGuffey, plus a special Indiana edition and a German adaptation for Cincinnati. Ten were arithmetic and mathematics texts by Joseph Ray. Five were English grammars by Timothy Stone Pinneo. Four were the School Friends Readers by Barnabas C. Hobbs (who had accepted a royalty arrangement identical with 35. Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 51. 36. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 116-118. 37. Untitled, undated, and unsigned eight-page document in American Book Company files in New York. 38. Vail, History of the McGuffey Readers, 52; see also Note 27. 39. Assignment of publishing rights from W. B. Smith and W. B. Smith & Company to Sargent, Wilson, and Hinkle, January 1, 1863; now in files of American Book Company in New York. |
58 OHIO
HISTORY
that originally signed
by W. H. McGuffey). From W. B. Smith & Co. there were
eight lesser items.
The textbooks were A Class Book of Geography by Emerson E.
White; The Young
Singer by Locke, Aiken, Mason, and Baldwin; A School Geome-
try by E. E. Evans; The Instructive Speller by D. F.
DeWolf; and Object Lessons
[in grammar] by D. M.
C. Lilenthal and Robert Allyn. There were two specialties:
Chemistry for
Farmers by C. B. Chapman and The
Homeopathic Domestic Physi-
cian by J. H. Pulte.
This was the Eclectic
Educational Series developed largely by W. B. Smith that
by 1863 had managed to
outsell all competitors. Actually, the major income came
from the McGuffey
readers, the Ray Mathematics Course, and the Pinneo English
grammars, in that
order. Through his "almost intuitive knowledge" of textbook
publishing, his
resolve to "trust no man" but himself and his family, his under-
standing of the evocative
power of words like "eclectic" and "McGuffey," and his
concentration on mass
markets, W. B. Smith had made the Eclectic Educational
Series, in popular
appeal, at least, the leading educational instrument of our nation.
"For many years
previous to Mr. Smith's retirement," the 1876 document goes on,
"W. B. Smith
& Co. had sold millions of copies of school books, every page and
every line of which
gave and give healthful, moral instruction to the young. The
influence of such a
firm, the untiring enterprise of its founder, the wide extent of
its beneficial effect
in supplying a great want can scarcely be estimated."
McGuffey descendants
and partisans hint sourly that W. B. Smith retired a
millionaire as a
result of sharp dealing with the author. Perhaps the untitled and
unsigned document from
American Book Company files may be closer to the truth.
Smith's publishing
dynasty, it says, "has been accused of 'retiring a millionaire
every three years' but
the facts will hardly justify this saying. Mr. Smith did not
retire a millionaire
after his herculean labor of nearly twenty-five years [actually
more nearly thirty] in
founding and building up the business. He had a compe-
tency, which he has since
made a fortune by the most prudent and skillful man-
agement and he still
lives to enjoy the fruits of his labor."40
Some idea of his
"competency" is given in two arrangements of 1868.41 As his
health continued
uncertain and that of one of his brothers-in-law poor, Smith and
Daniel B. Sargent
agreed finally to close out their special interests and Edward
Sargent retired from
the firm. The amounts received by the three were:
E. Sargent W. B. Smith D. B. Sargent
Balance to credit on
private ledger $173,713 $ none listed $ none listed
Capital stock 80,000 50,000 30,000
Estimated share of
profits from Jan. 1
to April 20, 1868 27,500 10,000 6,000
--------- ---------- --------
$281,213 $ 60,000 $ 36,000
This record would seem
to indicate that W. B. Smith and D. B. Sargent had,
unlike Edward Sargent,
withdrawn their balances in the private ledger (dividends
40. Untitled, undated,
and unsigned document in American Book Company files in New York.
41. An April 20, 1868
document now in contract files of American Book Company in New York.
Winthrop B. Smith 59
on stock, etc.) annually. Whatever the
case, Smith had, including the sale of his
estate in Clifton, a considerable
"competency" upon retirement.
The publisher had obviously done much
better than McGuffey, although the
moral philosopher did not die poor.
Starting sometime during the post-war days,
Alice McGuffey Ruggles reports "the
publishers of the Readers had begun to pay
him [McGuffey] a small annuity, as their
postwar profit soared. He was able to lay
aside for a rainy day and to help the
needy of Charlottesville, white and colored . . .
William had left Laura [his second wife]
very comfortably off, provided she was
careful, and she had always been that.
She went to live with her spinster sisters,
who kept a private school in
Charlottesville. One summer they all three made a
tour of Europe."42 And
before his death in 1873, McGuffey had made a contract
with Wilson, Hinkle & Co. for a
two-volume work on moral philosophy, a task he
was unable to finish, for $500 down against
a royalty often percent net on all copies
sold.43
But W. B. Smith was not through as a
money-maker in 1868. As Cincinnati no
longer held him, he sold his estate in
Clifton to his partner Obed J. Wilson and
moved with his wife and remaining
children to Philadelphia, her original home,
where he managed to put his
"competency" to work. With his son F. Percy Smith,
he entered a new field: Winthrop and
Percy Smith, Brokers in Stocks, Bonds, and
Specie, and Public Accountants of 37
South Third Street. In 1881 this new firm was
described in a local "puff
sheet" in glowing terms. "Among the prominent houses,
well known in financial circles, that of
Messrs. Winthrop & Percy Smith is among
the most active. . . . The copartners
are members of the Stock Exchange, and no
firm in the city has a higher reputation
for judgement, business tact and success."44
W. B. Smith thus surmounted ill health,
extended his fortune, and survived until
December 5, 1885, dying seventeen years
after retiring from textbook publishing.
The 1876 company document provides an
appropriate epitaph: "Winthrop B.
Smith . . . will long be known and
kindly remembered for the good he has done."45
42. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 118,
121-122.
43. Contract preserved in American Book
Company's files in New York.
44. Richard Edwards, The Industries
of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1881), 129.
45. Smith, "Copy of Paper Furnished
by W. B. Smith," March 26, 1876.
MAUCK BRAMMER
Winthrop B. Smith: Creator of
the
Eclectic
Educational Series
William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) is
generally credited with the phenomenal
spread of moral eclecticism throughout
the United States during the middle third
of the nineteenth century. Much of the
credit should go, however, to his canny
publisher, Winthrop B. Smith, who was
the first to recognize the evocative magic
of the word "eclectic" as an
advertising device. He also wrested complete owner-
ship of the McGuffey readers from the
author, and he and his partner, William T.
Truman, parlayed it into the beginning
of an incredibly successful series of text-
books based on the eclectic concept.
Starting from scratch in 1833. W. B. Smith
by 1868 had developed the world's
largest textbook house through a succession of
partnerships. These included the
following: Truman & Smith (1833-1843); W. B.
Smith (1843-1845); W. B. Smith & Co.
(1845-1863); and Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle
(1863-1868). Smith's aggressive business
policy, however, was motivated not so
much by belief in an educational
philosophy as by the ambition of a Connecticut
farm boy to become a financial success.
Cincinnati, during the time of Smith's
residence, in spite of the cattiness of Mrs.
Trollope, was the "Queen City of
the West." With a population of nearly 25,000
in 1830, it could boast of more than
strategic and transportational virtues. By this
time there were numerous public,
private, and parochial schools, academies, and
colleges. Public libraries and a number
of circulating libraries served the descen-
dants of a mixed European population.
Music, both sentimental and highbrow, was
popular, and one theater could claim 800
seats. There were picture galleries, the
beginning of an art museum, a Haydn
Society, several literary clubs, and a very
active group of booksellers, printers,
and publishers. "By the 1830's," wrote Walter
Sutton, "Cincinnati was the
recognized capital of the western book trade,. . . ."2
Too frequently rough privations of
frontier living are associated with lack of
culture. This was certainly not true of
Cincinnati in 1833 when W. B. Smith arrived.
1. American Book Company is a direct
descendant from Truman & Smith, having been formed in
1890 by the descendants of textbook
concerns discussed in this text plus Wilson, Hinkle & Co. (1868-
1877) and Van Antwerp Bragg & Co.
(1877-1890) together with three New York concerns, Iuison,
Blakeman & Co., A. S. Barnes &
Co., and D. Appleton & Co.
This paper is adapted from Mauck
Brammer, "American Book Company: Our Heritage and Our
History." A typescript is in the
New York office of American Book Company.
2. Walter Sutton, The Western Book
Trade: Cincinnati As a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and
Book-Trade Center (Columbus, 1961), 67.
Mr. Brammer is retired managing editor
of American Book Company.