VOL. XIX MAY, 1888 No. 5 ALFRED SMITH BARNES HALF A CENTURY AS A SCHOOL-BOOK PUBLISHER period in American history has ever been characterized by greater intellectual restlessness or fruitage than the two decades subsequent to 1825. A mere catalogue of the various books, libraries, clubs, charities, churches, educational institutions, newspapers, inventions, industries and business enterprises which sprang into existence within those years would furnish an instructive lesson. We are all familiar with the story of the long-baffled efforts and final success of Professor Morse in devising mechan ical contrivances for conveying messages from point to point by means of electricity. We know how depressing were the original endeavors to bring steam into harness for propelling land-carriages. We recall with something akin to wonder the wholesale terror inspired by the first introduction of gas for lighting houses and streets; and the persistent vigor which, in spite of bitter opposition and in a time of great scarcity of money, brought pure water into the city of New York through a conduit of solid masonry forty-five miles in length, at a cost of upwards of nine millions of dollars. We look backward also to this same remarkable period for the foundation of the great newspaper system of the country, which has become such an engine of thought as well as power. It was an era of important beginnings. Authorship took a fresh start, art received higher recognition than ever before, exhibitions of pictures and statuary became both lucrative and creditable, while the drama struggled for elevation in keeping with the advance of public taste. "The age is itself dramatic," wrote a prominent critic in 1837. There was an endless amount of groping experimentally in the dark, but the air was exhilarant with material progress and exciting possibilities. Among the most popular themes discussed in all quarters were the value of books as a means of culture, and the cause of common-school education. Far-sighted practical men were acting on the principle that no good citizen could afford to dwell in this world without the privileges of a public library; VOL. XIX.-No. 5.-25 and as the population multiplied, the American brain was actively trying to solve the problem of how to provide improved opportunities for the instruction of children. In New England, more than in any other part of the country, education was the absorbing social topic. Money-making was an after-consideration. Birthright was by no means ignored, but it counted for little unless divested of all suspicion of ignorance. The standard by which men and women were measured was intelligence; and intellectual effort and achievement were the fashion. The year 1837 will ever be memorable in the annals of America for its great financial perils and disasters sweeping the entire land. Banks closed their doors, enterprises of all descriptions came to a standstill, industries were paralyzed, and the working classes were plunged into a condition of extreme destitution. Partial relief only came with the following year. Yet it was in 1838 that the late Alfred Smith Barnes, at the age of twentyone, founded the great school-book publishing house that bears his name, and of which he was the head and soul for just half a century. The train of circumstances connected with this event, in view of the condition of the times that gave it birth, will be found singularly interesting. Alfred S. Barnes was a native New Englander, born in New Haven in 1817, and breathed through all his early and maturing years the health-giving, brainstirring atmosphere that has influenced the subsequent fortunes of so many of our countrymen. His father was of the old Puritan stock, with a back-ground of religious culture extending through many generations; his mother was of French Huguenot descent, her ancestor, who took refuge in America, having been the eminent divine Rev. M. De Luce. Losing his father when ten years of age, the future publisher went to live with an uncle in Hartford. His education was well cared for, and at sixteen he was employed by D. F. Robinson & Co., a Hartford publishing-house, with a salary of thirty dollars a year. In this field he grew rapidly in knowledge, for it furnished opportunities that he was in no sense inclined to waste for learning the business he afterwards followed with such marked success. A few years rolled on; the bright boy-clerk was on the verge of manhood, when it so happened that he made the acquaintance of Charles Davies, then a professor in Trinity College, Hartford, who being an enthu siast in mathematics was devoting his spare moments to the preparation of a series of arithmetics, algebras, geometries, and kindred works for the use of schools. Young Barnes was at once interested, and presently in animated sympathy with the learned professor in his vigorous determina tion to produce the best text-books of the kind the world had yet seen. His wonderful clear-sightedness and natural taste for mathematical investigations did more than this, it induced him to offer himself as publisher of the series. The result was the formation of a partnership with Professor Davies for the issue and sale of these as yet unfinished school-books, an experiment almost without precedent in that decade, and one at which many an older if not wiser head would have shaken in such a crisis of affairs. A little office twelve by twenty feet in size was secured in Hartford, where, without cash capital, the business was opened. Book canvassers, like railroads, had not yet appeared to disturb the even tenor of American life, and as the first and most important feature of the venture was to create a market, young Barnes started out in person to introduce Professor Davies' mathematical text-books into the schools. Mrs. Emma Willard then resided in Hartford, and her histories were included for variety in the earliest publications of the new firm, and were canvassed for at the same time. For two years Alfred S. Barnes traveled from town to town and village to village, visiting all the schools and academies within a wide range of surrounding territory. He journeyed by country stages, on horseback, and in private conveyances, as chances offered, and he explained in the most courteous and convincing manner the superior merits of the new method of teaching and learning mathematics over the old. He was a mere stripling, but graceful, refined, unpretentious, and well-informed on every phase of mathematical science, and ready at all times to converse on general topics or play ball with the sons of the taciturn masters, as the case might be. He managed the enterprise so ingeniously that he had no disappointments nor ill luck to chronicle. The productions of Professor Davies were found to be all that he had represented; they were adopted by one institution of learning after another, soon becoming much talked about, then famous wherever the English language was spoken. In his intercourse with the educators of the day, the youthful publisher naturally became conversant with existing defects in the primitive schoolbooks then in use, and learned the general sentiment as to what ought to be provided for a starving generation. He made educational text-books a practical study. His plans for the future were formed on this basis. In 1840 he removed his business to Philadelphia, adding a wholesale department, in which he commenced handling the publications of other houses. The following spring, as he was returning from a long Western trip, he became quite unexpectedly one of the principal parties in a charming little romance. He had made the journey from Albany to Springfield by stage, |