Chapter 5

In the eyes of a publisher a good schoolbook is one that can be readily introduced and one that will stay when it is put in use. The officials who adopt a schoolbook are not the users of the book. They are adults long past the school age. Cases have been known when in important adoptions the majority of the adopting board had not seen the inside of a school room for twenty-five years. Of course such men are far behind the schools. They are governed by their own past experience. When the teachers are allowed to have a voice in the way of advice, the real needs of the pupils obtain more consideration. But the final real judge of the merits of a schoolbook is the boy or girl who uses it. If the book is truly pedagogical, adjusted in every part to the average mental development of the child, it becomes a valuable tool in the school room. If on the other hand it is a mere collection of novelties such as catch the eye of inexpert judges and impress merely the imagination, the books may be introduced; but they won't stay.

[Child Nature]

The McGuffey Readers had staying qualities. Teachers often became so familiar with their contents that they needed no book in their hands to correct the work, but to each child the contents of the book were new and fresh. It is the fashion of the present day to exalt the new at the expense of the old. But the child of today is very much such as Socrates and Plato studied in Greece. The development of the human mind may be more generally understood than it was then; but it may be doubted whether the mass of teachers are today wiser in the results of child-study than were the philosophers of ancient days. Child nature remains the same. At a given stage in his upward progress, he is interested in much the same things. He is led to think for himself in much the same way, and the whole end and aim of education is to lead toward self activity. The readers that deal simply with facts--information readers--may lodge in the minds of children some scraps of encyclopedic information which may in future life become useful. But the readers that rouse the moral sentiments, that touch the imagination, that elevate and establish character by selections chosen from the wisest writers in English in all the centuries that have passed since our language assumed a comparatively fixed literary form, have a much more valuable function to perform. Character is more valuable than knowledge and a taste for pure and ennobling literature is a safeguard for the young that cannot be safely ignored.

The success of the McGuffey Readers was due primarily to their adaptation to the general demand of the schools and secondarily to the energy and skill of their publishers.

[Moral Teaching]

The books in their first form were strongly religious in their teaching without being denominational. If a selection taught a moral lesson this was stated in formal words at the close. The pill was not sugared. Thus at the close of a lesson narrating the results of disobedience, the three little girls assembled and "they were talking how happy it made them to keep the Fifth Commandment." There was in the books much direct teaching of moral principles, with "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not." In the later revisions this gradually disappeared. The moral teaching was less direct but more effective. The pupil was left to make his own deduction and the formal "haec fabula docet" was omitted. The author and the publishers were fully justified in their firm belief that the American people are a moral people and that they have a strong desire that their children be taught to become brave, patriotic, honest, self-reliant, temperate, and virtuous citizens.

In some of these books the retail price is printed. In 1844 the retail price of the First Reader was twelve and a half cents. It contained 108 pages. In the same year, the Second Reader of 216 pages was priced at 25 cents. The Fourth Reader cost 75 cents, and contained 336 pages.

These prices were in a market when the day's wage of a laboring man was only fifty cents. Relatively to the cost of other articles, schoolbooks were not nearly so cheap as they are now.

When Truman & Smith began publishing, the copyright law required the deposit of titles and copies of the several books in the office of the Clerk of the District Court. At first such deposits were made in Columbus, Ohio, but later in Cincinnati. When Congress organized the Copyright Bureau in Washington, the several clerks were required to send to the Library of Congress all the sample copies deposited; but these had been carelessly kept and many were lost. A duplicate set was for years required to be sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. These were also passed into the custody of the Librarian of Congress; but this collection had been carelessly preserved and the files of the McGuffey Readers at Washington are now quite defective for the earliest issues. The Library seems to have no copy of any number of the first edition except possibly the Second and Fourth. The copy of the Second was deposited December 12, 1836. The Fourth bears date of July, 1837. All the other early copies found in that library are of later dates and are "Revised and Improved."

[Early Engravings]

It may be well to indicate in a general way the progress that has been made in illustrating schoolbooks. The first editions of the McGuffey Readers as issued in 1836 and 1837 did not contain a single original engraving. All seem to have been copied from English books. The nice little boys wear round-about jackets with wide, white ruffled collars at the neck. The proper little girls have scoop bonnets and conspicuous pantalets. Most of the men wear knee breeches. The houses shown have the thatched roofs of English cottages. In one picture a boy has a regular cricket bat. Other schoolbooks of that date show similar appropriations of English engravings; but even at that time there were a few wood engravers in America. When the second general revision was made in 1843 some original illustrations appeared and in the edition of 1853 notice was given on the title page that the engravings were copyright property that must not be used by others.

As pictures are closely studied by children, some of the users of these early books may remember the cut showing vividly the dangers of "whale catching." Two boats are thrown high in the air by one sweep of the animal's tail and one seaman is shown head downward still in the boat. Another represented Jonah being cast overboard from the ship toward the whale below whose mouth is manifestly large enough to accommodate Jonah.

But the engravings in this edition of 1853 had no considerable artistic quality and they were very coarsely engraved. In 1863 came the first employment of a genuine artist in wood engraving. This was Mr. E.J. Whitney who had made a reputation by work done for New York publishers. His engravings were to take the place of some then in the books and their sizes were precisely determined. The drawings were most carefully made by Mr. Herrick with pencil on the whitened boxwood blocks, and sent to the publisher for examination. These, when approved, were returned to the engraver who followed precisely the lines of the drawing. When the engraving was finished, a carefully rubbed proof on India paper was sent to the publisher. If this was satisfactory, the block was delivered and from it an electrotype was made for printing. The block itself was preserved as an original. Mr. Whitney's work was thoroughly good. He was a wood engraver of the old school.

[New Processes]

When the revision of 1878 was decided on, the publishers of the McGuffey Readers realized that much improvement must be made in the illustrations. About this time the magazines were placing great stress upon pictorial work and a new school of engravers came into existence. The wood engravers had already departed from the painful reproduction of each line of a pencil drawing and had become skilled in representing tints of light and shade if placed on the whitened block with a brush. This gave greater freedom of interpretation to the engraver. The next step was to have the drawing made large and reproduced on the block by photography. By this method most of the engravings were made for the edition of 1878. Care was taken to employ artists of reputation and the engravings were usually signed by the artist and by the engraver.

Before the last edition came out in 1901, photo-engraving had nearly supplanted wood engraving. By this process the artist's drawing with the brush is reproduced in fine tints which, when well engraved and carefully printed, produce effective results. Pen and ink drawings are also reproduced in exact facsimile. By this process the hand work of the engraver is nearly eliminated. The blocks are sometimes retouched to produce effects not attained by the process work. The skill of the artist in making the drawing thus becomes all important.

[Later Inventions]

The introduction of color work in the schoolbooks intended for young children resulted from the invention of the three-color plates. From nature, or from a colored painting, three photographs are taken--one excluding all but the yellow rays of light, one for the red rays, and one for the blue. From these photographs three tint blocks are made which to the eye in many cases look exactly alike. From one of these an impression is made with yellow ink, exactly over this the red plate prints with red ink and this is followed by an impression from the blue plate. If the effects of the color screens of the camera are exactly reproduced by the printer's inks and with exactly the right amount of ink, the result is wonderfully satisfactory.

What are the qualities in these McGuffey Eclectic Readers that won for them through three-quarters of a century such wide and constant use?

[Character Building]

The best answer to this question may be drawn from the many newspaper articles which appeared in Western and Southern papers after the death of one of the authors. There is general recognition on the part of the writers of these articles that while the books served well their purpose of teaching the art of reading, their greatest value consisted in the choice of masterpieces in literature which by their contents taught morality, and patriotism and by their beauty served as a gateway to pure literature. One editor, who used these books in his school career, said, "Thousands of men and women owe their wholesome views of life, as well as whatever success they may have attained to the wholesome maxims and precepts found on every page of these valuable books. The seed they scattered has yielded a million-fold. All honor to the name and memory of this excellent and useful man."

[What Constitutes Real Value]

One of the wise men of the olden time cared not who wrote the laws if he might write their songs. Among a people devoid of books the folk-songs are early lodged firmly in the mind of every child. They influence his whole life. The modern schoolbooks--particularly the readers--furnish the basis of the moral and intellectual training of the youth in every community. The McGuffey Readers, from their own peculiar inherent qualities, retained their hold upon the schools until in some states laws were passed which in their operation caused schoolbooks to be regarded as commodities estimated almost solely upon the cost of paper, printing and binding. The value of these material things can easily be ascertained and compared; but unless the print carries the lessons that help to form a life the paper is wasted and the pupil's most valuable time is misspent. The teaching power of a schoolbook cannot be weighed in the grocer's scales nor measured with a pint cup. In the field open to free and constant competition, the books best suited to the wants of each community will in the end succeed. It was under such conditions that the McGuffey Readers won and held their place in the schools.

End of Project Gutenberg's A History of the McGuffey Readers, by Henry H. Vail