THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 385
of the statistics compiled for these reports concerning the dis- tribution of the magazines and periodicals of the later periods, did not appear until 1869. The figure given by the Budget, however, undoubtedly indicates the average number of copies printed for the prairie periodicals of western circulation.
A lack of businesslike estimates, and an abundance of over- optimistic speculations about the geographic extent of the market for them, have been constant causes of death for literary pub- lishing projects in Chicago. In general, those publishers who have sought only, or mainly, a western market for their output have had a measure of success. Those who, like the editor of the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is, expected readers in the eastern states eagerly to accept their literary product, have, until recently, been altogether disappointed. They have found that, while the people of the states east of Illinois wish to know of the West, they want a literary presentation of western life made from their own point of view. The outlook of the writers for the early periodicals of Chicago was too restricted.
A detailed story of each of these early efforts, however, would show that the central motive of the men making them was not commercial success. Seriously and earnestly they strove to create a literature. Some even were so devoted that it might truly be said they were the high-priests of a fetish, the idol being a Litera- ture of the West. Of the twenty-seven literary periodicals started at Chicago in the decades before 1860, 44 per cent, may be classified as purely literary, while 33 per cent, were of the literary- miscellany type, and II per cent, of the literature-information variety. The proprietors were not publishers, not highly devel- oped captains in the industry of manufacturing and marketing letters. They were, rather, or strove to be, editors.
William Rounseville, of Rounseville & Co., the founder of the first literary magazine published in Chicago, was such an editor. He literally unfurled the banner of western literature, in the Indian summer month of 1845. The cover of his magazine was illustrated with two large trees, an Indian and his tepee at the base of one, and a prairie schooner at the base of the other. A streamer was strung from tree to tree. This streamer bore the
