500 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
consciously than they had done before under the merely nationalizing influence of the Civil War.
The outside aid was a great stimulus to local energy, helping the ambitious rebuilders of the city to start upon a remarkable period of business enterprise; a period which, along with success in more material lines, led to the establishment of literary periodicals of kinds that were money-makers. Not only food and clothing for the sufferers, but goods for the merchants on long- time credit, and capital on easy terms, came in large quantities from other parts of America and from Europe. All this, added to their own determined spirit, led Chicago men not merely to rebuild on a larger scale, but also to launch new enterprises. Among such were papers of the "family-story" literary order.
That the typical ventures of this period were not of a higher literary type is explained by the fact that the "family-story" paper was the most promising for quick returns in cash. In fact, it is because investments in high-grade publishing in general do not yield returns more quickly that the development of serious publishing has continued to be comparatively slow in Chicago. In an article on "Chicago as a Publishing Center" in "The Com- mercial Association Number" of the Chicago Evening Post, March 8, 1905, Mr. T. J. Zimmerman, managing editor of System, a successful Chicago magazine of information on busi- ness, puts this point as follows:
The whole history and present condition of the publishing business in Chicago may be summed up in this statement : the westerner is looking for quick profits; when he makes an investment of money and labor, he wants to know what it is going to bring, and he wants to see the results at once. In the publishing business that is, real, sincere publishing this is impos- sible. The initial investment in a book or magazine is heavy. And not only this ; returns are spread over a long period of time. Westerners have not gone into the publishing field to a greater extent, because there have been so many opportunities at hand for quick returns into which their energies could be turned.
Twenty years before the Chicago fire it had been discovered in New York that a popular story paper would bring returns to an investor. And we have already seen in the Chicago periodi-
