530 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
aesthetic publication of high literary quality went to pieces on the dry rocks of a knowledge interest.
A phase of the increasing complexity in the character of Chicago complexity growing out of the industrial magnitude of the city in the eighties was reflected in the starting of several magazines devoted to serious subjects but appealing to the popu- lar literary interest through the form of essays, supplemented with fiction and, in some, with illustrations. Questions on the relations of capital and labor began to be the subject of much talk and action in Chicago questions whose consideration has since grown to such importance here as to make the city one of the caldrons in which much of social import is seething. In 1886 a violent manifestation of this came in the anarchist riots at Hay- market Square, which, it may be mentioned incidentally, were pictured with large wood cuts in the Illustrated Graphic News, published simultaneously in Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Kansas City, in that year. But the riots and the execution of the anarchists were merely the extreme expression of elements constantly stimulating serious thought.
A monthly magazine called the Commonwealth, started in 1888, was recorded in the newspaper annuals until 1892. But Bel ford's Magazine, of which No. i, June, 1888, bore the imprint " Chicago, New York, and San Francisco," is the most significant serious periodical of the decade which is represented among the files. It appears that, during its second year, the periodical was issued from New York, that in 1892 its headquarters were moved back to Chicago, and that it died in 1893. A statement on American life and serious periodicals was made by the editor, in June, 1889. In an editorial he said:
When the best blood of Europe sought these shores as laborers or pirates, they sought to conquer a continent. The victory achieved between the first landing and now is simply a marvel of industry, endurance, energy, and enterprise. In this struggle of man versus matter we have become materialists. Out of sixty odd millions of population, about three million read books, and these mainly novels. To attempt the publication of a monthly devoted to the discussion of grave subjects, to be to the thoughtful reformer of this country what the Westminster of London has been to the Liberals of England, would be commercial insanity. Successful American magazines are devoted to
