differentiated from ordinary library aids, by the statement that they were "more experienced and able," and whose work Mr. Bancroft describes as "the study and reduction of certain minor sections of the history which I employed in my writing after more or less condensation and change": (Lit. Ind., 568). But even this passage seems to indicate that the material prepared by these writers was rewritten by Mr. Bancroft.
As a result, therefore, of the indication of the title page of these works, of the recognition of the public press, of the statements of the Literary Industries, and of Mr. Bancroft's connection with the work widely known through personal means, it happens that today he is called the "Historian of the Pacific Coast." Furthermore, he is the only person to whom such a title is given, being so recognized by newspapers, encyclopedias, and the people at large. In the minds of the great number, Hubert Howe Bancroft is the historian of the Pacific states for just the same reason that George Bancroft is the historian of the United States. Speaking in accord with this popular estimate of Mr. Bancroft's work, Wendell Phillips once called him "The Macaulay of the West."
Nowhere, however, can there be found a statement by this historian in which he lays an unequivocal claim to the authorship of the works which have been published under his name. By his own words quoted above he admits that the work was, at least in part, coöperative, and that he was a compiler of the work of his assistants. And for any one man to assert authorship of the Bancroft series of histories would be preposterous. According to actual computation, the mere work of arranging the material and writing the History of the Pacific States, after a small army of note-takers had concluded their operations, represents an equivalent to the labors of one man
