Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/313

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Authorship of Bancroft's History.
303

done by those in his employ as his work, neglecting a distinction between a publisher and an author, which is a vital one. The reputation of a publishing house depends upon the workmanship of its employés, but that of an author depends solely upon his own talents and the work of his own hands. While a publisher may with all propriety speak of work done by agents as his printing, for him to say that writing done for him by others is his writing is a positive misstatement. When Mr. Bancroft paid his writers for their manuscript, he became its owner with full rights of publication, but no one will say for a moment that he thereby became the author. In speaking of the Native Races, as well as the History of the Pacific States, Mr. Bancroft often does so in such terms as to indicate that writing was done by him when it was his only by purchase. (Compare statements in Literary Industries, 303, 568, 571, and in Native Races I, preface xiii, with the facts as shown by the statements of different members of Bancroft's literary corps as to the work actually done by each writer and as given later in this article.)

The division of responsibility for collating and arranging facts for the various divisions of the Native Races was made apparently toward the latter part of the year 1872. We are told that routine work was laid aside for three or four weeks in the middle of the summer, and this time devoted to placing the library in order and cataloguing the new books which had been added. This was obviously done preparatory to entering upon the new work. To a young Englishman who called himself T. Arundel-Harcourt, and who entered the library in November, was assigned the preparation of that portion of the work devoted to the manners and customs of the civilized nations. (This man's true name he did not