THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO
in knowledge about the form and contents of literary works. The Dial was raised up for keeping time on the knowledge of current productions of literature.
Nevertheless, the Dial is significant of Chicago and western literary interests as they devloped in the decade of its founding, and as they have grown to be since then. With Chicago having attained a metropolitan prominence in materialistic things, one characteristic of the majority of Chicagoans in the eighties became self-confident boasting about their city. It was the crass clamor of a puissant metropolitanism of the market-place. When this note became most strong, many citizens, with material achievements accomplished, began to have some doubts as to whether business success is all of greatness possible. The appear- ance of the Dial marked the fact that the central inland market for grosser products had become a great central market for liter- ary goods. In a section where literary appreciation was much more predominant than the creative literary interest writing and publishing it is perhaps remarkable that such a journal as the Dial did not come earlier. The West was buying books. The West began to criticise books. And incidentally other journals of literary criticism, among them being a short-lived magazine called the American Critic, were started at this time. Of course, from the earliest days of periodical-publishing in Chicago there had been some literary criticism. But the attitude of appraising quality had not been a characteristic of Chicago until the decade of the eighties, when this element found a place in the public mind of a community which had reached a material metropolitanism, and was growing toward a broader and higher metropolitan spirit.
The history of the Dial during the eighties and later tells of the advance toward, not only breadth, but also independence in the judgment of letters. During the entire decade of the eighties, and for two years in the nineties, the business success of the Dial was made easy because A. C. McClurg & Co. were heavy whole- sale purchasers from all of the large publishing-houses of the East. Naturally the publishers were quick to place advertise- ments in the Dial. Furthermore, the Dial, published by Me-
