As Henry Holt pointed out, this so-called "trade courtesy" was effective before the Civil War, largely because "the natural distribution of industries then prevented the undue crowding of labor and capital into manufacturing."[1] During the war there was an expansion of manufacturing, but this was confined mainly to matters connected with the war. The years following the war witnessed a further increase in manufacturing industries, which finally, seeking fields in which to work profitably, overflowed into the book publishing business. Without regard to "trade courtesy," and with little or no pay to foreign authors, books were manufactured in cheap form at low prices and distributed in large quantities throughout the country.
The purpose of this study is, first, to give a chronological account of cheap book publishing during the period from 1870 to 1891; and second, to present an account of some of the more important firms which were active in publishing cheap books during that period.
The term "cheap book" is used in this study, with the same meaning that it generally had in the trade and in the newspapers and magazines of the period; that is, a cheap book was, considering its character, conspicuously low in price in comparison with book prices in general. However, it does not include the so-called "Dime Novels," which although low in price, were seldom referred to in the trade as cheap books. The cheap book as it is here considered falls into two classes, the cloth bound book, and the book in paper covers, or as was the case with early issues of the cheap libraries, the book without a separate cover of any sort. For clearness and convenience, books not in cloth binding are in this study referred to as paper-covered books. These were the
- ↑ Forum, 5:27-46 (1888).
