This revolutionary process, by which it ultimately became possible to place before the public pictures of news events within an hour of their occurrence, was utilized first by Frank A. Munsey in "Munsey's Magazine." A page illustration in a magazine by this process cost less than the composition of a page of type, and the public liked it. "Munsey's" reached a circulation in excess of 600,000 soon after its establishment in 1891, and "McClure's," which was to undertake "muckraking" on an elaborate scale, proved a close rival from 1893, and was illustrated in the same manner. Under the editorship of Robert Hobart Davis, from 1904, "Munsey's" became the parent of a group of fiction magazines devoted to the genre of the happy ending, which exerted such power that Rudyard Kipling was obliged to devise a sweetly pretty final chapter of the "Light That Failed."

"McClure's" not only published Ida M. Tarbell's "History of the Standard Oil Company," but by its success brought about the establishment in 1906 of the "American Magazine," of which she was associate editor, and to which most of the radical group of writers contributed; and "Ridgeway's," which ran up to a million circulation during the publication of Tom Lawson's "Frenzied Finance." The "Amnerican," which had hard sledding as an exponent of radical reform, prospered as the creator of the "success" a type of biographical articles , to which Dr. Marden devoted his magazine called "Success"; but finance declined to carry "Ridgeway's" through the panic of 1907.

"The Bookman," at first a publisher's house organ, then a literary magazine, issued by George H. Doran & Co., started upon an independent career at the age of thirty-two in 1927, under the editorship of Arthur Burton Rascoe. The "Review of Reviews," founded by Albert Shaw as an American companion to William T. Stead's London publication of the same name, appeared in 1891.
Stead and his magazine died, but New York's "Review of Reviews" and its editor were still flourishing in 1927.

"The Smart Set," founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann, inventor of the Mann Boudoir Car, and publisher of "Town Topics," passed upon his death of Henry L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, who sold it to the Hearst interests in 1924, to become editors of the "American Mercury," published by Alfred A. Knopf. "Harper's Bazaar," first of the great American group of magazines devoted exclusively to women, although a brilliant success in earlier days, languished under the later Harper's management, but was purchased by Hearst and attained a greater circulation than ever. The "Cosmopolitan," founded by John Brisben Walker in 1890, also passed to Hearst control, and was merged with "Hearst's Magazine." "The Forum," founded by ex-Governor Roswell P. Flower, was edited in 1927 by Dr. Henry Goddard Leach. "The North American Review," founded by Allen Thorndike Rice, reached its zenith under the editorship of George B. Harvey. "The International Studio," founded by John Lane, the London publisher, passed to the ownership of Hearst. "Everybody's Magazine" continued to be published as part of the "Adventure," "Delineator," "Designer" group.

The Oldest of the publishing houses in New York City, of course, is Messrs. Harper Brothers, who celebrated their centennial in 1917. James and John Harper, both practical printers, went into the publishing business in March, 1817, in a little room on Dover Street, and took in as compositors their two younger brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher. All four worked on the composition of their first book, which was "Seneca's Morals," of which they printed for Evert Duyckinck, then a bookseller at 68 Water Street, 2,000 copies. Second in point of antiquity is G. H. Putnam's Sons, which was the first New York house to open a branch in London. In 1927 the largest house in New York, its output being considerably in excess of a book a day, was the Macmillan Company, originally a branch of the Macmillans, Limited, of London.

The growth of the publishing industry is, however, as striking as that of the city itself. The combined population of the territories now embraced in the greater city as the borough of Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Richmond and Queens, in 1790, according to the United States census for that year, was 49,401, of whom 33,131 lived in Manhattan. Bradford brought his press to New York three years later. In 1927 the printing trades in New York City employed 32,000 men, exclusive of editors, authors, writers, artists, etc. The minimum wage of an ordinary compositor was then $55 for a forty-four-hour week, and this being fifty-one percent higher than in New Jersey, and 100 percent higher than in some cities a large part of the books for publishers, and the bulk of the periodicals were manufactured outside the city. But to quote the United States census figures for 1025, the value of products of the printing and publishing manufactures in that year in the city alone was $600,096,484. This was about one-fourth of the total business in these lines for the whole of the United States and dependencies.

(End of Article)