The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America, 1893-1914

In this new book, Schneirov is debating with other authors who have studied popular magazines and American culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These researchers utilize a “Western marxist” perspective, particularly Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, to argue that economic factors, such as the growing need for business to attract a national market of consumers, led to the development of national advertising. This, in turn, sparked the rise of the mass-circulation magazine that helped shape the consumer culture and consciousness of American society (7). In other words, “the economy” is the independent variable that effects culture via the media. Schneirov argues that this theoretical framework is too simplistic and that “changes in the economy cannot be given an independent status as a causal agent and then used to explain cultural factors because economic change is never purely ‘economic’ (i.e., divorced from larger social and cultural frameworks)” (10). He seeks to show in his study that the foundations of contemporary consumer culture were forged out of the interactions between the popular magazine, its publishers, editors, and contributors, the readers, and the larger social context. He borrows Wendy Griswold’s term “cultural diamond” to describe this approach.

Schneirov explains that from 1865–93, the magazines that educated middle-class Americans read were genteel “family house magazines,” primarily Harper’s Monthly, Century, Scribner’s, and Atlantic Monthly. The editors and publishers of these family house magazines were men raised in the eastern part of the United States and closely connected with the “old money” commercial interests of the northern upper-class. These men, as part of the political group called “mugwump reformers,” sought liberal reform within the Republican party. Through the publication of works of fiction and poetry by English Victorian and American authors, and articles by other mugwump reformers on politics and current events, “these magazines sought to elevate middle-class tastes through exposure to great literature and art in order to protect the Protestant middle class from the dangers of the ‘lower orders’ and to counteract their influence” (29). Schneirov argues that the fear of immigration, working-class radicalism, and rural populism created the impression that these magazines resisted “mass society” and “mass culture,” eventually leading to a decline in their circulation.

Schneirov disagrees with the contentions of the magazine historians that the decline of family house magazines in 1893, and the subsequent rise of popular magazines such as Munsey’s, McClure’s, and Cosmopolitan, constituted a “magazine revolution.” The change was not so abrupt. Family house magazines did not remain strictly elitist and conservative but began to reflect changes in American values, such as religious toleration as well as an optimistic faith in both economic development and scientific advances (60). Popular magazines continued to reflect elements of the mugwump reform tradition and the genteel view of culture (84). Nevertheless, there were distinct differences between the two types of magazines. In terms of the larger social context, the popular magazine rose during a time of industrial conflict and economic crisis. Reflecting the social environment of the time, the features in popular magazines were more timely than those in family house magazines and gave readers an “inside” look at politics and current affairs. The use of photography gave the popular magazines a contemporary and journalistic look. The publishers, editors, and contributors of the popular magazines were less likely to be from the eastern literary establishment. Because advertising was included in these magazines (the editors thought it had artistic and educational merit), their price was much lower than that of family house magazines. This helped to increase circulation during a time of economic depression, and increased readership among the lower middle class. Schneirov claims that the lower price alone is inadequate to account for the rise in circulation of the popular magazines because it explains “only that magazines were affordable, not what kept people reading them” (96). He tries to argue that...