The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine

Notes

299 N o t e s Chapter 1: Creation 1.“Dissatisfied Creditors,” Rochester (New York) Union and Advertiser, May 22, 1888, 3. All descriptive anecdotes and quotes from the meeting throughout this chapter derive from this newspaper article unless otherwise specified. Details about Powers Hotel from I. J. Isaacs, The Industrial Advance of Rochester (Rochester, N.Y.: National Publishing Company, 1884), passim, and from images at www.vintageviews.org, keyword Powers Hotel. The amount of debt in 1888 would equal $6.9 million in 2010 dollars. For perspective, all dollar amounts in this chapter can be multiplied by a factor of twenty-three to determine the approximate equivalent value in 2010 dollars. 2. “Dissatisfied Creditors” and “Patents Issued,” Rochester Union and Advertiser, August 12, 1886, 3. 3. Jacob J. Bausch v. The Schlicht & Field Company, Monroe County (New York) Supreme Court, 1888; information on birth date, birthplace, and nationality of Paul J. Schlicht from passport 6560, U.S. Department of State, 1886. www.ancestry.com. 4. Cosmopolitan, April 1886, 2; the publisher’s note explained canvassing for subscribers. 5. “Dissatisfied Creditors”; Rochester Directory (Rochester, N.Y.: Drew, Allis and Company , 1875–1889), see various entries for Paul J. Schlicht and Schlicht & Field Company. 6.“Dissatisfied Creditors.” 7. Articles of Incorporation, Cosmopolitan Magazine Company, January 21, 1888, New York Department of State, Corporations Office, Albany. 8. Jacob J. Bausch and German American Bank of Rochester v. Paul J. Schlicht, Monroe County (New York) Supreme Court, 1888; “Dissatisfied Creditors.” 9.“Dissatisfied Creditors.” 10. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines: 1865–1885 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1938), 5–8. 11. Public school enrollment, compulsory school attendance laws, and educational attainment from Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition Online (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); exposure to literature and general knowledge from Carl F. Kaestle, Helen Damon-Moore, Lawrence C. Stedman, Katherine Tinsley, and William Vance Trollinger Jr., Literacy in the United States: Readers and Reading Since 1890 (New Haven , Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 276–79. 12. Mary Ellen Zuckerman, A History of Popular Women’s Magazines in the United States, 1792–1995 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998), 3–4. 13. Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century (New York: Verso, 1996), 89–91. 14. Susan Harris Smith and Melanie Dawson, editors, The American 1890s: A Cultural Reader (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), 15–19. 15. Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 71–72; occupational data from Historical Statistics of the United States. 16. Harold G.Vatter, The Drive to Industrial Maturity: The U.S. Economy, 1860–1914 (Westport , Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 171–74; Eric E. Lampard,“Urbanization,” in Encyclopedia of American Economic History: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas, ed. Glenn Porter (New York: Scribner, 1980), 1051–52. 17.Wage data from Historical Statistics of the United States. Other household income data and expenditures from Daniel Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 13–21; and Vatter, 232–33 and 300–304. 18. Historians, all relying on Mott, cite $4 as the annual price of a Cosmopolitan subscription for its first few years. Schlicht listed $2 for the 1886–1888 editions of N. W. Ayer & Son’s Annual Newspaper Directory. However, Cosmopolitan listed $2.50 on its cover for an annual subscription until 1888 and $3 afterward for several years. Also, Cosmopolitan promotional statements in the magazine itself specified $2.50 during the startup phase. 19. Population clusters from Robert Higgs, The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865–1914: An Essay in Interpretation (New York: Wiley, 1971), passim; Stuart W. Bruchey, Enterprise: The Dynamic Economy of a Free People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), passim. 20. Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 223–29. 21. Century, Cosmopolitan, and Scribner’s, various issues, 1884–1891. 22.Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 136. 23. Ohmann, 70–72; Mott, 22–25; Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 70–71. 24. Postal rate and reform information from Richard B. Kielbowicz,“Postal Subsidies for the Press and the Business of Mass Culture, 1880–1920,” Business...