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“Old Homes, in a City of Perpetual Change”: Women's Magazines, 1890–1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Mary Ellen Waller-Zuckerman
Mary Ellen Waller-Zuckerman
Affiliation:
Mary Ellen Waller-Zuckerman is visiting professor of marketing at McGill University and associate professor of marketing at SUNY-Geneseo.
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Abstract

Although the growth of inexpensive, widely distributed magazines that began in the United States in the 1890s has been noted, the role played by magazines directed specifically toward female readers has received little scholarly attention. The following article examines contents, personnel, and readership and advertising, pricing, production, and distribution techniques to demonstrate that the women's magazines were pioneers in many of these areas.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 715 - 756
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

1 Towne, Charles Hanson, Adventures in Editing (New York, 1926), 190.Google Scholar

2 See Peterson, Theodore, Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1964), 13, 14Google Scholar; and Wood, James, Magazines in the United States (New York, 1949).Google Scholar

3 For agreement see Ohmann, Richard, “Where Did Mass Culture Come From? The Case of Magazines,” Berkshire Review 16 (1981): 87, 88, 99.Google Scholar

4 Figures on magazine circulation from Ayer, N. W., Ayer's Directory (Philadelphia, Pa.), 1981Google Scholar; and Peterson, Magazines, 60.

5 For more on this argument, see Waller, Mary Ellen (Zuckerman), “Development and Influence of Popular Women's Magazines, 1890–1917” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1987).Google Scholar

6 For an analysis of tactics used by other industries of this period, see Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, “The Beginnings of ‘Big Business’ in American Industry,” Business History Review 23 (Spring 1959): 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This measurement is not the number of magazines founded by that time; it is rather, a frequency measure of how many times a journal appeared. For example, Ladies Home Journal, founded in 1883, counted 26 times in the sample of 260, since it was listed among the top ten circulators in every year from which the data were collected. These figures are derived from data collected from Ayer's Directory, 1910–60.

8 Waller, Mary Ellen (Zuckerman), “Selling Mrs. Consumer: The Role of Women's Magazines in the Development of Advertising,” Proceedings of the Third Annual History of Marketing Conference (April 1987).Google Scholar

9 Additional information on the women's magazines in the antebellum period can be found in Tebbel, John and Waller-Zuckerman, Mary Ellen, The Magazine in America (New York, 1991).Google Scholar

10 For description of the origins and content of these journals, see Waller, Mary Ellen (Zuckerman), “The Business Side of Media Development: Women's Magazines in the Gilded Age,” in Essays in Economic and Business History, ed. Perkins, Edwin J. (1989), 7: 40–59Google Scholar; and “Marketing and Women's Journals, 1873–1900,” Business and Economic History, ed. William J. Hausman (1989), 18: 99–108.

11 Analysis of women's magazines from 1910 to 1960 shows that these six magazines appear most frequently in a listing of the top ten women's magazines during that fifty-year period. The top ten magazines for each year were derived from Ayer's Directory, listings from 1910 through 1960; analysis was done on the top ten listed for alternate, even years.

12 Waller, “Business Side of Media Development.”

13 For statistics on the magazine industry, see Casson, Herbert, “The Wonders of Magazine Making,” Woman's Home Companion, Sept. 1904, 8, 9Google Scholar; Presbrey, Frank, The History and Development of Advertising (New York, 1929), 488Google Scholar; Tebbel, John, The American Magazine: A Compact History (New York, 1969), 124Google Scholar; Peterson, Magazines; and Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), 4: 5.Google Scholar

14 For more on these features, see Peterson, Magazines, 13, 14.

15 This excludes mail-order journals such as Comfort, often not considered magazines but advertising sheets, distributed at low or no cost to readers.

16 Presbrey, History, 481.

17 For discussion of the attributes and philosophies of the editors of women's journals in this period, see Waller, “Popular Women's Magazines,” chap. 2.

18 John, Arthur, The Best years of the Century: Richard Watson Gilder, Scribner's Monthly and Century Magazine, 1879–1909 (Urbana, Ill., 1981).Google Scholar

19 Ohmann, “Mass Culture” and Peterson, Magazines.

20 In addition to the new photoengraving process, inexpensive glazed paper lowered the cost of making illustrations from photographs. See Brady, Kathleen, Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (New York, 1984), 65.Google Scholar

21 See “A Few Things We Have Done,” Ladies Home Journal, Nov. 1908. See also Steinberg, Salme, Reformer in the Marketplace (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 12, 17.Google Scholar

22 Profitable Advertising, Dec. 1901. The article noted that the building was “modern in every particular. It is constructed entirely of iron, steel, and brick, is seven stories high, and provides a space of 1,000 feet on each floor.”

23 Fuller, Walter Deane, The Life and Times of Cyrus H. K. Curtis, 1850–1933, Newcomen Society Address (New York, 1948), 20, 21.Google Scholar Fuller worked for the Curtis organization and had risen to the position of vice-president by the time of this address.

24 Young, Gerald, This is Crowell-Collier (New York, 1947).Google Scholar

25 Crowell Publishing Co., About the Crowell Co. (Springfield, Ohio, 1903)Google Scholar, found in Hayden Carruth Papers, box 9, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

26 Ibid.

27 Casson, “The Wonders of Magazine Making,” 9; and Young, This is Crowell-Collier.

28 See Crowell, About the Crowell Co., 8.

29 Swanberg, W. A., Dreiser (New York, 1965), 119.Google Scholar

30 In the 1914 Woman's Home Companion survey, customers voted service departments the most important section of the magazine; see “Survey,” 5.

31 Even as product differentiation continued, successful departments were sometimes imitated; for example, Woman's Home Companion copied Ladies' Home Journal's Babies Bureau.

32 These differences were determined by quantitative analysis performed on the issues of the Big Six appearing in 1912. See Waller, “Popular Women's Magazines.” For discussion of the continuation of these similarities and differences in the 1920s, see Stevens, Hazel, “An Inquiry into the Present Content of Women's Magazines as an Index to Women's Interests” (M. A. thesis, Columbia University Journalism School, 1925).Google Scholar

33 Towne, Adventures in Editing, 79.

34 Condé Nast, quoted in Seebohm, Caroline, The Man Who Was Vogue—The Life and Times of Condé Nast (New York, 1982), 80.Google Scholar For firsthand accounts about these two journals, see Chase, Edna Woolman and Chase, Ilka, Always in Vogue (Garden City, N.Y., 1954)Google Scholar; Snow, Carmel with Aswell, Mary Louise, The World of Carmel Snow (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Harper, J. Henry, The House of Harper (New York, 1912)Google Scholar; and Laurensen, Helen, Stranger at the Party (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

35 On developments in the postal service, see Mott, History of American Magazines, 4:20; and Kennedy, Jane, “Development of Postal Rates, 1845–1955,” Land Economics 33 no. 2 (May 1957): 93–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On mail-order journals, see Mott, History of American Magazines, 4: 365–67.

36 Mott, History of American Magazines, 4: 11.

37 Woman's Home Companion, Oct. 1907, 42. On the ease of starting a woman's magazine, see Mott, who notes that “Most cities of any size had women's magazines at some time or another during this period (1885–1905). Any hustling publisher could start such a journal ‘on a shoestring’”; History of American Magazines, 4: 362. Easy credit, readily available and inexpensive editorial material, the use of premiums, and eager advertisers all made easy start-up possible.

38 See Casson, “The Wonders of Magazine Making,” 8; and Connolly, Vera, Judy Grant: Editor (New York, 1940), 89Google Scholar for this description.

39 Young, This is Crowell-Collier, 11.

40 See Bok, Edward, The Americanization of Edward Bok (New York, 1921)Google Scholar, for staff size of Ladies' Home Journal; see Swanberg, Dreiser, for Delineator; and “James Ottley,” National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1935), 24: 65, 66, for size of McCall's.

41 Carruth, “What's Going On,” 28 Feb. 1918, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 10.

42 In this, the magazines fit into the “search for order” occurring in American society at large. See Wiebe, Robert, Search for Order (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

43 Hayden Carruth memo to Frederick Collins, 11 Nov. 1907, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 10; Carruth had little success on this point, and he complained that, “This is especially to be regretted when in so many ways we come into direct competition with The Curtis Publishing Co., whose system of payments is the promptest, surest, and most entirely satisfactory of any publishing house on the market.” Memo, 26 Dec. 1907, ibid.

44 See Chase, Always in Vogue; for descriptions of Jordan, Tompkins, and Wilbur, see “Notes on Some Magazine Editors,” The Bookman, Dec. 1900, 357. On women generally, see “The Journalist's Birthday,” and “Women as Editors,” The Journalist, 23 (April 1898): 9, 10, 121. The only female publisher during this period was Mrs. Frank Leslie, who had taken over on her husband's death.

45 These moves proved permanent, as the magazines' main offices remained in New York throughout the century. From 1910 to 1960, 62 percent of the top women's magazines had main offices in New York City. This proportion increases to 73 percent when Philadelphia (home of Ladies' Home Journal) is added in. Geographically, it was a highly concentrated industry. Figures from analysis of top ten circulators, 1910–60, from N. W. Ayer, Directory.

46 For example, Vogue had an international edition by the time of the First World War, and Delineator had been publishing in Europe since the late nineteenth century.

47 See Hayden Carruth Memo, 9 April 1907, Hayden Carruth Papers, on the subject of reprints.

48 The analysis was performed on data derived from N. W. Ayer, Directory; the exact figure is 40.4. Good Housekeeping changed publishers so it does not appear as frequently. This magazine industry characteristic is given special note in “Circulation: 9,496,841,” Fortune, Aug. 1937, 63–69ff.

49 See, for example, announcement of price increase in Woman's Home Companion, 700th Anniversary ed., Dec. 1908. For prices of the various magazines see Mott, History of American Magazines, 4: passim.

50 See Waller-Zuckerman, “Marketing the Women's Journals“; the general-interest journals, such as McClure's, Munsey's, and Cosmopolitan, raised their prices shortly after this; see Tebbel, American Magazine.

51 See “James Ottley,” 64, 65; Mott, History of American Magazines 4: 582; and Tipper, Hany, Hollingsworth, H. L., Hotchkiss, G. B., and Parson, F. A., Advertising: Its Principles and Practices (New York, 1915), 283.Google Scholar

52 The relative lack of importance of price competition remained a characteristic of the women's magazine industry for the first half of the twentieth century. Examination of prices in the top ten magazines from 1910 through 1960 reveals a statistically insignificant relationship between price and placement in the top ten circulators (R=—.18). Data for just one woman's magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, also reveal no significant relationship between quantity and price for an even longer time period, 1890–1960; see Mary Ellen Waller (Zuckerman), “Content Change in Women's Magazines,” Working Paper, Jones School of Business, Nov. 1987. Both analyses are based on figures taken from N. W Ayer, Directory.

53 For a provocative discussion of how much advertising revenues subsidize current magazine prices, see Norris, Vincent, “Consumer Magazines and the Mythical Advertising Subsidy,” Journalism Quarterly 59 (Summer 1982): 205–11, 239CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Norris, Vincent, “Mad Economics: An Analysis of an Adless Magazine,” Journal of Communication 34 (Winter 1984): 44–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Soley, Lawrence and Krishnan, R., “Does Advertising Subsidize Consumer Magazine Prices?” Journal of Advertising 16, no. 2 (1987): 4–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Casson, “Wonders of Magazine Making,” 9.

54 See Curtis Company, Expenditures of Advertisers in Leading National and Farm Publications (Philadelphia, Pa., 1920)Google Scholar, for comparative advertising revenue figures.

55 See Profitable Advertising (15 June 1898): 50; Steinberg, Reformer; Bok, Americanization, and Waller (Zuckerman), “Selling Mrs. Consumer.”

56 See issues of Woman's Home Companion, back pages, 1895 through 1910 for examples of these gift offers to reader-agents. For a description of the clubs, see Woodward, Helen, The Lady Persuaders (New York, 1960), 103, 104Google Scholar. Woodward, an advertising copywriter, worked for both Woman's Home Companion and Pictorial Review during the early years of the twentieth century, as well as for advertising agencies placing advertisements in the women's magazines. See Hayden Carruth Memo, 8 Nov. 1907, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 9; Woman's Home Companion, Dec. 1910, 12.

57 Curtis Company, “How to Sell 100 Copies a Week” (Philadelphia, Pa., 1912), 50–59. This pamphlet identified nine particular types of customers who would buy the Journal, as well as eleven “traps” (refusals by potential Journal purchasers) and how to overcome them. For description of Curtis's handling of the boy agents selling the Post, see Cohn, Jan, “The Business Ethic for Boys: The Saturday Evening Post and the Post Boys,” Business History Review 61 (Summer 1987): 185–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Woman's Home Companion, Jan. 1912, 83; Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1912, 1.

59 “When We Were Younger,” Good News (Crowell Co. employee publication), Jan. 1926, 15, found in Hayden Carruth Papers, box 9.

60 Crowell, About the Crowell Co., 26; “A Few Things We Have Done,” Ladies' Home Journal, Nov. 1908; and Steinberg, Reformer, 10.

61 See “Circulation: 9,496,841,” Fortune, 63–69ff; Crowell, About the Crowell Co.; Curtis Co., Selling Efforts (Philadelphia, Pa., 1913)Google Scholar; and Wyman, Phillips, Magazine Circulation: An Outline of Methods and Meanings (New York, 1936), 11.Google Scholar

62 See McCall's, issues for 1912, Table of Contents page.

63 Wyman, Circulation, 11. The Crowell organization carefully pointed out that this plan was not really installment selling, but rather a “pay as you get” plan, since the product, the magazines, arrived over the course of the payment plan. See “Circulation: 9,496,841,” Fortune, 108.

64 Woman's Home Companion, Jan. 1915, 44. Carruth notes that they were offering calendars to Companion readers in 1907 and 1908; see Hayden Carruth Memo, 9 Sept. 1908, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 9.

65 See, for example, Woman's Home Companion, Jan. 1915, inside cover; a similar advertisement appearing in the Companion, Dec. 1913, 71, noted that “we are confident that every COMPANION reader will also enjoy THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE.”

66 See Woman's Home Companion, Sept. 1912, 1, for offer noted first; see “Announcement Page,” ibid., Jan. 1904, for later offer.

67 See ibid., Feb. 1907, 13, where the editors state that they have been running advertisements in the “traction cars“; Hayden Carruth to Mr. Messier, 15 Dec. 1916, Hayden Carruth Papers.

68 Hayden Carruth Memo, July 1915, Hayden Carruth Papers; Hayden Carruth Memo, 18 May 1909, ibid. A Carruth memo, undated [1910], Hayden Carruth Papers, noted the covers hanging in the advertising agency, but left the agent unnamed.

69 See Woman's Home Companion, Oct. 1907, 1, for an example of this marketing technique. This painting had won their huge cover content; a similar promotional effort was repeated in 1911, where readers were sent a reproduction of a picture by Kate Greenaway. See Companion, Dec. 1911, Announcement page.

70 See Hayden Carruth Papers, box 10, for Woman's Home Companion clip sheets of June, July, Aug., and Sept. 1905. Carruth was in charge of preparing these sheets.

71 Quoted in The Journalist 32 (1 Nov. 1902): 1.

72 See “A Few Things We Have Done,” Ladies' Home Journal, 3.

73 See Crowell, About the Crowell Co., 5.

74 Mott, History of American Magazines, 4: 766, quoting from Printer's Ink.

75 Steinberg, Reformer, 10, 11; and Sykes, G. A., “Periodicals on the Elevated Railroads,” Printer's Ink, 21 Dec. 1892, 830.Google Scholar

76 For more on Munsey's fight with ANC, see Britt, George, Forty years, Forty Millions—The Career of Frank A. Munsey (New York, 1935), 83–85Google Scholar; for additional details about the ANC generally, see Mott, History of American Magazines, 4: 18; and Peterson, Magazines, 91.

77 Bok, Edward, “The Magazine with a Million,” Ladies Home Journal, Feb. 1903, 16Google Scholar; and Steinberg, Reformer, 11; percentages calculated from figures appearing in Standard Rate and Data Service (Skokie, Ill., Nov. 1922).

78 See McCall's advertisement, Ayer's Directory (1914), n.p.; Wyman, Circulation, 43–59.

79 These changes are described succinctly by Woloch, Nancy, Women and the American Experience (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; and Hymowitz, Carol and Weissman, Michaele, A History of Women in America (New York, 1978).Google Scholar On changes in women's roles, see Banner, Lois, Women in Modem American History (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Strasser, Susan, Never Done (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; and Rothman, Sheila, Woman's Proper Place (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

80 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the U.S., Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (Washington, D.C., 1975).Google Scholar

81 See 1914 WHC Reader-Survey, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 10, 4.

82 See Kessler-Harris, Alice, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982), 120–22Google Scholar, for salaries and budgets of working women in this period.

83 Towne, Adventures in Editing, 153.

84 Ohmann, “Mass Culture,” 97.

85 Various sources document the beliefs of editors about the middle-class nature of their audiences. On Bok, see Steinberg, Reformer, 6, 7; for Collins's ideas, see Frederick Collins to Edward Everett Hale, 28 Sept. 1908, Hayden Carruth Papers; for those of Lane and Vance, see Waller, Popular Women's Magazines, chap. 2. For McCall's advertisement, see Ayers Directory (1914), n.p.; and discussion of audience in About the Crowell Co., 11, 14. Ohmann concludes that “the main audience for these magazines was what was called then, as now, the ‘middle class’: people in small businesses, professionals, clerks, tradespeople, farmers, and significantly, wives and mothers from this same stratum”; “Mass Culture,” 91.

86 Here I am referring to actual letters seen in archival material, as described, for example, in Waller-Zuckerman, Mary Ellen, “Vera Connolly, Progressive Journalist,” Journalism History 15, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 80–88.Google Scholar Letters printed in the magazines provide uncertain evidence as editors at times manufactured these missives.

87 For a slightly different view, see Schwartz-Cowan, Ruth, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

88 See “The Cat in the Cracker Barrel,” Woman's Home Companion, Nov. 1907–Feb. 1908; “The Campaign of Hope,” ibid., Feb. 1910. The Better Babies Bureau started in the Aug. 1913 issue and continued through the 1920s; articles describing the evils of child labor began in the Sept. 1906 issue and also continued on a regular basis through the 1920s. For discussion of the continuation of reform articles in women's journals, see Waller-Zuckerman, “Vera Connolly.”

89 See Fisher, Katherine, “Housekeeping Emerges from the Eighties,” Good Housekeeping, May 1935, 80–83Google Scholar; and Wiley, Harvey Washington, A History of the Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, D.C., 1929).Google Scholar

90 See Perriton Maxwell, editor of Metropolitan Magazine, quoted in Gale, Zona, “Editors of the Younger Generation,” The Critic 44 (April 1904): 320Google Scholar; and Bok, Edward, The Woman's Column 3 (Feb. 4, 1890): 4Google Scholar, quoted in Mott, History of American Magazines, 4: 353, on the predominantly female nature of magazine readership. The editors of the Century also believed their readership was strongly female; see John, Best Years of the Century, 19, 49.

91 Lord, & Thomas, , America's Magazines and Their Relation to the Advertiser (Chicago, 1895), 26.Google Scholar

92 See Crowell-Collier, unmarked promotional booklet, 1929, 20, Crowell-Collier Papers, New York Public Library.

93 Circulations for 1916 compiled by Crowell-Collier Co., National Markets and National Advertising 1922 (New York, Crowell, 1922)Google Scholar. The mailorder journal Woman's World, which topped this list, cost only 35 cents, straddling a shadowy line between advertising catalog and magazine.

94 See Mary Ellen Waller (Zuckerman), “Aspects of Early Market Research, 1879–1917,” Proceedings of the AMA Winter Educator's Conference, Spring 1988.

95 See Curtis, Expenditures of Advertisers; and Bok, “Magazine with a Million.”

96 For example, see “Queen of Fashion” (McCall's) advertisement, Remington Brothers Newspaper Manual (1893), 477; and Woman's World advertisement, Printer's Ink, 25 Sept. 1913, 61.

97 See Geographic Circulation Breakdown, 1908, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 9. As early as 1892 Crowell Company was selling lists of subscribers to its various magazines to businesses for direct mail purposes; see Elkhart Carriage and Harness Manufacturing Co. to Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 8 Feb. 1892, in Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.; letter written by Woman's Home Companion editor Frederick Collins to contributor Edward Everett Hale on 28 Sept. 1908. Collins took over in 1906, so presumably he had seen the 50 percent improvement in the two intervening years.

98 For corroboration of this time frame, see Hungerford, Herbert, How Puilishers Win (Washington, D.C., 1931).Google Scholar

99 Letter from Gerald Young to the author, 19 Jan. 1985.

100 Woman's Home Companion, March 1910, “Our Own Page.”

101 Quoted in Daggett, Mabel Potter, “When the Delineator Was Young,” Delineator, 76, 365 (Nov. 1910): 419.Google Scholar

102 See 1914 WHC Reader-Survey, 6, 14.

103 Bok, Americanization, 174; Steinberg, Reformer, 56.

104 See Hayden Carruth Expense Notebooks for 1916, 1917, and 1918, Hayden Carruth Papers, box 26, budget records with notations of the amounts paid out to department editors both for their columns and for answering reader letters; and Woman's Home Companion, April 1916, Table of Contents page.

105 Curtis, Selling Efforts, 235.

106 John, Best Years of the Century; and Lyon, Peter, The Life and Times of S. S. McClure (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

107 See Steinberg, Reformer, 33 for evidence concerning Bok; and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, “Pathway to Success: Gertrude Battles Lane and the Woman's Home Companion,” in press, Journalism History, for a description of Lane.

108 For debate by present-day scholars on the pernicious effects of the content of the women's magazines on female readers, see Weibel, Mirror, Minor, Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; White, Cynthia L., Women's Magazines, 1693–1968 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Ferguson, Marjorie, Forever Feminine (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Waller-Zuckerman, Mary Ellen, Information Sources in the History of Popular Women's Magazines (Westport, Conn., 1991)Google Scholar, introduction.

109 Chase, Always in Vigue, 107; and Swanberg, Dreiser, 128.

110 See Woman's Home Companion, May 1912.