Collier's Weekly
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Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. As a result of Peter Collier's pioneering investigative journalism, Collier's Weekly established a reputation as a proponent of social reform. When attempts by various companies to sue Collier ended in failure, other magazines became involved in what Theodore Roosevelt described unflatteringly as "muckraking journalism."
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[edit] History
Irish immigrant Collier (1849-1909) left Ireland at age 17. Although he went to a seminary to become a priest, he instead started work as a salesman for P.J. Kennedy, publisher of books for the Catholic market. When Collier wanted to boost sales by offering books on a subscription plan, it led to a disagreement with Kennedy, so Collier left to start his own subscription service. P.F. Collier & Son began in 1875, expanding into the largest subscription house in America with sales of 30 million books during the 1900-1910 decade.
In April, 1888, Collier's Once a Week was launched as a magazine of "fiction, fact, sensation, wit, humor, news". By 1892, with a circulation climbing past the 250,000 mark, Collier's Once a Week was one of the largest selling magazines in the United States. The name was changed to Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal in 1895. With an emphasis on news, the magazine became a leading exponent of the halftone news picture. To fully exploit the new technology, Peter Collier recruited James H. Hare, one of the pioneers of photojournalism. Collier's only son, Robert J. Collier became a full partner in 1898.
[edit] Editors and writers
When Norman Hapgood became editor of Collier's Weekly in 1903, he attracted many leading writers. In May, 1906, he commissioned Jack London to cover the San Francisco earthquake, a report accompanied by 16 pages of pictures. Under Hapgood's guidance, Collier's Weekly began publishing the work of investigative journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams, Ray Stannard Baker, C.P. Connolly and Ida Tarbell. Hapgood's approach had great impact, resulting in such changes as the reform of the child labor laws, slum clearance and women's suffrage. In April, 1905, an article by Upton Sinclair, "Is Chicago Meat Clean?", persuaded the Senate to pass the 1906 Meat Inspection Act.
Starting October 7, 1905, Adams startled readers with "The Great American Fraud," an 11-part Collier's series. Analyzing the contents of popular patent medicines, Adams pointed out that the companies producing these medicines were making false claims about their products and some were health hazards. Hapgood launched the series with the following editorial:
- In the present number we print the first article in "The Great American Fraud" series, which is to describe thoroughly the ways and methods, as well as the evils and dangers, of the patent medicine business. This article is but the opening gun of the campaign, and is largely introductory in character, but it will give the reader a good idea of what is to come when Mr. Adams gets down to peculiarities. The next article, to appear two weeks hence, will treat of "Peruna and the 'Bracers'," that is, of those concoctions which are advertised and sold as medicines, but which in reality are practically cocktails.
- Since these articles on patent medicine frauds were announced in Collier's some time ago, most of the makers of alcoholic and opiated medicines have been running to cover, and even the Government has been awakened to a sense of responsibility. A few weeks ago the Commissioner of Internal Revenue issued an order to his Collectors, ordering them to exact a special tax from the manufacturer of every compound composed of distilled spirits, "even though drugs have been added thereto." The list of "tonics," "blood purifiers" and "cures" that will come under this head has not yet been published by the Treasury Department, but it is bound to include a good many of the beverages which, up to the present time, have been soothing the consciences while stimulating the palates of the temperance folk. The next official move will doubtless be against the opium-sellers; but these have likewise taken fright, and several of the most notorious "consumption cures" no longer include opium or hasheesh in their concoction.
"The Great American Fraud" had a powerful impact and led to the first Pure Food and Drug Act (1906). The entire series was reprinted by the American Medical Association in a book, The Great American Fraud, which sold 500,000 copies at 50 cents each.
Hapgood had a huge influence on public opinion, and between 1909 and 1912, he succeeded in doubling the circulation of Collier's from a half million to a million. When he moved on to Harper's Weekly in 1912, he was replaced as editor by Robert J. Collier, the son of the founder. After the death of Peter Collier in 1909, Robert Collier died in 1918, leaving a will that turned the magazine over to three of his friends--Samuel Dunn, Harry Payne Whitney and Francis Patrick Garvan. The magazine was sold in 1919 to the Crowell Publishing Company (which eventually was renamed as Crowell-Collier Publishing).
Writers such as Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, who reported on the Spanish Civil War, helped boost the circulation. Winston Churchill, who wrote an account of the First World War, was a regular contributor during the 1930s, but his series of articles ended in 1938 when he became a minister in the British government. Other writers included Willa Cather, Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Carl Fick, Ruth Burr Sanborn, Albert Payson Terhune and H.C. Witwer.
[edit] Radio
Collier's circulation battle with The Saturday Evening Post led to the creation of The Collier Hour, broadcast on the NBC Blue Network from 1927 to 1932. It was radio's first major dramatic anthology, adapting stories and serials from Collier's. Airing on the Wednesday before weekly publication, it switched to Sundays to avoid spoilers with stories being aired simultaneously with the magazine. In 1929, in addition to the dramatizations, it offered music, news, sports and comedy.
[edit] Serials
Serializing novels during the late 1920s, Collier's Weekly sometimes simultaneously ran two ten-part novels, and non-fiction was also serialized. Between 1913 and 1949, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu serials, illustrated by Joseph Clement Coll and others, were hugely popular. The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was adapted into a 1932 film and a 1951 Wally Wood comic book, was first published as a 12-part Collier's serial, running from May 7 to July 23, 1932. The May 7 issue displayed a memorable cover illustration by famed maskmaker Władysław T. Benda, and his mask design for that cover was repeated by many other illustrators in subsequent adaptations and reprints.
[edit] Illustrators and cartoonists
Leading illustrators and cartoonists contributed to Collier's, including Charles Addams, Carl Anderson, Stan and Jan Berenstain, Sam Berman, Howard Chandler Christy. Sam Cobean, Harrison Fisher, James Montgomery Flagg, A.B. Frost, Jay Irving, Crockett Johnson, E.W. Kemble, Hank Ketcham, David Low, J. C. Leyendecker, Bill Mauldin, John Cullen Murphy, Virgil Partch, Mischa Richter, John Sloan, William Steig, Charles Henry "Bill" Sykes, Richard Taylor, Gluyas Williams, Gahan Wilson and Rowland B. Wilson. In 1903, Charles Dana Gibson signed a $100,000 contract, agreeing to deliver 100 pictures (at $1000 each) during the next four years. From 1904 to 1910, Maxfield Parrish was under exclusive contract to Collier's, which published his famed Arabian Nights paintings in 1906-07. After WWII, Harry Devlin became the top editorial cartoonist at Collier's, one of the few publications to display editorial cartoons in full color.
[edit] Later years
During World War II, Collier's readership reached 2.5 million. In the October 14, 1944 issue, the magazine published one of the first articles about concentration camps, Jan Karski's "Polish Death Camp," a harrowing account of his visit to Belzec. Collier's carried that excerpt from Karski's Story of a Secret State a month-and-a-half prior to the book's publication by Houghton Mifflin. A Book of the Month Club selection, Karski's book became a bestseller, with 400,000 copies sold in 1944-45. The Collier's selection was reprinted in Robert H. Abzug's America Views the Holocaust: 1933-1945 (Palgrave, 1999).
Collier's had a circulation of 2,846,052 when Walter Davenport took over as editor in 1946, but the magazine began to lose readers during the post-WWII years. In the early 1950s, Collier's ran a groundbreaking series of articles about space flight, Man Will Conquer Space Soon! which prompted the general public seriously to consider the possibility of a trip to the moon. Collier's changed from a weekly to a biweekly in August 1953, but it continued to lose money. After the magazine ceased publication on December 16, 1956, the company continued to publish Collier's Encyclopedia and Collier’s Junior Classics.
[edit] Editors
- Peter Fenelon Collier, editor (1888-1903)
- Norman Hapgood, editor (1903-12)
- Albert Lee, managing editor (1905)
- Robert J. Collier, editor (1912-14)
- Mark Sullivan, editor (1914)
- Arthur H. Gleason, associate editor (1908-13)
- Finlay Peter Dunne, editor
- William Ludlow Chenery, editor (1925-31)
- Henry La Cossitt, editor (1944-46)
- Walter Davenport, editor (1946)
