Whenever I come from the mountains to San Francisco, I have to go thro’ an acclimating fever. This time, perhaps because I came under unusual excitement and have been left for a week in very inconvenient suspense—finding my checks dishonored & not being able to get a reply from New York as to whether this is a permanent or an accidental and temporary condition of my office—my fever held off longer and then came more severely than ever before. I have been obliged to keep my room & wanting something to read, I suddenly recollected that you once advised me to read Herbert Spencer. Two volumes, therefore, I have read & with great benefit & humbleness.

They strike at the roots of so much popular philosophical heresy and are so easy & perfect and satisfactory in their uprooting of it that they have brought upon me again an oft recurring thought: Is there not some way by which ideas like these & like those of Mill on Liberty and of scores of books & pamphlets that you & I have read of a less abstract character, may be systematically disseminated thro’ the mass of the people? Reflecting upon it a little, the duty of reflecting upon it more is impressed upon me & I am writing to you because of a conviction that I ought not to let it sleep again without ever handling it once to any other end than that [it] may sleep easier.

It has been slumbering in my mind, ever since 1849, when in the first rush to California I went into the vast Magazine of the American Tract Society & spent an hour there trying to make up a package of reading matter which I thought a party of healthy but wayward and obstreporous young men would be likely to read and to their benefit.

The Tract Society is an unnatural thing—not consistent with our [300]commercial system—at war with our booksellers &c. but the wonderful cheapness of its publications and the enormous amount of them, shows what capital & system thus directed may accomplish. And have you ever thought what vast influence it has had? and what a vast difference there would have been, had the selection of its publications had a different purpose or been directed with much greater or much less wisdom?

I don’t like the system & don’t propose to adopt it—nor to enlarge that of the Loyal Publications Societies. With regard to the latter by the way, suppose Stille’s pamphlet had been circulated by the hundred thousand, immediately upon its value being generally recognized by us, with the advantage of a machinery like that of the Tract Society, how quick & beneficent would have been its influence on the public—great & quick as it was, how much more so!

To make a start, is not a Society for the cheapening of certain good reading, practicable—including the cheapening of distribution—that is to say the putting it into the hands where we want it to go. Or suppose we call it the Association of book-buyers, centre in New York—corresponding clubs everywhere—subcentres of distribution at Boston, Albany, Buffalo, Cleaveland, Chicago, St Louis, San Francisco &c. All members pay $2, $4, $8; what they please. In New York we buy 5, 10, 20, 100 thousand as we think best of any book we like, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Macauley’s History of England, Popular Fallacies; History of the Sanitary Commission, Quinine as a Prophylactic, or a Treatise on the Ventilation of bedrooms. We send at least one specemin without orders to every club of ten or more, with the price marked upon it—actual cost including cost of administration & distribution. It is to pass through the hands of every member to be retained & read or passed on as in Mudie’s Library in England, till all have looked at it at least. The local club will then either keep it as part of a permanent local library, or at stated intervals return it with others to the sub-centre. Or any member can retain it after it has passed the hands of all, or any or each member can have a duplicate sent him, upon ordering it of the nearest sub-centre, free of special charge for transportation, at the price fixed.

I suppose you know enough of the Mudie system to follow out the plan. Of course a vast number of books more or less worn would come back & go out to others & in & out till the demand had ceased or they were too badly worn, when they would be sold at a very low rate, as second hand books to members or others.

I observe one error or at least questionable point in what I have written. We could not send one specemin of everything we took to every club—but as a general rule should probably have to adopt Mudie’s plan. Each club is entitled to have a certain number of books constantly in circulation among its members & to make its choice, if it pleases, from the general library; as it sends in a dozen it orders another dozen, choosing [301]from a catalogue to which supplements are issued weekly. In the English clubs each member as he finishes a book & passes it on & gets another, looks over the catalogue & marks what he would like to have follow—if he chooses,—but many do not & the choice is often left to the central office, it being a part of its business to guess what will be liked. But all I am proposing seems to be Mudie over again, which is not what I want—but Mudie modified to suit a nation of book-owners instead of a nation of book borrowers (hirers.)

Suppose then we start with a fund of $100,000 (10,000 subscribers=$10 each) raised by subscription as a benevolent & philanthropic & patriotic fund—not distinctively religious—which is to be used in forming clubs, advertising, canvassing and otherwise starting the machine. There is a Committee of Selection of men like those composing the Sanitary Commission, philanthropic men of large culture and literary discrimination. Your arrangments leave you in no Question that of any book adopted by them you have a sale secured of —— (X copies). (The mere endorsement in this thorough manner of any book would command a sale of thousands). Ticknor & Fields send you advance sheets of a book they propose to publish. The question is shall your Committee determine that this book is one which they can afford to risk the success of the association upon to any extent by spending a portion of the money of the corresponding clubs for? And is a sound good book, which it is worth while to employ the machinery of the association with? (& so on.) If they decide in its favor, how large a number can they take with advantage for all the club—that is, how large a number with their endorsement in this wise, and under a thorough system of canvassing & selling the worn out books &c, can they secure purchasers for? Say 10,000? In fact it will vary from one to two or three hundred thousand. But say 10,000 for instance. Ticknor & Fields will be glad to contract in advance of any publication to supply 10,000 copies, bound & lettered to order, at 50 pr ct below the regular retail price, and your taking 10000 copies will not injure but rather increase the immediate book-sellers’ demand for it. It can have no other so good advertising to them as the mere announcement. (Of course I am supposing your Committee to be cautious & judicious.)

Your clubs then or correspondents, individual or associated, have then not only the inducement of your careful advice in their selection of so much of their reading but also the inducement of economy. Thus with advice gratis & say 40 pr ct saving in price of a certain number of books annually, you bribe or influence people to read & put in extraordinary circulation, books the influence of which, it is the duty of your Committee to have assured themselves, will be favorable to sound politics, good morals, healthful habits &c—and counter active to certain active evil conditions—to ignorance, vice, delusions, the Herald & other pernicious literature.

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Of course it would be difficult to draw the lines, & of course some mistakes would be made. But the mere choice of your Committee would fix certain lines beyond question, & within these lines, a large Catholicity would before long be found to the advantage of everyone.

Perhaps I have not succeeded in sprouting anything practical & consistent with sound principles, but I can’t help thinking that if I could think about it enough, I could find a plan by which philanthropy could be applied to literary brokerage with vast profit.

I have written this to you on the same plan that you have sometimes written to me, just to give the germ a chance to sprout if it would, and to ask: Don’t you think there is something alive in it?

I shall write you again how what has recently occurred modifies Henry’s position & prospects, as soon as I can see how this Mariposa cat is really jumping. At present it is hard & would be useless to say anything about it.