The
Cosmopolitan Magazine was founded by Schlicht & Field in
1886. In the first edition Paul Schlicht told his readers that the
intention was to produce a "first-class family magazine".
He added: "There will be a department devoted exclusively to
the interests of women, with articles on fashions, on household decoration,
on cooking, and the care and management of children, etc., also a
department for the younger members of the family".
Within a year Cosmopolitan had a circulation of 25,000. However,
Schlicht & Field went out of business in March 1888. A new editor,
E. D. Walker, who had previously worked for Harper's
Monthly, became the new editor. He introduced serial fiction,
book reviews and colour illustrations. In four years Walker tripled
circulation and Cosmopolitan became of of America's leading
magazines.
In 1889 John Brisben Walker purchased Cosmopolitan.
He employed top writers including Theodore
Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling,
Annie Besant, Ambrose Bierce, Jack
London and Edith Wharton. Walker also
commissioned Olive Schreiner to write
a long article on the Boer War and H.
G. Wells had two of his books, The War
of the Worlds (1897) and First
Man in the Moon (1900), serialized in the magazine.
In 1897 Walker announced that Cosmopolitan would sponsor a
free correspondence school. He proudly announced: "No charge
of any kind will be made to the student. All expenses for the present
will be borne by the Cosmopolitan. No conditions, except a
pledge of a given number of hours of study." Within a few weeks,
twenty thousand students had enrolled. Surprised by the response,
Walker was unable to finance the venture and had to ask students to
contribute 20 dollars a year for their education.
William Randolph Hearst purchased Cosmopolitan
for $400,000 in 1905. Hearst recruited the well-known investigative
journalist, Charles Edward Russell,
to work for the magazine. Articles written by Russell included two
collections of articles: At the Throat of
the Republic (December, 1907 - March, 1908) and What
Are You Going to Do About It? (July, 1910 - January, 1911).
Other articles written by Russell included The
Growth of Caste in America (March, 1907) and Colorado
- New Tricks in an Old Game (December, 1910).
Alfred Henry Lewis was also employed
by Cosmopolitan. This included the series Owners of America
(1908 - 1909). Other articles by Lewis published in the magazine
were A Trust in Agricultural Implements,
April, 1905; The Trail of the Viper,
April, 1911 and The Viper's Trail of Gold,
May, 1911.
Another outstanding journalist employed by Hearst was David
Graham Phillips. This included the series, The
Treason of the Senate, in 1906. This was considered to
be one of the most important investigations of the muckraking
period of journalism. Other radicals who contributed to Cosmopolitan
during this period included Ida Tarbell,
Upton Sinclair, Sinclair
Lewis and George Bernard Shaw.
The Cosmopolitan also began employing top illustrators including
James M. Flagg, Francis
Attwood, Dean Cornwall and Harrison
Fisher.
In the 1930s Cosmopolitan offered three serials and ten short
stories. Many of America's novelists By the 1930s the magazine had
a circulation of 1,700,000 and an advertising income of $5,000,000.
In the early 1940s Cosmopolitan began to call itself "The
Four-Book Magazine". The first section contained one novelette,
six or eight short stories, two serials, six to eight articles, and
eight or nine special features. The other three sections contained
a complete short novel, a normal length novel and a digest of current
non-fiction books. Sales of Cosmopolitan during the Second
World War reached over 2,000,000 copies.
In the 1950s there was a decrease in the demand for fiction. Sales
of the magazine dropped dramatically. The size of the Cosmopolitan
was reduced and although circulation was only just over a million
in 1955, the magazine was still a profitable concern.
(1) David
Graham Phillips, Cosmopolitan
(March, 1906)
Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to
characterize the situation which the Senate is the eager, resourceful,
indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people
as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous: interests
that manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up
riches for the few; interests whose growth and power can only mean
the degradation of the people, of the educated into sycophants, of
the masses toward serfdom.
The Senators are not elected by the people; they are elected by the
"interests". A servant obeys him who can punish and dismiss.
Except in extreme and rare and negligible instances can the people
either elect or dismiss a senator? The senator, in the dilemma which
the careless ignorance of the people thrusts upon him, chooses to
be comfortable, placed and honoured, and a traitor to oath and people
rather than to be true to his oath and poor and ejected into private
life.
(2) David
Graham Phillips, Cosmopolitan
(March, 1906)
He was born in 1841, is
only sixty-four years old, good for another
fifteen years, at least, in his present rugged health, before "the
interests" will have to select another for his sate seat and
treacherous task. He began as a grocery boy, got the beginning of
one kind of education in the public schools and in an academy at East
Greenwich, Rhode Island. He became clerk in a fish store in Providence,
then clerk in a grocery, then bookkeeper, partner, and is still a
wholesale grocer. He was elected to the legislature, applied himself
so diligently to the work of getting his real education that he soon
won the confidence of the boss, then Senator Anthony, and was sent
to Congress, where he was Anthony's successor as boss
and chief agent of the Rhode Island interests. He entered the United
States Senate in
1881.
In 1901 his daughter married
the only son and destined successor of John
D. Rockefeller. Thus, the chief exploiter of the American people is
closely allied by marriage with the chief schemer in the service of
their exploiters. This fact no American should ever lose sight of.
It is a political fact; it is an economic fact. It places the final
and strongest seal upon the bonds uniting Aldrich and "the interests".
Has Aldrich intellect?
Perhaps. But he does not show it. He has never in his twenty-five
years of service in the Senate introduced or advocated a measure that
shows any conception of life above what might be expected in a Hungry
Joe. No, intellect is not the characteristic of Aldrich - or of any
of these traitors, or of the men they serve. A scurvy lot they are,
are they not, with their smirking and cringing and voluble palaver
about God and patriotism and their eager offerings of endowments for
hospitals and colleges whenever the American people so much as looks
hard in their direction!
Aldrich is rich and powerful.
Treachery has brought him wealth and rank, if not honor, of a certain
sort. He must laugh at us, grown-up fools, permitting a handful to
bind the might of our eighty millions and to set us all to work for
them.
(3) Alfred
Henry Lewis wrote about Thomas
F. Ryan in Cosmopolitan
(April, 1906)
Mayors are his office-boys, governors come and go at his call. He
possesses himself a party and selects a candidate for the presidency.
Tammany Hall is a dog for his hunting, and he breaks city council
to his money-will as folk break horses to harness
(4)
David Graham Phillips, Cosmopolitan
(May, 1906)
Such is the stealthy and treacherous
Senate as at present constituted. And such it will continue to be
until the people think, instead of shout, about politics; until they
judge public men by what they do and are, not by what they say and
pretend. However, the fact that the people are themselves responsible
for their own betrayal does not mitigate contempt for their hypocritical
and cowardly betrayers. A corrupt system explains a corrupt man; it
does not excuse him. The stupidity or negligence of the householder
in leaving the door unlocked does not lessen the crime of the thief.
(5) In his book, The Era
of the Muckrakers, C. C.
Regier wrote about Phillips's articles that appeared in Cosmopolitan
(1932)
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich
of Rhode Island, who was singled out for special attack because of
his connection with the Rockefellers and because of his tariff legislation,
which, it was charged, favoured the oil and tobacco trusts. Aldrich,
a Republican, was called the right arm of the interests, and Senator
A. P. Gorman of Maryland, a Democrat, was called the left arm. Phillips,
referring to this interest in business affairs which Democrats and
Republicans alike displayed, spoke of the Senate "merger".
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