Go to Table of Contents"ARE OUR SCHOOLS IN DANGER?"
EDWIN GINN.
WHO IS EDWIN GINN?
EDWIN GINN is a schoolbook publisher in Boston, very much "devoted to doing business for a profit," who aspires to be known as a millionaire, and an infallible authority on moral and philanthropic questions. He appears to have re-discovered a very threadbare and worn- out method of attempting to promote his own interests, by publicly attacking the character, business methods, and publications of his rivals in trade. He is the author of a twelve- page pamphlet, which he entitles, "Are Our Schools in Danger?" and of various other circulars and letters of "warning," addressed to the educational public, and very widely circulated by Ginn & Company, all embodying one prolonged cry directed against the American Book Company. He poses as the censor and guardian of Public Education-for a profit. The twelve pages of verbiage which Edwin Ginn directs against the American Book Company can be briefly summarized, and fairly interpreted, as stated below:
MR. GINN CLAIMS TO KNOW IT ALL.
1. In substance this Ginn pamphlet says: I, Edwin Ginn, know all that is knowable about the schoolbook business, not only about my own business, but about everybody else's business, and have appointed myself the supreme judge of publishers and the guardian of teachers and school officers I am also the educational standard, and nothing is right unless approved by me.
MR. GINN'S ADVICE IS NOT FOLLOWED BY HIS COMPETITORS
2. Acting upon my all- knowledge, "I (Edwin Ginn) tried very hard to persuade them not to form this company"(The American Book Company). (Ginn, page 3.) But "they" (the most experienced schoolbook publishers in the country) were perverse, thought they knew their own business, and were not guided by the advice of a competitor. This was an offense to Edwin Ginn personally, and therefore a public offense. Hence he must warn the public, that it should use only the books of Ginn & Company.
IN AN ABUNDANCE OF EXPERIENCE AND SKILL THERE IS NOT KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM, BUT A MONOPOLY - EXCEPT WITH GINN & COMPANY.
3. The Ginn pamphlet further says in substance: The American Book Company is a monopoly, and they do not know how to publish schoolbooks. That secret is still monopolized by Ginn & Company. Although, "with all their short- comings, I think that publishers in general may claim that in the past twenty- five years they have done a good deal to advance the cause of general education, and have made American text-books to- day probably superior to those of any other nation." (Ginn, page 9.)
SCHOOL BOARDS NEED MR. GINN FOR A COUNSELLOR.
4. The public cannot be trusted to select its schoolbooks on their merits. "Where towns select their own committees they are generally made up of the best citizens of the town and the best qualified to perform the duties of such a board." (Ginn, page 4.) But "two or three men will almost always be absent from meetings. The influential friends of each committeeman are known, and some of them will have important business with these men on the very night of the meeting." (Ginn, page 7.)
GINN & COMPANY'S BOOKS REQUIRE BRAINS, AGENTS, AND CAPITAL TO PUSH THEM.
5. Discussing the "Educational (?) Publisher" (example, Ginn & Company, twelve advertised partners), it is stated by Ginn, page 5, "The publisher may conduct his business with a view to the production of the best books, trusting to merit in the long run to reward his efforts," but on the same topic, page 6, he says: "Not more than one- third of the sales of school- books are due to the author, the other two- thirds to the brains of the agent and publisher, and to the capital invested." This second quotation is evidently a slip, but introduced to pay tribute to the "brains" of Ginn & Company.
ONLY MR. GINN'S "EXPERIENCE" CAN PRODUCE GOOD BOOKS.
6. The widest combined experience in every department is necessary to publish schoolbooks. "It is a task old Hercules himself might be proud of accomplishing." "Before the good book appears at least fifty manuscripts must be read and a dbzen sets of plates made." (Ginn, page 6.) But the "combined experience" of nobody but Ginn & Company is equal to the Herculean task. When the American Book Company, under twelve directors in the form of a lawful corporation, gathers and organizes experience, this is monopoly, threatening danger to the schools. But when Ginn & Company organize with twelve advertised partners, taking the form. of a firm, and so escape corporate taxation and all the other limitations with which the law, as a public safeguard, surrounds organized business consolidations, they, not being a corporation, become public benefactors!
GINN & COMPANY'S BOOKS NOT CHEAP
7. "It is not cheaper books that are wanted, but better ones." (Ginn, page 4. This may be Ginn & Company's experience of what is wanted from them.) It is charged that the American Book Company will sell books so cheap that other houses will be driven out of the business, and then prices will be raised (although contracts at the adopting price can be made with the American Book Company for any term of years). Does the public object to low prices and favorable terms of introduction? But, notwithstanding the alleged monopoly, Ginn & Company will always continue to supply their books "at the old stand."
IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A SCHOOLBOOK TRUST OR MONOPOLY IN THIS COUNTRY?
8. On June 4, 1895, when a general adoption of schoolbooks was to take place in Vermont, Ginn & Company addressed, in one envelope, four separate circulars to Vermont teachers and superintendents, all attacking the American Book Company, claiming it to be a trust and monopoly and dangerous to public welfare. Nobody knows this to be false better than Ginn & Company do. Nothing proves it to be false more completely than the Vermont canvass itself. On the question whether it is monopoly or competition that exists in the schoolbook trade, the following dispatch is submitted, the truth of which every school officer in Vermont will confirm:
Dispatch published in New York Sun, June 5, 1895.
"Overrun with Book Agents."
"Vermont's Experience with a Free Text Book Act for Schools. Bethel, Vt., June 4. -- The Legislature of 1894 passed a Free Text Book act to take effect on June 1, 1895. The books are to be used for five years before a change can be made. For two months fifteen publishing firms have been canvassing Vermont. There are 240 town and 40 graded school districts. The publishers had 85 agents at work at first. Then the number was increased to 125, and the canvass closed with 175 men soliciting. The average salary and expenses per month of each agent is $ 150, making an expense to the companies of $37,000.
"The books cost on an average 30 cents. If one firm gets the contract for supplying all the text- books used in the State for the next dozen years at prices quoted, there is no money in it."
The American Book Company had 15 agents only employed in the Vermont canvass. It is reported that Ginn & Company had there 25 agents. Other houses must have had the balance of the 175. Competition and not monopoly would seem to be firmly established in the schoolbook trade, notwithstanding Mr. Ginn's great and continuous wail to the contrary.
ANONYMOUS ATTACKS ON THE AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY.
9. The assassin who, hidden by the cover of darkness, creeps up and stabs his victim from behind, has in all ages been execrated, hated, and outlawed by civilized mankind. What shall we say of those who, with similar cowardice, seek to assassinate character and destroy business interests by preparing and circulating vilifying publications "anonymously?
A very scurrilous, anonymous pamphlet against the American Book Company, printed in several forms and editions, is known to have been circulated by the agents of Ginn & Company, and a vilifying, unsigned article in the Norfolk Pilot of December 23, 1894, is known to have been prepared by an agent and attorney of Ginn & Company, and the newspaper containing this article to have been largely circulated by that house.
TWO QUESTIONS FOR GINN & COMPANY TO ANSWER.
10. How would it do for Ginn & Company to publish and push their schoolbooks on their merits as books, instead of endeavoring to obtain a market by falsely accusing and slandering their competitor, the American Book Company?
Which would Ginn & Company have the public believe:
Their boast that they have doubled the amount of their business since the American Book Company was
formed ; or,
Their whine that the American Book Company is a monopoly and is destroying their trade?
It is to preach such dishonest and false stuff as the Ginn pamphlet and Ginn & Company's defamatory circulars contain that Edwin Ginn mounts the rostrum of pretended public interest, wildly gesticulating with one hand to warn the public of the dark ways of his competitors, while the other hand, as a member of the firm of Ginn & Company, is calmly but deeply buried in the public pocket. Heretofore in commercial history the person who, in exploiting his private business, has endeavored to enlist public sympathy and transform it into trade patronage by posing as the high moral guardian of the public against the impositions of his rivals in business, has found scant support among the intelligent, and has never escaped contempt. This method of appeal to the public by pretended high and disinterested motives for the purpose of serving selfish and gainful ends has come to be known in the annals of trickery as the "confidence game," and always returns to plague the inventor.
We have not sought personalities, and have always deprecated their use. But there is a limit beyond which even the most patient is not justified in remaining silent under continued misrepresentation and abuse. That limit, in this case, has been reached and passed.
What are the simple facts about the business methods of Ginn & Company? We have herein exposed one of them. As to the rest, it is known to all who have had experience, that their methods of publishing schoolbooks and pressing them upon the market are in no way actuated by different or purer motives, or pursued by other or more honorable means, than the ordinary business methods of all publishers, except that they appear to be careless about being consistent. It does not trouble them to preach high prices when it suits, and low prices when it suits; to sell a book like Montgomery's History for sixty-five cents in Indiana, and the same book in Ohio for seventy- five cents, in Massachusetts for eighty cents, and in Pennsylvania for eight-four cents. They preach against. the "folly of even exchange," while their agents constantly practice this "folly" under the guise of donations and allowances. They follow the doctrine, "Assume a virtue if you have it not," and so wind along their tortuous way.
The American Book Company is a schoolbook publishing house, mindful of the high obligations of its responsible calling, and laying under contribution all its means to serve the public in all honorable and legitimate ways. It aims to produce the best possible American schoolbooks and sell them at reasonable prices. It seeks to hold up the highest possible educational standard, but does not set itself up as a censor or public adviser, nor pretend to be governed by motives of philanthropy. It is pursuing a mercantile business of a high character, for profit, in accordance with principles which govern the true merchant's vocation - the exchange of wares for mutual advantage.
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY.
NEW YORK, June 10, 1895.
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