380 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
decades of local, national, and international development, the character of this western spirit has unfolded in various modifica- tions. It has passed, with shading emphasis, through western sectionalism to national westernism and western nationalism, and has come, finally, to cosmopolitan westernism and western cos- mopolitanism. We find this at once apparent by dipping into these published records by periods. Nothing is stamped so clear on the pages of all the literary magazines and journals of Chicago, however, as the picture of the prairies and the expression of the western Zeitgeist of this section filling those of the period prior to our nation's Civil War those of the forties and fifties.
The titles proclaim this fact. The first weekly of predomi- nantly literary character was named, in response to the stimulus of environment, the Gem of the Prairie. This paper retained its prairie name from the founding in 1844 until it became the Sun- day edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1852. Before it was started, the Prairie Farmer, 1841-1905 an agricultural journal which, during its pioneer stage, was largely literary in leaning had set the copy for titles derived from the fields and lands. Sloan's Garden City, 1853-54, a weekly, achieved considerable prominence because of a serial story, by William H. Bushnell, entitled "Prairie Fire." This "tale of early Illinois" attracted many subscribers, and was copyrighted in January, 1854, and reprinted in pamphlet form. Finally, for a few months in 1856, D. B. Cooke & Co., booksellers, published the Prairie Leaf.
The word " western " or the name " Chicago " appears in the titles of nearly all the early periodicals not named from the prairies. Only one in this period had a caption of dictinctly national significance ; and that one was most ephemeral. The first literary magazine, in standard magazine form, to be published in Chicago was the Western Magazine October, 1845, to September, 1846 from which quotations appear in the headpiece to this paper. In later decades there were two magazines given the same name. Other early ones with typical titles were the Garland of the West, July, 1845; the Lady's Western Magazine, 1848; the Youth's Western Banner, 1853; and the Western Garland, published simultaneously at Chicago, Louisville, and St. Louis for a short
