Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/416

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400 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

through an interesting personal experience in creating the new name thus called for by the social movements following the Civil War.

A call upon Mr. Browne in the Dial office at the Fine Arts Building was rewarded with a vivid narration of this important incident. Looking out over the green space bordering Michigan Boulevard to the great blue lake in the distance, Mr Browne con- sented to give his recollections of the transforming of the West- ern Monthly into the Lakeside Monthly. Soon after his advent into the magazine, he felt the narrowness of the word " western," and began feeling for a name which, while it might retain the flavor of locality, would first of all connote a wide interest in the aesthetic. The title of the Atlantic Monthly had some such con- notation. Mr. Browne devised a long list of possibilities, com- pounding words to suggest beauty and fertility the lake and the land. And one day, in 1870, he struck off the word "Lakeside" a name which, perhaps because it so clearly mirrors the most beautiful physical feature of the Chicago environment, has become Ji popular favorite for many ambitious enterprises. For its first use Mr. Browne chose it as the looked-for title, and the magazine became the Lakeside Monthly.

Under its new name the magazine made rapid advances in influence and reputation, so that it became the nucleus of a large publishing and printing house organized in 1870 for the avowed purpose of making Chicago as important a center for the manu- facture of books and periodicals as it had already become for their marketing and distribution. The magazine gave its name to the new house, the Lakeside Publishing and Printing Co., for which it became the literary organ. In November, 1870, it announced editorially that the Lakeside Monthly would hold such a relation to this company "as does Harper's Magazine to the great publishing house of Harper Bros, of New York." The new publishing company was a successor to the magazine company and the printing firm of Church, Goodman & Donnelly. It started with a capital stock of $500,000, and had, besides the magazine and other literary interests, a large and well-equipped printing-plant. It also erected the Lakeside Building, which,