510 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
The publication of this significant communication was made
the occasion for opening a new department in the magazine, called "The Club." Mrs. Starrett declared editorially that there was "no more significant sign of social progress than the spread of literary and social organizations known as clubs, whether woman's clubs, art clubs, social science clubs, or study clubs." The Chicago Philosophical Society, really a literary society in which Mr. Franklin Head, Mr. Lyman J. Gage, and other prominent business and professional men interested in reading, met for discussions, was the most important club in Chicago at the time. The Saracen Club, the Fortnightly, the Chicago Woman's Club, and the Athena, of which Mr. Carpenter's mother was president, were notable, the woman's- club movement having become, well started. Mrs. Starrett says that Chicago people interested in letters were much more closely associated in those days than has since been possible in the enlarged city.
A sub-title was added to the name of the Western Magazine announcing it to be "A Literary Monthly." The editor was flooded with manuscripts from local writers and from writers in other cities, for both "The Club" department and the general literary pages. Much of the material was amateurish. But some of it was done in promising style by authors, who, through their start in this medium, later attained some prominence, among them being Lillian Whiting. After one of the later issues, Professor Swing sent a note to Mrs. Starrett in which he said :
There is no better-edited magazine, nor one containing finer writing, east or west or anywhere, than our little magazine; which has just come to my desk.
But at that time the interests of Mrs. Starrett, who had previously found 75,000 readers for an article on "The House- keeping of the Future," in the Forum, turned more keenly to social and economic questions than to form in literature. The contributions to "The Club" department soon were almost exclusively along these lines the reproductions of essays read at club meetings by studious women. For this reason, among others reflecting the general situation, it is not surprising that
