516 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Clurg's had to criticise books from the publishing department of McClurg's. The effect of these relationships was to arouse dis- belief in the independence of the journal; and in July, 1892, the interest of A. C. McClurg & Co. in the Dial was sold to Mr. Browne. At the time the Dial was disconnected from their house, A. C. McClurg & Co. made the following statement through its columns :
The change looks wholly to the good of the paper, which, it is believed, will be better served by its publication as a separate and independent enter- prise. It is perhaps natural that a critical literary journal like the Dial should be to some extent misunderstood through its connection with a publishing and book-selling house. To relieve the paper from this disadvantage, and to make its literary independence hereafter as obvious as it ever has been real, is the prime object of the present change.
From the first, Mr. Browne, though a prophet of Western literature, had maintained, besides a broad critical outlook, the high ideals of editorial independence for which he had been respected while editing the Lakeside Monthly. With Mr. Browne small. The character of the editor, and the fact that experts on 1906, it stands as the only authoritative American journal devoted exclusively to literary criticism that is not connected with a book- publishing house. While in the eighties its circulation was in largest part western, today it is national, although not large as compared with the popular magazines, because the constituency of publishers, reviewers, librarians, teachers, ministers, and gen- eral readers deeply interested in literary criticism is relatively small. The character of the editor, and the fact that experts in special topics are paid for reviews expressing their opinions freely, have made the independence of the journal have meaning. It is safe to say that the Dial, although published in the inland metropolis, is the leading journal of literary criticism in the nation.
After all is said about the Dial as a symbol of the growing metropolitan independence of criticism in Chicago, that which stands out as most striking concerning the developments of the eighties is its origin in a book-distributing agency erected, like other freight-distributing houses, along with the railway systems
