The Panoplist

The printing press was the empowering symbol of enlightenment and enrichment in early America. By the beginning of the nineteenth century presses had become plentiful enough in America so that news could be quickly printed anywhere in the country. Jeremiah Evarts wrote in amazement “We of the present age, who have lived thirty years, have seen greater changes within our time, than could have been seen, at other periods of the world, in several centuries.”

He was right. Free from the old colonial relationship with England, entrepreneurship and invention took hold in America. There was a sudden increase of mass produced goods, including books, newspapers, and magazines. The Stanhope press, made of cast iron rather than wood, and using levers rather than the old “wine-press” screw was introduced in England in 1800, and George Clymer improved on the design in Philadelphia in 1812 with his own lever action "Columbian" press.

The new presses were much easier and more efficient to run, cutting the required number of impressions in half, and the print quality was markedly improved. Paper was being manufactured in this country. Anthony Haswell started the first mill in Vermont, in Bennington, in 1784, making just enough paper for his own newspaper; by 1820 there were fifteen mills supplying the needs of the state. With reduced costs, popular novels were suddenly finding their way into the culture. Evarts noted with dismay the proliferation of “that light and frothy stuff, which under a hundred names, our booksellers’ shops were pouring upon the public.”

In 1810 Evarts moved from New Haven to Charlestown to become editor of the Panoplist, which had been founded as a counterweight to Unitarianism at Harvard. This move opened the door for Evarts; the Awakening became Evarts personal mission as he addressed the issues which challenged society: education, the promotion of religion, inroads on the Sabbath, the call to evangelize through foreign missions, and temperance.

It’s a little hard to believe that before the generations of hard drinkers, one of my forebears would be a founding member of the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance. The new western lands in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Kentucky were producing grain which was more easily transported when converted to whiskey. In the early 1800’s the estimated per capita consumption of hard liquor was around six gallons per person, which is a little south of where it stood in Tyringham in the mid 1960’s when I was growing up.

My two grandfathers would sit on the side terrace in Tyringham before dinner on summer evenings with Ritz crackers, cheddar cheese, Edward with his J. W. Dant straight on the rocks, and Arthur with his Early Times, with a little “branch” water.

- Edward: “Can’t you wait for the ice to melt?”
- Arthur (my maternal GP, just returned from a cruise on the Kungsholm): “The liner had seven bars.”
- Edward: “You probably needed all of them.”

John Jay, the first Chief Justice had been elected to the board of ABCFM, ordered two complete sets of the Panoplist, and subscribed both for himself and for his town library, when Evarts’ first son was born and baptized in April 1813 as “John Jay Evarts”. Jay had written Evarts in January, complimenting his writing, which “abounds in just sentiments, handsomely expressed.” Jay wished to contribute to the printing press in Serampore, India, but worried about transmitting funds as the War of 1812 made sending money through England problematical.

Evarts helped form the New England Religious Tract Society in 1814. The society consolidated publication and distribution in order to circulate inexpensive tracts through a network of village based church societies. By the end of the 1820’s it had more than 2600 branches and distributed nearly six million tracts annually. Just as today we hear appeals for “a laptop for every child”, the evangelical movement sought “A Bible for every family, a school for every district, and a pastor for every 1000 souls.” Local branches held meetings, raised money, circulated publications, and communicated directly with headquarters in Boston. This efficient network was unrivalled on a national scale in its day.

In issue after issue, the Panoplist sent out pleas for funds for printing presses and for paper on which to print. Presses were being set up in India, Ceylon, Greece, and the Sandwich Islands.

I am anxious to have a printing-press also established in Benares, by which school-books might be speedily multiplied, and treatises on different subjects might be printed, and generally dispersed throughout the country. Without this, the progress of knowledge must be very slow, and the Hindoos long remain in their present very fallen state, which is very painful to a benevolent mind.

In the early nineteenth century it was common for periodicals to reprint articles first published elsewhere. While printing technology had been widely spread, it was still a labor intensive operation with hand set type. Prior to steamships, canals and railroads, it was easier to reprint information in Kentucky or California or Ceylon or the Sandwich Islands than to transport bulk printed materials from the point of manufacture, and the technology had not yet been sufficiently mechanized to make publication in large quantities economically feasible.

As mechanization of print took hold, the model began to shift from “distribute and print”, to “print and distribute”. Prior to the telegraph, there were no wire services, and no central clearing houses for giving attribute to authors and copyright holders. While a copyright law had been passed in England in 1710, the colonies were not covered by the act and there was a long history of pirating in America. The first copyright law in the United States was passed in 1790, protecting books, maps and charts, but it was poorly enforced. Evarts felt the pain:

"We have not so much occasion to complain, that the strictly original parts of our work have been republished without our consent. In former years, however, such republications were not uncommon. A friend of ours, in a neighboring state, said to the publisher of a magazine, "There are four religious magazines in this state, all of which live by stealing from the Panoplist." The printer of one of these four determined to republish our whole work without our consent, or even our knowledge. He used it as an argument with his patrons, that he should present them with matter, which cost the editor of the Panoplist much labor and expense, but as it cost himself nothing, and he printed his work cheap in the country, and on inferior paper, he could afford it at an inferior price."