Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 March 1949 — Page 29

Section Three

Fourteen Pages

The Indianapolis Times

WEEE

pi

i

EA)

ORDS Built

EI EL Ee fle?) editor. take their

Gary Leslie,

V. Sipe,

By HAROLD HARTLEY, Times Business Editor ORBS did it. Magnolia-scented words of sultry, moist-lipped romance. Leop-ard-hunting words from orchid-hung jungles. Words glistening in medieval armor. Soft, gentle words read on a mother's knee to her very young. Then stir in the somber, black-robed words of the law. And. schoolbook words for the pig-tailed and corduroy - trousered generation. These words, spanning the whole spectrum of the emotions, most of the range of jurisprudence and formal learning—frothed with sweet, fragile words and seasoned with the tough, profane blasts of the stevedore—have huilt the most influential publishing house of the middle west, the Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. > eS INSIDE the thick quiet of the Bobbs-Merrill offices at 724-730 N. Meridian St., you feel the presence of a scholarly dignity, a poise born of earned confidence and experience. It is the same rich feeling you get from walking on a thick-piled carpet, At Bobbs-Merrill, you listen ‘closely for the steady throb of the executive heart. You detect it in many directions. ‘But if you follow it closely, the strongest beat leads to the office and study of D. Laurance Chambers, president. You find him at a massive desk in an openthroated, soft, blue-gray shirt, an unlit cigar in his curled fingers. At a glance, he is patience and forbearance. But emplovees assure you that behind his scholarly charm, he is a rigid, insistent perfectionist. It is a toss-up as to whether Bobbs-Merrill made Indiana authors or the authors made Bobbs-Mer-rill. It probably was the combination of the smooth-running, fast-flowering enterprise of both. o> oo o> MR. CHAMBERS has the magic touch, the sixth sense which tells a publisher when he has struck the mother lode. He joined Bobbs-Merrill shortly after its name had been changed from Bowen-Merrii on Apr. 7, 1903. He had been secretary-to Henry van Dyke at Princeton University when William C. Bobbs, then president of the firm, invited him in as his own secretary. And the team, along with John J. Curtis, vice president, and Charles W. Merrill, secretary, made the team which tapped the richest literary mines of Indiana. Their quick sense of perception is illustrated in the following: A newspaper publisher named George Hitt had printed a volume of poetry by one “Benj. F. Johnson’ under the title of “The Old Swimmin Hole and Leven Other Poems.” Young “Mr. Johnson” had more poems to sell. A Cincinnati publisher turned them down as “too undignified.” But Bobbs-Merrill published them, and every other poem the author ever wrote, He was, of course, Indiana’s immortal James Whitcomb Riley.

Na yg

b nkal

Kya Ridge view Drive, a limit switch of the controier Yo LIME an entire CITE EI

Le Harmon,

unit which®

and Richard

ET oY the ton.

0) Tim (OFT oT RT LL Me gah

Te I 4

Moorehead, treasurer, company 54 ycars . .. he's a young loves his farm next to the law.

Photos by vonn Spicklemire, Times Stafl Photogr2pner.

The brittle and yellowed pages of Bobbs-Merrill history reach back 125 years. It was then, in 1824, that Samuel Merrill was treasurer of the state of Indiana and the capital was being moved from Corydon to Indianapolis. Mr. Merrill brought four wagon loads of belongings to Indianapolis, and in one of these were his precious books, the seed from which the State Library grew, >. 4 IN 1838 he opened ¥ bookstore with E. H. Hood at No. 1 Temperance Hall. By 1851, the Merrill Bookstore published Volume V of the Indiana Report, the beginning of the law book business for Bobbs-Merrill, an important segment of its economy today. In 1885, some 34 years after another book firm, Stewart and Bowen, had published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Memories in Foreign Lands” Mr. Merrill, merged with Stewart and Bowen to form the Bowen-Merrill Co. It was in this merger that William C. Bobbs entered the picture, later to be president. The name Bowen-Merrill Co. still carries a haze of tragedy for a few citizens yet living. The store on Washington St., just west of Meridian St. burned on St. Patrick’s Day in 1890. The roof fell in, killing 12 men and injuring 16 others, one of whom died later. But in 1903 when Mr. Bobbs became president

LYE y

assembles

a

Herman Kuerst, en ‘mpeller unit for concentricity.

Vy ith the

SUNDAY, MARCH 20, 1949

doors ar Bobbs-Merrill Co.

aT

have passed the magic minds of a modestly ornate entrance to ™

Editorials . ...30 Records ....32 Politics .....31 Radio ......37 Features ....33 Movies ..40, 4

res

a ! associate editor of the Trade Book Department

p ry pv down these broad stairs walk oe pin ir on »

Guernsey Van Riper Jr. one

13.

Miss Jane Throckmorton holds the most hardy perenniel of all children's books, "The Wizard of Oz."

and later took Mr. Chambers on the Bobbs-Merrill team, business began to move forward. Mr. Chambers heads the Trade Book Department which publishes fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. It was, incidentally, the alert-minded John J. Curtis who first put colorful jackets (with blurbs on the flaps) to make them sell better. C4 IT IS well to note here that the firm's oldest department, publishing law books, is still growing. It is headed by the venerable zipper-sweatered Col. Robert Moorehead, treasurer of the company, who hag been with the firm 54 years. His department turns out close to 150,000 law books annually, The School Textbook Department is headed by Lowe Berger, vice president. His editor is Dr. C. B. Ulrey. This department publishes school textbooks on American Health, the Geography Foundation Series, a series of curricular readers and “Our America” on citizenship, among others.

pe Walter Martz,

1121 N. Rural St., checks

Photos by John Spicklemire,

editor-author, descends with

f his own books (Lou Gehrig) in hand.

LITRE

"Rosemary"

bookstores. Manuscripts pour in,

editors, Harrison G. Platt Jr., Guernsey Van Riper Jr. It that Earl Derr Biggers a Bobbs-Merrill editor, When a ‘manuscript with the “network” goes into play. for opinion.

TTT TTL Mrs. Rosemary B. York, associate editor of the Trade Book Department,

But topmost publi¢ fascination goes to the creation of volumes for the vivid shelves of the modern

both prearranged solicited. They come to the desks of three Rosemary York, is interesting to note (Charlie Chan) once

possibilities It is passed around The sales and promotion department

under Herman Ziegner examines it.

to Mr, Chambers for a yes or no.

If Mr. Chambers says shape either with or without Copy editors check it for grammar and plagiarism in Plagiarism is most easily break in style.

yes

very well read. 2 J oh

it

Finally it goes

fs whipped into the author's the spelling of names, the detected Besides Bobbs-Merrill editors are into {ts second century,

“proof

Jr. ex-Brown English professor, is

. He's

Harrison &. Piatt

conferring with copy editor Charlott Jeanes.

MR. ZIEGNER begins preparing his salen brochures, pamphlets and news releases. A digest is prepared to be submitted to salesmen some of whom strangely carry the books of several publishing houses. Advertising ‘is prepared in New York in co-operation with Bobbs-Merrill's. well-staffed New York office where authors are given all of the help provided by New York publishers, The book is being set in type, the proofs checked, the cover created, all at the same time. And an elaborate presentation is made to the saleswen at two conferences a year, January and July for spring and fall selling. . Anecdotes pile up in publishing houses. Take Pietro di Doneto. One of the editors noticed one of his stories in a magazine. A letter to him went unanswered, Finally the New York office located him, and found him a poor bricklayer. He said he had: a novel to write. The firm made a contract, paid him an advance, When the novel came it was “Christ in Concrete,” and sold 178,000 copies. Scanning the Hoosier liorizon, Mr, Curtis found a Shelbyville lawyer named Che#ries-Major. “When Knighthood Was in Flower” sold more than a million copies. But so did came the movie

“The Phantom Crown” which be“Juarez,” the romance of Carlota and Maximillian. Mrs. Chambers had heard Bertita Harding at a lecture and thought she had literary possibilities, * 2 9

MR. CHAMBERS is probably the foremost live ing authority on trade books. He has lived through all the cycles. He knows that after a war there is a strong appetite for high emotion. And that the far-away-and-long-ago novel (historical glamour) has a high batting average with the publie. But the one thing he tells you, quite frankly, he does not know, is what makes a best seller, the right story for the yet-to-be-discovered public demand. Children's books, edited by Patricia Jones, Smith graduate, are a growing field with BobbsMerrill, Today they steer clear of fantasy and go in for simply written - biographies In Col. Moorehead's law book field, Gary Leslie, sales manager, lists the codes of some 11 states and the Federal Code, Richard Sipe, 25-year-employee, Leslie's assistant, Robert Runyan, in 1904. . help. > & ? WHEN YOU tie these three branches, the trade the law books and the textbooks together corporation of 300 stockholders, well you have an organization with the intricate mechanism of a fine watch.

i

and unassociate

and

was

arrives,

is" editor. Mr, joined the firm

room.” bOOKS,

by a sudden in one some

TRE VLR

Danville Ind.,

eI TH ILTR

ready to be machined.

APRN CITI 1S works on a winding rotor coil, one of 12 used in rotor assembl

TLE Re!

Times Biaft’ Photographer,

SKILLED FINGERS and precision ‘eyes keep a steady flow of 613 parts for diesel locomotives rolling from. the Allison Division plant of General Motors at Speedway. When a crack diesel passenger or freight train moans over a crossing, you can .be pretty sure it is moving smoothly on GM parts made at the Allison plant under E. B. Newill, GM vice president and A general manager. sms} . , Thirteen “hundred ® workers make the 613 parts and as semble them into 94 function- \ . ;

. Ing parts in 280,000 square feet

of plant spac e,

» THE OUTPUT of the Allison plant in diesel parts pL 100,000 pounds a day. These go to the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors at La Grange, Ill, where powerful locomotives are delivered to eagerly waiting railroads, Diesels, more than steam, are pulling railroads out of the red. The diesels stay on the rails longer without layups for repair. Passengers like them, too, No Jerks in stops and starts, v

" long, gray diesel flash by,

fuel-efficient '

Most people think of Allison fn terms of jet plane. motors. But the diesel locomotive accounts for 18 "per cent. of workers on the payroll,

» ~ ~ SO THE next time you see a remember there are 1300 Allison men and women turning out the little intricate parts which give it the strength to keep the country's business-—-and people moving safely, swiftly over the rails, And they keep the auditor's pen out of the red ink bottle, too.

3 14a Marine

LAS EI 1g