When Carey took on James Stewart as a business partner in 1789, he entered the bookselling business, selling his Douai Bible and other books he published, as well as those from other publishers. The retail store represented much of the partnership’s business. Like many bookstores of the era, it carried stationery, ink and quills, blank legal forms, an assortment of office supplies and even a selection of medicines.[1]
Publishing was evolving in the United States. Not all booksellers and printers became publishers. Risk was involved. If a printer produced work for a customer, he provided the ink, he set the type and he operated the press. The customer usually provided the paper, which was expensive. Binding was an expense charged to the customer. Publishing required significantly more capital. The publisher had to decide what to publish and what would sell. He had to distribute the copies, and most important, raise the funds to finance the publication.[2]
In the early 1790s, the First Bank of the United States was established. Britain was at war with France, hindering some British shipments to the United States. American printers ventured into book publishing usually by soliciting subscriptions.[3]
Carey cautiously entered the publishing business. In 1789, Carey and William Spotswood jointly published two books of humor, sending the jobs out to other printers. Carey also published a book of devotions and a book on Catholic principles by Richard Challoner. In 1790, besides publishing the Douai Bible, Carey and Stewart published a child’s version of Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison. In 1791, Carey published another jest book with William Spotswood, an anthology of poems that he edited, another book by Challoner, a translation of Jacques Necker’s Of the importance of religious opinions and John Trumbull’s M’Fingal: An Epic Poem.
In July 1791, Carey organized the Philadelphia Company of Printers and Booksellers, convincing printers making the transition to publishing, that by joining forces they could minimize risk and expand their businesses.[4]
In September 1791, Carey was optimistic. He wrote to his brother Thomas, “My credit being better established in this city than heretofore, my situation is easier. My business goes on more to my satisfaction. I have established a credit with the bank, by means of which I can employ in trade a thousand dollars beyond my capital, which gives me great advantages.”[5]
“The situation in America improves apace. Her credit is as firmly established as ever that of Britain has been. Her public securities have risen many of them above par…Two years have made a great change in the prosperity & happiness of this nation, than the same space of time has ever done in any other country. The confidence of the public in the government being firmly fixed, manufactures & agriculture are rapidly extending their benign influence.” [6]
Mathew Carey
Carey ended his partnership with Stewart in October 1791.[7] Out on his own, Carey stocked the shelves of his bookstore and expanded his inventory. He secured credit through his political connections and acquaintances. John Beckley, clerk of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, and an emerging Democratic-Republican Party leader, rewarded Carey for writing a pamphlet critical of the British. He wrote to Joshua Johnson, the United States Consul in London, to encourage bankers there to give him a line of credit.[8] He enlisted the support of Robert Morris, the financier and Federalist senator from Pennsylvania, James Rivington, a New York bookseller and George Meade, a Catholic Philadelphia merchant, for their references on Carey’s credit for British booksellers. Carey also purchased from Irish booksellers.[9] A year later, his catalogue of books for sale at his shop included 1,056 titles.[10]
His bookstore at 118 Market Street was successful. Carey augmented his sales by engaging three postmasters, who had been part of his American Museum distribution network in Maryland and Virginia, to sell books he consigned to them.[11] With a distribution network in place, Carey had an advantage over other booksellers. He exchanged his own publications and books with high-volume booksellers in big cities. With booksellers who had no books or publications to exchange, he offered his books at a discount, or by consignment.[12]
Despite this success, finding the capital to finance bookselling and publishing was a problem that bedeviled Carey and his fellow tradesmen. He was party to the practice of endorsement, which he despised, calling it a “devouring vortex.” When he applied to the bank for a loan, he was required to ask friends to back it. When those friends applied to him to back their loans, he had to reciprocate. When friends he backed failed, creditors forced him to pay their debts. He estimated that over twelve to fourteen years he lost more than $30,000.[13] Carey had to rely on friends and private creditors to succeed.[14]
In 1792, he stopped publishing the American Museum and imported numerous books, he published twenty titles either by himself or in partnership with other printers.[15] He reported to his family that he was ending his printing business. He divested himself of his presses, his shop and eight employees. He had made the transition from printer to publisher.[16]
TRANSITION TO PUBLISHER | The Demise of the American Museum
[1] William Clarkin, Mathew Carey: A Bibliography of His Publications 1785-1824 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1984) 12.
[2]Rosalind Remer, Printers and Men of Capital: Philadelphia Book Publishers in the New Republic, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) 2.
[3] James N. Green, “From Printer to Publisher: Mathew Carey and the Origins of Nineteenth-Century Book Publishing” in Getting the Books Out: Papers of the Chicago Conference on the Book in 19th Century America, ed. Michael Hackenberg, Washington, D.C.: Center for the Book, Library of Congress, 1987, 27.
[4] Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, 57.
[5] Mathew Carey to Thomas Carey, 13 September 1791, Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
[6] Mathew Carey to Reverend James Carey, 12 September 1791, Lea and Febiger Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
[7] Clarkin, A Bibliography, 12.
[8] Edward C. Carter, “The Birth of a Political Economist: Mathew Carey and the Re-charter Fight of 1810-1811,” Pennsylvania History, V.33 N. 3 (July, 1966) 277.
[9] James N. Green, “The Rise of Book Publishing” in A History of the Book in America Volume 2: An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840, Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley eds. (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press and American Antiquarian Society, 2010) 85.
[10] Clarkin, A Bibliography, 15.
[11] Green, “The Rise of Book Publishing,” 85.
[12] Green, “From Printer to Publisher,” 29.
[13] Mathew Carey, Autobiography, (Brooklyn, Research Classics, 1942) 42.
[14] Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, 100.
[15] Clarkin, A Bibliography, 8-9.
[16] Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, 100.