The American Mercury is a defunct
magazineMagazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
founded in 1924 as the brainchild of
H. L. MenckenHenry Louis "H. L." Mencken , was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English...
and drama critic
George Jean NathanGeorge Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He graduated from Cornell University in 1904, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society....
. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
s in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
through the 1920s and 1930s. The magazine suffered a silent death in 1981, having spent the last 25 years of its existence much in decay.
History
Mencken and Nathan had previously edited
The Smart SetThe Smart Set was a literary magazine founded in America in March 1900 by William d'Alton Mann. It was edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan...
literary magazineA literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
together, when not producing their own books and, in Mencken's case, regular
journalismJournalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and comment via a widening spectrum of media. These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and even, more recently, the mobile phone...
for the
Baltimore Sun. With their mutual book publisher Alfred A. Knopf serving as the publisher, Mencken and Nathan created
The American Mercury as "a serious review, the gaudiest and damnedest ever seen in the Republic," as Mencken explained the name (derived from a 19th-century publication) to his old friend and contributor,
Theodore DreiserTheodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist. He pioneered the naturalist school and is known for portraying characters whose value lies not in their moral code, but in their persistence against all obstacles, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of...
: "What we need is something that looks highly respectable outwardly.
The American Mercury is almost perfect for that purpose. What will go on inside the tent is another story. You will recall that the late
P. T. BarnumPhineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. His successes may have made him the first "show business" millionaire...
got away with burlesque shows by calling them moral lectures."
And, from 1924 through 1933, Mencken — Nathan was forced to resign as his co-editor a year after the magazine was born — provided precisely what he promised: elegantly irreverent observations of America, aimed at what he called "Americans realistically," those of sophisticated skepticism of enough that was popular and much that threatened to be.
Simeon StrunskySimeon Strunsky, A.B. was a Jewish American essayist, born in Vitebsk, Russian Empire . He graduated from Columbia University in 1900...
in the
New York Times observed that, "The dead hand of the yokelry on the instinct for beauty cannot be so heavy if the handsome green and black cover of
The American Mercury exists." The quote was used on the subscription form for the magazine during its heyday.
The January 1924 issue sold more than 15,000 copies and by the end of that first year the circulation was over 42,000. In early 1928 the circulation reached a height of over 84,000, but declined steadily after the Stock Market crash. The magazine published literature by
Eugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August...
,
Carl SandburgCarl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
,
William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning American author. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short stories. He was also a published poet and an occasional screenwriter.Most of Faulkner's works are set in his native state...
,
Sinclair LewisHarry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works...
,
F. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the Twenties...
,
Langston HughesJames Mercer Langston Hughes, was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry...
,
Albert Jay NockAlbert Jay Nock was an influential American libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...
, W. E. B. Du Bois,
W. J. CashW.J. Cash, or Joseph Wilbur Cash, was an American author and journalist known primarily for his works about the American South.-Early life:...
,
James Weldon JohnsonJames Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the...
,
Conrad AikenConrad Potter Aiken was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, and an autobiography.-Early years:...
,
Sherwood AndersonSherwood Anderson was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio...
,
Edgar Lee MastersEdgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist...
,
John FanteJohn Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent.-Life:Born in Denver, Colorado, Fante's early years were spent in relative poverty...
,
William SaroyanWilliam Saroyan was an Armenian-American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...
, Albert Halper, Nathan, providing theater criticism, and Mencken himself, his regular contributions being limited to "Editorial Notes" and "The Library," the latter being book reviews masquing social critique, placed at the back of each volume. The magazine published others, from newspapermen and academics to convicts and taxi drivers, but its primary emphasis soon became non-fiction and usually satirical essays; its "Americana" section—containing items clipped from newspapers and other magazines nationwide—became a much-imitated feature, and Mencken further spiced the package with aphorisms printed in the magazine's margins whenever space allowed.
Controversy
H.L. Mencken rarely if ever flinched from controversy, and he found himself in the thick of it when
The American Mercury was just over two years old, when the April 1926 issue published "Hatrack," a chapter from
Herbert AsburyHerbert Asbury was an American journalist and writer who is best known for his true crime books detailing crime during the 19th and early 20th century such as Gem of the Prairie, Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld and The Gangs of New York...
's
Up From Methodism. The chapter described a reputedly true story: a
prostituteProstitution is the act or practice of engaging in sex acts for hire. In most cultures, prostitution is viewed by many as a deviant profession, either illegal or socially discouraged...
in Asbury's childhood in
Farmington, MissouriFarmington is a city in St. Francois County located 60 miles south of St. Louis in the Lead Belt region in Missouri in the United States. As of the 2000 U.S. Census, the population was 13,924; a 2007 estimate, however, showed the population to be 15,870. It is the county seat of St. Francois...
, nicknamed Hatrack because of her angular physique, and a regular churchgoer seeking genuine forgiveness but, shunned by the town's reputed good people, returning to her sinful life.
If that seems a straightforward and uncontroversial enough description, consider that in 1926 it was just enough at the edge that the Rev. J. Frank Chase of the
Watch and Ward SocietyThe Watch and Ward Society was a Boston, Massachusetts organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century....
, which monitored material sold in Boston for obscenity, decided "Hatrack" was immoral and had a Harvard Square magazine peddler arrested for selling a copy of the issue. That provoked Mencken himself to visit Boston and sell Chase himself a copy, the better to be arrested for the cameras. Tried and acquitted, Mencken's courageous stance for freedom of the press cost him regardless: over $20,000 in legal fees, lost revenue, and lost advertising.
Mencken sued Chase and won, a federal judge ruling the prelate's organization committed an illegal restraint of trade and prosecutors, not private activists, should censor literature, assuming anyone should. But following the trial, the Solicitor of the
U. S. Post Office DepartmentThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. Within the United States, it is commonly...
Donnelly ruled the April 1926
American Mercury was obscene — the federal
Comstock LawThe Comstock Act, was a United States federal law which made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information. In addition to banning contraceptives, this act also banned the distribution of information on...
, he ruled, barred the issue from delivery through the U.S. Post Office. Mencken challenged Donnelly, arousing the prospect of a landmark free speech case before the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second CircuitThe United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
and legendary Judge
Learned HandBillings Learned Hand was a United States judge and judicial philosopher. He served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...
. But because the April 1926
Mercury had already been mailed, an
injunctionAn injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order, whereby a party is required to do, or to refrain from doing, certain acts. The party that fails to adhere to the injunction faces civil or criminal penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions for failing to follow the...
was no longer an appropriate remedy.
Exit Mencken
Mencken resigned as editor of his creation at the end of 1933, and
The American Mercury was then edited by his assistant, Charles Angoff. At first, the magazine was seen as moving farther left, but a year after Mencken left Knopf sold the
Mercury to Paul A. Palmer, a Mencken colleague at the
Baltimore Sun. By 1936, Palmer had continued the Mencken standard in its content but changed its appearance: it now had the same pocket size as
Reader's Digest. Three years later, the magazine changed hands again, Palmer selling to the
Mercury's business manager,
Lawrence E. SpivakLawrence Edmund Spivak was an American publisher and journalist who was best known as a regular panelist and later moderator on NBC's Meet the Press from 1947 to 1975, a program he produced and co-created with original host Martha Rountree. Prior to his assuming the moderator's chair in 1966, he...
.
Radio
Spivak even more than Palmer revived the
Mercury for a brief but vigorous period — Mencken, Nathan, and Angoff themselves contributed essays to the magazine again. From there, Spivak created a company to publish the magazine, Mercury Press, and soon the company began publishing other magazines, including
Ellery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...
(1941) and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1949. But perhaps in new financial difficulty, the
Mercury merged with
Common Sense in 1946, and by 1950 the new
Mercury owner was
Clendenin J. RyanClendenin James Ryan, Jr. was an American businessman best known as the publisher and owner of The American Mercury magazine, published in Baltimore, Maryland in the early 1950s when McCarthyism was at it strongest....
, who changed the name to
The New American Mercury. Ryan was the financial angel for Ulius Amoss the publisher of International Services of Information in Baltimore, MD and a former OSS Colonel who specialized in operating spy networks behind the Iron Curtain for the purpose of destabilization of communist governments and the neutralization of their leadership. Ryan's son, Clendenin J. Ryan, Jr. was one of the financial sponsors of Young Americans for Freedom started by William F. Buckley, Jr., according to Doug Caddy, Ryan's Georgetown University roommate. Ryan began another transformation of American Mercury, toward another direction, but it would take a familiar journalist to finish what he began.
In 1945, while editing the magazine, Lawrence Spivak created a radio program called
American Mercury Presents Meet the PressMeet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television show in worldwide broadcasting history, having made its television debut on November 6, 1947...
. Brought to television on November 6, 1947, the show shed the first three words of its name — and remains the single longest-running news program in television, a fixture on NBC every Sunday.
Huie's experiment
William Bradford HuieWilliam Bradford "Bill" Huie was an American journalist, editor, publisher, television interviewer, screenwriter, lecturer, and novelist.-Biography:...
— whose work had appeared in the magazine before — had gleaned the beginning of a new, post-
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
American
conservativeConservatism is the diverse political and social philosophy that supports tradition and the status quo, or that calls for a return to the values and society of an earlier age, the status quo ante. However, the term has been used by politicians and political commentators with a variety of meanings...
intellectual movement. He sensed correctly that Ryan had begun to guide
The American Mercury toward that direction. He also opened the magazine's pages to more mass-appeal writing, by the like of the Reverend
Billy Graham William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr., , is an American evangelist and an Evangelical Christian. He has been a spiritual adviser to multiple United States presidents and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for the 21st century. He is a Southern Baptist...
and
FBIThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency. The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
director
J. Edgar HooverJohn Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation — predecessor to the FBI — in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
. With boldness if anything, Huie seemed en route to producing what one of his staffers would have an easier time producing a few years later — the young
William F. Buckley, Jr.William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist...
, whose
God and Man at Yale was a best seller, worked for Huie's
Mercury, invaluable experience for his 1955 creation of the longer-living, more deeply respected
National ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine and web site, founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955 and based in New York City...
. Buckley would succeed at what Huie was unable to realise: a periodical that united the nascent but already differing strands of this new conservative movement.
Huie found himself facing financial difficulties sustaining the
Mercury as he pursued the new direction, and was forced to sell to a sometime financial contributor, Russell Maguire, owner of The Thompson Submachine Gun Company, in August 1952.
George Lincoln RockwellGeorge Lincoln Rockwell was a Navy Reserve Commander and founder of the American Nazi Party...
, later head of the
American Nazi PartyThe American Nazi Party was founded by George Lincoln Rockwell with the goal of reviving Nazism in the United States of America and was headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Initially called the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists , Rockwell reorganized and renamed it the American...
worked for Russell Maguire and with a young William F. Buckley, Jr. at The American Mercury during that period. It was at this point that the new owners of The American Mercury took that periodical on a journey into the nether world of national socialism. That sale spelled the end of
The American Mercury as a respectable mainstream magazine, though it would survive, steadily declining, for nearly 30 more years.
Within a very short time, Maguire steered the magazine “toward the fever swamps of anti-Semitism”, as
National Review publisher William A. Rusher would describe it. Various interest groups which began only with the
Anti-Defamation LeagueThe Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States of America. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and...
accused Maguire's
Mercury of ongoing and increasing Jew-baiting, particularly when it drew a number of purportedly anti-Jewish comments from the writings of Mencken himself back for reprint. The influences of both
George Lincoln RockwellGeorge Lincoln Rockwell was a Navy Reserve Commander and founder of the American Nazi Party...
and later the Rev.
Gerald B. WinrodGerald Burton Winrod was an evangelist, author, and political activist.-Biography:Winrod was the son of Mable E. of Illinois, and John W. Winrod of Missouri. His father was a former Wichita, Kansas bartender whose saloon was attacked by Carrie Nation...
and General Edwin A. Walker, on the editorial policy of The Mercury resulted in anti-semitic, white supremacist, and pro-Fascist articles becoming commonplace in the magazine. Control of the
American Mercury had passed from the respectable journalistic anti-establishment into the domain of extremist factions, and the editorial policy never attempted to regain credibility within mainstream intellectual circles.
Maguire did not remain long as the magazine's owner/publisher, but what he started other owners continued for the rest of the magazine's life. Maguire sold the
Mercury to the Gerald B. Winrod-owned Defenders of the Christian Faith, Inc. located in
Wichita, KansasWichita is a city in and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 344,284. The 2006 estimated population of 361,420 made it the 51st largest city in the country and the most populous city in Kansas...
in 1961; Reverend Gerald B. Winrod, was known as "The Jayhawk Nazi" during World War II and was once tried and convicted for violations of the Sedition Act of 1917. The DCF sold it to the Legion for the Survival of Freedom of Jason Matthews in 1963, and the LSF cut a deal in June 1966 with the
Washington Observer that telegraphed a merger with
Western Destiny which was a
Liberty LobbyThe Liberty Lobby was an American political advocacy organization which existed in the U.S. between 1955 and 2001. It was founded by Willis Carto.-Antisemitic world-view:...
publication owned by
Willis CartoWillis Allison Carto is a longtime figure on the American far right. He describes himself as Jeffersonian and populist, but is primarily known for his promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.-Influences on Carto:...
and
Roger PearsonFor the Linguist, please see Roger Pearson Roger Pearson is a British anthropologist, advocate of eugenics, and editor of several scholarly journals published by the Institute for the Study of Man.-Life and work:...
, the largest recipient of Pioneer Fund grants in history. Pearson was well known neo-Nazi and pro-Fascist who headed up the
World Anti-Communist LeagueThe World League for Freedom and Democracy is an international anti-communist political organization founded in 1966 in Taipei, Taiwan, under the initiative of Chiang Kai-shek. It was founded with the aim of opposing Communism around the world through "unconventional" methods...
during its most blatantly pro-Fascist periods. Pearson was a close associate of
Wickliffe DraperWickliffe Preston Draper was a big game hunter, an ardent eugenicist and a lifelong advocate of strict racial segregation...
, founder of The Pioneer Fund. By then
The American Mercury was a quarterly with a circulation of barely 7,000, and its editorial content was composed almost entirely of attacks upon Jews, African Americans, and other minorities.
Legacy
A 1978 article praised Hitler as the “greatest Spenglerian”; another new ownership for the exhausted magazine was announced in fall 1979; the spring 1980 issue celebrated Mencken's centennial, and lamented the passage of his era, “before the virus of social, racial, and sexual equality” grew in “fertile soil in the minds of most Americans”. The last issue concluded with a plea for contributions to build a computer index — with information about the 15,000 most dangerous political activists, actual or alleged, in the United States.
External links