"Making the Magazine": Visuality, Managerial Capitalism, and the Mass Production of Periodicals, 1865-1890

Abstract

After fifteen years of publication, Harper's New Monthly Magazine opened doors to visitors at its building in downtown New York. The editors proposed to demonstrate the entire series of operations through which each of these Numbers has passed until it comes in its perfect shape before reader. 1 However, it was not through an actual visit to facility that Harper's subscriber would catch a glimpse of magazine in action. Rather, steps were laid out in a lengthy article by editor-in-chief Alfred H. Guern- sey, filled with illustrations of each stage of process and culminating in a dramatic cut-away view of factory that laid each segment open to eye of observer. Not only did Guernsey's article and accompanying illustra- tions demonstrate for viewer complex process of putting together issues of both Harper's Monthly and Harper's Weekly, they also framed periodical itself as one of many mass-produced commodities that were treated in similar visual fashion in illustrations between 1865 and 1890. Illustrations of this period demonstrate a consistent interest in exploring processes required to bring a commodity to market and a desire to explicate through visual means connectedness and inter-reliance of each phase of manufacture. During this twenty-five year period, dozens of images take viewer inside factory to observe making of everyday consumer goods such as clothing, shoes, nails, matches, sewing machines, and canned goods. 2 These images suggest interest in minute details of manufactures of all kinds and an editorial presumption that viewers wished to have these processes explained to them using a combination of narrative and imagery. Artists developed a variety of visual techniques, including methods of fram- ing and composition, which helped viewers gain certain kinds of knowledge about production of commodities they purchased every day. Visual attention to sequential and interdependent nature of proto-assembly line and mass production techniques arose simultaneous to emergence of a managerial class.