A Peek at the U.S. Rare Book Trade in 1933

by Stephen J. Gertz

By November of 1933 the financial crisis that swept the country in 1929 had wrenched the U.S.  into a profound economic depression that was deepening into a miasma with no end in sight. The rare book trade saw prices decline, credit dry up, and client bases contract. Many firms went under.

Goodspeed's, in Boston, established by Charles E. Goodspeed in 1898, had grown dramatically during the Roaring Twenties; by the end of the decade it had three shops and sixty employees.

"With us, as with many others, the late 'twenties were years of great expansion both of staff and premises," George T. Goodspeed, C.E.'s son, who joined the firm in 1925, remembered. The Williams Book Store had gone bankrupt in 1929; Goodspeed's bought its stock and took over its lease.

But just two years later economic circumstances had worsened and now even Goodspeed's - one of the most successful rare book firms in the country -  was feeling the Depression's effects.

"1931, which I think of as the first of the Depression years, found us dangerously overstaffed and but for an extraordinary windfall we should have operated at a loss for the first time in many years," George T. Goodspeed recalled.

By 1933, however, Goodspeed's had, by necessity, slimmed down. It was time to retrench and, significantly, reach out. Studies show that in difficult times, rather than cut back, it is crucial to continue to advertise and market to remain visible, competitive, and viable; spending money to make money is never more important.

And so, amongst other tactics, Goodspeed's placed an ad, 11 x 2 inches, in the November 1933 issue of Fortune magazine. While advertising space rates had declined, this was still an expensive ad to run.

Why that magazine and that issue?

In 1933 only one industry in the United States was booming, indeed, bursting its barrel hoops: The alcoholic beverage trade. The huge sums of illegal money generated by the business during Prohibition had, with Repeal (implemented in 1933) been diverted to legal commerce. The November 1933 issue of Fortune featured a twenty-page in-depth report on the whiskey business, which couldn't distill and age spirits fast enough to satisfy demand. The magazine would, of course, be read by all in the liquor industry, who were doing quite well, thank you, in addition to the moneyed class that Fortune was aimed at; the rich were still, for the most part, rich, even if a polo pony or two had to be sold to help make ends meet and pay the chauffeur. 

Goodspeed's was simply trying to attract the attention and business of the demographic that it depended upon and seek new clients. Fortune was an over-sized periodical that was still using expensive, coated paper stock, though at this time the total number of pages so had declined, with uncoated stock used for approximately 50% of its bulk. It was priced at $1, which, adjusted for inflation, is $16.50 in today's dollars; a very pricey magazine.

The advertisement is quite revealing:

Fortune, November 1933, p. 126.

 Here, Goodspeed's is offering prints from the first edition of Audubon's Birds of America (1833) from $5 to $100 ($82 - $1640 in 2009 money). First edition prints in fine condition now sell for $25,000 - $80,000.

"Audubon Never Drew a Dodo" is certainly a headline for the ages.

They offer Robert B. McAfee's History of the Late War in the Western Country (1816) for $250 ($4,100 adjusted for inflation). A rebound copy now sells for $925, which may be pushing it; it has not fared so well at auction over the last thirty-five years, though, admittedly, it is usually found in poor condition. Fine copies are  near impossible to find.

I can find no auction records for the Coolidge piece offered for $95 ($1560). My guess is that the price, adjusted for inflation, would be around the same were it offered today; at the time Coolidge was fondly remembered for presiding over the 'Twenties speculative boom. "Silent" Cal has not fared  so well in Presidential Americana (or in U.S. history) since then.

Of special note is Goodspeed's promotional publication, The Month, an illustrated overview of books, prints and autographs in general and those in Goodspeed's stock in particular. In bad times, the show must always go on. It is offered to as a "gift" to Fortune readers, a nice  if somewhat misleading pitch - it was free to anybody who subscribed. Goodspeed's simply used the ploy as an attractive, personalized come-on to a readership whose attention, names, mailing addresses, and money it was trying to capture.

Goodspeed's, alas, closed in 1993, just five years shy of its centennial, a victim of rising rents and a lagging economy, an object lesson that, if at all possible, book shop owners should own the buildings they are located in to turn a  short-term fixed/long-term (and potentially disastrous) variable expense (rent)  into a permanently short- and long-term fixed and predictable one, and gain a growth investment at the same time.

"It's hard to talk about it," George Goodspeed, ninety at the time, told the Boston Globe. He wanted to continue the tradition but keeping the bookstore open, he said, became "just too expensive."

No amount of advertising could save it. Fortune no longer smiled.

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Reference: GOODSPEED, George T. The Bookseller's Apprentice (Oak Knoll Press, 1996). Excerpted in The Professional Rare Bookseller, Journal of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, 1983, No. 5.

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Fortune magazine, November 1933, and advertisement therein a happy discovery courtesy of Kenneth G. Gertz, the author's beloved father, with my deep thanks.
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I have a personal interest in advertising for the rare book trade 1900 - 1960. Readers with knowledge and/or in possession of such are encouraged to contact me, with my thanks in advance.

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"Speak a Jewish Word and Make an Extra Sale"

My girlfriend's father died recently and in amongst his belongings she found a curious pamphlet.

The Joseph Jacobs Handbook of Jewish Words and Expressions. For use by anyone calling on the Jewish trade...for making friends with Jewish merchants was issued in 1954 by the Joseph Jacobs Organization, an U.S. advertising agency that specifically targeted the Jewish market. It was created for any business interested in cultivating the Jewish trade, and Calvert Distillers co-opted it for use by its salesmen and distribution to the liquor store owners they called upon so that both could more effectively service their customers with a little schmear of Yiddish to grease the ethnic gears and help all concerned  put a little extra gelt (money) in their pockets and mach a leben (make a living). It's hands across the Old and New Testaments, brotherhood with a dollar sign.

It's rather quaint as a piece of ephemeral American Judaica. But as with all ephemera, close investigation reveals it to be much more than a handy lexicon.

Between the lines of this little pamphlet lies the history of the liquor business in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. I know this story well and can recite it by heart. My family played a supporting role in the writing of it.

Prior to Prohibition, the whiskey business in the U.S. was a Protestant affair. When the Volstead Act became law, distilleries in the U.S. closed down and their inventories were gathered into U.S. Government bonded warehouses for distribution into the legal trade: Few are aware the there were exemptions under the Volstead Act for the sale of alcoholic beverages during Prohibition: wine for sacramental purposes, liqueurs and rum for industrial baking, and whiskey sold in drug stores for medicinal purposes by a doctor's prescription.(1)

The original owners of these warehoused goods were issued government receipts and a lively trade developed for brokering the receipts which were sold by the original owners to raise cash, and then brokered for resale. Control the receipts, and you controlled the legal flow of booze in the U.S. The brokers and buyers of the receipts were, to a man, Jews.

By 1930, it was becoming clear that the Noble Experiment was an utter failure and distillers, sensing Repeal in the air, began to prepare for it. But they needed capital to gear up for the change and resume production at a level to meet anticipated demand.

During the '20s, the National Brokerage Company of Chicago(2), one of the more successful traders of warehouse receipts, learned that a distillery in Kentucky was looking for a financial angel. The distillery, an old family business, had an established brand and venerable reputation. And so National Brokerage Company made a deal with the family patriarch. In exchange for investing the requisite scratch, they assumed control of the distillery's plants and products and handled all sales and marketing; day to day operations of the distillery and the manufacture of its alcoholic beverages were left in the hands of the family. Thus, Jim Beam bourbon became, for all intents and purposes, Judah Beam, the world's finest bourbon since 1795 (5555, by the Hebrew calendar).(3)

At the same time, the Bronfman family was buying up distilleries in Canada, amongst them, Calvert, and made strong, similar moves into the United States. South of the Canadian border, Lewis S. Rosenstiel bought the Schenley distillery in Pennsylvania and following that purchase went on a distillery buying binge. By the mid-1930s, Jews controlled the distilled spirits industry in the U.S., completely responsible for its finance, sales and marketing.

In the immediate post-WWII years, the liquor business enjoyed the same boom as every other industry in America. Its expansion and growth through publicy-owned corporations required a dramatic increase in personnel and non-Jews entered the trade in supporting roles. Liquor stores, almost entirely owned by Jews because the liquor trade was considered to be low-class by Christians influenced by the temperance movement, began to become owned by gentiles as upwardly mobile Jews rose to other, more acceptable occupations. The industry, though, was still run by Jews and, by 1954, the need for a pamphlet such as this was strong. By the 1960s, however, the corporatization of the industry was complete and the role of the Jews who established the modern liquor business in the United States gave way to a an ethnically neutral (parve) and faceless industry. Like the movie industry pioneered by Jews, the distilled spirits business shed its roots and became pasteurized, homogenized and fully "American." Indeed, Jim Beam was sold by the Blum group to American Tobacco (now American Brands) in 1967.

Recently in these pages, Chris Lowenstein wrote a fine piece about collecting ephemera, a follow-up to a blog post she wrote earlier for Book Hunter's Holiday.(4)

As this throwaway pamphlet demonstrates - all ephemera (or paper collectables) are throwaway by nature, not meant to last much less be collected - these pieces of paper can be as valuable as books for illuminating the world in which they were born. For book collectors wishing to enter the field on a tight budget, ephemera is unsurpassed. The pamphlet under notice is worth $15-$20, tops. Those who enter the hobby with ephemera often find that it is so rich yet inexpensive that they never want to collect beyond it.

This piece falls into Judaica, specifically American Judaica, with cross-over into 20th century American industry in general and the distilled spirits business in particular. And, just as many have found the collection of the literature of illegal drugs to be a fruitful and worthwhile area of interest and inquiry, so, too, are there collectors who specialize in collecting the literature of booze, with sub-specialties in bourbon, scotch, etc. Further, the establishment and growth of the liquor business in the United States runs parallel to the establishment and growth of the Republic; it is a sub-specialty of Americana. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 anyone?

Thus, this little booklet can serve as the cornerstone to a collection that can grow in many interesting directions. A far-sighted dealer could build a collection of American liquor business-related ephemera, perhaps with the Jewish slant and form a collection more valuable as a whole than in its parts and sell to a university, a Jewish or a liquor industry trade organization. An individual could do the same and gain much personal nachas (joy), something to really kvell (beam with immense, swollen pride) over having amassed a collection of material that has gotten little attention and, having done so, brought to light a slice of our cultural history and heritage heretofore passed over.

As an adjunct, one could include vintage liquor business advertising, i.e.:

     Clear Heads Call For Calvert (1940). Buyers of other brands presumably too drunk to buy wisely.


The Joseph Jacobs Handbook provides a pronunciation guide, so the non-Jews who used it would not make the blunder that one gentile performer in Hollywood made during an appearance on Jan Murray's early 1960s game show, Treasure Hunt: in a mangled expression of solidarity mit der menschen (good Jewish people) and as a self-elected landsman (fellow townsperson) he mispronounced the Jewish holiday Hanukah as CHa-NU-ka, thereby eliciting peals of derisive laughter from the audience and fellow game show participants, and demonstrating that he was a real schmendrick, a beheymeh, a putz.

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1. Title II, sections 3, 6, and 7.

2. The principals of National Brokerage Company were Harry Blum who was married to one of my paternal grandmother's sisters; his father, Philip; my grandfather, Edward M. Gertz; Moe Rieger, married to Blum's sister; Joe Levy, who was married to my Great-Aunt Eva Bernstein; and Joe Guzik, brother of Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, Al Capone's loyal business advisor and financial wizard. My Great-Aunt Bernice, my grandfather's sister, kept the books. My grandfather would sell his share of the business to two of his brothers-in-law, my Great-uncles Joe and Leo Bernstein, just prior to National Brokerage Company's reorganization as the Philip Blum group and its purchase of Jim Beam. In 1941, my great-uncle Harry Blum assumed sole ownership of James B. Beam Distilling Co.

3. It is instructive that the Jim Beam website makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of this part of its history. It also has some dates completely wrong.

4. Hats off to Chris for slyly referencing A.S.W. Rosenbach's 1936 classic book of the same name.