annot be safely ignored.

The success of the McGuffey Readers was due primarily to their
adaptation to the general demand of the schools and secondarily to the
energy and skill of their publishers.

[Moral Teaching]

The books in their first form were strongly religious in their teaching
without being denominational. If a selection taught a moral lesson this
was stated in formal words at the close. The pill was not sugared. Thus
at the close of a lesson narrating the results of disobedience, the
three little girls assembled and "they were talking how happy it made
them to keep the Fifth Commandment." There was in the books much direct
teaching of moral principles, with "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not."
In the later revisions this gradually disappeared. The moral teaching
was less direct but more effective. The pupil was left to make his own
deduction and the formal "haec fabula docet" was omitted. The author
and the publishers were fully justified in their firm belief that the
American people are a moral people and that they have a strong desire
that their children be taught to become brave, patriotic, honest,
self-reliant, temperate, and virtuous citizens.

In some of these books the retail price is printed. In 1844 the retail
price of the First Reader was twelve and a half cents. It contained 108
pages. In the same year, the Second Reader of 216 pages was priced at 25
cents. The Fourth Reader cost 75 cents, and contained 336 pages.

These prices were in a market when the day's wage of a laboring man was
only fifty cents. Relatively to the cost of other articles, schoolbooks
were not nearly so cheap as they are now.

[Copyright Files]

When Truman & Smith began publishing, the copyright law required the
deposit of titles and copies of the several books in the office of
the Clerk of the District Court. At first such deposits were made in
Columbus, Ohio, but later in Cincinnati. When Congress organized the
Copyright Bureau in Washington, the several clerks were required to send
to the Library of Congress all the sample copies deposited; but these
had been carelessly kept and many were lost. A duplicate set was for
years required to be sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
These were also passed into the custody of the Librarian of Congress;
but this collection had been carelessly preserved and the files of the
McGuffey Readers at Washington are now quite defective for the earliest
issues. The Librar