Printed Materials
Published sources, including books, serials, pamphlets, and printed ephemera also comprise an important part of the Kansas Collections' holdings, and range from some of the earliest books printed in Kansas to contemporary scholarly treatments of the state and region. Periodicals include both scholarly journals and the magazines, reports, and newsletters produced by organizations and businesses in the state and region. Among the ephemeral materials (items printed or published for a specific event or purpose, and not intended for long-term use) are advertising leaflets, trade cards, handbills, posters, and commemorative items.
The Kansas Collection is a depository for the official publications of the state. Its collection of Kansas documents is extensive and includes a full set of Session Laws from the founding of the state in 1861, Kansas House and Senate Journals, and Kansas Statutes Annotated, as well as annual and biennial reports of many agencies, statistical compilations, special reports, and state budget information.
Very many of the publications in the Kansas Collection are printed on highly acidic, poor quality paper. Care must be taken in handling these items to insure that the information they contain will be available for future researchers. For instance, since the process of photocopying can be damaging, requests to copy fragile materials cannot always be filled. A microfilm copy, when available, is issued to the library patron if the original is too fragile for use.
Newsprint is a particularly poor quality material, designed for a very short period of use, and poses a number of problems. A series of newspaper scrapbooks was compiled by library staff over a period of years: they include clippings from local newspapers on a variety of topics covering Lawrence and Kansas history from the 1870s through the 1960s. Since there were no indexes published to these newspapers the scrapbooks provide an important access point to the information they contain. Time and heavy use has reduced the scrapbooks to poor condition and they are now being microfilmed, using funds from the KU Friends of the Library, so that this important indexing resource can continue to be used without further damage to the scrapbooks.
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24. Moses Merill, First Ioway Reading Book, Shawanoe Baptist Mission, Indian Territory: Jotham Meeker, printer, 1835.
This volume is one of the earliest books printed in what was to become Kansas. Jotham Meeker was both a printer and a missionary. He was born in Ohio, and received his training as a printer in Cincinnati. After serving as a missionary to the Potawatomie Indians in present day Michigan, Meeker spent much time learning the Potawatomie and Ottawa languages. After several assignments in different locations he received orders from the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions to relocate to Indian Territory. He did so in 1833, taking with him a printing press, which he established at the Shawnee Baptist Indian Mission.
This copy was acquired by the Libraries in honor of the centennial of the Kansas Territory in 1954.
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25. Miriam Davis Colt, Went to Kansas: Being a Thrilling Account of an Ill-Fated Expedition to that Fairy Land, and its Sad Results. Watertown, New York: L. Ingalls and Co., 1862.
The author journeyed with her husband and family from New York to Kansas Territory in 1856, and joined a vegetarian colony near present-day Chanute, Kansas. The book provides excerpts from the journal she kept along the way and during her stay in Kansas. Upon arriving in Kansas City she records the following:
May 1—Take a walk out on the levee—view the city, and see that it takes but a few buildings in this western world to make a city. The houses and shops stand along on the levee, extending back into the hillsides. The narrow street is literally filled with huge merchandise wagons bound for Santa Fe. . . . Large droves of cattle are driven into town to be sold to immigrants, who, like us, are going into the Territory.
This is the eleventh anniversary of my wedding-day, and as I review the pleasant years as they have passed, one after another, until they now number eleven, a shadow comes over me, as I try to look away into the future and ask,"what is my destiny?"
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26. The Reign of Terror in Kanzas, Boston: Charles W. Briggs, 1856.
The Kansas Collection includes many publications that deal with the period in the state's history known as "Bleeding Kansas," when both free state and pro slavery forces struggled to determine the future of Kansas. This inflammatory publication, critical of President Franklin Pierce, includes personal narratives of a number of individuals representing the free state view.
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27. Dark Youth of the U.S.A. Poem by Langston Hughes, Decorations by Prentiss Taylor, [New York]: The Golden Stair Press, 1931, (The Golden Stair Broadsides No.5). Autographed by Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902. He spent his early childhood (1903 to 1915) in Lawrence, Kansas, where he was raised largely by his grandmother, Mary Langston. In a talk given at the University of Kansas in 1965 he recalled his Lawrence days: "The first place I remember is Lawrence, right here. And the specific street is Alabama Street. And then we moved north, we moved to New York Street shortly thereafter. The first church I remember is the A.M.E. Church on the corner of Ninth, I guess it is, and New York. That is where I went to Sunday School, where I almost became converted, which I tell about in The Big Sea, my autobiography, my first autobiography."
In the Kansas Collection researchers can find a copy of The Big Sea and much more of Langston Hughes' work, including poetry, a novel, short stories, music and drama. Also included are various works translated into Hindi, Japanese, Swedish, and other languages. Many of the works were given to the Collection by Hughes, inscribed by him to the University of Kansas.
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From 1919 to 1951 the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company, Girard, Kansas, published some 500 million copies of Little Blue Books, representing over six thousand different titles. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius became known to some of his contemporaries as the "Henry Ford of publishing."
A socialist in his youth, Emanuel Julius came to Kansas in 1913 to join the editorial staff of the Appeal to Reason, one of the largest circulating socialist newspapers in the U.S. In 1916 he married Anna Marcet Haldeman. Interestingly they chose to hyphenate their two last names, a common practice today, but decidedly not so then. In 1919 Haldeman-Julius bought out the Appeal to Reason and continued with various publications of his own. He believed that good literature should be available to everyone, rich or poor, and that by publishing in mass quantities he could produce books of interest to many at a low price. His Little Blue Book series, which appeared under that name in 1924, offered small format books (3 1/2 x 5 inches) with about 64 pages per book, selling for as little as 10 cents apiece.
The books proved to be immensely popular. The series covered a very broad range of subjects including self improvement, philosophy, religion, politics, humor, biography, music, literature, science and sex education. Haldeman-Julius described the success of his series in the introduction to his How to become a writer of Little Blue Books: "The future of the Little Blue Book series is assured. Nothing can stop the progress of these little messengers of culture and mass education and entertainment."
28a. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company, undated (Little Blue Book No. 244).
28b. Margaret H. Sanger, What Every Girl Should Know, Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company, undated (Little Blue Book No. 14).
28c. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, How to Become a Writer of Little Blue Books, Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company, undated (Little Blue Book No. 1366).
28d. Clement Wood, How to Psycho-Analyze Your Neighbors, Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company, undated (Little Blue Book No. 1344).
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29. Great Western Paint Catalog, click here for a more detailed imageKansas City, Great Western Paint Manufacturing Co., 1929.
The main plant of the Great Western Paint Manufacturing Company was in Kansas City, with branch plants in Chicago, Dallas, St. Louis, and Buffalo. Their catalog carries illustrations of paint, varnishes, and brushes together with product descriptions and cost, but it provides far more than just a guide to what was in use at the time. An article written by the president of the company, A.M. Hughes, outlines how he started the business, and mentions plans to open several more plants. Much information is provided about two ways of increasing the mutual profits of company and painter: the "Great Western Plan," under which the painters shared in the profits on paint sold to customers, and the "Kangaroo Club," which claimed a membership of 15,000 and offered various benefits based on the amount of paint sold by the individual member.
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30. Lizzie E. Wooster, The Wooster Arithmetic for Grade I, Topeka: Crane & Company, 1900.
Each section of the book contains numbered lessons for the teacher's use. Wooster, a teacher herself, describes her objectives in the introduction: "The number and variety of exercises given are so numerous that they will save the teacher from writing out much drill work on the blackboard. Blackboard lessons are very objectionable, on account of the injury done to pupils' eyes. More books should be used in the lower grades, and less blackboard work, and then we would find a much less per cent of the children wearing glasses in the school-room."
Lorraine Elizabeth (Lizzie) Wooster went on to serve as Kansas Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1919 to 1923. Prior to her service as State Superintendent she authored several widely used textbooks (beginning around 1910) which were adopted by the state as approved textbooks for a number of years.
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31. Petroleum Reporter, July, 1936. San Antonio, Texas.
Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon, shown on the cover of this periodical, was nominated by the Republicans to run for President of the United States in 1936 against Franklin Roosevelt. He campaigned on the theme of sound money, but lost to Roosevelt.
As the caption says, "Alfred M. Landon, after graduating from the University [of Kansas] spent three years in a bank, and then went into the oil business, and prospered. He went into it at the end where they wear boots, khaki trousers and leather jackets and built a business out of the earnings."
Landon, an early conservationist, an oil man who fought big oil companies, and an opponent of the Ku Klux Klan at the peak of its activities in the 1920s, won the election for governor of Kansas in 1932, and was reelected to a second term in 1934.
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32. William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1946.
William Allen White was one of Kansas' best-known and respected journalists. He purchased the Emporia Gazette in 1895 at the age of twenty-seven. Describing his arrival in Emporia to take over the newspaper he wrote: "I never played poker but I did enjoy throwing dice with Fate that May evening as I rode regally through Emporia with the top of the hack down, a dollar in my pocket, and in my heart the sense that I had the world by the tail with a downward pull." White remained in Emporia for the rest of his life, but gained nation-wide fame as a writer, journalist, and social observer and commentator.
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33. Indian Leader, Lawrence, Kansas: Haskell Indian Junior College, Vol. 75, 1972.
This yearbook is one of many in the Kansas Collection published by Haskell Indian Junior College (now Haskell Indian Nations University). Established by the federal government in 1884 as an industrial boarding school for Native American children, Haskell has evolved over the years to become one of only two federally run higher education facilities for Native Americans in the United States.
In 1972 Haskell was completing its second year as a Kansas accredited junior college, with a student population totaling approximately one thousand, representing some 60 tribes from all over the United States. The yearbook provides information on the students attending the school, the teachers who taught there, clubs and organizations, social activities, and sports events. School and university yearbooks can provide researchers with information on school curricula, organizations, and social life that is difficult to find elsewhere.
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34. Seven Point AIDS/HIV Prevention and Intervention Plan, Topeka: Kansas Department of Health and Environment, 1990.
"This document outlines a strategic plan for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) to further address the substantial needs created by the unique epidemic of AIDS/HIV disease." The Kansas Collection contains many state documents which reflect the state's response to issues confronting Kansans and society in general throughout the years.
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35. History of First Baptist Church,1864-1934, Kansas City, Kansas: First Baptist Church, 1934.
The First Baptist Church was one of the earliest African American churches to be organized in Kansas, and exemplifies the origins of African American institutions in the state. Organized in 1864 in Wyandotte, Kansas, the congregation consisted originally of 20 members and held services in a store room for two years until a frame church was constructed on Nebraska Avenue. In 1879 the church relocated to Fifth and Nebraska Avenue; a brick building was erected which remains in use today.
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36. Coburn, F.D., Prohibition in Kansas from Every Viewpoint a Benefit and Permanent Success, Topeka, Kansas, Kansas State Temperance Union, 1910.
A speech given on January 29, 1910, at the Kansas Day Dinner of the Chicago Kansas Day Club, by F.D. Coburn, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture and President of the State Temperance Union. He offers his views and the testimony of others on the benefits of prohibition, which Kansas voters had approved in 1880. He quotes the Reverend Charles M. Sheldon (Topeka author of the multi-million seller In His steps), "Constitutional prohibition has done more than any other one thing to make Kansas the garden spot, morally, of the universe. . . . Prohibition in Kansas is not a question mark, but a permanent fact. The saloon and all that goes with it in Kansas is deader than Pharaoh's army."
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Trade cards of this general type were very popular from the 1860s up to World War I. They served as a small premium and were widely collected, very often for insertion in scrapbooks. Some were locally produced, but many more were offered by color printers for local imprinting. Today's baseball cards started out as a form of trade card, advertising a particular product.
37a. Trade card, A. Marks, Jeweler, Lawrence, Kansas, undated. An advertisement for celluloid eyeglasses.
37b. Trade card, click here for a more detailed imageDr. Warner's Coraline corset, for sale by Geo. Innis & Co., Lawrence, Kansas, undated.