(The main facts of Oak's life, as learned by Mrs. Victor, are as follows: Henry Labbeus Oak was born at Garland, Maine, in 1844. His ancestry—including the family names of Oak, Merriam, Hastings, Hill, and Smith—was entirely American from a period preceding the Revolutionary War, being originally English and Welsh. He was educated at the public and private schools of his native town until, in 1861, he entered Bowdoin College, and was graduated at Dartmouth in the class of 1865. During his college course, he taught in the public and high schools of different towns in Maine; and after graduation, for a year in an academy at Morristown, New Jersey.
Mr. Oak came to California by steamer in 1866, and, after some attempts at commercial life, broken by a long illness, again became a teacher. A year was spent as principal of the public school at Haywards, and as instructor in the collegiate institute at Napa, and in the spring of 1868, he became office editor of the Occident, a Presbyterian paper which the Bancroft house was then publishing for an association. According to Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind. 219), "the whole burden of the journal gradually fell on him." But when, owing to a disagreement with the religious association, the firm declined to publish the paper any longer, the young editor was left without employment. In the meantime a somewhat erratic Englishman named Bosquetti had succeeded Knight as custodian of the Bancroft library, and Oak was appointed to assist him. Upon his decamping a few months later, at the end of 1868, Mr. Oak was appointed to the position.)
The beginning of a classification of the material in the library had been made by Mr. Knight, who saved clippings and arranged them in scrap-books and boxes. It now became Oak's duty to superintend the extraction of material from the volumes in his custody and to catalogue new books as they came in. In May, 1871, he prepared for publication by the firm, two guide-books for tourists. It was at the same time that Mr. Bancroft took another step toward the history plan.
The plan of publishing a Pacific Coast encyclopedia had been under consideration for a year or two, and was now adopted. Mr. Bancroft began to look for contributors. John S. Hittell, publisher of the Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast, prepared a list of the principal subjects to be treated, and Oak began to gather statements from pioneers and contributors of every sort by issuing circulars and writing letters. For about a year the preparations continued. During the first half of 1872 Ora Oak, a younger brother of the librarian, together with others, extracted material on Pacific Coast voyages and travels. Walter M. Fisher, an educated young Englishman who came to the library early in the year, wrote out such travels as those of Bryant, Bayard Taylor, and Humboldt. The librarian, finding inadequate the system of indexing the library then in use, set to work to devise a more practical one, and spent three months in bringing it to perfection. This was apparently the only part of the year's work which proved abiding.
That the material in the Bancroft library was better adapted to the preparation of a history than of an encyclopedia gradually appeared to those who came in contact with it. (Walter M. Fisher was born in Ulster in 1849, and was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, a member of an English and Scotch colony. He was educated at Queen's College, Belfast. Nemos remembered him as "a handsome fellow, a great eater, and a hard worker." Together with Harcourt, he left Bancroft's employ in 1874 to accept the editorship of the Overland Monthly. Returning to London in 1875, he published a clever work entitled the Californians. Subsequently he became a physician). After several years of suggestion, discussion, and change, Mr. Bancroft decided to reshape the entire plan of work accordingly. The history of the Pacific slope of the continent was to be written, beginning at the Isthmus of Panama with the first appearance of the Spaniards, and then taking up the successive regions to the north as their history had its beginning. This work, embracing an account of all the various republics, provinces, states, and territories along the Pacific, it was decided to designate as The History of the Pacific States.
Heretofore, Mr. Bancroft had been known only as bookseller and publisher, and manager of one of San Francisco's large business houses. His experience in writing had been limited to the preparation of some material for the proposed encyclopedia. But now, when he had reached the age of forty years, practically all of them except the first sixteen, spent in the world of business, the head of the firm of H. H. Bancroft and Company made his first venture as a literary man, writing himself and rewriting the work of others. He began by preparing what he considered a suitable introduction to the history. The task was not easy, especially for one unaccustomed to write. In fourteen weeks he had taken out material from which he wrote three hundred pages of introduction to the History of Central America which he subsequently reduced to seventy-five pages. This seems to have been the only part of the work that he considered as exclusively his own theme: (Lit. Ind., 291). But this matter subsequently had to be rewritten.
While writing on this volume, Mr. Bancroft became convinced that the history could not be complete without an account of the original inhabitants of the coast. To quote his own words, "I did not fancy them, I would gladly have avoided them. I was no archæologist, ethnologist, or antiquary, and I had no desire to become such. My tastes in the matter, however, did not dispose of the subject. The savages were there, and there was no help for me; I must write them up to get rid of them." To compile information concerning the manners and customs, the mythology, the language, and the antiquities of these aborigines, Mr. Bancroft estimated that two volumes would be required: (Lit. Ind., 301). The Native Races as completed is a work of five volumes. So much of an expansion in all of the early historical plan was necessary.
Mr. Bancroft, wrote but two hundred and seventy out of the four thousand pages of the Native Races, devoting his time while that series was in preparation largely to a rewriting of the first volume of Central America, to a continuation of a summary of early voyages for other volumes, and to a perfection of the plan and a collecting of material for the histories. His relation to this work may be likened to that of a managing editor. He decided upon the division of labor as suggested by Oak or others, and required changes in the manuscript as completed if he considered them necessary, either for the sake of treatment or style, but the extent of his writing as printed in this work certainly falls far short of that necessary to substantiate the claim which he has made to its authorship. The chapter which he wrote was that on the Hyperboreans. As to this work, he tells us in the Literary Industries that during the first half of the year 1873 he "was writing on northern Indian matter, giving out the notes on the southern division to go over the field again and take out additional notes": (Lit. Ind. 571). As to his further connection with the work, he says that in December of the same year he became convinced that the plan of treating Indian languages adopted by Goldschmidt was not the proper one, and that the latter was "obliged to go over the entire field again and re-arrange and add to the subject matter before I would attempt the writing of it." (Lit. Ind., 573.) This passage ascribes the actual preparation of the volume to Goldschmidt, and the writing referred to here must have been largely in the nature of editorial work. It is hardly to be presumed that a man of Mr. Bancroft's education and slight literary experience would have attempted at this time anything so ambitious as the complete preparation of a treatise on Indian languages.
We see, then, that although the influence of Mr. Bancroft was felt in arrangement and even in style, the Native Races was written almost entirely by other persons. But one would hardly suppose that such was the case from reading the words: "During the progress of this work I succeeded in utilizing the labors of my assistants to the full extent of my anticipations": (Lit. Ind., 304).
When speaking in the Literary Industries of work done for him by others, Mr. Bancroft shows a habit which is derived from his long experience as manager of a business concern. His constant tendency is to speak of work done by those in his employ as his work, neglecting a distinction between a publisher and an author, which is a vital one. The reputation of a publishing house depends upon the workmanship of its employés, but that of an author depends solely upon his own talents and the work of his own hands. While a publisher may with all propriety speak of work done by agents as his printing, for him to say that writing done for him by others is his writing is a positive misstatement. When Mr. Bancroft paid his writers for their manuscript, he became its owner with full rights of publication, but no one will say for a moment that he thereby became the author. In speaking of the Native Races, as well as the History of the Pacific States, Mr. Bancroft often does so in such terms as to indicate that writing was done by him when it was his only by purchase. (Compare statements in Literary Industries, 303, 568, 571, and in Native Races I, preface xiii, with the facts as shown by the statements of different members of Bancroft's literary corps as to the work actually done by each writer and as given later in this article.)