It is thus for the timeliness of his labors in collecting his library that the Pacific Coast, and the whole world as well, is indebted to Mr. Bancroft. For this work his qualifications as a successful business man experienced in handling books were exactly those required.
A second great end which Mr. Bancroft attained was the founding of a history of Western North America on the original sources which he had collected in order that it might constitute a foundation upon which future histories would be built.
"He who shall come after me," says he in the letter quoted above, "will scarcely be able to undermine my work by laying another and deeper foundation. He must build upon mine or not at all, for he can not go beyond my authorities for facts. He may add to or alter my work, for I shall not know or be able to tell everything, but he can never make a complete structure of his own."
That the volumes supervised by Mr. Bancroft should contain imperfections is in the nature of the case inevitable. Perfect historical estimates of contemporaries can not as a rule be made, and history based largely on personal reminiscence must contain errors of refraction which can be corrected only in the clearer light of later years. The handling of material by a writer who did not collect it, and who is likely to find the places and conditions dealt with strange to his experience, inevitable though it be in so large an undertaking, results in the writing of faulty history. The hastening of the work and the editorial revision of manuscripts by a manager desirous of pleasing subscribers, and impelled by various other motives of his own, are not circumstances likely to increase the accuracy of the work. But after allowance has been made for all inaccuracies which have crept in through these various avenues, we still have the fact that the histories are based upon sources which may be supplemented but can never be displaced. No greater mistake could be made, therefore, than to say that because they contain errors they are worthless. All must agree with the practical argument made by a thoughtful old pioneer of the writer's acquaintance that, in spite of all criticisms which may be passed upon the Bancroft histories, they contain a great fund of information which is nowhere else to be found in print.
A third result of the history plan, and one which is of importance to historical writers everywhere who have large fields to cover, was the devising of a coöperative method for organizing the vast collections in the library. Mr. Bancroft makes the claim of having been the first to resort to such a division of labor; and points out (Literary Industries, 767) that his method avoids the repetition of details and insures a more thorough working up of the field than does the coöperative method as the term is usually understood, under which the writers work independently of each other after the field is divided. Such a claim might indeed be granted had Mr. Bancroft announced himself as editor and reviser instead of author, and had he designated the part of the work written by each of his collaborators in accordance with the usual custom in coöperative works. The printing of his name as author on the title page, and his general recognition as such in accordance with press notices following those of the Native Races, have, of course, largely lost for him the credit of originating a coöperative method for the organizing of large quantities of material.
Concerning the understanding Mr. Bancroft had with his corps of writers generally as to the public acknowledgment of their work which he would make, information is not at hand. Only one had ever before written and published a book, and perhaps the majority gave no thought to the rights which would be theirs as authors. Certain it is that when the greater number of the more prominent writers entered the library, the work was planned on a much smaller scale than that upon which it was carried out, and, as they did not know that they were to become the authors of entire or consecutive volumes, the question was not then of the importance which it assumed with the later growth of the series. What the understanding was with those who first entered the library we can not say definitely, but his ideas on that subject seems to have been a survival of the encyclopædia project. To Mrs. Victor, just prior to her entering his service, he wrote on August 1, 1878:
"The work is wholly mine. I do what I can myself, and pay for what I have done over that; but I father the whole of it and it goes out only under my name. All who work in the library do so simply as my assistants. Their work is mine to print, scratch, or throw in the fire. I have no secrets; yet I do not tell everybody just what each does. I do not pretend to do all the work myself, that is, to prepare for the printer all that goes out under my name. I have three or four now who can write for the printer after a fashion; none of them can suit me as well as I can suit myself. One or two only will write with very little change from me. All the rest require sometimes almost rewriting."
He further adds that it gives him pleasure to acknowledge his obligations to his assistants, but that this acknowledgment is always voluntary on his part and not claimed as a right by them, and says that while he is not sure of mentioning certain persons in connection with certain parts as he had done in the introduction to the Native Races, he will certainly not do more than that. The only mention which he promises definitely to his writers is a biographical notice in the Literary Industries.
"The work in the library," says he, "good or bad, is mine; were it not so, I would simply do what I could with my own fingers, or do nothing."
It is easy enough to see why Mr. Bancroft should wish to have absolute control of manuscripts to insure good work, and a complete covering of the field, but it is difficult to see how he could justly make the claim before the world that manuscripts turned out by other persons were his writing.