It has been far from paying a reasonable editorial compensation; often it has paid nothing, and at present it does little more than pay its bills. The number of engravings and the extra labor in printer’s composition, cause it to be an expensive work, while its patronage is limited.
It is difficult at this date to give any adequate statement of the amount of encouragement and active assistance given to Silliman by his scientific colleagues in New Haven and elsewhere—a subject earlier alluded to. It is fortunately possible, however, to acknowledge the generous aid received by the Journal in the early days from a source near at hand. It has already been noted in another place that the dawning activity of science at New Haven was recognized by the founding of the “Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences,” formally established at New Haven in 1799 and the third scientific body to be organized in this country. From the beginning of the Journal in 1818, the Connecticut Academy freely gave its support both in papers for publication and at least on one occasion later it gave important financial aid. Upon the occasion of the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the Academy on October 11, 1899, Professor, later Governor, Baldwin, the president of the Academy, discusses this subject in some detail. He says in part:
To support his [Silliman’s] undertaking, a vote had been passed in February [1818], “that the Committee of Publication may allow such of the Academy’s papers as they think proper, to be published in Mr. Silliman’s Scientific Journal.”
Free use was made of this authority, and a large part of the contents of the Journal was for many years drawn from this source. In some cases this fact was noted in publication;[[2]] but in most it was not....
In 1826, when the Journal was in great need of financial support, the Academy further voted to pay for a year the cost of printing such of its papers as might be published in it. In Baldwin’s Annals of Yale College, published in 1831, it is described as a publication “honorable to the science of our common country,” and having “an additional value as being adopted as the acknowledged organ of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
Many active campaigns were carried on over the country through paid agents to obtain new subscribers for the Journal and it was doubtless due to these efforts that the nominal subscription list was, at times, as already noted, relatively large as compared with that of a later date. The new subscribers in many cases, however, did not remain permanently interested, often failed to pay their bills, and the uncertain and varying demand upon the supply of printed copies was doubtless one reason why many single numbers became early out of print.
An interesting sidelight is thrown upon the efforts of Silliman to interest the public in his work, at its beginning, by a letter to the editor from Thomas Jefferson, then seventy-five years of age. The writer is indebted to Mr. Robert B. Adam of Buffalo for a copy of this letter and its interest justifies its being reproduced here entire. The letter is as follows:
Monticello, Apr. 11. ’18.
Sir
The unlucky displacement of your letter of Mar 3 has been the cause of delay in my answer. altho’ I have very generally withdrawn from subscribing to or reading periodical publications from the love of rest which age produces, yet I willingly subscribe to the journal you propose from a confidence that the talent with which it will be edited will entitle it to attention among the things of select reading for which alone I have time now left. be so good as to send it by mail, and the receipt of the 1st number will be considered as announcing that the work is commenced and the subscription money for a year shall be forwarded. Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.