With regard to racial issues, discrimination was ever-present, often within subtle asides. In a not-so-subtle example, Dr Einbinder quotes the article on Lynching from his 1958 set, an entry unchanged since it first appeared in 1910.
After reconstruction, with the increase of Negro crimes, came an increase of lynchings, because of prejudice, the fact that for some time after reconstruction the governments were weak (especially in the districts where Negroes outnumbered whites), the fact that Negroes nearly always shielded criminals of their own race against whites, and because of the occurrence of the crime of rape by Negro men upon white women.
‘This passage does not rest on facts,’ Einbinder notes, ‘but is merely an attempt to justify Southern mob violence.’ The entry was written by a dean of Vanderbilt University, then a largely white Southern school. ‘Although the article was revised within the last decade to include recent statistics on lynching, the only change made in this biased passage was to alter its punctuation and capitalise the word “Negro”.’*
Harvey Einbinder’s revelations of 1964 strengthened the demand for an entirely new edition, and he claimed this was his intention. He conducted his investigation more in love than in anger: he had always relied upon Britannica as a trustworthy source, he said, and he emphasised it was still a valuable enterprise with much rigorous text; he just wanted all of it to be better, more current. He almost apologises for his scrutiny, suggesting it would be impossible for the editors of such an unwieldy institution to keep abreast of all the breakthroughs in the scientific journals or developments in natural history.
It would be another decade before the groundbreaking fifteenth edition was published with much fanfare in 1974, and we shall see how it endeavoured to sweep away almost everything that had gone before. But in the meantime, there was an awful lot of old stock that needed to be sold.
Something for everyone: kitchen scales and first-aid kits seal the deal in the 1950s
* Three-quarters of the 3693 people lynched in the US between 1889 and 1929 were ‘Negroes’. Of this number, 17 per cent were accused of rape and an additional 7 per cent of attempted rape. In many cases these charges were unfounded, and hence there is no basis for citing rape as a major cause of lynching.
S
SELLING
In October 1964, a seventeen-year-old Londoner named Peter Rosengard was attracted by a classified advertisement in the London Evening Standard that read, ‘International publishing company launching major new publication seeks young enthusiastic management trainees’. His parents wanted him to become a dentist, but he had his eye on a sporty soft-top Sunbeam Alpine, and the management opportunity seemed to be the fastest way to get it. More than fifty years later, Rosengard recalls being interviewed by an American ‘in cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat’ promising him the world. But it was clear early on that his job would be unlikely to include any management training at all.*
The American in the hat ran a franchise of Collier’s, the New York publishing company that had been in the encyclopaedia business since the 1880s. Its twenty-volume set was now being sold in Europe for the first time, and the company would use the same sales techniques it had perfected in the United States. Rosengard remembers the set costing £240, but being told that some recipients would be paying rather less.*
‘We’re doing an advance marketing campaign here in the UK to select a number of families to receive a free set,’ he was told at his interview. ‘They can tell everyone how good they are, so when we come to sell them we’ll have a ready-primed market.’
And there was something else too. ‘As well as the set of books, there is an annual information service and updated single volume to keep ’em abreast of new developments in the world. All we ask is that the selected families sign up for this service, which costs £12 a year for 20 years; but rather than have it round their necks for 20 years, like a mortgage, they can pay it over just 24 months at £10 a month. What do you think of that, Peter!?’
‘Well that is really a fantastic offer. So they get the entire set of encyclopaedias absolutely free?’
‘You’ve got it! Absolutely free, Peter!’
The next day he found he had joined a team of about fifty new recruits. ‘Every morning we had a pep talk which ended with us all standing on our chairs. “OK, guys. What have you got?” “Enthusiasm!” we shouted. “What do you want?” “Money!” we shouted. “What are you going to do about it!?” “Rock ’em!” “OK, let’s rock ’em!” Then we all ran down the small staircase out into the street, got into our group leader’s car and roared off to Upminster or Slough, to whatever housing estate we were headed for.’
He was invited into the first house he approached. ‘We had to learn a ten-page script, word for word. I was doing pretty well in the tiny living room of this young couple and just getting to the bit where I threw open my briefcase, took out the stuck-together concertinaed spines of the twenty volumes … when my mind went totally blank. I knew I was halfway down page six but I hadn’t a clue what came next.
‘“I’m terribly sorry, but it’s my very first day and you are the first people I have done this to and actually, I have got a little stuck … but I have the script in my briefcase and if you don’t mind, I can read the rest to you?”
‘Amazingly, they were very understanding and so I got out the script and hurled the dead encyclopaedia spines across their living room; it bounced off the wall. And they signed up. I had earned £16. By the end of the first week, I had signed up nine families and made £144. As the average income in 1964 was £15 a week, this was amazing. I got the top prize at the Friday morning meeting, a silver Dunhill lighter. It didn’t matter I didn’t smoke. I felt fantastic. And that’s how I became a salesman.’
Now in his seventies, Peter Rosengard has been a salesman his entire life, although for most of it his line has been life insurance (he sells the majority of his policies from his permanently reserved breakfast table at Claridge’s). He has also enjoyed side-careers managing the eighties pop band Curiosity Killed the Cat and co-founding London’s Comedy Store.
In 1964 it took him three months to realise he was selling anything at all. He writes, ‘I was angry; I felt I had been duped.’ But he was told, ‘You can’t just knock on a door and say, “Hello, I am an encyclopaedia salesman, would you like to buy one?” You have to make them feel they have been selected. Everyone wants to feel special. We selected you for this job, didn’t we? Remember, you’re saving their children from a life of ignorance, and therefore the yawning jaws of poverty.’
The Collier’s Encyclopedia of 1964 was an updated version of the 1962 edition, containing about 15,000 illustrations and 1,500 maps. The spines suggested an engagingly diverse range (Art Nouveau – Beetle, Heating – Infantry, Infinity – Katmandu), while its clear editorial tone was necessarily pitched below the brow of Britannica. Peter Rosengard had been selling it successfully for five months, making £250 a week, when he was called to a meeting at a hotel in Kensington.
‘Guys, we have some big news!’ he was told. ‘The reason not everyone is here today is because this is only for you, our very top guys. You are being selected to go on this exciting new journey. Guys, we are going to hit Germany!’
His employers explained that the consumer protection law in the UK allowed customers a seven-day cooling-off period, resulting in a large number of cancellations. Apparently, Germany had no such policy.