General Details
Title: The Book of Knowledge
Volumes: 20 (bound into 10 books)
Language: English
Publisher: The Grolier Society Inc.
Year: 1945
Pages:7580
My copy of The Book of Knowledge: The Children's Encyclopedia is 20 volumes bound into 10. The books are copiously illustrated, with woodcuts, reproductions of artwork, photographs, and even a number of color plates. This set has a couple of similarities to the World Book volumes of that time: first, like The World Book, The Book of Knowledge underwent continuous revision, so no two printings are exactly alike. The volumes are also continuously numbered, so that volume 9/10, for example, contains pages 3025 to 3772.
This set is unlike other works featured on this site in that it is not arranged alphabetically. This is done purposefully, as mentioned in multiple prefatory essays, to encourage reading for pleasure. In the "The Purpose and the Plan" on page 9 it is stated: "The work has been planned, not so much to make learning easy, as to make it interesting. [...] The departments of The Book of Knowledge are distributed throughout the set, one or more sections appearing in almost every volume. This distribution has its root in sound psychology and has been found to be one of the strongest features of this work. The pedagogical reason is this: the average child can not concentrate long upon those subjects which require close attention. After a comparatively short period, he must change his occupation or rest." An article on the astronomical significance of the Earth is followed by one on the history and construction of bridges. After reading about fantastical creatures like the unicorn and sphinx, the reader is presented with an article on the Panama Canal. The "departments" of knowledge include "The Earth" (astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, and meteorology), "Plant Life," "Animal Life," "Our Own Life," "Familiar Things," "Literature," "Stories," "Famous Books," "Wonder Questions," "All Countries," "The United States," "Canada," "Men and Women," "Golden Deeds," "Poetry," "Fine Arts," and "Things to Make and Things to Do."
This feature is repeatedly touted; in his introduction, John H. Finley writes: "It is not like a grown-up encyclopedia, a work of reference which one does not think of reading consecutively or for pleasure (though I have myself read through an encyclopedia of several volumes and found it intensely interesting and profitable reading). This is an encyclopedia in that it gives the child or youth possession of the whole cycle of existence and circle of truth to which he is entitled by birth. The city boy and the country boy find themselves inhabitants of a universe a thousand times more wonderful and interesting than that which most of their elders knew at their age or dreamed of. The facts of physics, biology, astronomy, history and language learned in these boyhood, girlhood days are never forgotten. Through them the child has inextricably woven into his being the life of the race and of the earth, who might otherwise be only a child of a certain valley or prairie, or of a certain street" (3).
Leonard Power's "A Unique Aid in Elementary Education" essay echoes the same sentiment - this set for children is superior to others precisely because it is not alphabetically arranged: "In its sheer power to delight children lies, I think, the greatest value of The Book of Knowledge. Rarely, indeed, are whole sets of books endowed with such power. Other reference works for children attain it to a degree corresponding with their willingness to break up the mechanically alphabetical continuity of their arrangement. But The Book of Knowledge has always held to the sound psychological arrangement appropriate for juveniles, yet providing a kit of tools (indexes) adequate for unlocking any particular door to knowledge" (8).
Sample Entries
To provide fair comparison between all of the works featured in my Reference Work Guide, I try to look up the same entries in each: "umbrella" and "Saint Louis." Due to the unique arrangement of topics in this work, I have to first consult volume 20. This final volume contains a general index, a chronology of the events of World War II, a poetry index, and the full texts of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. "Umbrella" has no entry in the general index, but "St. Louis" can be found on page 7458:
St. Louis. One of the greatest commercial centres in the U.S. 20 miles below the junction of the Missouri with the Mississippi, in Missouri. The river is crossed here by a bridge 2,225 feet long, connecting the city with East St. Louis. Finely built, the city has three cathedrals and two universities, but is famous chiefly for its great manufacture of tobacco, over 80,000,000 pounds of which are annually produced. Other industries include smelting, meat-packing, publishing, flour milling, foundries, and leather and clothing manufactures.
commerce and industries, 17-6046
fur-trading centre, 18-6426
iron and steel industry, 17-6038
Jefferson memorial, note and picture, 17-6047
scene of World's Fair (1904), 3-864
Pictures, 17-6047
Most of the St. Louis references come from an article in volume 17 on "The North Central States Part II" (pp. 6037-6048). St. Louis's iron industry is mentioned on page 6038: "St. Louis once had many blast furnaces. Ore was brought from Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain, a hundred miles away in the Ozarks. As late as 1880 St. Louis was spoken of as the 'City of the Iron Crown.' When the rich deposits of the Ozarks were exhausted the industry declined. Recently Roberts' coke oven, which makes excellent coke out of Illinois coal, has been invented. Across the Mississippi River from St. Louis coke ovens and blast furnaces have been erected. Ore can be secured either from Minnesota or from the rich deposits of Alabama, and a plan is under way to bring the Minnesota ore by way of the Mississippi River. The market for the product will be chiefly in the South and the Southwest. St. Louis may again become the 'City of the Iron Crown.'"
St. Louis is mentioned again later in the article in a section on the changing importance of river transportation in the region: "Commerce on the Mississippi River has come to be of less importance. There are several reasons. The railroads have been built with few curves from one important commercial centre to another. The winding pathway of the river increases the distance from one river port to another. Railroads can operate throughout the year. The Mississippi, especially above St. Louis, is closed to navigation for a part of the winter season. During the latter part of the summer season the water may be too low for the larger boats and barges, and the channel also shifts, and snags form. [...] Large sums have been spent to improve the navigation of the Mississippi and its tributaries, but without much plan. It is hoped that a complete plan will be worked out. The railroads took commerce away from the rivers, but they cannot always carry it all. The Federal Government has established a barge line between St. Louis and New Orleans, and modern docks have been built at St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. The Ohio River once had a very important commerce in coal and iron and steel products. Recently barges have brought iron and steel goods from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. It is expected that river boats will soon be making regular trips between St. Louis and St. Paul. Transporting heavy products like coal and iron by boat is economical; but we shall probably never see a return of the old days of bustling river traffic" (6040; 6044).
St. Louis is briefly compared to Chicago a couple of times in the article: "While Chicago is the largest meat-packing centre, other cities farther west, as St. Paul, Omaha, Kansas City and St. Louis, are also important. [...] In the early part of the last century, St. Louis was larger than Chicago, and Cincinnati was larger than Cleveland. Now, Chicago is over three times as large as St. Louis, and Cleveland is about twice as large as Cincinnati. The lake cities began to push ahead of the river cities when canals were built. One canal connected Cleveland with the Ohio River, another canal connected Chicago with the Illinois River. The lake cities reached out and captured commerce that had been going to the river cities" (6044; 6046). St. Louis then gets its own full paragraph, as well as a few photographs on the opposing page: "St. Louis was founded on the Mississippi River at a favorable site about twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri River. Its location between the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio rivers gave it an early advantage when the rivers were the chief arteries of commerce. To-day the rivers are of less importance. St. Louis now has twenty-six railroad lines extending into its trade territory, and is called the gateway to the Southwest. Its location has made it a large wholesale centre. The food and allied products industry ranks next. St. Louis is very fortunate in that it manufactures so many different things that a business depression along a few lines does not affect it as much as it would affect many other cities" (6046).
The article from volume 3 is "The Story of Fairs" (pp. 858-864). Saint Louis is here mentioned briefly: Other noted American expositions include the following: The Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901; the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, celebrating the Louisiana Purchase, which reached a total attendance of 19,694,855 and cost $15,000,000; the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Oregon, in 1905; the Panama-Pacific Exposition, held at San Francisco from February to December, 1915, to mark the opening of the Panama Canal; and the Philadelphia Sesqui-Centennial of 1926" (864). Finally, St. Louis is briefly mentioned in volume 18's article "The Western States Part 1," in a section on fur-trading: "Having secured a large number of furs, the traders returned and sold then [sic] in cities or fur-trading posts. It was at this time that St. Louis became a fur-trading post. Even now the city of St. Louis is the centre of fur-trading in this country, although there are so many other larger industries in the city now that few people know that it is a fur centre" (6426).