Research Articles Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy

166 American Archivist / Vol. 52 / Spring 1989

Research Articles Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021

Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy: The Changing Nature of Nineteenth Century Religious Records

PETER J. WOSH

Abstract: The American Bible Society's founders conceived the organization in 1816 as a traditional missionary moral reform agency. By the mid-nineteenth century, the ABS more closely resembled a modern national nonprofit corporate bureaucracy. Important changes in institutional recordkeeping accompanied and reinforced this change in mission. Increasingly, ABS field agents and employees were discouraged from presenting rich narrative reports, and were required to quantify their work into narrow statistical compi- lations. Recordkeeping case studies, sensitive to the broader process of institutionalization, can contribute to bureaucratization theory, expose institutional power relationships, and help archivists better appraise the informational value and limitations of their collections.

About the author: Peter J. Wosh is director of archives and library services at the American Bible Society in New York. He holds a Ph.D. in History, with a concentration in nineteenth-century American social history, from New York University, and this article grew partly from research relating to his dissertation. An earlier version of it was delivered at the Society of American Archivists convention in New York in 1987. Dr. Wosh currently chairs the Society of American Archivists' Religious Archives Section. He recently co-edited The Diocesan Journal of Michael Augustine Cor- rigan, Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, 1872-1880 (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1987). Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy 167

WHEN THE AMERICAN BIBLE Society's can also offer important insights into the Board of Managers convened in New York process and nature of institutionalization, on 2 February 1859, the members of that and help place recordkeeping problems in body debated and discussed a subject cen- a broader social perspective. tral to the concerns of modern day archi- The wealthy and respectable Christians vists: the nature, scope, and adequacy of who established the American Bible Soci- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 institutional documentation. Recordkeep- ety in 1816 perceived the organization in ing had constituted an important concern very different terms from the men who sat for the men who managed Bible Society on the Board of Managers in 1859. The affairs ever since the organization's found- founders did not plan to employ a full-time, ing in 1816. Still, when the managers met paid administrative staff to conduct their in 1859, they decided that a new age re- affairs. They sought principally to guar- quired a new type of record. Their delib- antee, in the words of the first ABS con- erations offer important insight to the stitution, "a wider circulation of the archivist, always interested in chronicling Scriptures without note or comment." This and determining record-keeping changes mission necessitated some arrangements for over time. More broadly, however, the rec- printing and binding, but the first genera- ord-keeping debate stimulated and sig- tion of managers simply subcontracted these nalled an important change in the Bible tasks to appropriately pious master work- Society's history—a change which paral- men. Bringing such mundane mechanical leled developments in other religious insti- operations under their own roof appeared tutions at roughly the same time. The wasteful and rather counterproductive. The American Bible Society (ABS) was board, after all, had set its sights on re- undergoing a transformation from a tradi- forming the world, not superintending a tional missionary moral reform organiza- manufacturing concern. The organization's tion to something very new and very sole purpose involved publishing and dis- different—a national, nonprofit corporate seminating the Holy Scriptures, and its in- bureaucracy. Its records policies consti- terdenominational character dictated an avoidance of all theological controversy or tuted an integral element of that transfor- doctrinal strife. It appeared to be a broadly mation. public purpose, directed by men committed Archivists spend considerable time to participation in public life. The early processing, describing, and appraising their managers considered themselves eminently collections, but do not always turn their qualified, by birth, talent, and virtue, to thoughts to the question of records crea- direct New York City's—and indeed the tion. In fact, the kinds of records an insti- entire nation's—social, political, and eco- tution produces at specific moments in its nomic fortunes. While courtroom and organizational life tell us much about its countinghouse affairs occupied much of their own development, the changing nature of time, the merchants and lawyers supporting its governing structure, and broader social the Bible movement dutifully accepted the trends. Recordkeeping decisions also play burdens and responsibilities of public of- an important, if often unrecognized, role in fice as well.1 institutional decisionmaking. Case studies that explore the ways in which records creators use, manage, and occasionally mismanage documents can expose some of the 'On this patrician generation of New Yorkers gen- biases and limitations of institutional ar- erally, see Thomas Bender, New York Intellect: A His- tory of Intellectual Life in New York City, 1750 To chives, and help archivists more effectively the Beginnings of Our Own Time (New York: Alfred understand their collections. Such studies A. Knopf, 1987), esp. 46-88; M.J. Heale, "From 168 American Archivist / Spring 1989

Dedicated to preserving the traditional, for their inspection. In 1817 they created deferential, and hierarchical values they their first paid position—that of recording treasured, the managers drew no distinction secretary and accountant—and the individ- between their public and private pursuits. ual they hired was explicitly charged with Prominent local clergymen and benevo- maintaining the minute books, accumulat- lently disposed laymen took time from their ing accurate accounting information, and

regular business activities to manage the corresponding with the hundreds of vol- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 American Bible Society's affairs on a part- untary auxiliaries who had already affili- time basis. Richard Varick, for example, ated with the society. This appointment served as the society's first 'treasurer be- reflected both the extraordinary increase in tween 1816 and 1819. Born in 1753, Var- the society's volume of business and cor- ick had formerly served as a mayor of the respondence since its founding two years city, speaker of the State Assembly, and earlier, and the first recognition that affairs New York attorney general. He viewed the could no longer be conducted exclusively Bible Society treasurer's position as part of through the efforts of part-time philan- his public charge, and maintained the so- thropists.3 ciety's books when not involved in other The managers engaged John Pintard to activities. The first few treasurers and serve as recording secretary. Pintard was a corresponding secretaries received no re- founder of the New-York Historical Soci- muneration for their efforts, and the board ety, trustee of the New York Bank for Sav- itself regulated every detail of the operation ings, director of the Brooklyn Steamboat through its committee structure.2 Company and Sailors Snug Harbor, secre- Every detail of Bible work did indeed tary of the Mutual Insurance Company, and interest the early managers. They proved promoter of the Erie Canal. He personified especially meticulous in establishing a the civic humanitarian impulse character- thorough record-keeping system to insure istic of urban elites in early Republican that correspondence concerning the cause America, and devoted his career to admin- would be carefully preserved and available istering and maintaining the learned societies and cultural institutions of early federal New York.4 City Fathers to Social Critics: Humanitarianism and The managers explicitly instructed the Government in New York, 1790-1860," Journal of American History (June 1976): 21-41; and Michael part-time secretaries for domestic and for- Wallace, "Changing Concepts of Party in the United eign correspondence to "deliver to the Re- States: New York, 1815-1828," American Historical cording Secretary all the letters [they] may Review (December 1968): 453-491. For an important treatment of the lack of distinction between public and write relative to the concerns of the Soci- private in this period, see John S. Whitehead, The ety, excepting such as shall be mere letters Separation of College and State: Columbia, Dart- of form." They charged Pintard to "copy mouth, Harvard, and Yale, 1776-1876 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). Concerning Bible, tract and Sunday School societies generally, the standard treatments remain Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers 3On the initial decision to hire a paid employee, see Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States (New Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Managers, 22 Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960) and Charles January 1818, American Bible Society Archives I. Foster, An Errand of Mercy (Chapel Hill: Univer- (hereinafter cited as ABS Archives). sity of North Carolina Press, 1960). An important 4Pintard's career is treated in Dorothy Barck, ed., study of institutions in nineteenth century America is Letters From John Pintard To His Daughter, 4 vol- Peter Dobkin Hall, The Organization of American umes (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1937- Culture, 1700-1900: Private Institutions, Elites, and 1940); David L. Sterling, "New York Patriarch: A the Origins of American Nationality (New York: New Life of John Pintard, 1759-1844" (Ph.D. diss., New York University Press, 1982). York University, 1958) and Richard Harrison, Prince- 2For a brief biography of Varick, see Dictionary of tonians, 1776-1783 (Princeton: Princeton University American Biography, s.v. "Varick, Richard." Press, 1981). Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy 169 Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021

Figure 1. Bible House, Astor Place, New York City, 1893. The relocation of production, distri- bution, and translation functions to this uptown facility physically articulated the American Bible Society's mid-nineteenth century emphasis on centralization, bureaucratization, and businesslike management. (Courtesy of American Bible Society Archives.)

them without delay into books to be pro- The managers made extensive use of each vided for that purpose, one for the foreign scrap of information they could find con- and the other for domestic correspondence, cerning the moral condition of Americans and as soon as the said letters are copied and the state of Scripture destitution to forward the same according to their re- throughout the United States. Every incom- spective destinations, and to note in the said ing letter was read to the managers at every Books the time when, and the mode in which meeting of the Board. In their attempt to he forwarded each letter." The managers assess the spiritual welfare of remote cor- also mandated that "an Alphabetical Index ners of the United States and allocate their and such marginal notes as may promote resources according to need, no letter ap- the convenience of reference" be con- peared too trivial, no correspondence irrel- structed by the recording secretary, and that evant. In a nation of island communities, "the said books be laid on the table at each they craved information—information es- meeting of the Board for the inspection of pecially concerning the distant western and the Managers."5 southern regions, but information as well concerning the lives of the poor who some- times lived in their own neighborhoods, but ^Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Managers, 15 May 1818, ABS Archives. of whose lives they knew precious little. 170 American Archivist / Spring 1989

New York City and the nation underwent The expansive economy, and the ex- an extraordinary transformation in the forty traordinary growth of the American Bible years or so after the American Bible So- Society, brought a new style of manage- ciety was founded, and this great transfor- ment to Bible affairs. By the 1850s, the mation between 1815 and 1860 stimulated Bible Society employed thirty-seven full-

Christians to redefine the nature of benev- time agents, with each responsible for dis- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 olence and revise the manner in which they tributing the Scriptures and soliciting sub- did business. Many historians have chron- scriptions in a specific geographical territory. icled the familiar story of New York's eco- Their salaries totalled more than $32,000, nomic rise: the beginnings of packet service and they brought in nearly $100,000 in an- between New York and Liverpool; the nual donations and Scripture sales; the aux- opening of the Erie Canal; the city's role iliaries they supervised contributed another as America's major entrepot for European $125,000 to the home office. The society goods and its domination of the southern had begun producing written manuals out- cotton trade; its emergence as the most pro- lining these agents' responsibilities, regu- ductive manufacturing city in the Republic; larizing its own internal reporting and the concentration of banking, credit, arrangements, and creating an increasingly and capital on Wall Street. Steamboats, well-defined system for regulating the flow railroads, and telegraphs linked previously of information between the field and the isolated areas of the country and heralded home office.7 the emergence of a new national economy. Insurance executives, corporate attor- Technological developments in the printing neys, and investment bankers now wielded trades revolutionized the information mar- the power on the Board of Managers, and ket, and the penny press carried news from they hoped to bring the precision of the the metropolitan centers into the rural vil- actuarial table and the rationality of the or- lages and small towns of antebellum Amer- ganization chart to Bible affairs. They re- ica. New York became the information lied on the railroads, the most complex and capital of the young republic, and the na- sophisticated business concerns of the age tional headquarters of the major interde- and the only other enterprises heavily de- nominational Protestant philanthropies, pendent on nonlocal capital resources, for making it in some important ways the re- administrative models. The managers cre- ligious capital of mid-nineteenth century America.6

Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 1790-1840 (Cambridge: Harvard University "Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, Press, 1973); Amy Bridges, A City in the Republic; 1815-1860 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine describes the growth of New York City during the Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Ed- ante-bellum period. More recent specialized treat- ward Pcssen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the ments of this transformation include: Sean Wilentz, Civil War (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1973); Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic: The American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Ox- Tradesmen of New York in the Age of Jefferson (New ford University Press, 1984); Robert Ernst, Immigrant York: New York University Press, 1979); Allan Stan- Life in New York City, 1826-1863 (Port Washington: ley Horlick, Country Boys and Merchant Princes: The Ira J. Friedman, 1949); James F. Richardson, The Social Control of Young Men in New York (Lewis- New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (New York: burg: Bucknell University Press, 1975); and Jay P. Oxford University Press, 1970); Carl F. Kaestle, The Dolan, The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish and Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, German Catholics, 1815-1865 (Baltimore: Johns 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Hopkins University Press, 1975). 1973); Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New 7Rcport of the Sub-Committee, Minutes of Meeting York City, 1840-1857 (New York: Columbia Univer- of the Committee on Agencies, 1 March 1855, ABS sity Press, 1981); Allan Pred, Urban Growth and the Archives. Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy 171 Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021

Figure 2. Excerpt from the journal of Richard D. Hall, who served as a travelling Bible Agent in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Western Virginia in 1822-23. Hall's rich narrative reports provided a fascinating perspective on community life in the Upper South. (Courtesy of American Bible Society Archives.) 172 American Archivist / Spring 1989

ated a paid, internal hierarchy of profes- When the Agencies Committee met to sional managers to regulate Bible affairs on consider its recordkeeping policies in Feb- a daily basis. They created and redefined ruary 1859, it discussed a series of motions administrative positions throughout the early presented by a relatively new member of nineteenth century, subdividing more and the Board of Managers — Archibald Rus-

more tasks between the different offices. sell. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1811, Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 The names of these offices and their dates Russell had been trained in the law. He of creation offer some indication of the di- made his greatest mark in a fairly new field rection in which the society was moving: of study, however—the science of statis- corresponding secretary (1826), general tics. A founder of the American Geograph- agent & accountant (1827), recording sec- ical and Statistical Society, his Principles retary & accountant (1832), general agent of Statistical Inquiry earned him wide- & assistant treasurer (1832), editor & li- spread recognition in mid-nineteenth cen- brarian (1836), treasurer (1838), assistant tury America. As president of the Five Points agent (1840), financial secretary (1840), and House of Industry and presiding officer of general agent (1853). Administrative work a savings institution for the poor, he knew had emerged as a full-time occupation, fixed the value of a well-managed benevolent en- monetary salaries and contractual obliga- terprise. He began his association with the tions increasingly governed terms of em- Bible Society in 1843, and his concerns ployment, and an internal hierarchy reflected the anxieties of recently elected developed among the society's employees. businessmen and brokers on the Board of Richard Varick relinquished his post as Managers. Was the American Bible Soci- Treasurer in 1819, but remained active on ety, the new members of the board asked the Board of Managers and eventually served with increasing frequency, conducting its a term as society president. When Andrew affairs efficiently? Had the society suc- L. Taylor resigned as ABS assistant trea- cessfully applied the appropriate laws of surer after seventeen years in 1886, he did business to the work of benevolence?9 so to accept a position as secretary of Dr. In 1858, Russell asked the Agency Com- Jaeger's Sanitary Woollen System Com- mittee to consider three resolutions. First, pany on Broadway. His association with he wished to introduce "a tabulated Sched- the society terminated with his final payroll ule to be filled out by each Agent, weekly, check. The contrast is instructive and rel- evant. Increasingly, full-time administrators seeking bureaucratic rewards and career opportunities rather than part-time philan- ABS Annual Reports, and Andrew Taylor's subse- thropists hoping to dispense benevolence, quent career has been reconstructed through New York City Directories, available at the New York Historical managed internal affairs. The new admin- Society. istrators and the new managers brought a Brief overviews concerning some of the topics ad- commitment to efficiency, an emphasis on dressed in this paper can be found in Reinhard Ben- dix's discussion of "Bureaucracy" and Peter M. Blau's productivity, a more systematic approach analysis of "Organizations and Theories" in Inter- to benevolence, and not insignificantly, a national Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. On gen- new passion for recordkeeping to their tasks. eral changes in the corporate world, see Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial But it was to be recordkeeping of a very Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Har- different kind, and recordkeeping to be used vard University Press, 1977) and Thomas C. Cochran, for a very different purpose.8 "The Business Revolution," American Historical Re- view (December 1974): 1449-1466. '"'Russell, Archibald," Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiskc (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 'The creation of new offices has been traced through 1898), 41:432; New York Times, 21 April 1871. Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy 173

and transmitted to the Bible House agent's personal progress and evaluate the monthly." The printed schedule would in- general state of the Bible cause in a specific clude "all the information relative to the district. It also chronicled exciting and sig- acts of the Agents and result of their labors nificant personal incidents that the ABS that may be easily stated in this form." frequently published in its monthly Bible

Second, he suggested that, when an agent's Society Record. The narrative certainly ap- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 commission came up for renewal, an "ab- peared "decidedly preferable," according stract of the last year of the tabulated re- to some Committee members, to the nar- ports which have been forwarded from time rowly conceived statistical format." to time" be carefully examined and pre- The majority of the board completely sented to the full board. Finally, Russell disagreed. Its members had no time to sift proposed "abolishing all Sub-Agencies and through long stories and anecdotes. Busi- making each Agent report to the Bible ness concerns and service on benevolent House." These measures .would signifi- boards took up more time in 1859 than in cantly reduce agents' autonomy, provide 1816. The revolutions in transportation and new instruments for gauging their effec- communication that allowed businessmen tiveness, and revolutionize institutional to accumulate great fortunes also tremen- recordkeeping.10 dously increased the daily volume of busi- The committee that considered his re- ness transactions. New York's rising quest did not respond with one mind. This capitalists spent long hours in the office, particular group contained a significant and found little time for the cultural and number of older, more traditional Bible men intellectual interests that occupied the ear- and evangelicals. William Forrest (1791— lier Federalist gentry. The separation of work 1865), for example, was the committee and residence further pressured business- chair, and he had spent his career con- men. Managers commuted to Wall Street ducting a traditional seminary for young men and Pearl Street from uptown residences, in Manhattan, far removed from the cares rode the cars to Astor Place late in the day of South Street and Wall Street. Forrest and to look after ABS affairs, and subsequently his supporters objected especially to con- returned home. The new capitalist lifestyle densing the rich information which agents seemed a constant struggle against the clock, provided into "a dry tabulated statement." and time itself assumed new significance. Traditionally, Forrest informed Russell, each By 1884, George M. Beard would diag- agent presented his monthly account in "a nose a new, peculiarly modern disease in narrative form." While the agent's reports his work, American Nervousness, attribut- "included most of the particulars enumer- ing much of the increasingly common anx- ated in the schedule" that Russell pro- ieties and mental breakdowns characterizing posed, it also offered much more. The agents the middle class simply to the pressure of 12 attempted to "weave the whole into a nar- always being on time. rative, which affords an opportunity of in- Time economy demanded a new form of troducing anything interesting in the way of incident, anecdote, remarks or conver- sations coming under their notice or to their "Minutes of Meeting of the Committee on Agen- knowledge." This narrative helped Agency cies, 2 February 1859, ABS Archives. Committee members keep abreast of the 12Arthur H. Cole, "The Tempo of Mercantile Life in Colonial America," Business History Review, XXXIII, No. 3 (Autumn 1959): 277-299; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 207-215; Cochran, "The Business Revolution;" Alan Trachtenbcrg, The Incorporation '"Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Managers, 1 of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age July 1858, ABS Archives. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 47-48. 174 American Archivist / Spring 1989

STATISTICAL REPORT. MONTHLY REPORT OF AGENT OF THE AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, FOR THE DISTRICT OF FOR THE MONTH OF

PERSONAL LABOURS. Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021

gj,

S-s a, M 13 a —! ~*'3 D Bfica

Poit-qfficc Addreu, Signed, Dated, Agent for N. B.—Pleoae fill the blank* carefully, and return thii report to the Secretaries at the Bible House as soon as possible after the close of the month. Add your detailed statement on the blank pages. Leave margurgini s fo* r binding.

STATISTICAL REPORT. MONTHLY REPORT OF AGENT OF THE AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, FOR THE DISTRICT OF FOR THE MONTH OF

LABOURS OF ASSISTANT AND COUNTY AGENTS. OPERATIONS OF AUXILIARIES. a 'S'O s H I IS I

Date Signed, Agent for

Figure 3. Statistical report, from The Bible Agents' Guide, 1894 edition, reflecting changes in managerial expectations regarding agents' productivity and in the use of agents' reports to support institutional decision-making. (Courtesy of American Bible Society Archives.) Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy 175

communication. The managers sought brief methods, could now construct endless sta- summaries, statistical breakdowns, and tistical tables, designed to determine whether easily assimilable factual data. Sacrificing Bible work in a given area paid off, whether complexity for simplicity, the board wished an agent operated efficiently, whether more to reduce information to its most basic favorable ratios of receipts to expenditures

level—a single number if at all possible. could be obtained in other areas of the Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 The destruction of the narrative report ac- country. Crude figures, calculating the pre- complished this. Like the credit rating and cise cost of distributing each item of Scrip- the stock-turn ratio, the tabulated statement ture, could be devised. Agents began to heralded the birth of a new bureaucratic realize that maximizing receipts and slash- age. The new records concealed as much ing expenditures counted for more in the as they offered. When the full board ap- eyes of home-office bureaucrats than sto- proved Russell's recommendations, Bible ries of conversions or time spent merely agents were confronted with a new form of proselytizing to unreceptive audiences. An report. Each monthly statement required ecclesiastical career might turn on the twenty-six separate entries. Agents were amount of collections received from con- required to specify the "Number of Bible gregations, and new managerial and fund- Sermons and Addresses delivered," but the raising skills determined success in an in- Managers exhibited minimal interest in the creasingly competitive benevolent market- sermons' content. Agents counted up the place. "Number of Pastors, Officers of Bible So- William Forrest, the chairman of the cieties, and Bible Patrons visited," but bore Agency Committee who advocated an older, no obligation to describe or relate the con- more traditional, missionary approach to versations they engaged in. The last col- Bible labor, fought the new recordkeeping umn in each report, after all, adequately regulations. Buried within his reports was measured their success in the eyes of the a strong and radical critique of the new in- board: "Total Receipts from Sales or Do- formational system. "To measure such work nations." By 1864 the Society included in [Bible work] by the dollars and cents which its Instructions to Agents manual, a section are derived from it, or to estimate it by the titled "Pecuniary Transactions." In it, the amount which it costs," he commented, managers informed their field representa- "is like counting the price of the ointment, tives that "this Society expects its Agents when poured upon the head of the Sa- to be systematic, prompt, and exact." "They viour—like an attempt to bring within the can never be successful labourers in the Bi- computation of a business transaction the ble field," commented the managers, "un- worth of truth, or the gain of godliness."14 less they are conscientious and thorough businessmen.'' The businessmen on the Forrest eloquently criticized the new pol- Board had indeed effected their own man- icies, but in the final analysis he failed. The agerial revolution.13 future belonged to men like the Rev. Ed- ward W. Gilman, the Society's cor- This revolution in recordkeeping played responding secretary between 1871 and an important, subtle, and largely unrecog- 1900, and a career administrator. Writing nized role in future institutional decision- to William Whipple, the society's agent in making. The board, by revising its reporting Persia in 1892, he criticized a narrative report recently forwarded by the Persia

"American Bible Society Board of Managers, In- structions to Agents of the American Bible Society with Miscellaneous Items of Information (New York: '"Minutes of Meeting of the Committee on Agen- American Bible Society Press, 1864), 13. cies, 1 March 1855, ABS Archives. 176 American Archivist / Spring 1989

Agency. Of course, he conceded, "there is icies and practices over time, exploring the no question about the hardships faithfully ways in which records creators use, man- endured by your men" and "the four in- age, and mismanage their own documen- stances which you allude to are of a thrill- tary record, and understanding the biases ing character." Still, Gilman complained, and limitations of institutional records can

"you say you are employing twenty men: help the archivist more effectively appraise Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 what are they accomplishing? Some of them the informational value in her or his col- you describe as being very successful: what lections. It can help the archivist under- of the residue? On an average, each man stand gaps in the documentary record and sells three books a week. Is that the best discern the reasons why modern records that can be done? Can we not make our seem so silent on the most salient aspects methods for putting the Scriptures into cir- of human existence. A recent article in the culation more efficient and economical?" American Archivist argues that archival Remember, cautioned Gilman, your men theory does not exist. It may be that we should not "be spending their time in ar- have been attempting to construct archival guments and wayside preaching." In the theory in the wrong areas.16 nearby Levant Agency, Gilman observed, American historians, in recent years, have twenty men working in Constantinople, paid much greater attention to the process Adrianople, Adabazar, Smyrna, and Cae- of institutionalization, charting the devel- sarea sold 4,398 copies in ninety days: opment and evolution of large organiza- "cannot your men be brought up to some tions in nineteenth-century America.17 [such] standard as that? The average sum Several important insights from this new received, if I calculate correctly, was thirty cents a volume ... it is quite worth while literature contain significant theoretical im- for you to keep the figures in mind, and to plications for archivists. First, the new in- aim resolutely at something better than you stitutional historians stress the importance have ever reported."15 Clearly, a new standard was being ap- "'John W. Roberts, "Archival Theory: Much Ado About Shelving," American Archivist 50 (Winter plied to Bible laborers, and a revolution in 1987): 66-74. institutional recordkeeping helped set that l7Scc the discussion in Thomas Bender, Peter D. standard. The new reporting schemes al- Hall, Thomas L. Haskell, and Paul H. Mattingly, "Institutionalization and Education in the Nineteenth lowed information to be filtered, analyzed, and Twentieth Centuries," History of Education and presented in new ways. They provided Quarterly (Winter 1980): 449-472, for an elaboration the informational base upon which the new of many of these points. Examples of recent histories which I would place within this new institutional his- bureaucratic structures could be con- toriographic framework include: Hall, The Organi- structed. Most significantly, they enshrined zation of American Culture; Chandler, The Visible the values of business in the arena of ben- Hand; David F. Allmendingcr, Paupers and Schol- ars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth- evolence. Century New England (New York: St. Martin's Press, What has all this to do with archives? 1975); Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The For- Archivists, when they turn their thoughts mation of an American Institution, 1790—1880 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); and Geoffrey to records creation, can occupy a unique Singleton, "Protestant Voluntary Organizations and place within their institutions. Remaining the Shaping of Victorian America," in Daniel Walker sensitive to changes in recordkeeping pol- Howe, ed., Victorian America (Philadelphia: Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 47-58. One suggestive article in the archival literature which addresses issues concerning recordkeeping and bureaucratization is Michael A. Lutzkcr, "Max Weber and l5Edward W. Gilman to William Whipple, 13 Sep- the Analysis of Modern Bureaucratic Organization: tember 1892, Corresponding Secretary's Papers, Lev- Notes Toward a Theory of Appraisal," American Ar- ant Files, ABS Archives. chivist 45 (Spring 1982): 119-130. Bibles, Benevolence, and Bureaucracy 177 Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021

Figure 4. John Percy Wragg, Superintendent of the ABS's Colored Agency, working in his office at Atlanta's Gammon Theological Seminary, 1907. The ever-present typewriter, wastebasket, and filing equipment, as well as a variety of record types, characterized the turn-of-the-century administrative office. (Courtesy of American Bible Society Archives.)

of linking social sectors. Specific institu- Organizations rarely move forward in a lin- tions did not constitute isolated arenas of ear, unified manner. Internal conflicts de- specialized activity, but rather shared their velop and intensify as administrative structures and personnel with other social hierarchies emerge within an institution. institutions. Understanding the revolution Power struggles frequently evolve into in- in recordkeeping at the American Bible So- formational struggles; control over the na- ciety, for example, requires some consid- ture and form of institutional information eration of the rise of managerial capitalism, can mean control over the organization it- the creation of the railroad, the growth of self. Recordmakers, as well as recordkeep- the life insurance company, the changing pers, have always pursued their own well- social composition of the Protestant min- defined "documentation strategies" to ad- istry, and New York's dynamic urban mil- vance very specific social and institutional ieu. Recordkeeping studies underscore the goals and agendas. Archivists must remain essential interdependency and interrelation- sensitive to the implications of this fact in ships between the organizations we docu- evaluating the historical records that have ment, and remind us that our archives were survived. not created in an institutional vacuum. Finally, sensitivity to changes in insti- Second, recent institutional histories em- tutional recordkeeping offers important in- phasize the importance of dissecting inter- sights into the ways in which organizations nal, as well as external, relationships. transform themselves to persist and remain 178 American Archivist / Spring 1989

vital. Careful written recordkeeping con- selves as "information specialists." stitutes an essential element of modern bu- Recognizing that professional historians reaucratic life. The moment an institution constitute a diminishing percentage of their elects to change the form and/or content of research clientele, some have constructed its written record can signal an important a rather narrow definition of archival re-

ideological shift within the organization. The sponsibility. They have defined their prin- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/52/2/166/2747804/aarc_52_2_403v3142u38177v0.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 desire for a new kind of record, and the cipal concern as one of service to the impulse to organize information in new administrators of a particular corporation, ways, bears a complex, yet largely unstu- governmental agency, or denomination, and died, relationship to the process of bureau- defined as their principal priority retrieving cratization. Careful case studies, the information their specific administra- documenting such changes within specific tive constituency demands most frequently. organizations and connecting them with Less consideration has been given to the larger institutional changes, can make an nature of records which repose in their care. important contribution to bureaucratization Truly understanding an archival collection theory. demands a sophisticated historical knowl- For archivists to make such theoretical edge of institutional life that moves beyond contributions, however, they need to re- simple structural issues. Ultimately, it remain conscious of the dangers of bureau- quires archivists to behave a bit less like cratization within their own profession. the nineteenth-century bureaucrats who Many archivists in recent years have moved created their holdings and assume the per- away from traditional historical and hu- spective of the twentieth-century human- manistic concerns, and have defined them- istic scholars they frequently serve.