By the 1860s, Harper & Brothers had grown into a powerful publishing company. Nonetheless, the brothers remained what we might call Christian “virtue capitalists.” Such businesspeople aimed to produce goods that made consumers—and by extension, society—more righteous, while also operating their companies in a moral fashion. For the Harpers, this meant producing virtuous books while using Methodist values of thrift, honesty, and respect for the Sabbath to guide their publishing company.
The brothers’ Methodist theology emphasized the agency of human beings to choose (or reject) salvation. After salvation, the Methodist emphasis on pursuing full sanctification, that is, the process of becoming more like Jesus Christ, informed the types of books the brothers produced and how they ran their company. For example, the company was known for its stated commitment to only publish works that fostered a moral and virtuous citizenry—as they defined it.
That meant refraining from publishing fiction, because the Harpers subscribed to a Protestantism concerned with the influence of cheap novels flooding the U.S. marketplace. At the time, many Americans were still skeptical of fiction as a genre because it was viewed as frivolous and not morally useful, with few exceptions. Their religious qualms meant that the Harpers instead advertised biography, travel, science, classical philosophy, and theology, all strategically marketed to appeal to the emerging middle-class consumer. For example, they offered titles in these genres as a part of their “Family Library” and “School Library” series, priced relatively affordably in simple, portable, and readable formats.
The darker, esoteric works of authors such as Edgar Allen Poe did not make the brothers’ cut, and for those more “edgy” authors who did, their manuscripts faced the scrutiny of Christian morality editors who moderated references to gambling, alcohol, and sabbath desecration.
For some Americans, the Protestant values the Harpers expressed in the marketplace were an asset, and many celebrated them. Yet they also had their critics, like Henry David Thoreau, who complained, “Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers…to select our reading?” His disdain for the brothers’ moralistic literary choices was clear.
Harper & Brothers wasn’t unusual in having a moral or religious orientation despite being an ostensibly secular business. This was especially true of the printing industry, where Protestant publishers were common, including Gould & Lincoln (Baptist), Crocker & Brewster (Congregationalist), J. B. Lippincott & Company (Episcopal), and Robert Carter & Brothers (Presbyterian). Nor was such virtue capitalism limited to 19th-century publishers. Other examples included Quaker Oats, the Mercantile Agency, and the soap enterprise Procter & Gamble.