Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Early Mormonism and the Magic World View/Chapter 1

FAIR Answers—back to home page

Response to claims made in "Chapter 1: Early America's Heritage of Religion and Magic"

A FAIR Analysis of: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, a work by author: D. Michael Quinn

"Chapter 2: Divining Rods, Treasure-Digging, and Seer Stones"

Response to claims made in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, "Chapter 1: Early America's Heritage of Religion and Magic"

Jump to details:

• Response to claim: 21 - Were books on magic and the occult readily available on the 19th century frontier?
• Response to claim: 26-27 - The author equates "jugglers" with "conjurors"

Response to claim: 21 - Were books on magic and the occult readily available on the 19th century frontier?

The author(s) of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View make(s) the following claim:

•  Author's quote: ...it is reasonable to estimate that this one peddler was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year...by the early 1800's there were thousands of peddlers.
• The book then asserts that Weems was selling these volumes "door-to-door in the rural areas of the South" to individual "farmers."
•  Author's quote: ...some [book] peddlers also stocked clandestine works'" and therefore, "if local stores would not supply occult publications to American farmers, book peddlers were there to fill the need.

  Author's sources:
  

1. J. R. Dolan, The Yankee Peddlers of Early America (New York: Bramhall House, 1964).

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

The author miscites his source, doubles the cited figure, and conflates book peddlers with all peddlers. The author attempts to portray a wholesaler supplying multiple bookstores as representative of one of thousands of wandering book peddlers. He again seeks to bolster his weak and ahistorical claim that multiple occult texts were easily available in New England in the 1800s.

Question: Were books about magic and the occult easily and readily available on the 19th century frontier?

Assertions regarding the availability of "magic" and "occult" books on the 19th century frontier

The author of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View asserts the following:

• In an effort to show that books on magic were readily available on the frontier, the author makes some estimates. After estimating that a single book peddler "was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year," the author then concludes that "by the early 1800’s there were thousands of peddlers."
• The author also claims that “‘some peddlers also stocked clandestine works’” and that therefore, “if local stores would not supply occult publications to American farmers, book peddlers were there to fill the need.”

All peddlers were not book peddlers

The author miscites his source, doubles the cited figure, and conflates book peddlers with all peddlers.

"Quinn seriously misrepresents his sources. First, he does not inform us of the semantic shift from book peddlers to peddlers of all types. It is true that there were thousands of peddlers in the United States during the early nineteenth century, but book peddlers were only a small portion of this number...Quinn's source for the claim that "one peddler was selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year" (p. 21) is an article by James Purcell. Here is what Purcell actually wrote: "During the years 1809 and 1810 he [Weems, a book peddler] sold $24,000 worth of books for him [publisher Mathew Carey] in the South." Note how the two years' worth of sales clearly described in Purcell's article is transformed by Quinn into a single year's sales: "selling about 25,000 books to farmers each year." Quinn thus magically doubles the actual book sales."

Multiple "occult texts" were not being made easily available

The book also asserts that Weems was selling these volumes "door-to-door in the rural areas of the South" to individual "farmers." The author attempts to portray a wholesaler supplying multiple bookstores as representative of one of thousands of wandering book peddlers. He again seeks to bolster his absurd claim that multiple occult texts were easily available in New England in the 1800s.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Does Quinn really think that a single peddler, working door-to-door with nineteenth-century transportation, could carry and deliver 25,000 books to backwoods farmers in a single year? This would require selling nearly 2,100 books a month, or carrying and selling almost seventy books a day by a single salesman going door-to-door in rural farm country. In reality, in modern terminology Weems was a regional sales representative for Philadelphia bookseller Mathew Carey and others. His itinerary largely focused on selling to local booksellers."

All "clandestine" books were not actually about the occult

The author again distorts his source—there was a market for pornography, which is hardly surprising. This does not mean that there was a market for expensive occult books.

"Is there any indication of what Gilmore (the author Quinn quotes) meant by the term clandestine? Indeed there is. He meant illegal pornography, as is made quite clear in his article. Nowhere in Gilmore's article is there a single mention of a peddler selling occult books."

Response to claim: 26-27 - The author equates "jugglers" with "conjurors"

The author(s) of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View make(s) the following claim:

"Disorderly Persons" "all jugglers [conjurors], and all persons pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover lost goods."

• (italics added, the amendation of "conjurors" is the author's)

  Author's sources:
  

1. Laws of the State of New-York, Revised and Passed at the Thirty-Sixth Session of the Legislature (Albany: Southwick, 1813), 1:114

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: This claim is false

The author wants the reader to read "juggler" as "conjurer," i.e. as a practitioner of magic. In context, it is clear that those referred to are those who attempt to extract money from others by deceit, not the practice of 'magic.'

For a detailed response, see: Jugglers or conjurors?

Notes