The Western Home Monthly and Canadian Home Journal: A Comparative Approach

A Monthly Magazine of Interest to All Progressive Canadians

—Canadian Home Journal

 

The Only Household Magazine of the Canadian West

—The Western Home Monthly

In Citizens and Nation (2000), Gerald Friesen makes a compelling argument that “the very acts of communication—the social contexts created by voice, writing, print and modern electronic forms—establish a framework for citizenship and nationality and thus Canada.”[1] Canadian magazines undoubtedly played a significant role in the negotiation and articulation of constructions of national identity and citizenship, privileging certain characteristics over others. Indeed, the centrality of both familial and national conceptions of the home is evident in the titles and taglines of the Canadian Home Journal (1905–1958) and The Western Home Monthly (1899–1932). Both titles contained a similar format and range of content and—like the vast majority of Canadian magazines—made use of the now recognizable stylistic and economic models which had been tried and tested in the United States. This is perhaps why Canadian magazines have often been rather unflatteringly dismissed as merely derivative of their American counterparts. Yet these assumptions ignore the complexities of these texts, particularly in relation to the ways in which Canadian magazines constructed their readership and worked towards aims which were, at times, highly distinct from those of American publications.

This is readily apparent throughout the period of the 1920s, a time in which Canadian magazines—established in the main around the turn of the century—were gaining record circulations and making use of increasingly sophisticated marketing methods and a growing national advertising industry.[2] The 1920s are repeatedly referenced as a period of importance for the Canadian magazine industry, a time when magazines were understood as crucial to the cultural nationalist project, particularly in relation to encroaching Americanization.[3] The interdependence of women’s magazines and a burgeoning consumer culture has been widely acknowledged, and while this was not unique to the 1920s, the context of modernity and the increasing popularity of magazines make it a particularly useful period to explore.[4] As with any research on periodicals, given the overwhelming wealth of available material, it is essential to limit the scope rather strictly. With this in mind, this article will focus on issues of the Canadian Home Journal (CHJ) and The Western Home Monthly (WHM) published in 1922. While 1922 is a celebrated year in the history of modernism, a narrow focus on the artistic monuments of that year can lead to a neglect of the far broader range of cultural and literary production that was happening simultaneously. This article will dedicate specific attention to these often overlooked texts.

Given that magazines—in particular popular or mass-market magazines—are spaces in which literary, ideological, and commercial interests intersect, a methodology which accounts for these diverse interests is crucial. Literary scholars analyzing magazines have tended to privilege written above visual content, as well as prioritizing editorial above commercial material. I argue that the magazine is a collaborative, multi-authored text and is therefore best interrogated through an interdisciplinary approach which challenges hierarchical value-based assumptions. In my research I align with the approach of Faye Hammill, Paul Hjartarson, and Hannah McGregor, who seek to maintain

a commitment to reading magazines not as transparent containers of information but, rather, as complex media artifacts whose relation to their cultural and political contexts is articulated through rhythms of seriality, patterns of remediation, and material systems of production and circulation.[5]

With this in mind, this article is informed by a comparative methodological approach that draws on work from Canadian studies, periodical studies, and gender studies—to name the most obvious. The Canadian context and constructions of imagined audiences are integral to these titles, and comparative consideration will allow for the interrogation of how these titles made use of the same stylistic and economic models to different ends. Underpinning this approach is the combination of literary ways of reading with aspects of consumer culture theory and content analysis, providing an even-handed consideration of the magazine’s literary and commercial aspects.

Methodology

In studying magazines as collaborative texts I employ traditional close reading techniques alongside “surface” reading. Margaret Cohen describes surface reading as “‘a return to the archive,’ a renewed interest in historical research on the part of literary critics trained in the era of theory.”[6] Cohen argues for the tracing of larger patterns across groups of texts, repeated characteristics—such as plots, types of character, overall concerns—which require reading of the text, but not in-depth analysis. This is particularly useful for the consideration of texts that operate—to some extent at least—according to recognizable formulaic patterns, such as genre fiction or magazines.

The magazine’s reliance on repetition makes surface reading a particularly appropriate method of study.[7] This characteristic of the magazine form clearly demonstrates the interconnectivity of commercial and editorial interests, and is both a constraining and enabling feature of these texts.[8] Each issue of the magazine must present something familiar, so as to be recognizable to its readership; and something novel, to encourage its purchase. Yet I do not suggest that the repetition crucial to magazines justifies moving away from close reading entirely; rather, surface reading offers a way to deal with a vast corpus of material, highlighting appropriate areas for further analysis whilst maintaining a sense of the wider publication. This approach then, follows Marion Marzolf’s idea of a qualitative “content assessment,” “a process of ‘reading, sifting, weighing, comparing and analysing the evidence in order to tell the story.’”[9] I also include a quantitative content analysis—of advertising in particular—to supplement these findings. Quantitative content analysis has long been established as a research method in the social sciences and is becoming increasingly popular in periodical studies.[10] David Reed, for example, uses a particularly extensive content analysis to interrogate British and American magazines, but does not include any commercial content.[11] Yet when considering the magazines as “media artifacts,” the advertisements, however numerous and complex, cannot be avoided. In general, I take as the basic unit of study the individual issue of the magazine, but within the larger context of the magazine as a relatively cohesive title with distinctive characteristics.

Indeed, through initial close and surface readings—the first part of the multistage process described above—the importance of the advertising within these titles was rendered explicit, and therefore I carried out a quantitative content analysis of the advertising from the February, April, June, and August issues. These issues were selected to avoid major holiday months—which are usually exceptional in their advertising—and to give a relatively even spread across seasons. Every advertisement in these issues was counted and assigned one of twenty-five subcategories, which were then arranged under three main categories: “Home”, “Appearance,” and “Lifestyle.” Each advertisement was coded according to the category which fit best, involving, in some cases, a qualitative judgement. For example, some advertisements for toothpaste positioned themselves primarily as aiding appearance and were therefore assigned to the “Beauty Products” category. Others presented the toothpaste as a hygiene product—emphasising health benefits—and were therefore assigned to Health and Hygiene. One category was assigned to each product, according to the attribute which was primarily being marketed to the consumer.

Of course, as studies such as Reed’s demonstrate, the value of content analysis for editorial material in the magazines is significant. Usually the subject matter—the type of content and core interests—of each constituent feature of the magazine are easily identified through the magazines’ contents pages. For the first years of the 1920s, however, the CHJ did not include a contents page. In order to address this methodological challenge, and ensure the comparative analysis remains even-handed, I have detailed and coded the contents of the CHJ according to the categories in the WHM: “Editorial,” “Fiction and Reality,” “Regular Departments,” and “Women and the Home.”[12] An exception has been made for the additional category of “Poetry,” as this was a consistent feature of the CHJ not present in the WHM.

 This is not an ideal solution, in that it privileges the WHM and how that magazine chose to define its content. Yet working with periodical material often involves these sorts of compromises, in which one operates within limitations set by the texts themselves—be that in terms of content, access, or availability. This is the best available compromise, given that the range of content, concerns and interests, at this level of analysis, is fairly consistent and similar. The coding of the contents ensures that the same level of attention is dedicated to the editorial and commercial content. This methodological approach, then, brings together the process outlined by Kitch—of “reading, sifting, weighing, comparing and analysing”—and quantitative content analysis. With reference to this chosen sample, bringing together these methods and using them in tandem ensures consideration of the magazine—and all of its component content—as a complete object of study.

The Canadian Publishing Landscape

A crucial context for this article is the Canadian publishing landscape. The challenging environment these magazines entered into is inseparable from their editorial and commercial aims. Mary Vipond notes the hardships faced by Canadian periodicals due to their relative youth, smaller markets, and proportionally higher distribution costs:

Add to that the competition from the popular, attractive and already easily accessible American magazines, and it is not surprising that it was not until after 1920 that Canadian magazine publishers found it feasible to follow in the footsteps of Munsey, McClure and Curtis. (Mass Media, 21)

To put this into context, the American Ladies’ Home Journal consistently and significantly outsold both the CHJ and the WHM in Canada throughout the 1920s.[13] The construction of a marketable difference to their better financed, more established American counterparts was therefore essential for Canadian publications. Magazines often presented themselves as agents of community-building via imaginative connection amongst individual readers who were widely dispersed in geographical space.[14] While both the CHJ and WHM undoubtedly constructed themselves in this manner, they imagined their readership as primarily national and primarily regional, respectively. This serves as an appropriate entry point into a comparative interrogation of the two.

The CHJ was established in 1905 as the Home Journal, adding “Canadian” to its title in 1910, and was the first large-circulation Canadian women’s magazine that was national in scope.[15] Founded by James Acton, who owned mainly trade magazines, it was purchased in 1912 by Harold Gagnier’s Consolidated Press, based in Toronto and also the publishers of Saturday Night (1887–2005). Indeed the editor of the CHJ for the majority of the 1920s was Jean Graham, who had previously been the women’s editor of Saturday Night.^[16] While the magazine ran until 1958, when it was absorbed into another Canadian women’s monthly, Chatelaine (1928–), its popularity peaked in the 1920s (Sutherland, Monthly Epic, 156). By 1921, it had a circulation of 55,407 and ranked third highest in terms of circulations of Canadian magazine, surpassed only by the short-lived Everywoman’s World (1915–1923) and Maclean’s (1905–) (Johnston, Selling Themselves, 233).

The WHM, on the other hand, was established in 1899 in Winnipeg, produced by the Home Publishing Co. Ltd. While it began as “a modest local agricultural publication,” like many Canadian magazines it saw a steady increase in its circulation in the early twentieth century (McGregor, “Remediation,” 249). In 1921 it had an average circulation per issue of 43,319, coverage, which is impressive in comparison to the CHJ given the smaller target market (Johnston, Selling Themselves, 233). The WHM communicated its circulation to readers throughout issues published in 1922:

The WESTERN HOME MONTHLY is the only Household Magazine published in Western Canada and of all Canadian Magazines its 44,000 readers say it is the best—No need to travel abroad for your literature.[17]

This demonstrates how the WHM constructed itself as both specifically regional and Canadian, differentiating itself first from other Canadian titles and then from publications from “abroad.” While it could be argued that the CHJ articulated a different kind of regionalism (one more centered on Toronto and the urban/suburban when compared to the WHM’s western, rural regionalism), it consistently cited itself as national: “A Magazine of Interest to All Progressive Canadians.”[18] It articulated its marketable difference on the basis of a specific Canadian national identity, often constructed in opposition to Americanness. Comparative content analysis can further interrogate how these titles positioned themselves within the Canadian publishing landscape, and how this was reflected in their component content.

Content Analysis and Contents Pages

As we shall see, close reading of specific examples can be highly revealing in terms of understanding magazines’ interests, aims, and concerns. Yet this close analysis often makes it difficult to move beyond the issue, or even the individual feature. Quantitative content analysis offers a potential solution, as a tool to test close and surface readings. In the case of the CHJ and the WHM, analysis of the editorial content is particularly revealing. On average, issues of the CHJ from 1922 contained 68 pages, while the WHM averaged 55. The larger size of the CHJ is reflected in the results in Figure 3.

These figures indicate some interesting trends. The WHM consistently included three repeating features presented in the Editorial category; “Editorial,” “The Philosopher,” and “What the World is Saying.” The CHJ presented only one feature that fit within that category, “Editorial Chat.” This confirms the difference in the magazines’ tone and address that I noted above, with the CHJ presenting itself as informal and friendly, the WHM as authoritative and informative.

The other prominent trend revealed by these figures is the distinct difference in the “Women and the Home” category. The CHJ includes around double the number of features dedicated specifically to women. A number of potential conclusions can be drawn from this. Arguably, it could be seen as an indication that the CHJ marketed itself to women, first and foremost, while the WHM marketed itself to families, through women. Both magazines contained a similar mix of content in this category, including recipes, fashion and patterns, and household advice. Yet further inspection reveals the WHM to be far more practical and frugal than the CHJ. It presents recipes under the regular title of “Better Cookery,” while the CHJ ranges from “Chafing Dish Cookery” to “New Ways with Summer Vegetables” to “Thirst Quenchers for Hot Days,” encouraging a level of aspiration which goes beyond the practical.[19]

The fashion pages also emphasize this difference, with the WHM limited to one or two pages of basic pattern descriptions with very few illustrations, while the CHJ includes between two and six fashion features per issue. Often at least one of these features is in the form of an article, discussing trends and fashions in a friendly and familiar tone such as “My Lingerie, ‘Tis of Thee” and “Modes and Fabrics.”[20] Again, such articles go beyond the practical and functional, encouraging instead desires for fashionable and stylish clothes, and aspirational and leisurely ideals of femininity. The overarching implication is that the WHM is addressing and catering to an audience which has been constructed as regional, largely rural, and practical, while the CHJ—in spite of marketing itself as national—is courting a readership positioned as more suburban, urban, and with greater leisure time.

The content analysis of the advertising also gives insight into this distinction. Taking the average number of ads, as a percentage of total, gives us the following results in Figure 4.

Advertisements for home products, including food, cleaning supplies, hygiene products, and homewares, are by far the most common in both titles—unsurprising given the centrality of the home in each title. Yet the Lifestyle and Appearance categories indicate that the WHM carried proportionally more ads for products related to motoring, entertainment, work, and finances, while the CHJ carried a higher quantity of fashion and beauty ads. This gives an insight into not only into the types of advertising being presented, but also how the magazines were constructing their imagined readership and how they were presenting this readership to potential advertisers. The products reveal the priorities of the intended readership, as the magazines perceived them, and this is reflected again in the editorial content. The higher proportion of ads in the Finances subcategory in the case of the WHM is concurrent with the regular feature, “Dollars and Cents,” which addresses an audience interested in farming and small-business ownership. In the case of the CHJ, the comparatively higher number of ads for beauty products and appearance is reflected in the regular feature “The Vanity Box,” which provides (mainly home-made) beauty advice, addressing an audience interested in improving their looks and appearing fashionable.[21]

Audiences and Self-Advertising

Each issue of the WHM contained between two and seven ads for the magazine itself, while the CHJ contained between six and ten. While such ads may seem counterintuitive—in that they are addressing an audience who have already made a purchase—this tactic makes sense in terms of the magazine form, the logic of repetition, and the economic model which requires continued purchase of subsequent issues. Given that the ephemerality of the magazine—“read today and rubbish tomorrow”—leads to complex distribution networks where one purchased copy of the magazine can be passed along countless times, these ads had the potential to reach readers who had not purchased the magazine.[22]

Close attention to these ads reveal interesting differences in the marketing strategies of the titles and how they constructed their intended readership. In the February 1922 issue of the WHM, for example, one advertisement is in the form of a coupon for a subscription bundle including the WHM and the Nor’-West Farmer that states, “You cannot overlook the opportunity to receive so much valuable reading matter at such a trivial cost.”[23]

On the following page (fig. 5) there is another bundle offer with The Free Press Prairie Farmer, and a letter dated Dec. 22. 1921 that reads,

I am now in receipt of the Christmas issue of The Western Home Monthly. I have examined the copy and find it replete with matter of intense interest. I can well understand how welcome it would be in the 43,000 homes which it reaches. It is distinctly a home journal and I congratulate you on its appearance and the matter which it contains and the arrangement thereof.

The letter is headed “McGill University, Montreal” and signed “A. W. Currie, Principal”—this was Sir Arthur Currie, recently identified as “Canada’s most famous general.”[24] The inclusion of this letter is evidently intended as promotion for the magazine, and while Currie has no clear connection to Western Canada, it demonstrates the desire to establish origin in Western Canada whilst appealing to a wider range of readers. Over two pages, then, there are three separate promotional pieces for the magazine: two which make use of subscription bundling and emphasize the regional nature of the magazine, and one which attempts to highlight the value and quality of the magazine through endorsement by a respected individual.

Although the CHJ, per issue, contained roughly twice the number of these advertisements as did the WHM, it did not make use of subscription bundles; it did, however, offer subscription incentives. An ad in the February 1922 issue offers “These Five Great Books by Famous Authors Given Free to You,” referring readers back to “The offer made in our last issue.”[25] The referenced ad from the January issue (fig. 6) places a significant emphasis on nationality, describing itself as “A thorough Canadian magazine for the Canadian woman and her home, replete with stories and features that appeal to every woman.”

The ad offers the incentive of up to five novels—including the work of three Canadian authors, one American, and one Scottish—for each subscription sent in “that is not your own,” repositioning readers as saleswomen for the magazine. Yet it frames this role within private networks; readers can take advantage of the “free” books “by telling a few friends and neighbours why they find the Canadian Home Journal so interesting.” In doing so, it feminizes the activity of selling, making use of private feminine networks to advance its commercial interests.

Indeed, the magazine—in tone and overall content—positions itself as a trusted friend. In another advertisement for the magazine, which emphasizes the value of the ads featured for other products, the magazine asks,

If your friend on whom you could rely told you as a secret the name of an article you were needing, would you not want to get that particular article? You can place the same reliance on the many products advertised in The Canadian Home Journal and the information given you in all the advertisement is as valuable and useful as if it was the secret advice of your best friend.[26]

As Jennifer Scanlon comments, women’s magazines approached their reader “alternately as her confidant, friend, minister, critic, advocate, and teacher.”[27] All of these roles imply a personal connection to the reader, which the CHJ capitalized on to construct an imagined readership of women whom, it implied—while scattered across a vast nation—had shared interests, values, and aspirations. The construction of the magazine as trusted friend here also serves to connect the editorial and commercial content. This is rendered more explicit in an advertisement for the magazine in the June 1922 issue, which claims, “Besides the many useful hints given in the editorial columns—the fund of helpful suggestions contained in the advertising columns is well worth your close attention.”[28] In its “useful hints” and “helpful suggestions,” the CHJ adopts a tone that relies on conceptions of feminine friendship. The WHM, on the other hand, in its inclusion of respected male opinion and connection to farming titles, is less explicitly feminine. Comparative consideration of the two brings each into sharper focus.

Conclusions

The case for women’s magazines constructing their imagined audience as both readers and consumers—whose needs, desires, and aspirations were primarily defined by their domestic roles—has been compellingly put forward by numerous critics.[29] The magazines also relied on being able to sell their readerships to advertisers, emphasising the interconnected nature of editorial and commercial interests. In order to fully consider these magazines as collaborative texts and commercial products, it is crucial to acknowledge that the editorial and commercial material in these magazines influence and shape each other. The next task becomes designing a methodological approach that accounts for the varied range of content, without privileging one element over all others. This comparative approach offers one potential solution to this challenge.

This is, of course, not to say that this is the only or the best approach. Like any method designed for periodical material, it is constrained by its object of study. Historical archiving practices have removed many cover pages and the ads contained on the inside covers, as is the case with many issues of the WHM. This has certainly limited the precision of the content analysis, but imperfect archives are an unchangeable fact of periodical research. Therefore creative approaches must be adopted. This analysis does not hinge entirely on the decimal-point accuracy of the content analysis, nor does it rely entirely on interpretation of surface or close readings. Rather, it uses each to support the other, and in so doing addresses the challenges and limitations of each.

As is common with the interrogation of magazines, the research for this article has raised far more points than can be covered here. The differences between the fashion pages of the two magazines warrant further scrutiny, as do the authors like Katherine Hale and Nellie McClung who appeared in both publications, and perhaps have much to tell us about Canadian women writers and periodical publishing networks. Likewise, the ads for products like Clark’s Soup and Ford Motor-Cars that appeared in both magazines offer insight into the operation of national advertising, and the construction of national identity in a burgeoning consumer culture. Yet this analysis demonstrates that while the CHJ and the WHM made use of the same stylistic and economic models—tried and tested in the United States—they display nuanced differences in their imagined audiences, tone, and focus which often go beyond association with the regional or the national. This is particularly visible in the comparison of the editorial contents and proportion of appearance and lifestyle advertising, with the WHM catering to an audience imagined as more rural, practical, and frugal and the CHJ addressing a readership imagined as urban or suburban, desiring fashion and style, and with greater leisure time. Both the editorial and commercial content reflect the perceived interests, values, and ideals of their imagined audiences. I argue that comparative analysis offers tremendous potential for periodical studies, for titles published in the same country and across national borders.[30] What I hope is most clear, though, is how this methodology can be applied to highlight aspects of magazines that might go unnoticed—or may be less readily apparent—if considered individually.

Notes