Arizona republican., 1918-03-03
DEATH GALL COMES
 ID BANCROFT I, GREAT
 HISTORIAN 0F WEST
Republican A. p. Leased Wire1

SAN FRANCISCO, March 2-Hu- bert Howe Bancroft, famous Ameri- can historian, died today at his home Tn this city of acute peritonitis. He was S6 years of age.
 MT. Bancroft in recent years had lived quietly at his home here and until shortly prior to his death had continued his historical work.
 Although one of the most prolific writers of history which America ever has produced at the age of forty Hubert Howe Bancroft had never written a book, nor, by his own statement, made many years later, did he know how to write even the simplest manuscript. From early manhood he had been a bookseller and business man in San Francisco, and previous to that, clerk in book store at Buffalo, N. r. Earlier still, he was farm hand and tan nery boy near Grandville, Ohio, where he was born May 5, 1892. It was in the bookstores that he ob- tained his. education, his attendance at public schools being very limited.
 Following his opening of a book shop at San Francisco in 1856. Ban- croft conceived the idea of writing a comprehensive history of California, and to that end began collecting books, manuscripts and newspapers So absorbed did he become in this search for material that ten CT twelve years later he had collected thousands of volumes of books and stacks of manuscripts and newspaper files. Still he had written nothing and could not, for he did not know what was in the books and manu- scripts.
 Finally, in 1871, the passion to write so consumed Bancroft that he gave the conduct of his business over to others and set himself in earnest to the task. Long since the plan to write only of California had en- larged until it included the Pacific Coast regions of the whole North and South American continents.
 Despairs at First
 Soon despair seized upon Ban- croft, for he discovered by tests that the mere working of reading, digesting and notating his material unaided would require at last four hundred years For a time his de- spondency amounted almost to in- sanity. Then he considered the ex- pedient of employing assistants and i made many experiments, failure gen. orally resulting. On one occasion he threw into the furnace as worthless twenty-five reams of manuscript, rep resenting the work of six or eight men for months. A noted mediaeval ] scholar, employed at, a high wage, was unable to help him.
 Persisting, the would-be historian finally perfected a system of card indexing which proved successful. Thereafter, he trained and employed ] hundreds of assistants, the services | of some of whom amounted to col l laborators. From the vast notes thus accumulated, Bancroft finally ap- preached his real task, he having learned. painfully, in the meantime, something of the art of writing.
 Success Finally Won
 More difficulties arose. Bancroft had selected Peru as the subject of his first endeavor and had decided that its history should begin with the Spanish Conquest. Suddenly, when the work was half complete, he rejected it, holding to the theory that all history should begin with the beginning of things. Starting i anew, he delved into the mythe and l legends of the mysterious peoples of the American continents running back l into the Middle Ages, marshaling 1 therefromf the facts and theories of l his Native Races of the Pacific l States" This work, in five volumes,