page_title: Crowell-Collier Publishing Company
section_title: Early History
hierarchical_section_title: Crowell-Collier Publishing Company / Early History
context_page_description: Crowell-Collier Publishing Company was an American publisher that owned the popular magazines Collier's, Woman's Home Companion and The American Magazine. Crowell also published general interest books and references such as Collier's Encyclopedia and the Harvard Classics series of books.
  The company was founded by agricultural tool manufacturer P. P. Mast with a single magazine, Farm & Fireside to sell farm tools and implements in 1877 in Springfield, Ohio. By 1881, Mast had relinquished control to John S. Crowell who expanded their company by purchasing Home Companion.
  After P. P. Mast's death in 1898, Crowell obtained control of the company and established it as the Crowell Publishing Company. Crowell Publishing expanded their magazine holdings with The American Magazine in 1911 and the weekly Collier's in 1919. At one point Collier's weekly had over 1.25 million subscribers. Crowell's also published the Collier's Encyclopedia which came under fire from the FTC in 1940 for deceptive sales practices.
context_section_description: The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company had its roots in the agricultural trade of the 19th century. Industrialist Phineas P. Mast, the owner of P. P. Mast, manufactured farm and agricultural tools, and he wanted a magazine to promote his products. Mast made wind engines, pumps, plows and mowers in Springfield, Ohio. Mast hired John S. Crowell away from the successful Home and Farm of Louisville in 1877 to manage the new bi-monthly farm journal called Farm & Fireside. By the 1890s, Farm & Fireside maintained a circulation of over half a million. Mast relinquished his role as acting executive in 1879, but he stayed on as an investor. Crowell along with T.J. Kirkpatrick (who was Mast's nephew) then changed the name of the publishing house to Mast, Crowell and Kirkpatrick Publishers.
  The publishers soon expanded from the one magazine into other markets. They constructed the Farm and Fireside building in Springfield, Ohio, in 1881. In 1883, they purchased the Home Companion magazine from a Harvey & Finn of Cleveland, Ohio to meet the growing demand for content aimed at women. They bought Youth's Home Library, a similar paper that had been published in Boston, and merged it with their youth-oriented publication Our Young People. They then changed the name of the three merged periodicals back to the title Home Companion, a general family magazine. By 1890 the magazine's subscription had reached 100,000. The Companion had a number of names but was changed to Woman's Home Companion in 1896. By the 1890s, Farm & Fireside was also publishing regional editions of the periodical. After the death of P. P. Mast in 1898, the company changed the name to Crowell and Kirkpatrick Publishers.
caption: P. P. Mast and Company, Springfield, Ohio
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