A mischievous goat named Billy Whiskers wandered into the Saalfield Publishing Co. and turned the Akron business upside-down.
The farm animal tugged and nudged until the fledgling company became the largest publisher of children’s books in the world.
England native Arthur J. Saalfield founded the business in 1900 after buying the book-publishing unit of the Werner Printing & Lithograph Co. at Perkins and Union streets. He employed five workers and moved the shop to Miller Avenue, where he produced cookbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries and other weighty tomes.
There was little joy in Saalfield’s titles. Everything was strictly business. Off in the distance, a goat bleated.
Chicago housewife Frances Trego Montgomery (1858-1925), a Philadelphia native, submitted a manuscript in 1902 that was different than Saalfield’s usual fare.
Saalfield picked it up and read the first paragraphs: “Mr. Wagner lived about two miles from a small town, and he thought it would be nice for his boys to have a little goat cart, so they could drive into town for mail and do errands for the family.
“Without saying anything to his family, he appeared one evening leading a nice, docile looking, long-bearded Billy goat, hitched to a beautiful red wagon.
“Of course, the boys were wild with delight, and their mother disgusted, for she predicted that he would be more bother than he was worth, and would eat up all the things in the garden.”
The boys named the goat Billy Whiskers “on account of his long white beard.”
Saalfield was so impressed that he took chance on the first-time author and agreed to produce Billy Whiskers: An Autobiography of a Goat.
Montgomery lived on the south side of Chicago with her husband, Hugh, a grain broker, and two daughters, Estelle, 16, and Frances, 8. She was a natural storyteller and enjoyed entertaining youths.
“It has been my practice for years, when at home, to invite a group of children to my house for an hour in the evening, that between dinner and their bed-time, to whom I have ‘spun yarns,’ that have not infrequently been continued from sitting to sitting for weeks together,” Montgomery told The Bookseller trade journal in 1902.
“When entertaining my little friends, I always seat myself in a big arm-chair, with a child perched on either arm — these are the places of honor sought for, fought for, and at last decided by lot — and arrange the others in a semi-circle before me where I can watch the changes of expression that float over their faces and thus note the effect, as in no other way possible, of what I am saying.”
Saalfield’s first edition of Billy Whiskers retailed for $1. It was 159 pages long, measured 8 by 9½ inches and featured whimsical illustrations by W.H. Fry.
The Akron company described the book as “A book of pure, innocent fun for the little ones, relating the queer adventures, exciting times, and comical experiences of a pet Billy Goat, how he runs away from home; becomes the property of a little Irish lad; hauls milk to the city; invades a flat; is arrested; becomes a member of the fire department; a performer in a circus; makes life lively on a farm, etc., etc.”
Critics were quick to praise Saalfield’s new discovery.
The Akron Daily Democrat: “There is much fun for the children in the 159 pages of this volume and enough humor in the goat’s varied adventures to make it entertaining to older people as well.”
The Book Buyer: “Probably children will find more delight in ‘Billy Whiskers,’ by Frances Trego Montgomery, than in many a literary gem, and it needs no other praise than to say it is attractive by reason of simple language, good print, and colored pictures.”
The New York Times: “Who would not like to read the history of ‘Billy Whiskers: The Autobiography of a Goat’!”
The book was so popular that Saalfield had trouble keeping up with orders. The company soon enlisted Montgomery to write a sequel.
Billy Whiskers’ Kids, a title that gave away the ending of the first book, was out within months. Billy Whiskers Jr. came out the next year. Children delighted in each new tale of the goat’s antics, and Saalfield continued to produce at least one new Billy Whiskers book per year.
Thanks to a goat, the company converted its entire production to children’s publishing.
“The success of the Saalfield company is based very largely upon one of the most popular fiction characters that childhood has ever known and loved — the bizarre, highly intelligent and unique ‘Billy Whiskers,’ guaranteed to be the only absolutely odorless goat of history,” the Akron Times-Press reported.
Although Montgomery wrote other books for Saalfield, including The Wonderful Electric Elephant and Zip: The Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier, she kept coming back to Billy Whiskers. She penned at least 25 books about the goat, some under the pseudonym F.G. Wheeler.
The character was also featured in board games, silent movies, toys and puzzles.
Frances Trego Montgomery’s life story was an adventure, too. She divorced her husband in 1909, married George Porteous in 1910, had that marriage annulled in 1913 and moved to Detroit. The author embarked on a voyage around the world in 1925, but died of apoplexy April 7 aboard the S.S. Franconia after leaving Hong Kong for Shanghai. She was 67.
That summer, her final book, Billy Whiskers’ Pranks, became another big seller.
The Billy Whiskers series had legions of fans, including at least one future president. According to the National Park Service, a copy of Billy Whiskers’ Kids is on display in the nursery of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site in Brookline, Mass. His mother, Rose Kennedy, wrote inside the cover: “One of Jack’s favorite books. Grandma used to bring one of the series when she came to see him.”
Saalfield’s next big deal was to obtain the licensing rights for Shirley Temple books in the 1930s. The company sold more than 50 million products related to her.
Over the decades, other licensed products included Mickey Mouse, Dick Tracy, Superman, Raggedy Ann, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Brown, Casper the Friendly Ghost, the Beatles and TV shows such as I Love Lucy, The Cisco Kid, Leave It to Beaver, Bonanza and The Partridge Family.
By the late 1960s, the company had 350 workers, printed 80,000 books a day and sold 50 million products a year — and it was all built on the hairy back of an ornery goat.
The Saalfield empire collapsed in 1976 when banks foreclosed on a $2.5 million loan. Saalfield filed for bankruptcy and shut down. In 1977, Kent State University purchased the company’s archives for $4,000. The Saalfield files are stored in 171 boxes in the KSU special collections department.
Original Billy Whiskers books are collectors’ items that can sell for hundreds of dollars. Newer reprints fetch a more modest price.
More than a century later, the adventures continue for Billy Whiskers.
To read a copy of the first Billy Whiskers book, go to www.gutenberg.org/files/19167/19167-h/19167-h.htm. See a photo of Billy Whiskers’ Kids at the JFK National Historic Site at http://myoncell.mobi/stops.php?acct_num=16179929172&stop=4. Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.