Born in 1838 in the small farming town of Orland, Maine, Edwin Ginn grew up in a Universalist family with strong pacifist views. Ginn attended the Universalist Westbrook Seminary in preparation for a life in ministry, but ultimately decided to transfer to Tufts University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s of arts degrees. For several years after graduation, Ginn worked for various textbook publishers before founding his own publishing firm, Ginn & Co., in 1867. Based Originally in Boston, the company moved to East Cambridge in 1895 and established the facility at 215 First St. known as the Athenaeum Press.
Book publishing, particularly textbooks, was already well represented in Cambridge by the end of the 19th century, largely because of the city’s universities. An April 1895 Cambridge Tribune article announcing that Ginn & Co. would move to East Cambridge predicted that, with it and Houghton & Mifflin joining University Press and Riverside Press, “Cambridge may yet become a second Leipzig as the great manufacturing centre of the book publishers of the United States.” Over the course of the 20th century, the city did indeed become a renowned location for book publishing in the educational and broader commercial markets. By 1900, the Athenaeum Press alone was producing upward of 10,000 books a day and responsible for publishing more than 800 titles.
Although Ginn dedicated his professional career to publishing, his true passion was peace. Inspired by his upbringing and his friendship with the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, pastor of Boston’s South Congregational Church, Ginn’s pacifist beliefs led him to found the International School of Peace in Boston in 1910. The school’s stated mission was “educating the people of all nations to a full knowledge of the waste and destructiveness of war and of preparation for war, its evil effects on present social conditions and on the well-being of future generations and to promote international justice and the brotherhood of man, and generally by every practical means to promote peace and goodwill among all mankind.” Ginn gave the school a $1 million endowment from his personal funds and ultimately spent more than a third of the wealth he had accumulated from his years in publishing on funding the school and its mission. In December 1910, the Tribune reported on a “people’s meeting” at the First Parish Church at which Ginn spoke about “the special work of educating the public in peace principles” and encouraged Cantabrigians to join his pacifist efforts, arguing that the massive financial and psychological investments in warfare should be matched by significant investments in peace.
Ginn believed firmly that the increasingly global nature of society, fostered through international trade and improved methods of communication, would make peace highly desirable and inevitable as people and nations saw their futures as intertwined. He saw books, particularly textbooks, as the single most powerful means of creating peace; as students at all levels of education learned more about one another and about the destructive effects of war, Ginn believed they would inevitably become a generation dedicated to peace and international cooperation. Ginn spent the last several years of his life publishing textbooks with a pacifist bent for schools across the country in an effort to shape the minds of schoolchildren and avoid future wars.
But Ginn’s vision was not to be – at least not in his lifetime. Ginn died in early 1914, and several months later the world was plunged into the Great War.
Ginn left provisions in his will for his efforts to continue after his death, however; the International School of Peace, later renamed the World Peace Foundation, is now affiliated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Ginn’s alma mater, and continues to promote peace and global cooperation through research, education and advocacy.
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Beth Folsom is programs manager for History Cambridge.
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