B. F. Johnson Publishing Company
—This concern is the successor of B. F. Johnson & Company, which was organized some time in the 80’s to develop a subscription book business founded by Benjamin Franklin Johnson in 1876. The business grew to enormous proportions and at one time the books published by this concern were to be found in almost every house in the South.
In 1895, the Company began to experiment in a small way with schoolbooks, beginning with Lee’s Advanced History. Two years later it published Johnson’s Primer, and this was soon followed by Johnson’s Readers. The success of these experiments led to a reorganization of the Company by Mr. Johnson in 1900, when the subscription book business was dropped and the house began to devote itself exclusively to schoolbooks. The first publications of the reorganized company were Graded Classics Readers and Colaw and Ellwood’s Arithmetics in 1900, both of which series were remarkably successful.
In 1902, Mr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by James D. Crump, who held the position until 1920, when he was succeeded by A. J. Gray, Jr. The Company has recently been reorganized by Mr. Gray to meet the demands of its extraordinary growth and to provide for further development on an enlarged scale.