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Message from the President - 2000
It looks increasingly unlikely that F. A. Davis Company will become a Fortune 500 company before the end of
the century. We might make it if sales in the millennium's last September increase by a factor of say 2,000,
provided returns are lighter than normal. Could this be a case of unfulfilled dreams or is this the
proverbial blessing in disguise? The honor of being a Fortune 500 company appears to be as fleeting as it is
a symbol of power and success.
During the 1980s a total of 230
companies disappeared from the Fortune 500. Of the original top 100 published in 1956 only 29 could be found
in 1992s top 100. The guarantee of continued success rings just as hollow for the health science publishing
industry, where the largest houses have been led into chaos by the swap-happy lords who own and then disown
them. A century of progress in health science publishing has ended abruptly for the abandoned imprints, the
fallen CEOs, and the many very able publishing professionals who are being cast aside. The Unfortunate 500
should go on record not as the latest feature in Fortune magazine, but as a rising head count of
victims unable to survive the cross currents of merger and acquisition.
At the turn of the last century when intellectual property was the sprawling college campus on the other
side of the fence, American medical publishers were independent and for the most part closely held. A
constant flirtation with bankruptcy tested their abilities to raise capital and maintain an unwavering
optimism during some difficult economic conditions. As if they needed additional incentive, there was also
a chance to take the American Revolution into extra innings.
The well-established order of British medical publishers was given notice as a brigade of American
publishers led by Henry Charles Lea dutifully legitimized themselves by opening up London offices.
One such publisher got his break while covering the Middle Atlantic region for the esteemed William Wood
Company of Great Britain when he came upon a manuscript lead and a stockholder all in the same handshake.
Frank Allston Davis signed Dr. John V. Shoemaker, Dean of what became the University of Pennsylvania
Graduate School of Medicine (now defunct), and in 1879 the F. A. Davis Company was born.
While other American publishing entrepreneurs such as Walter Burns Saunders, Joshua Ballinger Lippincott,
and Kenneth Blakiston were wholly devoted to their publishing endeavors, Mr. Davis was in pain.
Every winter in Philadelphia, and perhaps by simply considering a trip to the company's London office,
the opportunistic Mr. Davis needed relief from his chronic rheumatism. In 1885 while attending the
American Medical Association meeting in New Orleans, Mr. Davis was alerted to the therapeutic attributes
of climate on Pinellas Peninsula in Florida. Forty-three years later he would be recognized as the Father
of St. Petersburg by the St. Petersburg Times. Apparently nobody warned him about the side effects.
The land developing company, the electric power plant, the gasworks, the waterworks, the trolley line,
the steamship line, and the hotel he built on the Gulf Coast collapsed upon his death in 1917. We can only
speculate upon the publishing company's growth rate had Mr. Davis been availed of a steady regimen of
ibuprofen, making his time in Philadelphia more bearable. And we can ponder whether estate tax consequences
would have forced a more sizable F. A. Davis Company right out of its coveted independence. The privilege to ponder and speculate remains with us.
Today, only F. A. Davis Company is still independent and unlike its formative years, closely held.
After a very disappointing year in 1894 Mr. Davis addressed his 39 stockholders. His characteristic
enthusiasm clearly challenged, he cited strikes, droughts, cyclones, and floods and then intoned, It is
the unexpected that always happens (Yogi Berra was not an investor but should have been). Over 100 years
later we have watched the unexpected turn the legacies of health science's publishing forefathers into a
kind of talent-cleansed Balkan conflict. Our liberty intact, F. A. Davis Company heads into the new
millennium on the high end of good fortune, ready once again, for the unexpected to happen.
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Robert H. Craven, Jr.
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