Vest Pocket Helps (1913) win the contest for the smallest known Paul Elder “books.” At 2½ x 3½ inches and only ten or twelve pages of text, they’re each a very slim stapled pamphlet. But then, that’s why they’re called Vest Pocket Helps: so that they will easily fit into one’s vest pocket. Back in the era when daily attire—at least, a man’s daily attire—always included a vest pocket, it was a self-explanatory title.
There are eight titles in the series, conveniently listed on the copyright page:
- The Supremacy of God’s Law
- Knowing the Truth
- God’s Ever Presence
- The Open Door
- The Truth
- The Divine Idea
- Forgiveness
- Material Needs
The books were sold for 10¢ each, or 80¢ for the set of eight “gathered and tied with linen tape.”
Update, 19 May 2025: The copyright page states “These pages have been compiled from random readings; grateful acknowledgement is made the several writers who have thus contributed their helpful thoughts,” though none of those writers is mentioned by name. Correspondence has come to light, however, suggesting that the texts of the Vest Pocket Helps are in fact the copyrighted writings of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science Church. In March 1914, the Christian Science Publishing Society wrote to Olcott Haskell of the Christian Science Committee on Publication for Northern California:
The trustees feel that the good work you have done with Mr. Elder in pointing out to him the necessity of protecting the copyright on the works of our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, and the publication of this Society, will be a help to him in the future as well as in the present, and they believe that, so far as the question of the Vest Pocket Helps is concerned, it would be well for you to inform Mr. Elder that under the circumstances, they believe he should be permitted to continue the sale of the pamphlets until his present stock is disposed of, but that no additional copies are to be printed by him.
By 1911, Elder had published at least twenty titles that he felt comfortable listing in Impressions Annual 1911-1912 catalog under the heading “Christian Science.” Elder’s store manager John Howell was a Christian Scientist, as was Paul Elder’s mother Amelia; it’s not known whether either of them had any direct influence in publishing those twenty books.
Then, in 1913, it appears that Elder published Eddy’s copyrighted material, and within a year the Christian Science Publishing Society told him to cease and desist. What I would like to know is whether knowingly published Eddy’s copyrighted material. The pamphlets list no author, which is very unusual. Add the meaningless “compiled from random readings” and things seem suspicious, but Elder’s letters to the Society do not survive. In any case, the Society merely admonished him to print no more pamphlets.
The series was incorrectly titled Vest Pocket Tracts in the printed editions of the checklist.
