South Bend, World Famed — the centennial volume (1922, for 1923)

Handelsman & Young; C. E. Young, editor — dated 1922 in the catalogs, made for the centennial of 1923

What it is: South Bend, World Famed, published by Handelsman & Young and edited by C. E. Young — by its own copyright leaf, "published and dedicated to a greater South Bend." It is the centennial souvenir book: the city invited the world to its hundredth birthday in 1923, counting from the 1823 trading post, and the Tribune's suggestion of the celebration, the Chamber of Commerce's adoption of it, and the program of booster essays — a "Tradition" essay among them, Frank J. Green's Chamber survey, a who's-who of firms down to a mock News-Times front page — fill the volume. The Events section read it first-hand, through Indiana Memory and the Internet Archive (item southbendworldfa00youn, the Allen County Public Library's copy).

A dating conflict, printed: the book celebrates a centennial kept in 1923, and this build's Events file cites it as a 1923 volume; the catalogs date the book itself 1922 — the Indiana State Library's holdings guide enters it as "C.E. Young, Editor, Reprint of: Handelsman & Young, 1922," and scholarship citing it gives "South Bend World Famed (Evansville, Ind., 1922)." A souvenir printed ahead of its party explains both dates; the entry prints both, and any citation of the book in this history should be read as the 1922 volume made for the 1923 centennial.

Its standing, from this build's experience: a centennial souvenir is the city introducing itself, and it is evidence of the introduction — of what South Bend in 1922 wanted the world to believe: "labor troubles are unknown for the most part," its health department "bent on keeping it free of contagion," a home-owning city with its great factory thriving. Scholarship has used it in exactly that way, as the city's official self-portrait. It is also, in one place, this record's sole carrier: the 1909 Homecoming survives to this build only as the centennial volume's citation of it, and the Events file prints it at that strength and no stronger.

Sources:

1. The volume itself, read first-hand (Internet Archive, item southbendworldfa00youn; Allen County Public Library copy) — copyright leaf, editor's credit, introduction.
2. Indiana State Library, county history holdings guide for St. Joseph County (the 1922 dating).
3. Indiana Magazine of History 118 (December 2022), citing the volume as Evansville, 1922.