Gordon Allison visited Mrs. Harriet Adams of the Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate in East Orange, NJ, in pursuit of the boy inventor Tom Swift last heard from in 1941. Not only had no new adventures appeared, the wartime paper shortage had forced the older books out of print. Same sad story for the Rover Boys, another longtime product of the literary factory that also produced the Bobbsey Twins, the Motor Boys and other “athletes, adventurers and young men of derring-do.” Edward Stratemeyer, who had created Tom Swift and most of the other characters, had died in 1930 but at the time the many volumes had long been the work of a stable of ghostwriters. Among the later series were the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Many middle class New Yorkers in 1946, particularly those of non-ethnic backgrounds, had grown up reading these books and their kids were now reading them.
“Tom is taking a rest,” said Mrs. Adams, Stratemeyer's daughter and current head of the syndicate. “There has been enough inventing in the last couple of years to satisfy everyone for a while.”
Stratemeyer was clerk in his step-brother's tobacco shop when he wrote out his first short story on brown wrapping paper and sold it for $75. He went on to write serials for and edit several juvenile magazines, which flourished at a time when there were no movies, television or radio. He sold his first full-length book, Richard Dare's Adventure or Striking Out For Himself in 1894 when he was 32. He then went on to write 150 books, including the original titles in the series Bound to Win, Old Glory, Rover Boys and Flag of Freedom before establishing his syndicate in 1906. Later he would outline the plots and then turn the rest of the writing over to a ghostwriter. That same year he personally wrote the first of the Tom Swift titles. A pen name was created for each series. While the early books displayed a fascination about new technology and inventions, they also reflected a social conservatism in which ethnic stereotypes abounded, antisemitism and racist attitudes could be found and where workers were depicted as delighted to please their employers without complaint or demands. These were the values with which a lot of Americans in 1946 had grown up.
In the 16 years since their father's death, Mrs. Adams and her sister, now retired, produced 235 new books. They stuck to the basic formula of action-packed, episodic stories but had made some changes over the years to meet contemporary tastes. There were now more mysteries and sports and less “improbable heroics and dubious adventures.” Books were tested on both adults and children before going to the publisher. At this time the syndicate was preparing five new series, each with two or three titles, but Mrs. Adams kept the particulars secret.
The actual authors remained anonymous to keep up the illusion that a single writer was responsible for all the books in a series. The writers mostly had day jobs. Although not mentioned in the article, Harriet Adams wrote a number of the books herself. Several of the series continued to be popular in the postwar years and some continue to be read today in modernized versions.
In 1946 a Tom Swift radio show was proposed and a couple of scripts written but it never got off the ground. A new series of Tom Swift books began appearing in 1954.